Don't ask, don't tell Israeli style - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 05-27-2009, 10:53 AM

meanwhile, back in the reality of apartheid:

Quote:

Israel Hopes for U.S. Settlement Shift
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government wants to reach understandings with the Obama administration that would allow some new construction in West Bank settlements, an Israeli official said Wednesday, despite vocal American and Palestinian opposition.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was expected to focus on the issue of settlement expansion in his meeting with President Obama in their meeting scheduled for Thursday in Washington. Mr. Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have stated repeatedly that they see no point in resuming stalled peace negotiations without an absolute settlement freeze.

President Barack Obama and other senior American officials have called on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud Party who came into office almost two months ago, to halt all settlement activity.

Dan Meridor, the Israeli minister of intelligence, and other senior Netanyahu aides returned on Wednesday from meetings in Europe with President Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, and other American officials. The purpose was to continue discussing issues raised in last week’s Netanyahu-Obama meeting, including that Mr. Obama’s objections to settlement expansion.

Almost 300,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, among a Palestinian population of some 2.5 million. Much of the world considers the 120 or so settlements a violation of international law.

Mr. Netanyahu says that his government will not build any new settlements and will take down a number of outposts erected in recent years by settlers without proper government authorization. But he insists that his government will allow building within existing settlements to accommodate what he termed “natural growth,” essentially continuing the policy of the last few Israeli governments.

Israel says it reached understandings with the Bush administration — some formal, some informal and some tacit — on building within settlements. For example, construction was limited in small, outlying settlements but more tolerated in large ones in areas that Israel intends to keep under any deal with the Palestinians.

“We want to work to reach understandings with the new administration” that are “fair” and “workable,” said the Israeli official. He was speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue was still under discussion.

The Obama administration is seeking a settlement freeze in the hope of improving the environment for peace-making, encouraging gestures toward normalizing ties with Israel from Arab governments, and buttressing a coalition of countries opposed to Iran developing nuclear weapons.

But there is a consensus within the Israeli government that the ever-growing settler population must be accommodated.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, said the final status of the existing settlements would be determined in negotiations with the Palestinians. “In the interim, normal life should be allowed to continue in those communities,” Mr. Regev said.

In an interview with Army Radio on Monday, Ehud Barak, the defense minister and leader of the center-left Labor Party, gave a hypothetical example of a family of four that originally moved into a two-room home in a settlement. “Now there are six children,” he said. “Should they be allowed to build another room or not?”

He added, “Ninety-five percent of people will tell you it cannot be that someone in the world honestly thinks an agreement with the Palestinians will stand or fall over this.”

In an effort to show goodwill, Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak have been underscoring their willingness to take down 22 small outposts that are illegal under Israeli law, and which were supposed to have been removed under the 2003 American-backed peace plan known as the road map. That plan specified that Israel should halt “all settlement activity (including natural growth).”

Mr. Barak has said he will try to remove the small outposts by agreement with the settlers, and if agreement is not reached, then by force. Settlers have vowed to rebuild any outpost that is removed and to create more.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the police removed some sheds and a tent from two tiny outposts in the Hebron area. Another small outpost was demolished in the Ramallah region last week, but new shacks have already appeared there. None of the three outposts were on the list of 22, but the measures against them prompted furious reactions from the hard right. Many religious Jewish nationalists say it is their right to settle in the biblical heartland of the West Bank, which they refer to as Judea and Samaria. Other Israelis cite security reasons for holding on to the areas captured in the 1967 war. Another point of contention between the Israeli government and the Obama administration is Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to publicly endorse a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a cornerstone of American policy.

At a conference on Tuesday in the Israeli Parliament on alternatives to end the conflict, a Likud minister and former army chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, said the peace process based on the two-state paradigm had failed and that it was time for new ways of thinking. The conference was organized by a Likud parliamentarian, Tzipi Hotovely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/wo...ef=global-home

disconnected?
i don't think so.

=====
edit:

polar--i don't really have an iron in that fire.
i really don't.

Polar · 05-27-2009, 11:08 AM

So the best way to handle the discussion is to...change the subject?

Willravel · 05-27-2009, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

His response was to post the first sentence of the article. Nothing more.

I assumed the veiled threat would be self evident.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

Then later, an article basing his entire claim on a single anonymous source. I give two concrete examples as to why anonymous sources should not be considered the best sources.

There are no "best sources" on this, because anyone speaking on the record about plans by Israel to attack Iran with nuclear weapons would be guilty of espionage. I don't understand why, in your mind, anonymous is comparable to "unreliable".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

I give concrete reasons why the 'anonymous' source should be doubted.

I'm glad that in your opinion your opinions are concrete, but not everyone has the same lack of skepticism for your arguments. You name the Downing Street Memos? I'll raise you Deep Throat. He was anonymous until the age of 91, but he managed to blow the lid off one of the largest political scandals of the decade.

Anyway, the journalist is responsible for vetting the claims of an anonymous source, and it's trust in that journalist, not the anonymous source, that earns a claim veracity.

Still, all of this journalism 101 aside, you need to look at this within a wider context. Israel secretly developed nuclear weapons either on their own or with the help of the US in order to defend itself from it's neighbors. Seems innocent enough, right? Well things aren't so clear. Israel has a history of preemptive and asymmetrical warfare.

Go back several months and we see Israel attack Gaza, breaking a 6 month cease-fire (a.k.a the 2008 Lull), on dubious intel that Hamas militants were running gunmen into Israel (this was November 5, 2008, iirc). Hamas of course retaliated with a few missiles. Israel proceeded to bomb Gaza, not just attacking government and military, but civilian buildings. Mosques, hospitals, homes, and schools were targeted. 1,166 to 1,417 Palestinians (officially) died, most of whom were civilian non-combatants. I believe 13 Israelis died.

Go back a year and some change and we see Israel attack Lebanon. Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists kidnapped 3 Israeli soldiers with the intent of trading them for Hezbollah prisoners, a common practice. Israel responded by launching huge bombing campaigns and invading Lebanon, killing over 1000 Lebanese, again targeting civilian infrastructure and again mostly killing civilian non-combatants.

I'm not saying Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself. It does. It doesn't have the right to launch asymmetrical attacks on civilian targets, especially in response to what are relatively small offenses. All they do is aid their enemies by providing them new, angry and heartbroken recruits. And they lose my trust.

roachboy · 05-27-2009, 11:21 AM

uh..polar: if you remember, i was putting up information about the israeli settlements in the west bank almost from the outset in this thread. i explained why i was doing it, why i thought it important. it just happened that i saw the article i posted in the times after i posted what i expected to be my last in the sequence, which was the post above.

to be clear: willravel and i are separate people.
i don't find the same things interesting as he does.
in this case, my main contention is that the iran "threat" functions to frame israel as a potential victim---i see this as a bit of symbolic politicking. i also contend that the central issue concerning israel is the settlement program and by extension the treatment of palestine. i've already explained why this is the case.
this is the line i am pursuing here.
it just seems to have turned out that i was right in suspecting a linkage between the stories about iran and the politics surrounding the settlements--which follows given the far-right coalition that netanyahu has had to enter into in order to govern. he's paying the piper.

Willravel · 05-27-2009, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

to be clear: willravel and i are separate people.

It's true. He has a beard while I am clean-shaven.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i don't find the same things interesting as he does.
in this case, my main contention is that the iran "threat" functions to frame israel as a potential victim---i see this as a bit of symbolic politicking. i also contend that the central issue concerning israel is the settlement program and by extension the treatment of palestine. i've already explained why this is the case.

My main contention, on the other hand, is more about the general state of the Israeli government's asymmetrical offense-as-defense strategy and how that plays into Israel having nuclear weapons. While I'll be glad to talk your ear off about Palestine and Lebanon in order to frame that strategy, my contention is less about politics and more about military strategy. It's not that roach and I disagree on the issue, we're just coming at it from different angles.

Polar · 05-27-2009, 12:22 PM

You forget Willravel, Deep Throat provided hard copy documentation to Woodward and Bernstien. He wasn't just a voice. He was a voice with official documentation.

As far as them breaking the six-month cease-fire, you apparently feel that rocket attacks into Israeli civilian centers isn't breaking a cease fire. That has nothing to do with nukes, however.

As far as kidnapping soldiers (an act of war) being a common practice, that only shows that Israel has shown restraint. And you forget that at least one soldier was killed during the kidnapping process. Again, an act of war. Again, this has nothing to do with nukes.

As far as "asymetrical attacks on civilian targets" those targets were where Hamas was launching rockets. Using civilians as shields in contemptable.

Willravel, most of your post is propoganda, period. Kidnappings, suicide bombings and rocket launches into Israeli civilian centers are ignored by you.

Instead you focus on the response. Hamas worked and fired rockets out of schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, etc. Israel did indeed rightfully return fire to those sites. Hamas more responsible for civilian deaths than Israel is.

Roachboy, you did indeed put the west bank settlement information at the start of the thread. It just had nothing to do with the topic of the thread. That is my point.

roachboy · 05-27-2009, 12:37 PM

polar--i don't think you get to dictate what is and is not the logic along which a thread develops. if you start your own thread, then you can control it as you like. in this case, there are perfectly reasonable explanations for going in the direction i have gone--if you want to debate them, fine--but otherwise it's just a stone that you'll have to carry around with you.

speaking of data that's empirically suspect cited without any sources: how about your ludicrous claim concerning relative deaths caused by israel and hamas? where'd that howler come from? from under your hat i expect.

Willravel · 05-27-2009, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

You forget Willravel, Deep Throat provided hard copy documentation to Woodward and Bernstien. He wasn't just a voice. He was a voice with official documentation.

Sometimes, but again this is about the verifiable evidence being provided to the journalist so that the journalist can test the validity of the source's claims. Once the journalist or journalists are satisfied with the veracity of the claims, they publish. We don't know who Uzi Mahnaimi spoke to in the Israeli military, only that the source spoke to the journalist and was able to pass the journalist's test. Ultimately it's not going to be about verifying the information by contacting the sources because they'd be charged with espionage. It's a question of whether or not you trust Uzi Mahnaimi and by extension the Sunday Times.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

As far as them breaking the six-month cease-fire, you apparently feel that rocket attacks into Israeli civilian centers isn't breaking a cease fire.

Your time line is wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

As far as kidnapping soldiers (an act of war) being a common practice, that only shows that Israel has shown restraint. And you forget that at least one soldier was killed during the kidnapping process.

You're off base here. Hezbollah cannot commit an act of war because Hezbollah is not a government, it's a terrorist organization. Lebanon did not kidnap anyone and they immediately offered to help. Unfortunately, Israel was more than willing to attack an entire country over the acts of a few very foolish terrorists. I wonder where they learned that from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

As far as "asymetrical attacks on civilian targets" those targets were where Hamas was launching rockets. Using civilians as shields in contemptable.

You need to do homework before posting stuff like this, because it weakens your case. On January 15th, Israel launched white phosphorus (illegal) ammunition into the UN headquarters in Gaza, which has been confirmed to not have any Hamas militants. The facility did have Palestinian refugees, food, medicine, and UN workers.
UN headquarters in Gaza hit by Israeli 'white phosphorus' shells - Times Online

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polar

Willravel, most of your post is propoganda, period. Kidnappings, suicide bombings and rocket launches into Israeli civilian centers are ignored by you

I find it deeply ironic that as you parrot Fox News talking points you accuse me of spreading propaganda. I look forward to you failing to refute the articles I posted.

roachboy · 05-28-2009, 12:39 PM

Quote:

US-Israel relations hit low after Jewish state rejects White House demand

• Barack Obama set to meet Mahmoud Abbas today
• Israel rejects demand to end settlement construction

* Chris McGreal

Increasingly fractious relations between the US and Israel hit a low unseen in nearly two decades today after the Jewish state rejected President Obama's demand for an end to settlement construction in the West Bank and Washington threatened to "press the point".

The dispute, which blew in to the open hours before Obama was to meet the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, reflects the depth of the shift in American policy away from accommodating Israel to pressuring it to end years of stalling serious negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state while continuing to grab land in the occupied territories.

Obama put down a marker at a difficult meeting with the Israeli prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in Washington this month when he demanded a halt to the perpetual expansion of settlements - which now house close to 500,000 Jews in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem - because they are a major obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestine.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, pressed the point yesterday with an unusually blunt call for a halt to settlement growth, including the continued construction of so-called "outposts", small informal settlements which are illegal even under Israeli law, as well as the building of new houses in existing Jewish enclaves which the government describes as "natural growth".

Clinton said Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is in the best interests of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease." She said the Americans "intend to press that point".

Israel is committed to stop all settlement construction under the 2003 US road map to peace.

Today the Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, said that construction will continue inside existing settlements.

"Israel ... will abide by its commitments not to build new settlements and to dismantle unauthorised outposts," he said. "As to existing settlements, their fate will be determined in final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In the interim period, normal life must be allowed to continue in these communities."

Israel defines normal life as the construction of homes to accommodate the children of Jewish settlers when they grow up and marry. Critics say that almost nowhere else in the world is it considered a right to build a house next to your parents house.

Netanyahu has offered to remove 26 of more than 120 outpost settlements but both the US and Palestinians remain sceptical about Israeli commitments as similar promises have been made over recent years and repeatedly broken.

The former prime minister, Ariel Sharon, promised President George Bush to his face that the outposts would come down but instead the Israeli government continued to allow new ones to be constructed, often with the assistance of the military and other state authorities.

Settlements have long been viewed as a litmus test of Israel's intent. Even at the height of the Oslo peace process, Israel more than doubled the number of Jews it moved to live in the West Bank, raising fundamental questions among the Palestinians as to whether Israel was more interested in grabbing land than peace.

The dispute over settlements, and Netanyahu's defiance of Obama's call, is likely to set the tone for future relations as the White House attempts to radically change the US approach by pressing Israel to move swiftly toward serious negotiations to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state.

Robert Malley, former special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to Clinton, said: "The surprise in this is not the Israeli position. The surprise the forcefulness of the American one. Rarely have we seen it at this pace and with this intensity and unambiguity. The US has taken a position that doesn't give much wriggle room at all to the Israeli government".

But Malley said it remains unclear how far the White House will press Israel.

Some US analysts say that the settlement issue is a good one for Obama to use to press Netanyahu because even among Israel's supporters in Congress there is not much backing for the continued expansion of Jewish enclaves in the Palestinian territories.

Other analysts say Obama will have to be careful not to allow a protracted dispute over the settlements to stall broader talks on the creation of a Palestinian state.

But questions remain over how far Obama is prepared to push Israel when Congress remains strongly sympathetic to the Jewish state and the pro- Israel lobby continues to wield powerful influence.

Obama's public stand on settlements is also intended to strengthen Abbas who is politically weak and under pressure from Hamas. Palestinian officials say Abbas plans to raise the settlement issue as one of the major obstacles to the peace process.

Israel's intelligence minister, Dan Meridor, met in London earlier this week with the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, for follow up meetings after Netanyahu's Washington visit at which the settlement issue was also pressed.

US-Israel relations hit low after Jewish state rejects Obama demand | World news | guardian.co.uk

so the cross-chatter between these two stories continues to reveal itself by default--the floating of "news" concerning the iranian nuclear program and potential threats to israel this time is obvious linked to a deteriorating relation between the united states and israel over exactly the question of settlement and "outpost" expansion---which are fundamental to any hope of ending israeli occupation of the west bank, setting up a palestinian state.

since all this stuff floats around in the infotainment sphere of the net, bouncing around under the auspices of wire service subscriptions, context is routinely stripped away. in this case, the context i have in mind is the immediate context for the fashioning of certain stories, the timing of their release, the implications of that release and so forth. wire service stories simply show up--information is either inside or outside the streams they constitute--a degree of neutrality is assumed along with their presence within the stream, as if there is some vetting that accompanies admission.

perhaps the problem is not so much there as it is in the nature of infotainment gathering itself. perhaps the budget-constrained need for more continuous infotainment, preferably already packaged is an ongoing Problem.

we've seen the effects of again and again--witness the appalling "news" coverage in the early phases of the iraq war, which only appeared to end when information that compromised the institutions of infotainment relay themselves surfaced and the extent to which the media apparatus in the united states had allowed itself to become a simple relay for bush administration information/disinformation---we know about this, but somehow we want to trust infotainment so we forget about it, put it aside.

this criss-crossing of story lines looks an awful lot like disinformation--a type of disinformation--the creation of an interpretive fog as a result of putting into play mutually exclusive narratives, each of which activates an image of israel that precludes the other---israel threatened by iran, which has the advantage of being one of the principal bush administration bogeymen of choice--and israel the colonial occupier which refuses--as it has refused---to do ANYTHING to stop the ongoing annexation of palestinian land in the west bank. this annexation--and it's implications--are THE primary underlying causes of conflict in the region--above and beyond anything else.

but what are we who read this stuff supposed to make of it?

the information as to source, context etc. is simply absent from the stories. if this same stuff was broadcast on television, chances are you'd see footage of people in suits entering and leaving important-looking doorways bookending stock footage of iran, stock footage of israel-being-threatened and maybe a map or some such.

we really are being fed nothing but bullshit, if you think about it.

quite a democracy we have here, ain't it?

the nature of information streams determines the nature of debate which determines the ability and inability of the polity to make meaningful decisions. we have no such ability. we're just being managed.

oliver9184 · 06-13-2010, 02:34 PM

Anonymous sources providing information to The Sunday Times about Israeli nuclear capability want to be anonymous because they don't want to become the next Mordechai Vanunu. It should also be noted that The Sunday Times is different from The Times and should probably be considered a trustworthy enough source. If they hadn't believed and published Vanunu's story back in 1986 we would be a lot less certain of Israel's capacity.

05-27-2009, 11:21 AM	#44 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	uh..polar: if you remember, i was putting up information about the israeli settlements in the west bank almost from the outset in this thread. i explained why i was doing it, why i thought it important. it just happened that i saw the article i posted in the times after i posted what i expected to be my last in the sequence, which was the post above. to be clear: willravel and i are separate people. i don't find the same things interesting as he does. in this case, my main contention is that the iran "threat" functions to frame israel as a potential victim---i see this as a bit of symbolic politicking. i also contend that the central issue concerning israel is the settlement program and by extension the treatment of palestine. i've already explained why this is the case. this is the line i am pursuing here. it just seems to have turned out that i was right in suspecting a linkage between the stories about iran and the politics surrounding the settlements--which follows given the far-right coalition that netanyahu has had to enter into in order to govern. he's paying the piper. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-27-2009, 12:37 PM	#47 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	polar--i don't think you get to dictate what is and is not the logic along which a thread develops. if you start your own thread, then you can control it as you like. in this case, there are perfectly reasonable explanations for going in the direction i have gone--if you want to debate them, fine--but otherwise it's just a stone that you'll have to carry around with you. speaking of data that's empirically suspect cited without any sources: how about your ludicrous claim concerning relative deaths caused by israel and hamas? where'd that howler come from? from under your hat i expect. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-27-2009, 11:08 AM	#42 (permalink)
Polar Upright	So the best way to handle the discussion is to...change the subject?

05-27-2009, 12:22 PM	#46 (permalink)
Polar Upright	You forget Willravel, Deep Throat provided hard copy documentation to Woodward and Bernstien. He wasn't just a voice. He was a voice with official documentation. As far as them breaking the six-month cease-fire, you apparently feel that rocket attacks into Israeli civilian centers isn't breaking a cease fire. That has nothing to do with nukes, however. As far as kidnapping soldiers (an act of war) being a common practice, that only shows that Israel has shown restraint. And you forget that at least one soldier was killed during the kidnapping process. Again, an act of war. Again, this has nothing to do with nukes. As far as "asymetrical attacks on civilian targets" those targets were where Hamas was launching rockets. Using civilians as shields in contemptable. Willravel, most of your post is propoganda, period. Kidnappings, suicide bombings and rocket launches into Israeli civilian centers are ignored by you. Instead you focus on the response. Hamas worked and fired rockets out of schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, etc. Israel did indeed rightfully return fire to those sites. Hamas more responsible for civilian deaths than Israel is. Roachboy, you did indeed put the west bank settlement information at the start of the thread. It just had nothing to do with the topic of the thread. That is my point.

06-13-2010, 02:34 PM	#50 (permalink)
oliver9184 Psycho	Anonymous sources providing information to The Sunday Times about Israeli nuclear capability want to be anonymous because they don't want to become the next Mordechai Vanunu. It should also be noted that The Sunday Times is different from The Times and should probably be considered a trustworthy enough source. If they hadn't believed and published Vanunu's story back in 1986 we would be a lot less certain of Israel's capacity.