IDF soldiers apparently happy about going to war looking forward to killing the enemy -but who's the enemy Hamas officials and their armed militants or does it include all of the civilian population of Gaza.
Instagram photos of IDF soldiers getting ready to invade Gaza seem quite happy about taking up arms against the Palestinians of Gaza who are a weakened oppressed enemy having been put on a strict diet and their civil society destroyed and the people terrorized by the Israeli forces who have Ghettoized the Palestinians in what has been called "The Largest open-air prison in the world". The Israelis backed by the Americans believe that all of the people of the Gaza strip all one and a half million Gaza citizens are each and everyone from new born infant to children , men, women, and the elderly and the disabled are equally guilty of terror because they elected Hamas as their government and Israel calls Hamas a terrorist organization .
The war is also being waged on social media mainly Twitter as these examples show:
Israeli soldiers shock the web with smiling Instagram photos by Lauren O'Neil via CBC.caNews November 16, 2012
They’re young, they’re attractive, and like many teens around the world they live much of their lives online.
But the people shown in a group of Instagram photos making their way around the web right now are also trained members of the Israeli Defense forces; a military group in the midst of a deadly battle with Hamas in Gaza.
These “surreal Instagrams” of young IDF soliders at ease looking happy and approachable were rounded up by Buzzfeed’s Katie Notopolous as drama continued to unfold between the two groups today.
As CBC News reported Wednesday, official military spokespeople for both the IDF and Hamas have been using their Twitter accounts to threaten each other and provide real-time military updates.
Examples from Twitter social media treats war destruction and death as if they were a game . But in team sports such as soccer the players don't all carry Uzis or AK 47s and other weapons.
So the Israelis claim God Elohim is on their side while the Palestinians claim God/Allah is on their side while America and president Obama believe God /Jesus is on their side .
So all of these God's are supposedly just and compassionate . Though all three religious traditions Judaism, Islam and Christianity each pray to the God of Abraham and the Prophets.Otherwise it is a pissing contest between three different Gods . Maybe God by whatever name is not on anyone's side but rather weeps for all who are victims that is the innocent caught in the crossfire of religious supremacists on all sides.
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Palestinian death toll mounts as Israel targets Hamas 24 Palestinian civilians killed in 24 hours, Gaza health official says The Associated Press Nov 19, 2012
Israeli aircraft struck crowded areas in the Gaza Strip and killed a senior militant with a missile strike on a media centre Monday, driving up the Palestinian death toll to 96, as Israel broadened its targets in the six-day-old offensive meant to quell Hamas rocket fire on Israel.
Escalating its bombing campaign, Israel on Sunday began attacking homes of activists in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza. These attacks have led to a sharp spike in civilian casualties, killing 24 civilians in just under two days and doubling the number of civilians killed in the conflict, a Gaza health official said.
"We've heard pretty loud detonations all through the night, especially the beginning of the evening," said Jean-Francois Belanger from the Gaza Strip, reporting for CBC's French-language network Radio-Canada. "It's been the fiercest and most intense shelling that we've heard since the beginning of this conflict."
...Military activity over the past two nights has dropped off as targets change and international efforts to wrest a ceasefire plod ahead.
But failure to end the fighting threatens to touch off an Israeli ground invasion, for which thousands of soldiers, backed by tanks and armoured vehicles, have already been mobilized and dispatched to Gaza's border.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he was in touch with players across the region in hopes of halting the fighting. While defending Israel's right to defend itself against the rocket fire, he also warned of the risks the Jewish state would take if it were to expand its air assault into a ground war.
"If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza, the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two-state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future," Obama said.
From CBC News
Obama gets pawned by Israel a second time just after being re-elected. When Obama was first elected in 2008 in the period between his election and inauguration the Israelis launched "operation Caste Lead" and now after being re-elected the Israeli government is using this period in time to launch another campaign against Gaza "Operation Pillar of Fire " Obama still not willing to condemn Israel's disproportionate retaliation against Gaza .
Gaza has become the Israelis version of the "Jewish Ghettoes " or even more specifically "The Warsaw Ghetto" of the NAZIs . At what point we might ask is it acceptable for a people who have been Ghettoized and oppressed to be permitted to fight back as those Jews trapped facing almost certain death in the Warsaw Ghetto did. At what point does this action by the Israelis become a War Crime or a Crime Against Humanity as defined by International Law and by /or be categorized as immoral.
Unfortunately the Palestinians and all Arabs and Muslims in general have been demonized not just over the last thirty years dating back to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the creation of OPEC but going back to before the Christian Crusades in 1095 onward . Islamophobia is so embedded in Western Culture that many in the West are unable or unwilling to admit its existence as another blatant form of prejudice and bigotry.
As Phyllis Bennis reminds us that what is happening in Gaza now has its roots going back before the escalation . In order to better understand the current situation it must be seen in context. Once seen in context the issues are not so black and white or good versus evil.
We must resist the simplification of the current conditions and to reject the notion which George W. Bush argued "you are either with us or against us" there is therefore no middle ground and no way to broker any peaceful settlement. If one side sees the other as the eternal enemy and even as acting on behalf of evil that is the devil or Satan there is little left to discuss and so at that point the discussion or conversation is shut down.
The Roots of Israeli Attack on Gaza Published on Nov 17, 2012 by TheRealNews Phyllis Bennis: The current conflict did not begin with rockets fired at Israel
and here's our response:
It is difficult to comment on Israel's actions in Gaza if we dare to even attempt to objectively look at both sides of the conflict without being called anti-Semitic. That is even to assume that the Israelis might be in the wrong just in this particular set of circumstances is to draw the ire of the Israelis and Israel's most prominent ally and defender the USA.
We are supposed to acknowledge at all times in each incident which occurs between the Israelis and the Palestinians that Israel is always in the right . To suggest that what Israel has been doing to the people of Gaza over the last six years or so is unwarranted and that the Israelis are involved in the war crime of collectively punishing not just the militants in Gaza but also all of the civilians as well in Gaza. It is in this case the Palestinian people who are being oppressed and facing ethnic cleansing by Israel and those countries which back Israel unconditionally such as the USA.
President Obama and the USA could end most of the aggression from the Israeli side by cutting funding to Israel and stop supplying Israel with weapons or even no longer allow the specially modified caterpillar tractors from being shipped to Israel. Instead the US will in all likely increase the financial and military aid to Israel so that Israel can bomb more civilians .
It was hoped that President Obama in his second term would take a stand against Israel if Israel was the true aggressor . Obama this time around does not have to worry about re-election but it maybe due to party loyalty he doesn't want the Democratic Party to appear unfriendly towards Israel or possibly Obama has no real sympathy of any kind in the case of the Palestinians trapped in Gaza waiting for total destruction and annihilation .
Like certain nations in the past the Israeli military and people believe they have a God given literally that is to exact revenge on any who attack them and to kill 100 of the enemy to each Israeli killed. This is part of the ancient Jewish Biblical law of "harem' but that was over 2000 years ago now we expect nations to operate by a different moral code to pursue even a war in the most humane and just fashion as possible .
This is why since the Holocaust/Shoah the nations agreed to develop international laws which would govern armed conflict and many of the foundational legal and moral notions for such International Agreements came out of the Nuremberg trials and judicial decisions.
As pointed out by Philip Jenkins in his book- Laying Down The Sword (pub. 2011)
" Where God has given lands as part of the Hebrew patrimony , all current residents must be subject to the law of "harem"-that of extermination. In those cities,"thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt "utterly destroy" them ; namely the Hittites, and the Amorites,the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee".( Deuteronomy 20:16-17) (p.33,Jenkins)
For some 2000 years during the Diaspora the Jewish people were persecuted and by the Babylonians, the Romans and then the intolerant Christians who erroneously blame the Jews for killing Jesus (Deicide) and then came the Shoah/Holocaust and now unfortunately some Israeli leaders appear to be misguidedly exacting revenge on the Palestinians .
There is a difference between defending ones self or nation and merely exacting revenge, retaliation and collective punishment that is wanting not just an eye for an eye or seeking justice but rather demanding ten or a hundred eyes for the two you have lost .
As Ghandi said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". Otherwise the cycle of violence will continue between Israel and the Palestinians. An innocent Palestinian civilian and an innocent Palestinian child and an innocent Palestinian mother are each still as worthy of life as an Israeli or an American though Israel and America both deny it as so and cavalierly kill Palestinians without any remorse.
And then the Americans ask disingenuously "why do they hate us".
and so it goes,
GORD.
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