Dreamer Easy

I've been donating to them on a monthly basis. They do great and very important work.

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Nsty side effects: the Jewish population in Melbourne has been under attack. No record of violence towards Jews in Sydney.

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Thank heavens Sydney is a little saner - despite idiotic comments from some of those protesters. Man, I have had it to the back teeth with both sides' rationalisations.

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Melbourne does seem to have more of these nastier racist types. I blame the weather. It's always raining down there and so they have to huddle indoors with likeminded types and com up with stupid poisonous ideas. Now, ifthey were in Sydney, It's too hot to get upset about the great Jewish/Islamic/whatever conspiracy. Everyone just buggers off to the beach instead, and has the occassional fight there.

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mondyboy.livejournal.com

First off, I would like the fighting to end.

But going by its headline, I thought that AI article was going to be neutral. But, sadly, it isn't. While it mentions that Palestinian gunmen are endangering Palestinian lives, it spends most of its wordage berating Israeli soldiers for using Palestinian households to take up sniper positions. It never mentions that Hamas use civilians as sheilds - though the article does point out that using civilians in anyway, is terrible.

The article also makes no mention at all of the Israeli civilians who have been endangered in rocket attacks from Fatah/ Hezbollah and Hamas since 2002

I don't condone the actions of Israeli soldiers who perform voilent actions on civilians without cause. And I hate that over 100 Palestinian children have died. That's shocking.

But please, AI, don't pretend to write a neutral article on the conflict when it's really a veiled attack on Israel's tactics.

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You mean today's press release, I take it. In all honesty, I am very weary of hearing each side claim they are the victim of unfair reporting. Given Israel's disproportionate response in the current flareup and the enormously higher casualties on the Palestinian side, I frankly do not have a problem if a single report on a single issue condemns both sides' actions - including the misuse of civilian homes by Palestinian gunmen via intimidation - but emphasises the Israeli side somewhat more.

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mondyboy.livejournal.com

Well, I could argue that the reason why Palestinian casualties have been so high is because Hamas use civilians - both people and instiutions - as shield. But I don't have a citation to back that up.

Then again neither does the AI article when it states this as a matter of fact: "Israeli forces have bombed civilian homes and other buildings, arguing that they had been used as cover by gunmen firing at Israeli targets, although Palestinian fighters usually vacate the areas as soon as they have fired."

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Coincidentally, I've just heard back from the embassy, who make that very argument - that it's Hamas' fault for using human shields. However, as the AI report states, it is illegal both for Palestinian gunmen to use human shields and for the Israel army to fire on those human shields. If an enemy soldier misuses a school, hospital, or home to launch an attack, the other side may not endanger civilians by attacking that target under any circumstances, even though the other side broke the rules first. By analogy, a police officer, fired at by a criminal, may not blow up the school into which the criminal has just fled. We wouldn't accept the officer's excuse that it was self-defence, or that it was the criminal's fault. (Nor would we expect the officer to just give up, of course: he must still stop the criminal, but without endangering innocent lives.)

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jblum.livejournal.com

Worthy as this may be -- you said you wanted to focus on writing today! Consider this me thwapping you round head and shoulders with a wet herring while intoning GET BACK TO WORK!

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GAH

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I support your husband. Go back to work, and I will too.

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I love AI. They never quit. But a lot of what they do, sadly, seems pointless. This is a good example. World opinion will change Israeli policy, probably within a few weeks, but only temporarily. World opinion will never change the policies of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. When Israel withdraws, the situation will return to the previous status quo of fake cease-fires, border incidents and questionable killings. This will go on until Israel engages in another military operation. And so the cycle continues, a dynamic equilibrium, usually simmering, occasionally boiling over. Regardless of what the world wants, the Israelis will not ignore cross-border rocketry and mortar fire; Palestinian extremists will not cease firing rockets and mortars at Israel; and so the violence will not end. I admire the aid workers in Gaza, but it's dangerous work, and often requires moral concessions. A tragic conspiracy of circumstances exists, and I don't see the situation improving significantly until the political territory in the middle east alters so much that financial support for Hamas ends.

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the Israelis will not ignore cross-border rocketry and mortar fire

Hmmm. Doesn't Israel have choices somewhere in between the current all-out assault and sitting on their hands?

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I imagine. Probably sanctions, restricting access through the checkpoints they control, restricting delivery of commercial goods, fuel, or electricity, restricting financial transfers, counter-battery artillery and airstrikes, and attempting to assassinate the Hamas fighters and combat leaders. All of which they have done at various times. They could try joint efforts with regional partners, but if a regional partner even wanted to cooperate with Israel, it would be politically courageous for them to even try.

If Hamas continues to actively or passively support cross-border attacks and to adhere to their public goal of the destruction of Israel, eventually Israel will have to either use the big stick or admit they won't, which is tantamount to admitting that Hamas can kill Israelis - or try to, anyway - with impunity.

Conflict is about hurting the other side until they decide to quit. Hamas is well aware that Israel's big vulnerability is domestic and global public opinion, so they are not fighting a war of bullets - they are fighting a war of perceptions. Of course, if enough senior or experienced Hamas members get killed, the remainder may decide to call a hudna, constituting a tactical defeat on their part. If the Gazan public decides that Hamas is more of a problem than a solution, that would also constitute a defeat - but this is a much more difficult objective, given decades of broad regional support for Palestinian organisations that attack Israelis, decades of anti-Israeli propaganda by and for Palestinians, effective Hamas control of all infrastructure in Gaza, and effective Hamas control of media reportage from Gaza.

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I'm frustrated here by my lack of knowledge of military tactics. I can't believe that the Israeli army's only possible strategy on the ground is to lob shells in the general direction of the enemy, but I can't suggest an alternative. Research is indicated. But I am heartened by the fact that Israel's old enemy Egypt is co-sponsoring a peace plan which includes stopping the smuggling of arms into Gaza for Hamas use.

When it comes to long-term solutions... were I Israel, I'd mobilise the army to build schools, hospitals, utilities, etc, in Gaza, much as the US military participates in natural disaster relief. This would be more than a PR coup - it would undercut Hamas's support amongst Palestinians who see them as the only guys who get things done. Plus surely Hamas would baulk at attacking such targets. This may be a pipe dream, but I wonder if anything like it has ever been tried.

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I'm just an armchair tactician too. But just lobbing shells in the general direction of the enemy is regarded, I believe, in modern militaries as pointless. You shoot when you have a target; maybe you hit it, maybe you don't, but effectively random fire is worse than useless. Counter-battery fire - that is, firing at identified sources of fire, rocket launch sites, mortar fire sites - is a useful technique, made quite effective with specialised radar and aerial surveillance.

The tactical response by Hamas to counter-battery is twofold: mobile launch teams to their losses (deploy, fire, and amscray hopefully before the hard rain falls) and human shields to deter return fire and increase civilian casualties if fire is returned (they deploy and fire from a public building, roof of a house, or just some random street). Any report of civilians killed by the IDF fire is a media defeat for the IDF. If a Hamas member is killed, the body will likely to be identified as civilians by media stringers, medics and locals either supportive of Hamas or intimidated by Hamas. The IDF has no rebuttal to any false casualty claim other than "We don't know if we did it," which is the honest answer of the spokesperson for a large organisation. The results of the IDF investigation will be too late, go unreported, and be considered suspect by many who are either anti-IDF or consider each party as bad as the other.

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