Israel – Page 6 – Antiwar.com Blog

How to become collateral damage #37

Israeli military ‘regrets’ killing wrong man in Hamas raid, Unarmed Palestinian Amr Qawasme was shot dead during IDF operation to arrest militants in Hebron, Harriet Sherwood, guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 January 2011 16.03 GMT

OOPS!

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops killed a 65-year-old Palestinian civilian named Amr Qawasme in a pre-dawn house raid earlier today in Hebron. Amr Qawasme’s wife Sopheye said the troops stormed into his bedroom while he was sleeping.

Sopheye Qawasme: "He wasn’t even awake. They just entered the door and shot him right away. I had gone to pray. When I came back, they told me. I have no idea how they just broke into the house and shot him. They came at me and put a rifle to my head, and they shot him again."

The Israeli military confirmed that Amr Qawasme was a civilian, but said the raid was justified because a member of Hamas was living in the building. –Israeli Troops Kill 65-Year-Old Man in Home Raid, Democracy NOW! Headlines, January 7, 2011

So you better know ALL your neighbors – – – AND their politics.

But don’t worry, it couldn’t happen here! At least not too often – – –

Iran: Parallax view

NOAM CHOMSKY: The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. …They show that Arab opinion …â€”holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, thatâ€™s 80 percent; the second major threat is the United States, thatâ€™s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent. With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority, in fact, 57 percent, say that …it would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. …
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When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here, Clinton and the media, have drawn. Thereâ€™s also a minor problem. Thatâ€™s the major problem. The minor problem is that we donâ€™t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So thereâ€™s a filtering process. We donâ€™t know how much it distorts the information. But thereâ€™s no question that what is a radical distortion isâ€”or not even a distortion, a reflection of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population doesnâ€™t matter, even if itâ€™s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy. This shows up elsewhere…. –Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal “Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership”

Washington Times: Dirty Bombs Away!

Of course the Moonies concur with John Bolton that Israel must strike the soon-to-be-activated, harmless light water reactor at Bushehr in Western Iran â€“ an act which would be certain to drag the United States into a high-casualty catastrophe within moments. But the authors of this unsigned editorial in the Washington Times tonight suggest that the Israelis needn’t strike by this weekend. Why the discrepancy?

Mr. Bolton set that deadline because he was concerned that destroying an operational plant would create a radiation hazard, but a strike that left the site radioactive would hinder Iranian attempts to get it back up and running.

Besides,

Civilian casualties would be minimal because the site is located nine miles downwind of the city of Bushehr, and potential [radioactive] fallout would drift over either the Gulf close to Iran or the immediate area, which is arid and sparsely populated.

Hat Tip, eXiled.

YouTube of Iran Debate

Below is the 2 1/2 hour entirety of that Iran debate at UCR on April 1, 2010. Featured speaker was Reese Erlich. Panelists were Erlich, Larry Greenfield, Christopher Records and myself. The host was Louis Vandenberg. Thanks to Joe Briggs for putting this on his YouTube account.

One correction: After this conference, I learned from Syed Saleem Shahzad that the Jundallah that the CIA and JSOC use against Iran is different from the Jundallah that KSM used to be the leader of. However, they are both radical Salafi civilian-bombing terrorists, so same difference.

Queer as Folk

Andrew Sullivan scolds the organizers of a gay pride parade in Madrid for withdrawing their invitation to an Israeli float:

Barring an Israeli float in Madrid’s gay pride parade seems perverse, exclusive and pernicious. They think they could have a pride parade in Gaza?

No, I’m pretty sure they don’t think that. I think it’s entirely possible that gay Spaniards are, you know, Spaniards â€“ and as such are a little peeved at the Israeli government for assaulting civilian ships that carried some of their countrymen. Had Sullivan bothered to read more than one report on this story, and from somewhere other than Ynet, he might have learned that this wasn’t just a float with some random Israelis on it (though even Ynet noted that the Israeli delegation included representatives of Avigdor Lieberman‘s Foreign Ministry). This took five seconds to find on Google:

The float was sponsored by the municipality of Tel Aviv but Spain’s Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals withdrew the welcome mat after learning that the mayor of the Israeli city has not condemned last week’s naval raid, which killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

“After this attack and taking into account that there has been no condemnation on the part of the mayor of Tel Avi we decided not to allow the float to participate,” the federation’s president, Antonio Poveda, told AFP.

“We see nothing wrong with Israeli organisations which are clearly in defence of human rights, taking part privately in gay pride,” he added.

So maybe they’re not fans of Hamas so much as people of principle.

Love, Exciting and New, Come Aboard, We’re Expecting You

Our quote of the day comes from wounded idealist Benjamin Netanyahu:

That was not a love boat. That was a boat of hatred. It was not a peaceful flotilla. The soldiers who boarded the ships were attacked by clubs, batons and knives.

And if you can bear to look, here’s a link to the Israel Defense Force spokesperson’s blog, with chilling photos of the hardware-store holocaust the activists had in mind.