Israel is what happens when you foster victim mentality

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magz
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14 May 2021, 7:29 am

 ! magz wrote:
Please, stay reasonably on topic.


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16 May 2021, 9:46 am

How the violence plays into Netanyahu’s hands

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In the beginning, the usual suspects from the left were the only Israelis who said it out loud. Next was the former minister of defence and chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, who made the link between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal interests and the violent confrontation that started in East Jerusalem and spread to the Gaza strip, the occupied West Bank and Israel. “The security escalation serves Netanyahu and Hamas, both for internal political reasons,” tweeted Ya’alon.

Then even former defence minister and chairman of Yisrael Beitenu party Avigdor Lieberman declared that “The strategic purpose of the [military] operation is to improve the public opinion of Netanyahu. As long as the mandate to form a government is with Lapid, Netanyahu will try to extend the operation.”

Indeed, the incumbent Israeli prime minister has not made any significant efforts to contain the violence. Last month, he could have ordered the police to remove the roadblocks from Damascus Gate in the old city of Jerusalem. Why did he wait until it became a battleground between the police and hundreds of young Palestinians? Why did he allow the police to throw stun grenades in Al-Aqsa mosque during prayer times?

Yair Lapid, chairman of the Yesh Atid party, former finance minister, and leader of the so-called “change bloc” had an answer even before the escalation started. Shortly after the March 23 elections, he met with defence minister and White and Blue Alliance chairman Benny Gantz and, according to Haaretz writer Yossi Verter, told him the following: “There is one thing you need to consider. If Netanyahu feels that the government is slipping through his fingers, he will try to create a security incident. In Gaza or the northern border. If he will think that this is the only way to save him, he will not hesitate for a moment.”

He now fears the “change bloc”, which Lapid and Gantz are part of and which emerged in an effort to oust him from power. It also includes right-wing Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, head of the right-wing Yamina party, and Gideon Sa’ar, head of the Likud splinter “New Hope”, as well as the left-wing Merav Michaeli, leader of the Labor Party, and Nitzan Horowitz, head of Meretz. This heterogeneous and rather fragile alliance had the sole purpose of setting up a government that excludes Netanyahu.

After Netanyahu failed for the fourth time in two years to form a government, the president offered the mandate to Lapid, the leader of the largest party in the “change bloc”, which has 17 mandates in the Knesset. The recent wave of violence found him amid his last efforts to complete the negotiations with the other parties.

Until a few days ago the “change bloc” was four Knesset votes short of the 61 that are needed to accomplish this mission. These votes were expected to come from the Palestinian Ra’am Party, headed by Mansour Abbas. He promised to join any political coalition that will be able to form a government.

As the tensions heated up in Jerusalem, Ya’alon urged the leaders of the “change bloc” to accelerate the moves to form a new government. But it seems that his advice came a little too late.

On May 13, the bloc fell apart. Bennett announced that he was leaving the “change bloc” and resuming negotiations with Netanyahu. Lapid said that he will keep trying to form a government, but his options have dramatically shrunk.

Apart from Mansour, he will also have to convince the Palestinian Joint List to “replace” Bennett’s party. If he fails to do so in less than three weeks, he will have to return the mandate to the president. In this case, Netanyahu may lead the country to a fifth election in two years and meanwhile appoint an attorney general that will find a way to halt his trial.

At this point, one must ask whether the “change bloc” that leans on Palestinian political forces will be able to avoid the next round of confrontation between the occupier and the resistance forces. Can a Palestinian-Israeli politician stay in a government that orders the police to attack Muslims in Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and sends pilots to drop bombs on Gaza, killing innocent Palestinian children?

The different responses to the current events demonstrate the huge gap between the potential partners of the “change bloc”. While Abbas and the other Palestinian Knesset members must take a step back from the new potential partners, the Zionist leaders cannot turn their backs to their constituents, who fear the barrage of Hamas rockets and inter-communal violence in mixed cities.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is like a car with only two gears: “drive” and “reverse”. You must choose between the two. There is no “parking” or “neutral”. If you are not making progress, you are doomed to go backwards.


Report: Hezbollah has ‘no interest’ in Gaza fighting spreading to Lebanon
Quote:
Hezbollah does not want to expand the ongoing fighting in the Gaza Strip to Lebanon, an unnamed Lebanese official told the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat in a Sunday report.

“The situation on the border with Israel will remain under control because Hezbollah has no interest to expand the conflict,” the source was quoted as saying.

Though there have been some clashes on the Israel-Lebanon border in support of the Palestinians, with one man shot dead, the Iran-backed Hezbollah was reportedly not intending to launch its own attacks.

The official, described as a “prominent politician,” said Iran doesn’t want an Israel-Hezbollah war while it tries to win sanctions relief from the US at the nuclear talks in Vienna. In addition, conflict with Israel would lead to Hezbollah’s stockpile of precision missiles being raised at the negotiations, the source added.

In addition, Hezbollah reportedly wants to keep a low profile about its weapons cache amid an ongoing political crisis in the country that has prevented the forming of a government. Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai has called for the United Nations to become involved, a development that would lead to consideration of Hezbollah’s weapons, according to the report.

Although some Hezbollah officials took part in the border protests, their presence was symbolic and intended to send only a political message, the source claimed.

The source also said that three rockets fired from Lebanon at Israel last week, which exploded in the sea, were intended as a show of solidarity with Gaza and that there will not be an escalation into open fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The report came after the Israeli military thwarted an attempted infiltration attack against Israelis along the Lebanese border, overnight Friday-Saturday. Forces identified several suspects cutting the border fence and digging beneath it, the Israel Defense Forces said, adding that “troops fired at the men’s lower bodies and they fled.”

Searches of the area revealed items suspected to be bombs, the military said, saying that the suspects’ behavior and evidence at the scene point toward a plan to infiltrate into Israel and carry out an attack in the area of Metula.

On Saturday the military reported fresh rioting in Lebanon at a number of locations along the border between the countries.

“The rioters are throwing objects and Molotov cocktails and damaging the [security] fence,” a statement from the IDF said, adding that troops responded with riot dispersal means and warning fire toward a number of the rioters.

The clashes were not near any Israeli communities, the IDF reassured.


Hamas rocket barrages, IDF’s response catch Biden with no envoys in Israel
Quote:
Four months into his tenure, US President Joe Biden has still not announced his choice for US ambassador. Even if a decision were made, the next ambassador would have to go through a Senate hearing process that might take weeks or even months.

A number of key Middle East roles in the Biden administration also remain vacant. In the State Department, the position of assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs is vacant. The former assistant during the Trump administration, David Schenker, led ongoing talks between Israel and Lebanon on exclusive economic zones amid a dispute over the maritime border between the countries and rights to potentially lucrative offshore gas fields.

The most senior American diplomat in Israel is the chargé d’affaires, Jonathan Schreier, and he is in charge of the American Embassy in Jerusalem, including diplomatic contacts between the United States and Israel.

Since Biden’s inauguration, Joey Hood has been serving as acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Last week, Hood was scheduled to brief foreign reporters in a conference call. However, on Tuesday, at the end of a tense day in the region, the State Department canceled the briefing.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian affairs Hady Amr was rushed out to Israel last week, and was holding talks in Israel on Sunday.

The Biden administration has also not yet picked a special envoy to the region or a consul general for East Jerusalem. The consul general to East Jerusalem’s position disappeared when Trump dissolved the office and transferred all its activities to the embassy in Jerusalem. Reinstating a consul requires a procedural process within the State Department, as well as close coordination with the Israeli government: a consulate in East Jerusalem, which acts as a kind of embassy to the Palestinians, cannot be reinstated without a security detail and that depends on the cooperation of the Israeli government.

Still, the leaders themselves are talking. Biden is known to have spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu four times since entering the White House.

Former Israeli diplomats told The Times of Israel that the US administration is at an advanced stage of choosing an ambassador, but the fact that there is no envoy yet is having a negative effect.

Danny Dayan, who served as Israel’s consul in New York until August 2020, said that after two particularly engaged ambassadors — Dan Shapiro and David Friedman — “the absence of a US ambassador is very noticeable.”

Still, Dayan noted that Biden has yet to appoint numerous ambassadors worldwide.

Danny Carmon, a former deputy ambassador to the United Nations, former attaché at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and an ex-ambassador to India, said leaving an embassy without an ambassador is less remarkable than it might once have been.

“In the past, in the diplomatic world, it was considered a bad sign, but today with all the technology and direct conversations by the head of the National Security Council with his counterpart, it is less critical,” Carmon said.

The delay in appointing a US ambassador could also reflect Biden’s foreign policy priorities, Dayan said, at least prior to the eruption of violence in the past week. “With the exception of the Iranian portfolio, the Middle East is not a top priority for the administration’s foreign policy, as opposed to East Asia and China in particular, and relations with Russia. Restoring relations with Europe and even Latin America are now a priority over the Middle East.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank, said that in general Biden is proving to be slow in appointing ambassadors and envoys. But that could signal trouble for Israel.

“If this is a reflection of his foreign policy priorities, Israelis will understand that they need to make their own decisions against enemies like Iran,” he said. “An increasingly invisible administration will have little reason to complain when they do. Iran is where there will be the biggest clash.


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17 May 2021, 9:03 am

IDF believes it significantly hurt Hamas, and that’s the best it can do for now

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The Israel Defense Forces believes it has achieved its major goals in this round of fighting against the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups as of Sunday, indicating Jerusalem may soon accept a ceasefire offer, The Times of Israel has learned.

Though Israeli defense officials maintain that they have many more targets that they could destroy in the Gaza Strip if the fighting continued, the military has knocked out the terror groups’ main military assets — demolishing parts of Hamas’s sprawling underground tunnel network and demonstrating that all of its subterranean infrastructure is vulnerable to Israeli attack; destroying nearly all of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s rocket production capabilities and most of Hamas’s, preventing them from being able to rearm in the coming months and years; and killing a number of top terrorist commanders and weapons experts.

Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi made this explicit on Sunday afternoon, stating at a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz: “Hamas made a serious mistake and did not calculate us correctly.” The IDF response, he said, had been following “a pre-prepared plan… with several stages, some of which have been completed and some which lie ahead.”

This is what occurred on Monday, as the IDF capitalized on Hamas’s mistaken belief that Israel had no tolerance for war and that while it would likely retaliate to the rocket fire on Jerusalem, it would not allow the situation to escalate beyond that.

Within a few hours, Israel’s political leadership gave the military the go-ahead to launch its campaign. The IDF top brass overwhelmingly view the latest round of fighting as a decisive tactical success for Israel and one that it expects will put off another conflict for years to come. It acknowledges, however, that Hamas has also had some achievements — notably in proving its willingness to make sacrifices in order to “defend” Jerusalem from Israel, giving it a somewhat elevated status to some Palestinians, Arab Israelis and others in the Muslim world.

Throughout the campaign to date, Israel was approached a number of times by international intermediaries, notably the Egyptian military, to reach a ceasefire with Hamas and rebuffed each offer, insisting that it would continue the operation until it had achieved its goals, which Israeli officials increasingly indicated on Sunday that it had.

Israel currently sees no viable alternative for Gaza aside from leaving the brutal Hamas terror group in power there, allowing it to rule the enclave and serve as a convenient address for punishment whenever an attack on Israel is launched from the Strip. This is deemed preferable to leaving the enclave in a state of potential chaos, were Hamas to be toppled. As a result of this thinking, Israel’s best outcome in this campaign is to significantly weaken Hamas militarily in order to prevent it from conducting further attacks.

However, Hamas and Islamic Jihad used that time without Israeli airstrikes to build up a massive arsenal of rockets, as well as smaller caches of drones and other more advanced weaponry. They also took advantage of the opportunity to expand their underground infrastructure, building out an already sprawling network of subterranean tunnels. Israel’s construction of a concrete underground barrier around Gaza effectively prevented the terror groups from using tunnels to conduct cross-border raids, but Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad dug over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of passages under the tiny beleaguered enclave, used for bunkers, weapons storage and to move fighters and commanders throughout the Strip.

Over the past week, the IDF has sought to dismantle all the gains that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made — not only over the past year, but in the nearly seven years since the 2014 Gaza war, the last major conflict fought between the two sides.

The military has also targeted dozens of rocket production facilities, which it believes will make it extremely difficult for terror groups in the Strip to replenish their arsenals — in the coming months, for simpler rockets, and for several years, for more advanced models. According to IDF assessments, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s rocket manufacturing network was more significantly damaged than Hamas’s.

Since the beginning of the conflict, Hamas has attempted multiple attacks using explosives-laden drones — which were domestically built but apparently inspired by some Iranian designs — with limited, if any, success. The IDF has also successfully prevented all of Hamas’s attempts to use its naval capabilities, notably its commando unit, against Israeli targets at sea and onshore, including multiple attacks on Israel’s Tamar natural gas rig.

The IDF has also destroyed most of the terror group’s naval infrastructure and weaponry over the past week, including several autonomous submarines that Hamas has developed in recent years, each capable of carrying 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of explosives and guided by GPS — though the military believes that a small number of the weapons may still be in Hamas’s possession.

Around midnight on Thursday, the IDF launched its largest yet bombardment in the campaign, targeting a massive defensive tunnel network under northern Gaza, which it refers to as the “metro,” dropping hundreds of bombs from 160 aircraft on different passages and bunkers in the complex under the city of Beit Lahiya.

This attack was intended to serve three main functions: to destroy the physical infrastructure so it could not be used by Hamas in the future; to convince the terror group that its underground tunnels were no longer an asset but were instead a liability, where they could be bombed by Israeli jets with impunity; and to kill as many Hamas operatives as possible.

The military believes the strike fulfilled the former two goals, noting a reluctance among Hamas members after the fact to as freely enter tunnels, but according to initial IDF assessments, the number of terrorists in the complex was far lower than hoped.

Yet overall IDF officials regard the operation, which required years of planning in order to map out and locate the various sections of the tunnel system, as having been a success.

In many ways, the past week has seen even more ferocious fighting than during the 51-day conflict in 2014, known as Operation Protective Edge. According to IDF assessments, rockets and mortar shells have been fired at an unparalleled rate at Israel in the past week, more of them each day than during the 2014 war. Indeed, the past week has seen nearly 3,000 projectiles fired by terrorists in the Strip, more than in the entirety of 2018, when 1,571 rockets and mortar shells were launched, and all of 2019, when 2,045 were fired.

In less than a week, these attacks have caused a greater number of civilian deaths in Israel — at least nine — than in the month-and-a-half of Protective Edge, when six civilians were killed. Most of those killed over the past week were directly hit by rockets or shrapnel when they were unable to reach a bomb shelter.

As Israel now has the military capabilities to strike tunnels from the air, such a ground operation is unlikely to occur in this round of fighting, despite apparent efforts by the military to suggest that such an invasion may indeed occur.

The number of Palestinians killed in the current round of fighting — at least 192 from Monday night to Sunday afternoon, or nearly 27 each day — is lower than in 2014, when over 2,000 Palestinians were killed over the course of the 51-day conflict, or over 40 each day.

On Sunday, in an IDF strike in an upscale neighborhood of Gaza City inhabited by many top Hamas officers, more than 40 Palestinian civilians were killed, Gaza health officials said, including a 1-year-old baby and a 3-year-old toddler, in what appeared to be the deadliest strike in the fighting.

However, as calls grow from Israeli allies to wrap up the fighting, particularly in light of recent Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel’s political echelon was expected to accept an armistice shortly.

While I do not dispute the thrust of the analysis I find it too limited sticking with military objectives and ignoring the political elements. Wars are political disputes. Hamas and the Palestinians made a number of very significant gains. First and foremost the events of the last few weeks put the Palestinian cause back to the priority after a post Abraham accords period of irrelevancy. Since Hezbollah stayed out of it, and the Palestinian Authority is weak Hamas is by default the leaders of the Palestinians. To an unprecedented degree Arab-Israelis participated in rioting. Concurrently Israeli Jews participated in the rioting making the situation somewhat reminiscent of the Northern Ireland troubles. This sectarian violence was not only in the occupied territories but in Israel proper. It was not the IDF dragging a man out of car and beating him to a pulp with Israeli flags, the teenage girls laughing and dancing over a destroyed Arab owned Ice cream shop were not the police. The riots will ease or end at some point. What experience has taught us Americans is that just because the riots end does not mean its over. Crime spikes, the neighborhoods physically deteriorate. What are bias incidents, what are common crimes, what are a bit a both is hard to determine and in the end does not matter to the people stuck there. As a result of the events of the last few weeks Jews in are a lot less secure in Israel proper and will be for the foreseeable future.

A case can be made that sans Hamas the Sheikh Jarrah evictions would have resulted in sectarian warfare anyways. But they did jump in and will gain politically from it.

There is a saying about Vietnam that contains a lot of truth “The Americans won every battle but lost the war”. The Vietnamese communists were willing to take cruel punishment from their far superior military foes in the successful expectations that the Americans would give up. Israel despite similarities is not America in part because of what Salad discussed in his OP. Their mentality has been we Jews were persecuted everywhere we went so screw world opinion, the Palestinians like us are willing to fight to the last person for this land so the best we can do is permanently manage the situation. Yet this is now a new situation and Israel is a more westernized country than it was during its socialist beginning and Holocaust is further and further in the rear view mirror last last survivors are dying off. If that is the case Hamas will have won the war but I am just raising the possibility, I have no clue. Now in the fog of war, with everybody's emotions way up is a bad time for predicting the future.


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20 May 2021, 2:58 am

salad wrote:
Right now Israel is shooting and maiming hundreds of Palestinians, including my own family, during the holiest 10 nights of Ramadan, while praying in the holiest Mosque of Islam, and Jewish settlers are marching through Arab streets caught live on camera chanting "Death to Arabs".

Yikes! I'm very sorry to hear what has happened to your family. How are they doing now?

salad wrote:
The nation formed from the descendants of Holocaust survivors is now running rampant committing atrocities that while incomparable to the actual Holocaust still evoke the same tactics of dehumanization and militaristic jingoism and chauvinism that made the Nazis so notorious. All committed by the very descendants of the victims of the Nazis.

Only victims can, have and will always become like their oppressors if their victim mentality is not checked. Literally the entire point of books like "Animal Farm" was that those who may spearhead revolutions for a just cause to fight tyranny and oppression can become worse than their oppressors if they dont stop their victim mentality from going unchecked.

[...]

This is why I condemn organizations like BLM.

I agree about the dangers of "victim mentality" being carried too far. But I don't see BLM -- at least in its current form -- as an example of this.

There are groups in the American black community who really do, quite literally, demonize white people. Primarily these are the so-called "Nation of Islam" and some of its descendant organizations who believe that white people are literally "devils." But BLM is not led or in any way dominated by these people, as far as I can tell.

salad wrote:
While that organization is right in seeking redress for the wrongs Blacks have faced, I fear that the movement if left unchecked will one day morph into a movement that will seek to seek retribution against whites for past wrongs and become worse than the oppressors they so hate.

That's a conceivable future possible danger, but that's not what BLM it its current form is doing or trying to do.

I think BLM should be judged based on what it is actually doing now, not based on some hypothetical future possible danger. If at some point it ever shows signs of morphing into a black supremacist organization, or if it ever starts advocating violent retribution, that would be the appropriate time to condemn it for same. Condemning it for that hypothetical future possibility now is uncalled-for, in my opinion.


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20 May 2021, 7:06 pm

Israel and Hamas agree to a cease-fire

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he Israeli government and Hamas said they had agreed to a cease-fire late Thursday after 11 days of violence that saw over 200 Palestinians and 12 Israelis killed in the worst fighting in the region in years.

A statement put out by the Israeli prime minister's office said the security cabinet had "unanimously" agreed to accept the Egyptian proposal for a "mutual cease-fire," but did not specify when it would start.

"The political leadership emphasizes that it is the reality on the ground that will determine the future of the operation," the statement said.

An hour after the Israel government's announcement, Taher Al-Nono, the political adviser to the head of the political bureau of Hamas, issued a statement saying they had agreed to a cease-fire to start at 2 a.m. local time on Friday (7 p.m. ET), as long as Israel abides by the same conditions.

President Joe Biden spoke Thursday evening from the White House after the announcement of the cease-fire. He said Israelis and Palestinians "equally have the right to live safely and securely and to enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy."

"My administration will continue its quiet and relentless diplomacy toward that end," Mr. Biden said. "I believe we have a genuine opportunity to make progress and I am committed to working toward it."

Mr. Biden said the U.S. will continue to support Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, which has blocked thousands of rockets during the conflict.

Mr. Biden said he had spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu six times over the last 11 days, and also spoke to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The White House also said Thursday that Mr. Biden had spoken to President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi of Egypt, and "discussed efforts to achieve a ceasefire." The White House said the two leaders will stay "closely" in touch.

At the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, the United States made clear that its "singular focus" during the past 11 days of the Israel-Hamas conflict was to bring about a cease-fire and work with both Israel and the Palestinian leadership to end the fighting.


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20 May 2021, 8:16 pm

It seems that Israel and Palestinian will never get over their differences and one side will not be happy until they have exterminated the other.

As for comparing to BLM, not having tanks and weapons, I think even if the BLM had them they still wouldn't want to go to war, as they feel that the differences have a better chance of compromising, rather than Israel vs. Palestine, or so it seems to me.