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User talk:Nishidani/Reading and listening list on the July–August 2014 Gaza assault

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by WarKosign in topic Reading and listening list. Contributions only of original and incisive quality will be appreciated

Reading and listening list. Contributions only of original and incisive quality will be appreciated

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Latest comment: 10 years ago63 comments5 people in discussion

Takes-the-cake-award for the mainstream article that best manages to ignore what it promises, in order to slam the other side.

Masterpiece of disinformation The question posed:'So what resources are the two sides using in this conflict?' is answered by a detailed breakdown of Hamas rocket types (assault), and single allusion to one system of Israeli defense, Iron Dome (nothing of Merkava tanks, Soltam M71 guns, Paladin M109 howitzers, Hellfire missiles, Apache and Cobra helicopters, F-16s with bomb loads of 100 kilos to the GBU-28 "Deep Throat" bunker busters, flechette bombs,etc.etc. etc)
4 pictures dealing with Hamas rockets. 2 dealing with damage in Gaza. One picture of a tank (no damage please, we're British). One picture of Iron Dome. Perfectly representative of the weaponry, obviously. Takes the cake indeed. Kingsindian (talk) 18:00, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Nope. Marcus has been topped, and is now runner-up.

The U.N. breakdown of 495 “children” killed, however, is greatly overblown. Why? Because the U.N. deems anyone below the age of 18 a “child,” which is totally unrealistic. Booth overlooks the fact that in Gaza, under Hamas indoctrination, children transition to adulthood at a much earlier age. They’re no longer “children” when they’re 17, 16, 15, or even farther on down for quite some years. Whether in Gaza schools or summer camps, Hamas transmits its brand of terrorism when kids are still in elementary grades. They reach adulthood far earlier than at age 18.

Evidently hadn't read Michael Kaplan, wondered at the implications of a bar mitzvah (transition to adulthood), or asked himself why then does everyone call the lads, one of whom was doing IDF military service, in the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers, 'boys, children, teenagers (and rightly so). Unbelievably crass (inhumane).

Timeline reconstructions of the prior events deemed relevant to the casus belli.

General

there are signs that some in government are taking notice. Yuval Steinitz, the strategic-affairs minister, is seeking 100m shekels to co-ordinate efforts by the army, the foreign ministry, the government press office and other bodies to combat delegitimisation. In the recent Gaza campaign, the government has co-opted universities to its war effort. Several have established “war rooms” with banks of computers where student volunteers use army talking-points to rebut social-media attacks.

The following is neither incisive nor original, but is RS, perhaps for the article on Bouvard et Pécuchet

'The Israeli approach described here is substantively different from current Western strategic thinking on dealing with non-state military challenges. Western thinking is solution-oriented. This explains part of the lack of understanding for what Israel is doing.’

I.e. The authors have established that there is 'foreign' thinking, what you get in Western civilization, and Israeli thinking. The former has no irrelevance and is in a certain sense culpable, when applied to the exceptional world of Israel, of misunderstanding Israeli policy, which does not believe in solutions other than that of regularly 'mowing the terrorists' lawn' in order to ensure 'the establishment of a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety without constant indiscriminate terror'. The break with the Western world consists in the total elision of the Other from the equation, for inclusion of the adversary's predicament would imply that 'Palestinian residents can live in safety without constant indiscriminate terror.' Quite remarkable and unutterably crass. Nishidani (talk) 09:53, 5 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
That is in of Herodotus (Book V.92 ζ 2-3), and it helps of course clarify the idiom of mowing a lawn, though the source for that is Biblical. More incisive is Thucydides (Book V.84-116), Melian dialogue, which sums up what happened. In terms of outcomes, justice is a function of rough parity in the capacity to destroy an adversity, whereas preponderance of power, more usual, means you just wipe the other out, which is the norm, and has nothing to do with defending democracy, civilization and all the other hot air blown round events as they happen.
The article is very solid, but makes a fundamental error in confounding 'Israelis' with IDF war strategy. The options are those chosen by a military and political elite and go back to the Lavon period, when it was decided that a strategy of appearing to go 'crazy' with overwhelming force was the default mode for confronting crises, trumping diplomacy and rational escalation. Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • I had indeed heard of the "going crazy" strategy before, like when Tzipi Livni vulgarly said that she demanded "real hooliganism" in the 2008-9 war. But I think the article is more dealing with the US side of it, enabling Israel's actions. "Of course, Israelis do care about their larger standing in the world and rightly fear isolation, but they figure they are safe so long as they have American public opinion in their corner."
  • Regarding the Melian Dialogue, I had only heard of Thucydides' famous dictum "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer as they must". But reading the Wikipedia page, the whole Athenian-Melian argument seems to have played out in eerie similarity. The "gods are on our side, because we are standing for what is right" argument, can be secularized in today's world by international law. The "Spartan kin" argument, is analogous to the Arab leaders. The "we are neutral" analogy is not perfect, but the previous 2012 ceasefire demonstrated Hamas' accomodation. The "we should not submit without a fight because of cowardice" is the argument for Hamas' firing rockets even as they know they are no match for Israeli firepower. And finally, the end result is the same: The Melians/Gazans do not accept the arguments that they should lie down and surrender. Kingsindian (talk) 15:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I am assuming that you will accept good quality sources from a differing POV, N? Makes it more useful as a resource. This space is actually the germ of an excellent concept. To compare and briefly discuss strong RS of differing POV without corrupting mainspace with premature inclusion. More importantly, a Scriptorium where sources can be critiqued and if neccesary, be removed. I see an organic development of thought here. You have provided a formidable list. Will you allow other comments on the sources to be briefly given under each entry? Concise, very, discussing weaknesses if present. Regards Irondome (talk) 01:33, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I've been away. Of course. I meant this as a ref. guide to articles that might be used for wiki articles (see now Ynet above. It's not a good paper, but the evidence was there from the start, as the evidence from Jewish history is overwhelming that there is nothing anomalous in defending one's position from within the thick of civilian areas, or using synagogues (the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv, the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem), hospitals and ambulance transport to store or ferry arms David Cesarani,Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism, Da Capo Press 2009 p.41 (to cite just one of dozens I have on file. Yossi Melman's review of Rephael Kitron, "Eretz Yisrael Hanisteret:Sippuram Shel Ha'slikim Ve'toldotehem" ("The Hidden Land of Israel:The Story and History of the Secret Weapons Caches" ) in the Haaretz English version (27 January 2011) shows the process of elision. In the Hebrew version, details are given of using synagogues and child centres as places for arms caches, This was excised in the translation (What a community is willing to admit privately is never 'washed' as the proverb says, before a foreign public)
What is, clinically, interesting for the student of the area is that almost everything that occurs, is recursive and the accusations are reflexive, even down to antecedents to the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers like the Irgun's lynching of Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and the Abu Khdeir's kidnapping, which uncannily mimicked Alexander Rubowitz's kidnapping and murder in a forest by the British. Of course Menachem Begin went on to be Prime Minister, as did other 'terrorists' like Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, and are glorified by mainstream history. What fascinates me is the way practices and incidents typologically identical between the two sides (Jewish past and Palestinian present) are spun differently now. It's not quite 'fascinating' as a farcical gloss on the stupidity of modern journalism, reportage, and commentary, which time and again proceeds without any sense of historical irony, because writing to a contemporary deadline means one doesn't consult the past, and in any case, one ruins the John Waynesque plot of civilizing the wilderness. The only people aware of the analogies, like Uri Avnery, are never listened to, by youngsters who appear not to read books, or politicians (who don't read books by definition). My only reserve is bad faith (in articles), or an excess of passionate sincerity drowning out the process of threshing out the dry germinal facts from the wet chaff of spun chat. Everything that the Israeli and US press finds repulsive about Hamas's strategy played a role in the foundation and consolidation of Israel (and many other nations' history).Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

The larger picture

It was more interesting for the other details. I don't think anything the US administrations say publicly has much interest. After 1967, it was decided that Israel was the terrestrial aircraft carrier they needed to 'stabilise' and control the Middle East, a proxy in 'the great game'. Yesterday Obama noted that “To have scratched out of rock this incredibly vibrant, incredibly successful, wealthy and powerful country is a testament to the ingenuity, energy and vision of the Jewish people." Well, 'scratching out of rock' is an odd spin on the facts of ethnic cleansing, water resource expropriation, and carpetbagging, heavily financed by US outlays. Had a nuanced strategy prevailed, it might have been different. The West Bank's Jordanian educational system before the occupation began, in 1967, imposed free and compulsory education for 12 years, and Palestinians leapt at the opportunity, the growth in education outstripping demographic growth by a factor of three times. The result was that 44.6% of the Palestinian age-group of 15-17 receiving a secondary education before the 2nd nakba of 67, as compared to 22.8% for Israel (Elias H. Tuma and Haim Darin-Drabkin, The Economic Case for Palestine, Croom Helm 1978 p.44). Percentually double, with Palestinian enrolment rates superior to those in any other Arab country and thus, had the $150 billion in aid given to Israel (1967-2005) been proportionally distributed also to Gaza and the West Bank for infrastructural development, we would probably be rephrasing that flattery less in terms of ethnic uniqueness:“To have scratched out of rock these incredibly vibrant, incredibly successful, wealthy and powerful pair of countries is a testament to the ingenuity, energy and vision of the Jewish and Palestinian people, and America can be proud of the key role its largesse played in financing the formation of two successful Middle Eastern States as models for the region, in terms of ethnic coexistence, entrepreneurial flair, commitment to education, and multiculturalism." The Palestinian diaspora is just a rerun of 70 CE., with similar results, though probably it will take less than 2,000 years to return home. The US is a great creator of failed states, and their exceptionalist success in underwriting the engineering of Israel serves to paper over the folly. It's quite remarkable that even in choked Gaza, some 38,000 of the 900,000 under 18 year olds managed to do their high school final exams this year, mostly studying by lamplight. Nishidani (talk) 10:54, 9 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

. A combat manual of the Shejaiya Brigade of Hamas advises its fighters to deploy in densely populated areas because “the soldiers and commanders must limit their use of weapons and tactics that lead to the harm and unnecessary loss of people and civilian facilities,”

The sentence is self-contradictory, and it is amazing that Wieseltier, a very close writer most times, outside this area, misses it. This all over the blogosphere, along with a non-relable source arguing it is a fake (IDF Hamas Human Shield Manual a Sloppy Forgery - The Evidence [UPDATED August 8th]).Ashley Fantz, 'Why are so many civilians dying in Hamas-Israel war?,' CNN August 6, 2014 writes:

The IDF said Monday it found a "Hamas combat manual" that IDF says proves the group uses its people as human shields. A CNN translation of the two pages posted by the IDF did not find specific statements that Hamas uses its own civilian population as human shields, but one section discusses the benefits for Hamas when civilian homes are destroyed. CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the manual, and neither the IDF nor Hamas could be reached for comment.

The issue is of some importance, and I cannot yet see good mainstream newspapers analysing the manual? Nishidani (talk) 21:48, 9 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that. I follow most of his interviews but missed that. The phrase you highlight of course glosses Golda Meir's 1969 statement:'When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.' It's a more deviously sophisticated because utterly persuasive and ineludibly false, version of what General Nelson A. Miles told Geronimo with arch realism, according to the memory of an Indian scout and interpreter, Kaiteh. I.e. that Apache attacks on settlers stealing their land was illegal, and, unless they surrendered and became meek reservations Indians (Palestinians in West Bank bantustan), he would have no choice but to commit genocide by exterminating the tribe and every last one of their children. The most important thing about Chomsky's testimony is that he is an outstanding bulwark against the kind of antisemitism, which, in the days of excessive internet visualization of on the ground realities and juvenile illiteracy, is an ominous threat only men of his background and serene, unhysterical rationality, informed by a profound humanitarianism that is also very deeply grounded in the ethics of Jewish modernity, can thwart.Nishidani (talk) 17:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
'Degeneration' implies a falling off from something 'noble' in the past. I think standards are fairly coherent over time:)Nishidani (talk) 19:33, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
One would underwrite every jot and tittle were it not for two small lapses: the three teenagers were not 'settlers': one was. Hamas did not fire off rockets to protest the West Bank mass arrests, Islamic Jihad and others did, desultorily. Hamas started firing when Israel 'took out' several militants within its territory, rising to the bait. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 19:10, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

“What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?”

Answer. I wouldn't shoot his child to kill him. About 40 yards separated Oz'S house from that of Sari Nusseibeh, unknowingly their playgrounds were separated by a patch of wire dividing Jerusalem. One of the two grew up. Nishidani (talk) 19:33, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Unfortunately, to answer such an obscene, misleading question is already to fall into a trap. The analogy is in no way representative of the actual situation. The purpose of such analogies is to direct minds towards simplistic, loaded hypotheticals instead of reality.

Kingsindian (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Particularly good if too brief. As opposed to newspaper breaking news style, which reflects spin, this gives a glimpse into what the technicians of war think about. They don't read govcernment handouts primed to sway emotions and opinion: they look at statistics, battle logic, the array of forces, and the strategic logic. All the rest (99%) is just hot air to them. Could be used over several articles.
I mentioned this on the talk page a week or so ago, but didn't know where to put it in. Got a chance to include it in the military deployments section which you recently started. A good analysis by a longtime knowledgeable commentator on Palestinian affairs. He has some good contacts with both Hamas and Fatah. (btw, fixed reference to Foreign Affairs, instead of Foreign Policy.)

Kingsindian (talk) 16:54, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry I can't edit much in these articles - apart from 1r, serious time-consuming problems have to be addressed in real life. Perry's article has many details, on rocket types, effective explosive power and range, that should be harvested. These wars are also exercise grounds for tactical and technological developments and they are far more informative than dull sections like 'Reactions' etc., which clutter that page.Nishidani (talk) 17:08, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we read anything in order to be convinced of a truth. We read this genre of work to find out whether we can trust the writer's integrity qua fidelity to complexity, and the essay only confirms my trust in Shatz. I can't see his point about Fisk's 2006 book. The latter's pages on a figure like al-Husayni, to cite one instance, do exactly what Shatz advises. Thanks again. It's very rich and requires several rereadings. I'm tempted to re-imagine it by thinking of Russians under Stalinism analogically.Nishidani (talk) 20:08, 17 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Nishidani: Usually my issue with very long pieces like this are that there are some insights there which I can agree with, but I find it hard to see the punchline, so to speak. I find it hard to see a thread of argument connecting, for example the Algerian section, to the Lebanese section, to the Palestine section, to Fisk's writings. It is good to be humble about the limits of your knowledge, as Shatz advises, but one also has to have a manageable grasp of the situation in mind as a guide to action. If one analyzes too much, considers the situation in all complexity etc. one can be paralyzed by it. How much sophistication does one really need to see that the bombing of Gaza is wrong?
The bulk of the article is about Algeria and the relationship with France. It is true that many colonial structures have been overthrown and still the post-colonial societies find their own problems. But what implication does this have? One has to deal with manageable problems. Colonialism was a problem, and that had to be confronted, while of course not forgetting about other issues. After re-reading the article several times, I was more confused about the argument than anything else. "World is complex. Prediction is hard". That is too harsh an assessment, for sure, but not too unfair, I think.
The other issue is that all points made can be turned against themselves. He discusses French occupation of Algeria and Syrian occupation of Lebanon and praises Samir Kassir's analysis, who was an uncompromising opponent of the Syrian occupation. But has Lebanon figured out its future after the Syrian occupation was overthrown? It seems to me that the difficulties faced by Lebanon are no different from the difficulties faced by Algeria. Similar things can be said about Arab states lack of concern about Gaza today (when did they ever really care?) Kingsindian (talk) 21:09, 17 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
It helps to read it 'psychoanalytically', as the reflection of a person who happens, among many things, to be born 'Jewish', i.e. with an imposed identity, of a kind however that had no identitarian confusion of 'being Jewish' with 'attachment to Israel'. All of the examples he cites are examples of what occurs when a national identity is premised upon overthrowing the hegemony of an intrusive 'Other' (as 'Israel' keeps intruding on his sense of himself), only to find that once the 'Other' is disposed of, the identitarian argument collapses partially because nationalism corrupts the promise of the future identity on behalf of which an occupation was challenged. Nationalism disindividualizes: it is collectivist. He is talking therefore about his plight as as Jew subject to both massive identitarian expectations by his originative community and, equally, he is likewise subject to the temptation to reverse those expectations, but rejection only leads to mirroring the inauthenticity negatively, i.e. by espousing mechanically the very opposite of what is socially or historically expected of one, which is no solution. The plight of Palestinians is, analogically, seen as similar: they are thrust into a similar scenario of discursive swamping, and his provisory answer is - just ground your personal identity and writerly vocation in the exploration of relationships, that go beyond stereotypes of the nation, the 'other', 'Orientalism' or broad-brush conceptions of what is, ultimately, a world which corrupts our experience by excessive abstractions. I've driven 1,000 miles today, and am too tired to rephrase this neatly, but that's a first impression. Jews broke out into the modern world as astonishingly creative individuals as they leapt into the mainstream of their professions and societies, and in Zionism they are losing that genius by identitarian politics as pressure from Israel to back that state begins to politicize the diaspora into collectivist defensiveness (as you get in wikipedia): Arabs are a huge congerie of groups knit by an historical heritage of abstract groupish identity that is unravelling, whose spell is broken, as experiments towards nationalism collapse into collectivist dictatorships or sectarian fanaticism, and must find their feet as individuals if their societies are to be reconstructed - two processes going past each other in the opposite directions - and his solidarity is with those individuals like Raja Shehadeh and Samir Kassir who have managed the achieve an autonomy of conscience immune to collectivist myths, something in less dramatic terms, he perceives as programmatic also for himself as a writer reporting on both worlds. Nishidani (talk) 22:03, 17 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Food for thought on Gaza? See Sandy Tolan's article below which has further background details useful for articles dealing with the run up to the three wars, and to the Gilad Shalit article.Nishidani (talk) 17:35, 17 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Uri Avnery'Eyeless in Gaza,'CounterpunchAugust 15-17, 2014.(pasta was banned as an important that aided the enemy)
  • Sandy Tolan 'How the Gaza War Could Have Been Avoided,' The Nation 10 August 2014. 'Could have' is a 'if my uncle had tits he'd be my auntie' argument, but many details not well know, are neatly marshalled.
  • Jeff Halper, 'Globalizing Gaza,' Counterpunch 18 August 2014. (Very good prescient article.) The blowback of precedents in Israel's innovations in controlling Palestinians will eventually dismantle what little remains of Western civic traditions and institutions, affecting us all. It's not Palestinians I see, but what states will feel licensed to do in the future).
I have to say that I am much less pessimistic about this threat of changing of law and institutions. Sure, Israel can try, but it is not getting too much traction. This is clear to me from the article itself, but of course, I am not an expert in law. As a related but different point, it is curious how many things are first "tried out" in the colonies and then imported back home. I read in a history of India that even institutions like secular state schools and large open cemeteries (instead of small parish graves) were first tried out in India and then were transplanted back into Britain. I have also read of Alfred McCoy's work of surveillance techniques in the Phillipines imported back into the US. So this is indeed a potential threat. Kingsindian (talk) 16:42, 19 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Old men can enjoy being prophets of doom or pessimists, because they won't be around when the shit they predict is supposed to hit the fan they imagine will be there:).Nishidani (talk) 19:32, 19 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
I have selected the final quote from Father Jenco on the panel (about 5 minutes worth - transcribed here but worth listening to directly). A blast from the past, which I was reminded of when I saw the deeply moving testimony by the Christian Peacemakers Team on Nishidani's user page. The whole series of 6 videos is great and shows how the rhetoric hasn't changed in decades, though the villains may have. As a confirmed atheist (though none of this New Atheism business), I find somehow that the testimonies by religious figures touch me the most deeply, probably because they have been in this business for thousands of years. Kingsindian (talk) 14:28, 22 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks indeed for that. To comment would be glib. I don't know about the last part, though I know what you mean (it's identical to what Norman Finkelstein says 01:32 here, as someone who is indifferent to religion, but has had a deep convivial working relationship and friendship with monks who have no issue with my paganism. Ideological atheism or secularism is as stupid as tub-thumping from monotheists of all faiths, of course. In this, one must be like Lévi-Strauss's bricoleur 'savage', scouring the jungle of the world for what is fruitful and one's mind for whatever symbolic codes make sense of the blur of experience, and in that sense. Amazonian indians know that usually near every poisonous plant, there is a healing plant that yields an antidote. In religions, for every seed of violence the Dawkins and Hitchens of our planet detect, there is a companionate balm of wisdom and tolerance. It's just that the former has more selling power politically. Religious orders that are meditative, unpolitical, detached and compassionate, for that reason, have depths of insight that move us, even if they remain unheard by their larger congregations. I note Father Jenco's page would shame his spirit: there is nothing in it that reflects the profundity of his struggle against hatred, and too much dwelling on the viciousness of those he forgave, and the ostensibly vindictive greed of his heirs. It's embarrassing. (Christian Peacemaker Teams have newsletters one gets daily: everything that the New York Times never notes of what happens in the territories, hour by hour, is scrupulously noted in them. Can't be used for articles, and probably not advisable to subscribe to: it's like living with bulletins from the Warsaw ghetto on the hour, for years. Nishidani (talk) 17:10, 22 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
The Avneri piece is somewhat conspiratorial in tone (though conspiracies are not always wrong). Here is another analysis, sidestepping the question of whether there was a conspiracy to assassinate Deif or not. Kingsindian (talk) 21:13, 24 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
“Listen, we know what it’s like to kill civilians in war,” said the senior U.S. officer. “Hell, we even put it on the front pages. We call it collateral damage. We absolutely try to minimize it, because we know it turns people against you. Killing civilians is a sure prescription for defeat. But that’s not what the IDF did in Shujaiya on July 21. Human shields? C’mon, just own up to it.” Kingsindian (talk) 16:58, 28 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Mmm. I'd lay a bet against the retentiveness of my alzheimerish mind against that of such soldiers any day. They've forgotten the Fallujah, though unlike Israeli commanders, U.S. generals have no problem in actually sending in their men to fight a war even at high cost, and secondly their short-term soldier/civilian ratios were 'better', in terms of standard battle practice.Nishidani (talk) 10:51, 29 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Now that I've actually read it, (and used it for the Battle of Shuja'iyya page) I retract my smart-arsed comment. A very good technical assessment of what is going on, free of ideological blinkers: the kind of real analysis lacking on the actually pages we are writing. It implicitly concludes that the tactic adopted constituted a war crime, ('indefensible'), one military's assessment of a brother military's tactics, and highly unusual. Thanks indeed.Nishidani (talk) 12:46, 29 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Indeed, I had meant to say, but forgot to add, that one should not put too much credence on self-serving US claims of reducing civilian casualties, but the description of military techniques used is very good. I have used some of it in the military section on the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict page. But definitely a good source for Shujaiyya page. Kingsindian (talk) 13:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
A picture is worth a thousand words. More maps here. Kingsindian (talk) 13:23, 29 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
This is a blog, but by a noted scholar of military affairs at King's College. It has the kind of details of who did what (background) that most quick journalism misses. Very good on the Rafah bombing of August 1. His whole blog on the war pays close study.
Jacob Bernays (a relative of Freud's) would always doff his hat in lectures whenever he mentioned the name of Scaliger, in reverent deference to the latter's genius. I do the same (mentally) everytime I listen to, or read, Kaufman.
Not much new in the short but excellent review of history, but comments on "Palestine today" and strategies and tactics are pretty good, as are his comments on Netanyahu. This comment, among many others, jumped out at me: "Both sides (Fatah and Hamas) are equally to blame and both sides should be tirelessly, relentlessly urged to reconcile. Of course the very act of reconciliation between them would be pounced on by Netanyahu as an act of war" Kingsindian (talk) 20:41, 31 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
i.e. here. I listened to a variation of this some months ago, i.e., his 'The Reconquista of Palestine'.
I can't read Arabic, but Bing Translate does an ok job. Kingsindian (talk) 16:32, 1 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
One intuits that much there is not yet in the news and therefore our article, but I couldn't help being distracted by my primary interest, i.e. poetry, since the machine version is brimming over with provocatively inspired mistranslations. I.e.
  • siggy today certified halkosh?
  • I'm a hyphen to a Hun
  • Israeli novel . . false million percent.(litcrit from Hamas)
  • alleged favorite handcrafted against each
  • If the relationship is based on trust, it is of no use
  • am willing to investigate any issue where Hamas even ghaltet build on SAFA and the whites.
  • Torch: I am what I knew (a challenge to Yahweh's great line)
  • Hoon hyphen with me (a hoon is a flash lout)
  • I can not answer your Highness now, because I am innervated.(T S Eliot)
  • Israel wants to destroy you, but I'm keen to give it a pretext for that. (Mazen to Meshaal)
  • now you are innervated, mesh in your mood
  • Session started and ended with the neurological condition of both parties.
There's material for a great poem there, seriously.Nishidani (talk) 17:32, 1 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Still too fragmentary, but a better glimpse of above.Nishidani (talk) 16:30, 3 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
As usual, Chomsky on everything, most of it is on Gaza/West Bank. Kingsindian (talk) 14:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Familiar, but updated, and I certainly had never heard that the Catholics have a mission there (under Fr George Hernández). Though Shlomo Eldar's article was salutary (in the world of fundamentalisms, Jewish, Christian and Islamic, Hamas, like Hezbollah, are relatively rational actors politically to adopt the comical jargon of political sociology) it's not, as Chomsky gives the impression of taking it to be, the last word. He also got the number of Hamas dead wrong (7 not 5) but, one can't have everything at one's fingertips. Amira Hass's phrase pretty much sums up the facts, and those who misreport them. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 4 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
On the reaction of some sectors of Israeli society to the 1990 massacre of seven Palestinian workers. (See also: Ami Popper.) IjonTichy (talk) 17:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
If you check the edit-history of that page, you'll see I edited it after reading that article yesterday. Actually five psychiatrists checked him before declaring him insane, if I recall. He wasn't satisfied and asked for another 2 to review the evidence. But thanks.Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 4 September 2014 (UTC)Reply

This war on Hamas, however, has little to do with the killed settlers and everything to do with the political circumstances that preceded their disappearance. On May 15, two Palestinian youths, Nadim Siam Abu Nuwara, 17, and Mohammed Mahmoud Odeh Salameh, 16, were killed by Israeli soldiers while taking part in a protest commemorating the anniversary of the Nakba, or “Great Catastrophe.” Video footage showed that Nadim was innocently standing with a group of friends before collapsing as he was hit by an Israeli army bullet.

Many articles that cite the three 'youths' (not all teenagers, one was a 19 yr old soldier) tragedy as the trigger that sparked the war reflect one narrative. It is probable that, when a dual narrative emerges, giving due weight to what both sides consider key elements in the prelude, that the May 15th incident will assume its proper place, as Baroud argues. It was a 'tipping point' for Palestinians, as the 3 youths killing was for Israeli opinion (as opposed to its pretextual value politically). Nishidani (talk) 12:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
I've always been fascinated by the dialectical tension between the prophetic vs the rabbinical traditions of Judaism. The former has been secularised as a critique of national power, but not wholly.

There is a story I want to tell you, Mr. Wiesel, for I have carried it inside of me for many years and have only written about it once a very long time ago. I was in a refugee camp in Gaza when an Israeli army unit on foot patrol came upon a small baby perched in the sand sitting just outside the door to its home. Some soldiers approached the baby and surrounded it. Standing close together, the soldiers began shunting the child between them with their feet, mimicking a ball in a game of soccer. The baby began screaming hysterically and its mother rushed out shrieking, trying desperately to extricate her child from the soldiers’ legs and feet. After a few more seconds of “play,” the soldiers stopped and walked away, leaving the terrified child to its distraught mother.

Thanks indeed. It's one of the strangest aspects of the discipline of Palestinian history that, despite the endless flow of Phds and complex textbooks on events and politics, it is mostly eagle-eyed. Any other area would have its historians writing up ground-zero day-by-day multiple-interviewee histories focused on how people experience these wars. Gaza has an extraordinary abundance of such testimonies. I hope Blumenthal and others begin to do just that, in the dryest narrative prose such material demands. Either that or hope that Primo Levi's two classics are translated into Arabic and read by a Gazan boy with a gift for story, and familiarity with Hasan Uthman’s or Kadhim Jihad's version of Dante's Inferno.Nishidani (talk) 20:39, 9 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
This teeters on the edge of profundity but, understandably, emotions got the better of the great man, or rather he missed his own central insight - how the greatest value of Judaism, the obligation to care for, redeem the life of one's fellows, has, under Zionist pressure, transmogrified into killing that life to avoid the political cost of dealing with one's adversary.Nishidani (talk) 17:31, 12 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
'She took me on a proud tour of this uninhabitable house that she and 30 others nevertheless inhabited . . She would not let me leave until I accepted a glass of juice.'
Another long and only tangentially-connected article. Kingsindian (talk) 03:47, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that. I was put off somewhat by the caricature of Lévi-Strauss's very complex argument at the end of his Tristes Tropiques:

'Claude Levi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, of the meekness, depth, and diversity of Asian civilization in India and China, contrasted with the closed, hostile, and monotonous Islamic East, as he claimed, which acted as a barrier to a beautiful cross-fertilization between Europe and Asia. Levi-Strauss insists that this would have been possible were it not for the fact that the Europeans had to build their civilization while being surrounded by the crude Muslims (in other words, even the violence and brutality of European colonialism against the Indians and the Chinese can be explained by the proximity of the Islamic civilization to Europe!).'

That is based on two small passages of a more complex argument, which opens with a pithy formula that undercuts what Mohsen is saying and against which the rest must be read:

l'Islam, c'est l'Occident de l'Orient' (Plon, Paris 1955 p.485).

He then argues that what he sees in Islam he sees in his native France, that looking at the former disconcertingly makes him see into the heart of his own world's inadequacies. Read, again, against the whole text, it is evident that Islam:East = West:Primitive world, and L-S prefers the latter terms to the former. He eventually repudiated the West and lay his hopes in a Japanese model, since it appeared to him to conserve the best in the feminine-primitive and the technological heritage of an Americanized modernity.Nishidani (talk) 10:26, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't know Claude Levi-Strauss from a hole in the ground (not quite, but close), but it seems to me that distilling a huge work into a paragraph will involve some caricature. Kingsindian (talk) 10:41, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
The point I felt was insightful in the article had to do with the choice between resisting and collaborating. My own sympathies are with anarchists like Bakunin who say that human beings are endowed with two special faculties: "the power to think and the desire to rebel." "Resistance" is always celebrated in the left, to which my sympathies lie. Yet, even "resistance" involves compromise in many other ways. How is one to decide what to resist and what to get along with? I see this same dynamic in many places, like one-state/two-state. I read that article with a view to this long-time feeling I had. Kingsindian (talk) 10:51, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
I'd underwrite those quotes, but not Bakunin. He is as contradictory a thinker as Rousseau: against centralisation, while working to subvert the majority with his own centralized power centre; proclaiming the individual and yet, when addressing his Russian readership, ecstatically foreseeing the day when the individual will drown in the multitude, etc.etc. What's good in him is already present in Max Stirner, a far more acute (and neglected figure).Nishidani (talk) 11:02, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, I will check out Stirner. I have, in general, an aversion to philosophy. I only read philosophy as a guide to politics (some of it is very useful). Same with economics (though I don't really have an aversion to the dismal science). Anyway, my impression of Bakunin was that he was against the centralizing of power by Marx in the international. Perhaps his record is more sordid than his ideals. Wouldn't be the first time, like John Stuart Mill defending imperialism in India, while championing liberal values. Kingsindian (talk) 11:11, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for that superficial reply, I had to rush it as I caught your note as the 'gong sounded for tiffins' (said the butler so stately and stout etc...) There is only one authority I obey supinely: my wife's executive command to attend lunch or dinner, not because I'm a glutton, but because a magnificent cook deserves due respect for her diurnal ingenuity in the service of others.
Of course like all thinkers, there are problems, one deep problem (a failure to understand the dialectics of socialization) with him as well. He's not a philosopher stricto sensu, but he got up Marx's nose to the point of exasperation, because, qua philosopher, Marx had no reply to his essential critique of the neo-Hegelian tradition. As to Bakunin, I read Aileen Kelly's Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Psychology and Politics of Utopianism, (1982) when it came out in paperback (1987) and found it very persuasive. Bakunin did challenge the centralising authority of the International, but, simultaneously formed his own secret society to subvert it from withi, and assume dictatorial power. Not only, given the cast of mind one discerns in that, he even bruited out the idea that 'Jews' were behind it all (this before the foundational 1868-9) documents on which the Protocols were forged. As Keynes (the last economist who had philosophical genius) said, the commonsensical ideas, if we ever try to formulate them, that guide our perceptions of the world are just the tired, worn out versions of theories that originated with economists and philosophers, and the only way to shake off the mental dross that clogs our lives is to restore the concepts in the vigorous primal form they had at birth before they assumed, with age, the wobbly senile shape they survive in, in our minds. Politics has always seemed to me to best exemplify the dictum: politicians never survive whatever marginal rationality they might have had once they succeed, because to succeed, they must throw formal principles and analysis overboard. Read the biographies of Reagan, Bush, Blair and even people close to them find that they have an unknowable void beyond the reach of insight (an excellent vignette of Blair's disconcertingly dumb, flaky reaction to what Britain's finest Arabists told him on the eve of the Iraq war can be found in Jonathan Steele's book (here, for example). The genius of Hitler was that he was an empty vessel, a sounding board, utterly mediocre and objectively ludicrous, for the clandestine madness of his times, which normative politicans, who paid lipservice to the rationality of statecraft, could never fathom. I guess the lack of a real self makes them excellent pawns in a power world which allows them to imagine themselves as kingpins, as they are manipulated by the crosscurrents of lobbies and popular moods to checkmate any intelligent game on the board. It's too uncomfortable in the first place, and a hindrance to the kind of 'thinking' required to 'win', which is essentially actuarial, i.e., figuring out the percentages of anything in terms of gaining or losing a plebiscite, a funder, or a constituency, whose respective 'logics' have nothing to do with 'logic' but interests, passions, fantasies, and cultural ideologies, and mediating between 'personalities'. (Jon Elster's works are wonderful in this regard). I think it a safe principle to assume that one lives in the world as in a lunatic asylum, where the patients are slightly less mad than the staff, and think like MacMurphy while acting like chief Bromden, the only one who manages to achieve freedom.Nishidani (talk) 12:29, 13 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
I think of the Vietnamese boat people, after the U.S. and Australia, for purely electoral reasons, smashed the shit out of that country, upwards of 7-800,000 thousands of many ethnicities fled the area. A senior Singapore based European diplomat told me the inside story of how Western aid groups competed to get big quotas, often because 'caring' was funded so lucratively. But, whatever, most got sanctuary in the West. The world has changed. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster I would have thought it obvious that Western nations extend a hand and offer emigration to, say 100,000 Japanese in the area: excellent levels of education, very quick to assimilate, and self-supporting, fine material for Canada, England, the U.S. Australia, Europe. Never even proposed. The Gazans are few. 100,000 selected by lottery, once spread over 10 countries, would make excellent immigrants. They had a tradition of higher education superior to Israel's in the mid-sixties, and their diaspora, which has become their imposed destiny, is as interesting as that which is the hallmark of that of the Jewish people. The remittances from such a small number would sustain those who are otherwise doomed to strangulation. But, like most obvious interim solutions, no politician will do what all were ready to do with the far more exotic Vietnamese and Hmong. Fuck'em.Nishidani (talk) 17:06, 18 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
A much more detailed article on the refugees. Kingsindian ♝♚ 14:06, 25 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Nothing new to followers of the issues, but a neat summation of most of the relevant points.
Another one of the "long and only tangentially connected" articles.
Testimony from Khuzaa and Rafah. Kingsindian ♝♚ 21:40, 7 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Testimony from Rafah after ceasefire on August 1st. Also see this translation of a Yediot Ahronot interview with Colonel Ofer Winter. I have been thinking for a long time on another article on Rafah, like the one on Shujaiyya. Kingsindian ♝♚ 21:57, 7 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
“WarKosign” 11:18, 13 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
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