Israel’s attack on Hamas
The Associated Press reports that the first major combat of this incursion into Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force has killed dozens of Palestinians and a bakers’ dozen of Israeli troops.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the offensive would continue “as long as necessary” to end attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
But Hamas seems defiant, international cease-fire efforts are stalled, and international criticism is becoming more vocal as the death toll among Palestinian civilians rises.
It makes me wonder what Hamas has to be defiant about. But, according to Reuters, two of the IDF troops killed were US citizens;
Max Steinberg, a native of California’s San Fernando Valley, was a sniper in the Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, according to a letter sent by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles to its email list.
Nissim Sean Carmeli, of South Padre Island in Texas, was also fighting in the Golani Brigade, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The U.S. Department of State confirmed both deaths, and said both men were citizens of the United States. It was not immediately clear whether they also held Israeli citizenship.
Oh, yeah, remember those 20 missiles that the UN found in one of their schools last week? Well, the UN demanded that Hamas remove them – in effect handing the missiles back to Hamas, according to Gateway Pundit.
The IDF posts video evidence of Hamas troops hiding in and firing from Palestinian homes;
Not to worry, John Kerry is enroute to some secure part of Israel to negotiate a ceasefire. Meanwhile the UN Security Council has demanded that there has to be an immediate halt to the fighting with a resolution, according to Fox News;
A press statement issued by the Security Council expressed “serious concern at the escalation of violence,” called for the protection of civilians under international humanitarian law, and said it was troubled by the growing number of casualties.
The Palestinian United Nations envoy, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, was disappointed. “We were hoping for the Security Council to adopt a resolution to condemn the aggression against our people,” he told reporters. But he said Sunday’s council statement was “a test” for Israel to see if it would comply.
Category: Terror War
I am all for carpet bombing the entire strip. Man, woman, child, sub human terrorist scum alike.
You lie down with dogs, you get fleas.
the world hates Gods people. very simple.
i wish our leaders would wake up from their rabid hate and see who the aggressors in this conflict really are.
John F’in Kerry?! Great. Of all the things the U.S. can do they send a guy that’ll guarantee an increase in hamas rocket attacks.
maybe there will be a lucky rocket strike?
I know where about 20 are hidden…
How convenient that Mansour has selective memory about who started what. If he really wants it to stop, then he can kick Hamas out of his home.
But that would be difficult, wouldn’t it, since they have him by the short hairs?
Hamas understands the world political scene better than Israel, there is no way Israel will kill every Palestinian in Gaza. That fantasy won’t ever come to fruition.
Consequently Israel can’t “win” this conflict in spite of all of their technical military prowess.
The same is true of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, the winners are those who can endure the most punishment and still survive.
That is the reality of the current world political climate. When Israel stops bombing Gaza and Hamas is still intact many in the Arab world will view that as Hamas using international pressure to force Israel to act a certain way. The same with the US leaving Iraq/Afghanistan the Taliban and AQ we leave behind will be viewed as having driven off the heathen intruders.
Until someone in our current political “leadership” understand that reality and devises an appropriate military and political strategy to address that reality the only the thing the West and Israel can do in confronting jihadist islam is lose.
An approach that declares war on the host nations and their jihadist parasites is the only approach that allows for the total destruction of a nation’s infrastructure as a means to bring that nation and the jihadis it is hosting to heel. Non-stop death and destruction under declaration of war is an acceptable means of prosecuting that war, bombing the cities and infrastructure of a country you are not at war with is not acceptable and leads to the crimes against humanity and the accusation of “war crimes”.
Hamas and the jihadis are using a violent interpretation of Ghandi’s line: “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
No one has the strength of the US, or even Israel in the middle east. But the US and Israel lack the indomitable will to annihilate their opponents, dooming both nations to a continued appearance of impotence.
I listened to an interesting podcast about how goats were eradicated from many of the Galapagos Islands in order to reclaim the habitat for the Tortoise. They used “Judas Goats”. The Judas Goats are on standby and available… sterilized, in perpetual heat, and very randy. I think they might work in re the ME dilemma and necessary solution you outlined above.
Yeah, GDContractor, but they probably look/act/smell a lot like vietnam war protestor – and if so, no one will have anything to do with them.
An approach that declares war on the host nations and their jihadist parasites is the only approach that allows for the total destruction of a nation’s infrastructure as a means to bring that nation and the jihadis it is hosting to heel. Non-stop death and destruction under declaration of war is an acceptable means of prosecuting that war, bombing the cities and infrastructure of a country you are not at war with is not acceptable and leads to the crimes against humanity and the accusation of “war crimes.”
Under current international law, you can’t bomb the cities even of countries you are at war with, because that would be deliberate targeting of civilians and “persons not taking active part in the hostilities.”
See Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, Art. 48 (the US and Israel haven’t signed onto that one, but I believe the U.S. and Israel both recognize the basic idea as customary)…also, if the conflict is “not of an international character” then common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies and you can’t deliberately target “persons not taking active part in the hostilities”…and arguably that applies always anyway.
The result may be that Israel and the U.S. are allowed to use just enough force to keep Hamas supporters angry, but not enough to make them give up the fight.
If the city is determined to be of no military value that is true, who determines what is military value?
The winners determine what’s a military target, have an electronic substation in your city then you are a military target as our goal is to reduce all electrical capability in the country. Did a military convoy or some terrorists pass through your village, then you are a target for aiding the logistical supply lines.
That component of the Geneva convention is as meaningless as is most of the Geneva convention.
It’s not a question of whether it has “military value.” It’s a question of whether it’s a “military target.” Attacking the enemy’s hospitals and MEDEVACs would have military value — it would stop him from treating the wounded and bringing them back to the battlefield — but it is simply forbidden as a target. Civilian populations are similar. (Infrastructure works a little differently.)
And sometimes the winners are called to account for how they fought the war — so the Croatian general Ante Gotovina was tried (and initially convicted) for ordering several towns to be placed “under fire” in 1995 (as part of Operation Storm, which was a decisive Croatian victory). The conviction was overturned later because it hadn’t been proved that he was ordering the entire towns to be shelled — as opposed to specific, prearranged military targets within those towns. The former would definitely have been a war crime; the latter was not.
Nonsensical or not…that’s the international law we have right now, and the U.S. and Israel both train their armed forces accordingly.
That all sounds quite civilized. Unfortunately, just about half of the world isn’t, anymore. The Geneva Convention has outlived its purpose and its usefulness. And I will never understand why we bind ourselves to laws and agreements that our enemies do nothing but laugh at, and use against us.
Great video need a few hundred more just like it.
I would not at all be surprised if Netanyahu tells Kerry something very similar to this: “We’ve already accepted one cease-fire proposal. Hamas turned it down. Go talk to them.” And then tells Kerry, very politely, that he should go.
That he should go and fornicate himself and his gigolo ass…
I find it funny that everyone is calling for a ceasefire. So far, in the past two weeks, Israel is the only side that has actually ceased firing during all of the brokered cease fires. If you try and make them do it again, they will only up until the other side actually scores a good hit with their random targeted rocket attacks.
If you try and impose a cease fire on Israel, all you are doing is tying the hands of the prisoner against the wall and not even giving him a blindfold as the firing squad fires randomly at him. The only problem is that the prisoner is every man, woman, and child within range of the rockets.
“The Palestinian United Nations envoy, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, was disappointed. “We were hoping for the Security Council to adopt a resolution to condemn the aggression against our people,” he told reporters. But he said Sunday’s council statement was “a test” for Israel to see if it would comply.”
This is the U.N ladies and gentlemen. An international body that allows a terrorist to lecture the civilized world. We need to move the U.N From NY to Gaza. They seem to like the Palestinians anyway, plus if they catch a few rounds…meh. I wouldn’t care in the slightest if the United Nothing caught a few rounds.
Oh, well, sKerry is speaking, again:
‘US Secretary of State John Kerry announces US is providing $47 million to help address humanitarian situation in Gaza’ – via @NBCNews
I thought he said the US was backing Israel, but he’s so two-faced about everything I forgot that he talks out of both sides of his mouth.