hamas does not exist to protect the "citizens" of gaza. were that the case, the "warriors" of hamas would be meeting the israelis in open combat in order to prevent palestinian "casualties." this is not the case, is it? they will not be drawn into battle to prevent the deaths of the people they rule.
the matter is quite the contrary.
to hamas, the sole rationale for the existence of the palestinians in gaza is to be casualties, and to be portrayed as casualties, the more luridly the better. were hamas to have had the interests of its citizenry in view, they would have cut short their missile attacks on israel, and sought a cease fire. but, that is not what they are interested in.
to hamas, the longer the war, the more palestinians who are killed, (especially women and children), so much the better. just so long as hamas and its operatives are not killed, so long as the israelis do not seek them out specifically for extermination, hamas is quite content to see "their" citizens killed. the more, the better.
to see its "ideological" & "theological" points made, hamas would be quite content to see gaza reduced to gravel, and the gravel and the palestinians bulldozed into the sea. the "citizens" of gaza are nothing more or less than "high profile" canon fodder to hamas, so long as hamas emerges from the whole affray its "purity" established, its status of the enemy of israel intact.
the raison d'etre of hamas is not to govern and protect "its people." the aim of hamas is to use their remains as the canvas upon which to paint their portrait of israel. the "people" mean nothing else. their "highest & best" uses, are as corpses.
and, hamas? their purpose? to provoke, to goad, to incite the state of israel into defending itself, to promote the status of hamas. they have no other purpose. and, to hamas, the only useful palestinian, the only "good" palestinian, is a thoroughly dead palestinian. just so long as he or she makes a good photo, and just so long as the death fits the narrative.
john jay @ 08.01.2014
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/07/branco-cartoon-crash-of-civilization/ -- a brilliant cartoon, here. obama's & kerry's "diplomacy."
"war such as this***," refers to the war fought between israel and hamas, and as wages now.
for the most part, war on american soil has been fought on battlefields, open ground removed from urban environs. and, civilian populations have for the most part been removed from the carnage of the battlefield. and, as we shall see, not particularly kept track of, which to me means that it was little noted, because of it relative rarity.
(the american indian has never been granted these exemptions in its dealings with the united states, on this continent. but, that is another topic.)
you would be wrong, however, to think that american cities and civilian populations have always been removed from battle, or granted immunity from it. union armies under ulysses s. grant** laid classic siege upon vicksburg, mississippi and then proceeded to pound it into submission and eventual surrender. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vicksburg . atlanta, georgia was laid waste by union armies led by william tecumseh sherman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Campaign . the final horrors of the american civil war took place at and around petersburg & richmond, virginia and again, ulysses s. grant commanded the union armies laying "siege" to american cities. although grant did not actually encircle richmond & petersburg, by the end of the battle (and the war) he had so nearly come to it, that general robert e. lee abandoned his defenses rather than see the cities besieged. an excellent compendium of the battles for petersburg & richmon is found at wikipedia. (petersburg, in a strategic sense, was "the front door" to richmond, and grant and lee both knew that when petersburg fell, so would richmond fall.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg .
it has been my privilege to spend almost 3 days on foot, walking the sacred battlefields at gettysburg, pennsylvania and while most of the civil war battlefields were a bit removed from the towns that lend their names to them, that was not always the case. i stayed in a motor lodge in gettysburg, upon whose grounds robert e. lee, in command of the confederate armies, spent his first night of the battle, headquartered in a house commandeered from the woman who owned it. it was across the street from the lutheran theological seminary then, as now. on the first day of the battle, union forces were driven back through the town by a massive attack from the north, led by confederate general richard s. ewell.
the union troops took position at cemetery hill, where our national cemetery is located, generally in and south of gettysburg proper. those troops who had initially repulsed southern attacks from the west down chambersburg pike (road) occupied a line north to south along cemetery ridge. the second day of battle would take place there. and, if i remember correctly, by the second night of the battle, lee had vacated his headquarters in town. but, for several days, the town was the scene of house to house, door to door battle.
gettysburg lay just north of these positions, after they had solidified, at the intersections of the chambersburg pike, the baltimore pike (upon which the union fed troops from the army of the potomac in washington d.c. and baltimore, maryland, to the southeast), and york, fairfield and hanover roads. the gettysburg & hanover rail road line fed into town from the northeast. the morning of the first day of battle found no troops from either side in the town, but the road network where it centered, begin to funnel troops by the hundreds of thousands to the open fields to its south. the first day they fought for the high ground in and south of town, and by that evening major battle was joined.
the town was in the middle of the battle, and its strategic importance cannot be over emphasized. the town suffered, as only a town in the middle of contesting armies could suffer.
by the second day, even while more troops were moving in for the penultimate climax of "picketts charge" on the third day, major battles waged at the peach orchard, the wheat field and devils den, and joshua chamberlain would be immortalized for his & his troops valor at little round top. on the second day, dan sickles would loose his leg, and become the center of historical argument that lasts to this day. i will give you the casualty figures for the 2nd day of battle, taken from an excellent article at wikipedia, and it was a bloody contest. it was fought on ground within the southern limits of gettysburg, and extended southerly on a north & south line a little more than 2 miles from the center of the town, and yet not one word of the summary concerns civilian casualties:
Casualty figures for the second day of Gettysburg are difficult to assess because both armies reported by unit after the full battle, not by day. One estimate is that the Confederates lost approximately 6,000 killed, missing, or wounded from Hood's, McLaws's, and Anderson's divisions, amounting to 30–40% casualties. Union casualties in these actions probably exceeded 9,000.[54] An estimate for the day's total (including the Culp's and Cemetery Hill actions) by historian Noah Trudeau is 10,000 Union, 6,800 Confederate.[55] This is in comparison to approximately 9,000 Union and 6,000 Confederate casualties on the first day, although there were much larger percentages of the armies engaged the second.[56] Some estimates of total casualties for the day run as high as 20,000 and declare it the bloodiest day of the Battle of Gettysburg.[57]It is a testament to the ferocity of the day's battle that such high casualties figures resulted even with much of the fighting not occurring until late in the afternoon and thereafter lasting about six hours. By comparison, the Battle of Antietam—known famously as the bloodiest single day in American military history with nearly 23,000 casualties—was an engagement that lasted twelve hours, or about twice as long.[58]
jennie wade was the only civilian killed in 3 days of battle at gettysburg.
as i have looked briefly at the history of these battles, i am struck by something odd, especially given our current fixation upon civilian casualties in contemporary urban warfare, and that oddity is almost a complete lack of information on civilian casualties, to include women and children.
as noted, i can find reference to one civilian killed during the battle at gettysburg, killed while kneading bread for her family. she refused to stop her bread making while union and confederate riflemen contested the possession of the neighborhood in which she lived, and a bullet struck her in the back while she worked. the bullet passed through two doors, the person who shot it, never seeing her. http://civilwartalk.com/threads/civilian-casualties-at-gettysburg.8432/ .
in a very cursory search of the net, i could find no authoritative text on the extent of civilian death during the civil war. there is an odd & simple reality about the american civil war, not immediately apparent until one considers the matter. and, that is, no one was used to dealing with the scale of death, the sheer numbers who were killed and missing, because of the intensity and prolonged nature of the fighting during the war. it is fact that more americans died in the civil war than in all of the other wars fought by americans, combined.
when the civil war started, the types of bureaucratic functions & functionaries that exist for keeping track of such things nowadays were non-existent. the military did not have graves and registration units, ... , slaves were often employed to clean the battlefields of the dead, when the fighting ceased. there were not ambulance services to take the dead and dying from the battlefields, nor hospitals nor surgeons to adequately care for the dead and wounded. there were not nurses, nor medics. one half of the dead were never identified. (there is a story about grant and sherman, after the first day of battle called "shiloh." the screaming, chaos and dying in a field hospital near where they had tented made such a din that they could not sleep, so they lay on the ground some distance away, in order to rest. the union had nearly been driven into the tennessee river. sherman noted it had been a rough day, a very close thing. "we'll get them in the morning, sherman," grant said, and slept. the surgery went on through the night.)
it is estimated that 50,000 civilian deaths can be attributed to the civil war.
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_cemeteries/death.html . the facts of the matter are, that no one has a very good sense of what the civilian numbers were, because no institution or organization functioned to keep track of it. americans were largely protestant, and death was part of life, and no one quite comprehended it on such a massive scale, even as they dealt it out.
they would have to learn.
and, most certainly, no one ever conceived of making the dead into "war trophies" to be used as proof of the other side's proclivity for atrocity or cruelty.
times change. people change.
it times past, civilian populations were put to the sword and killed for resisting conquest, men killed and women and children taken into slavery, legitimate plunder. (they remain the same today in islam, in case you are wondering.) defeat was not to be taken nor accepted lightly.
the romans and the greeks killed towns, and plowed them under, salting the earth.
in the 1860's, american armies contested for gettysburg, and one civilian was killed. one.
in wwi and wwii, american strategic bombing killed huge numbers of allied civilians, in order to drive german and japanese armies from their midst.
in gaza, hamas "warriors" lift the bodies of dead children as "war trophies," to demonstrate their valor, and the cruelty of their opponents.
it is all a bit hard to keep track of. it has always been a bit hard to keep track of, regardless of the epoch. the issue of what justifies the bringing and the conduct of war is old, and perhaps epitomized in our tradition by the thinking of st. thomas aquinas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War . the catholic church has tended to be at the forefront of this kind of thinking, and writing, even to this day.
the matter remains elusive.
john jay @ 07.30.2014
** hiram ulysses grant was his true name. the name "ulysses s. grant" was submitted by a sponsor, requesting his admission to the united states military academy. grant simply adopted the error.
they invite the war. they beg for war. yet, when the war comes that they have incited, they will not fight it.
they let the populace they say they "protect" die, but they will not fight the israelis, will not meet them in open combat. they shoot, throw down their guns, and scurry away in red cross and u.n. "ambulances." but, they will not fight.
they kill their people who want an end to this war. they are willing to kill their own unarmed people, who meet their deaths far more bravely than the stinking cowards of hamas, who are afraid of combat w/ armed opposition. http://www.lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=794699&Reply_Id=9944944&Page=1#9944944 .
they are the most craven of cowards, the most base and ignoble of villains, and they are cowards. braggarts, capable of murder most vile, but afraid to fight the battles they invite, about which they brag about brave sacrifice before they are fought, but, disappear when the battle comes.
yet, these are the same hamas and the european nations, that the united nations, and even the united states of america, have armed so that they may enforce the law of islam upon a defenseless population.
what farce. what divine comedy, which is, of course, tragedy.
worthless bastards. chickenshit, to the core. camel dung. pig offal. hamas. but, i've taken to repeating myself.
the war that israel wages against hamas, and against the citizenry that elected and supports it, is terrible.
to which i say, good on israel.
it is the war israel should have waged against gaza many wars ago.
it is a war that hamas goaded israel into, confident that israel would not wage it so furiously, so resolutely, so implacably. the hamas "leadership" (of thugs) miscalculated very seriously, and now the population suffers. what they suffer is "war," precisely what israel has been reluctant to wage against gaza in the past. and, precisely what hamas did not think israel stern enough to wage.
update, 07.30.2014, gaza powerplant. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/29/israel-hits-symbols-of-hamas-rule-128-killed/ . the post also says that 128 killed in overnight attacks. this is war. end update.
but, it is necessary.
i hope that israel continues to wage this war, as ghastly as it is, until it has eradicated hamas. right down to the last twit. i hope that iran, syria and hezbollah are watching. it is the war that israel should have waged long ago, against each and every foe that attacks her.
will islam learn? will hamas learn? i doubt it. they will test israel again, to their dismay, such that the funeral dirges wail, and the lamentations echo to the very corners of the land.
they had best not test israel again. in the past war has been without cost for the likes of hamas, abbas and hezbollah, and has been limited to the temporary loss of hardware soon to be replaced by those nations & organizations which enable arab terrorism. (yes, this means russia and iran, and the united nations, who exploit the palestinian birth rate & canon fodder to wage proxy conflict.) this was because israel has been reluctant to inflict the extent of casualty that true war involves. apparently this reluctance is a thing of the past, and this war and future wars are not to be limited by humanitarian concerns, and by attention paid to the caterwauling of the west.
this "reluctance" to do what had to be done, is the chief "casualty" of this war, and islam, hamas, abbas and hezbollah had best heed its death.
for israel has learned what she must do when goaded to war, and how to wage it. just as she must, if she is to survive.
emily dickinson. the poet. who wrote wonderfully, prodigiously, and whose writing was virtually unknown at her death. had not a surviving sister found her poetry bound in ribbons, we should not know her work, her soul.
xvi.
to fight aloud is very brave, but gallanter, i know,
who charge within the bosom, the cavalry of woe.
who win, and nations do not see, who fall, and none observe,
whose dying eyes no country regards with patriot love.
we trust, in plumed procession, for such the angels go,
rank after rank, with even feet and uniforms of snow.
emily dickinson, the collected poems, barnes and noble classics, new york 2003.
hat tip to carolyn e., who emailed the story of meriam ibrahim to me. thank you, carolyn, for your faith and, devotion to it.
meriam ibrahim. who would not renounce her faith. who chose death rather than do so. as martyr to her faith, alone and unknown by the world. her death remarked upon by silence, recognized only by rank upon rank of plumed angels. none would have seen her dying eyes. none would have known.
except for a husband who would not accept this, and friends who risked all to protest and demand her freedom, and a world whose attention was drawn to her plight by their indefatigable courage and witness. they garnered the attention of a church that sometimes does not see, and the commitment of politicians who had nothing to gain, except their own self respect and faith.
an unlikely constellation of forces.
her courage fired and forged courage in others. in the words of the poet, she charged her doom with bared bosom, and swelled the chests of a world far too often numb to such plight.
miracle. nothing less.
there can be no other way to put it, a miracle brought about by the quiet undaunted courage of an alone woman, chained in a dungeon, in whose bosom, to use the word of the poet, burned an unquenchable courage and faith.
mail online, "sudanese [death row] mother .... ", by leon watson and daniel bates, 24 july 2014, with copious pictures.
it is a story of personal courage the likes of which is seldom seen, a struggle steadfastly borne in the face seemingly insurmountable odds & implacable brutality, in a place where faith based death has been commonplace, and the likes of which was anticipated by a recluse poet, whose struggles were personal and internalized, who never faced the physical peril faced by merian ibrahim. but, saw it, and saw salvation as its reward.
sister warriors, who faced long odds, and whose personal courage & faith carried the day.
you may not see the ibrahim in dickinson, nor the dickinson in ibrahim, but they are cut from the same bolt of cloth, the same quiet, steadfast, insurmountable faith. across the years.
pump natural gas into it, under a certain amount of pressure.
touch it off. a very powerful explosive, when contained, and though it does "fracture," it "pushes and displaces," and it will collapse the tunnel.
without the necessity of having to send soldiers down it to explore it.
and, make it nice and smelly. when it is detected by any occupants, if they have brains in their little pea heads, they will evacuate the premises very quickly. give them just enough time to flee, but, not enough time to take weapons and munitions with them.
just follow the tunnel along until you get to the ends. find a new tunnel. do it all over again.
john jay @ 07.21.2014
p.s. much faster than bulldozing. much more thorough.
rt news headlines, "ukrainian buk battery radar was operational when malaysian plane downed -- moscow", http://rt.com/news/173784-ukraine-plane-malaysian-russia/ . 18 july 2014, no author attributed.
to quote the article:
on thursday, when a malaysian airlines plane was apparently shot down over ukraine, a ukrainian buk anti-aircraft missile battery was operational in the region, the russian defense ministry said, contradicting kiev’s statements.
the battery was deployed at a site from which it could have fired a missile at the airliner, the ministry said in a statement. it said radiation from the battery’s radar was detected by the russian military.
“the russian equipment detected throughout july 17 the activity of a kupol radar, deployed as part of a buk-m1 battery near styla [a village some 30km south of donetsk],” the ministry said in a statement.
the ministry said the radar could be providing tracking information to another battery deployed in the region [live link deactivated:jj], which was at a firing distance from the plane’s flight path.
earlier kiev said it could not have fired a missile at the passing civilian plane because it had no buk missile launchers deployed in the region. at the same time the ukrainians said the militias had no buk systems in their hands, according to a statement from the country’s prosecutor general.
after the russian ministry came out with the statement, bogdan senyk, a spokesman for the ukrainian defense ministry reiterated kiev’s position, saying that "anti-aircraft missiles have not been deployed during the anti-terrorist operation ... they are all in place."
1.)the russian defense ministry (at least in the release quoted above by rt) does not assert or claim that they detected any missiles having been fired by ukrainian forces, at the malaysian liner nor any other target.
2.)nor does the russian defense ministry claim that their systems could not have detected any missile launches from ukrainian buk sites.
it seems plausible if not determined that if the russians were monitoring the ukraine with instruments capable of detecting radar systems in use, than they should have also been monitoring the ukraine with systems capable of detecting (a) missile(s) launch(es), and should have been able to tell if the buk targeting apparatus had "locked" onto the malaysian liner had it been interpreted as a target.
this seems only a fair assumption/conclusion. if the russian equipment could detect " ... throughout july 17 the activity of a kupol radar, deployed as part of a buk-m1 battery near styla ...," as claimed, then it should have been able to detect a lock on target, and most certainly should have been able to detect and record (a) missile(s) launched on the doomed malaysian claim.
the russian defense ministry does not claim that. it claims only to have detected a general radar search. this is not the same as detecting a lock on target, nor a missile launch. indeed, since the rooskies developed and have deployed the buk missile, it seems that they should have also been able to intercept any transmission of target information from the radar battery which they say they were monitoring, and a launch site, and should have been able to monitor and detect targeting and authorization to shoot communication.
neither does the russian defense ministry say that.
in essence, what they say they detected was a radar signal.
this doesn't get the russians off the schneid, to say the least. and, oddly enough, i think this puts the russians fairly on the schneid. to be a little forthcoming. and, to allow the international community to inspect the records and the archives of the russian defense installation purportedly recording such matters.
for, you see, if the russian defense ministry were able to detect radar signals coming from a ukrainian installation fairly removed from the likely area of the missile launches that down malaysian flight mh17, then that same defense ministry installation should have been able to record any activity involving the buk site that did launch the missile(s) that brought the malaysian plane down, killing nearly 300 persons.
i think rt news ought to inquire of the russian defense ministry if they detected any russian and/or "militia" radar and launch activity toward the malaysian plane on that date. and, i further think that rt news ought to demand of the russian defense ministry that it open its records, archives and instruments to international inspection to see if it in fact detected such activity on the part of the russian military or its allied forces in ukraine.
so, come on, rt news, and come on russian defense ministry, let's see what you have.
fair is fair, after all. you don't have anything which indicates ukrainian targeting and firing upon the plane. let's see if you don't have anything which indicates that russian targeted and fired upon the plane, or, if maybe you do.
and, since you russians are pretty thorough about recording things, let's see if you have any records or orders memorializing the transport of a buk battery, minus two missiles, out of the ukraine shortly after the plane went down. you do record launch authorization, and launch codes, don't you? let's find out.
john jay @ 07.19.2014
p.s. come on, united nations. let's take a look at what the russians have up their sleeves.
let's say russian troops under russian command and supervision did not fire the russian missile from the russian missile launcher. (that's not what happened, but, let us just pretend that the rooskies did not operate their own weapons system.)
let's just pretend, and say the "militia" or the "partisans" did it.
does that take the onus of responsibility off of the russians?
why, no it does not. under any rational system of law, or responsibility, to put a very dangerous instrumentality into the hands of idiots, and then instruct them in how to use such instrumentality, does not relieve one of responsibility for the use and/or misuse of the dangerous thing.
quite the contrary, it is a ground in and of itself to assign responsibility for the consequences of the use of the instrumentality by those to whom it was given, or, to be precise in the application of the doctrine in this particular instance, it is a ground in and of itself to assign responsibility for the death of the passangers and crew of the malaysian commercial jet liner to the russians, even if done by the "militia." (any "militia" and/or "partisans" having control of the buk missile launcher, and its auxiliary command & control, were quite likely regular russian troops operating in the ukraine out of uniform, but taking direction from the russian command structure either there, or in russia. just the way the rooskies do, and have done in the past, their business. "the voodoo they do so very well.")
the russians did it. plain and simple. at putin's direction. at his behest. and, quite likely, with his direct authorization. lots of people inside russia will die as he covers his tracks. k.g.b. thug, doncha know.
john jay @ 07.19.2014
p.s. let us address an issue. did ukraine do this? does the ukraine have any missiles like this? if so, i would like to know. (keep in mind, not even the russians have suggested this. an odd omission in russian finger pointing, doncha think?)
i have all along asserted that the russian missile that downed the malaysian jet is part of a sophisticated weapons system that demands russian command and control, and russian crews, to acquire a target, aim and arm the missiles, and to fire them.
i was right. i am right now, and will continue to be right. and, now confirmation in a publication of general circulation. please see the schematic/illustration of the process (of command and control, and sequence of launch, and control of the bird after launch) at the bottom of this article in usa today.
the command and control of the missile which downed the malaysian jet was russian; it was a russian bird; the missiles and launcher were manned by russians, and the russians shot the jet down. this is all confirmed by the fact that the russians took all their toys home with them, when they discovered what they had done. (just scroll down for my previous posts.)
putin was raised, educated and nurtured a k.g.b. thug. he remains a k.g.b. thug. and, he has blood on his hands. he is a pig, and a bastard son of a bitch. a murderous asshole. think about it.
john jay @ 07.19.2014
p.s. it wasn't "militia," or "partisans." unless by same, you mean russian soldiers who have stripped off their uniforms and taken control of the command and control (to acquire the target, identify the same, and lock the missiles onto it) and of the launcher (to initiate launch sequences, arm the missile, and allied tasks.) what, you think shooting one of these damned things is like throwing a rock? that you just press a button, and away the damned thing goes?
russians had pilots in migs in korea, fighting u.s. pilots. troops and advisers in viet nam. and, troops in the crimea, stirring up resistance to the ukrainian government, and shooting and killing ukrainian soldiers. and, now, missile crews in the ukraine, shooting down malaysian jets.
you see, if provides proof of the rooskies absolute dominion and control over the weapons system and the missiles that were launched. there is no plausible deniability w/ regard to responsibility for the launch of the birds, not now. none, whatsoever.
p.s. not even accomplished liars like putin & obama can explain this away. not even their lap dog presses can explain this. not even the most ardent lefty could be brought to believe it.