Israel ATTACKED first...

[RethugAssKicker]

According to Noam Chomsky... Israel kidnapped a civillian doctor and others... thus causing the Palestinians to take as POW the one Israel soldier?

Why have we not hear about this?

Listen to Chomskys interview with Amy Goodman/

www.democracynow.org

[BillZBubb]

1. Israel was trying to provoke a confrontation with Hamas.

They made a number of provocative steps until their soldier was taken. It was their intent all along to find an excuse to hit Gaza. So, they helped create one.

[Hissyspit]

2. It's been mentioned in several threads over the past week or so.

Discussions of primary catalyst for the violence, instigation, "who hit first," ultimately end up in the aftermath of WWII, if not Biblical times. It's a bit more complex than that.

[rurallib]

11. Off the subject - that cartoon in your signature line gets

more relevant every day. And uncle Dick never rescues the little fellow.

[Hissyspit]

14. Well, hopefully Uncle Dick will be in need of rescue himself.

It's a panel from an Oliphant cartoon, by the way.

[Malikshah]

3. It has been discussed-- as is ever the case with I/P and I/A conflicts

though--the truth is shouted down. Even when we historians winnow the wheat from the chaff, we are "accused" of revisionism and pilloried for rewriting history and spreading falsehoods.

Think of it as the soundbite world clamoring for blood. The reality of the situation is often too much for many to comprehend or to accept. Many glory in the delusion of perpetual moral superiority and/or victimhood. Gnawing and chewing over the perceived victimhood like so much stale vomit over the decades, some cannot be bothered by realizing the folly of their ways.

Chomsky's a controversial figure for this very reason.

And so it goes...

BTW-- good catch!

[Freedom_from_Chains]

7. Think of it as the soundbite world clamoring for blood

One of the sad testaments of the human race is that a little blood letting has always been good for calming the masses down. It makes them feel more safe or something.

[bloom]

4. Why?

probably lots of reasons (mostly the news is intent on making Israel appear innocent)- but you might be interested in this op-ed I posted in Editorials...

"He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x224239

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/opinion/24gilbert.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Depends on what day of the week it is

One day Israel attacks, the next day Hamas attacks, the next day Israel attacks, the next day Hamas attacks.

It's called the viscous cycle but the Israelis are the only one who can break it at this point. They have become the oppressors.

[The Cleaner]

6. However

one still cannot dismiss the fact that Israel has been bombarded with rockets DAILY for months and months on end, despite their new policy of giving away land for peace. These rocket attacks were never reported in the news but were reported in the Israeli media and on Israeli websites.

If I were an Israeli resident, in all fairness, I would have been upset that Israel didn't take action sooner.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel for a long time now from Lebanon and all Lebanon can do is shrug their shoulders and say, "Nothing we can do, sorry?" That's simply not good enough.

Hezbollah has seats in Lebanese govenment and is also in the Lebanese army. This is a bad entanglement that Israel must deal with.

Lebanon was foolish to allow Hezbollah, once a small rogue terrorist group, to set up shop, grow in numbers, and infiltrate the Lebanese government and military.

[mzteris]

8. you gotta link for those stories? n/t

[endarkenment]

13. Your facts are dubious.

1) rocket attacks from Gaza have been widely reported. At the same time Israel continued its attacks on Gaza. The violence was not one-sided.

2) Hezbollah had committed one rocket attack, against Kiryat Shmona, since the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, prior to the recent crisis. That attack was in 2002, and appeared to be in response to an assasination by Israel of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut.


3) There have been ongoing low level military hostilities between IDF and Hezbollah over the disputed Shebba farms region since the withdrawal.

[azurnoir]

15. Rocket attacks by Hezbollah?

Day after day for months? Odd didn't hear about those until after Israel began bombing Lebanon on 7/13/06, guess the MSM was too busy reporting Hamas Kassam (unguided homemade) rocket attacks, which rarely caused casualties or damage. Those attacks stopped after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, but began again after the Jericho Jail raid in March of this year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4809034.stm

[Lurking Dem]

17. Actually

rockets were launched the day of Israel's pullout and continued daily ever since.

[Igel]

18. No, the context was

Hamas and Gaza.

Hezbollah would fire a spate of katyushas across the N. Israeli border on a monthly basis (give or take a bit), with some other incursion every few months. Sometimes men, sometimes a drone or glider. Israel would respond by bombing a Hezbollah post, strafing some Syrians in the Bekaa Valley, or viciously causing millions of Lebanese in Beirut to suffer incredible psychological torture by inflicting an ominous sonic boom or two.

Since the news cycle is based on US time zones, we'd see headlines like "Israel stages raid on Syrian forces, after cross-border Hezbollah attack". Take-away message was "Israel attacks ..." with all the rest as dross. But even that wasn't a "dog bites man" story, but the even more common, and therefore completely un-newsworthy, "dog pees on fire hydrant" story.

Hamas was good about not firing qassams into Israel; it was other groups, and the attacks began the day after Israel pulled out of Gaza. Literally, the next day. But the reports and rumors were that Hamas was arming, and assisting other groups: logistically, to help those shooting the missiles to avoid PA police, or with supplies; technically, by providing expertise and men to help in the design and production. IIRC, a day or two after Israel re-entered Gaza, photos surfaced of qassams labeled 'property of' and then the name of some Hamas group ("intelligence unit", I think it was described as).

[Richard Steele]

16. Actually, I can dismiss it easily, since it's FICTION.

Are you reading this nonsense somewhere, or
do you just make it up yourself?

[oberliner]

9. Chomsky vs. Reality

Chomsky says:

Gaza, itself, the latest phase, began on June 24. It was when Israel abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don’t know their names. You don’t know the names of victims.

Reality says:

Israel arrested two Hamas members who were in the final stages of preparing a large-scale terror attack against Jewish civilians.

Here are their names:

Osama Muamar
Mustafa Muamar

Al-Jazeera has a Gaza Offensive Timeline on it's website.
The first item listed is:

Sunday, June 25: Palestinian armed groups launch an attack on an army post on the Israel-Gaza border. They kill two soldiers and capture a third.

source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4EBC6739-C909-45FF-827A-7AC49447D68E.htm

[cali]

10. There is an excellent op-ed piece

in today's NYT, by Dan Gilbert, a psych professor at Harvard about the psychology of who did what first in complex situations; might I suggest you read it?

[slackmaster]

12. Oh goodie, another Chicken vs. Egg thread in GD

:argh:

[Igel]

19. We have not heard about it

because Israel's arresting people it suspected of trying to kill Israelis, or being accomplices in trying to kill Israelis, is background noise. Just as the qassams being launched into Israel was pretty much background noise.

The only thing that makes the arrest of these two not background noise is that it's the incident immediately prior to an escalation of the conflict, one that is handy to claim as the reason for escalation. But since the tunnel was being dug, and the operation planned (with the full intent to carry out the operation in the absence of a further excuse) long before the Hamas guys were arrested, it's a spurious post-hoc justification. Abducting the two brothers was not the trigger, or the reason, for abducting the Israeli soldier.

In similar but not identical fashion, people have latched onto Rugev's and the other Israel soldier's abduction as the proximate or only cause of the Lebanese bombing. But the difference is that while the plans to bomb Lebanon were most assuredly drawn up, and merely incidentally revised before executed by Israel, there's no reason to suspect that Israel would be bombing the hell out of Lebanon in the absence of the immediate provocation. Abducting the two soldiers is plausibly the trigger for the assault on Lebanon, but is ultimately not the reason for the nature of the assault.

[NoodleyAppendage]

20. Shh.You'll be accused of anti-semitism. It's forbidden to criticize Israel

Didn't you get the memo? Israel can do no wrong and to state otherwise or present facts to the contrary opens you up to accusations of anti-semitism.

Your choices around here are either "pro-Israel" or "anti-semitic bastard".

J

[Taoschick]

21. I've heard that as well

But most of the sites running that theory are so loony I discarded it immediately. Conspiracy theories can be interesting and they certainly provoke debate but if you let yourself get completely drawn into them, you can easily start to buy into any wacky theory that comes along.