Posts Tagged ‘gaza’
Shootout at the OK Gevald
Posted on: August 9, 2022
Welcome back, one and all, to another installment of the #Israelex5 Blog at the Weekend Holyland Update, brought to you live, with the style for which we strive, by Kedem Productions and GangstaYid Inc, straight from the sweltering concrete jungle of southeastern Tel Aviv.
A lot has happened since our latest dispatch, and while mine own energy levels have been suffering from the stupor-inducing summer temperatures, that hasn’t stopped events from rambling on, to include a brief performance of the annual bloodletting ritual.
As all the official babble, and much of the media coverage, has blathered the usual cliches about Israel’s right to defend itself, the right of its citizens to be free of rocket fire, and blah blah some more, perhaps a brief recap of this proactive, Israeli-instigated short shoot-up show is in order:
In the early morning hours of August 2nd, IDF forces raided the West Bank Palestinian city of Jenin (as they frequently do) and arrested several men wanted for terrorism (ditto), including one Bassam a-Saadi, an operative of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine (IJP) who, whether it was necessary or not, was documented being dragged by attack dogs as he was arrested.
Following this, Israel claimed to have intelligence of planned reprisals attacks by the IJP, and shut down traffic in the south of the country – roads, rail, summer camps, workplaces, events, the works. People in Israel were grumbling about this seemingly craven approach, and crowned the IJP the winners of this round without firing a shot.
But although Israel is stupid, it is yet to reach that nadir. Israel was planning all along (at least since arresting a-Saadi, who may have folded instantly under questioning) to assassinate a senior IJP commander in the Gaza Strip, southern sector commander Taysir al-Jaabari, which objective it carried out at 16:16 hours on Friday, August 5th. Having preemptively made sure there would be no civilians on the road for the IJP to target with their rockets and anti-tank launchers in reprisal, Israel was free to keep hammering the Gaza Strip and making withdrawals on its target bank, to the tune of 35 casualties, of which 11 were non-combatants (IDF’s count) or 46 casualties, of which 16 were non-combatants (Gaza Health Ministry’s count). More non-combatants seem to have been killed by the 200 or so IJP rockets that fell short of Israel, within the Strip. Of the app. 1,100 that did make it across the border separating Israel from its open-air prison, 95% were reportedly intercepted by the Iron Dome system, and the rest causing only some property damage and a total of three wounded from shrapnel and some others who were treated for bruises and anxiety.
So a great success for the interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid in his first baptism by fire (well, not his personally), right? Superficially, yes. It was a well-conducted operation, as such things go, with no funerals on Israel’s side of the border, and the polls (we’ll get to them below) reflect that. But what about the long term?
Well, if you want to be an optimist, there are signs that not everything about this latest round of shootin’ down folks and blowin’ stuff up with drones was same old, same old. For one, Hamas stayed out of it. The IJP, as the distant second place movement in the Gaza Strip* can be all purist and ideological, vowing to fight to the last man with the last pipe-bomb launcher, hiding under the last pile of rubble. Hamas, as the entity in power, has to actually govern in between skirmishes with Israel, and therefore it has to somewhat listen to what its people want, and what the people in the Gaza Strip wanted this summer was a respite from skirmishing. Hell, that’s what they want most of the time. Only when Israel pushes them too far do they truly support the futile defiance of hurling metal pipes out of fireworks launchers against a country that can darken the skies over their heads with drones carrying smart bombs – basically saying “fine, but your life gonna be disrupted for a lil bit too.” This time the vast majority in the Strip, according to what I’m reading, wanted nothing of the sort. This, beyond natural fatigue with the horrors of these extended bloodletting orgies that occur once every year or two, is a product of Israel smartly focusing its recent suppression efforts on the IJP, and working quietly to drive a wedge between the two Islamist terror groups (while Hamas is the actual representative of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Palestine, IJP is a more radical Brotherhood offshoot, much closer than Hamas to global jihadi movements such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh [ISIS].)
Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote on Sunday that it is possible that one result of Israel’s assassination of Jaabari (and his counterpart, the southern sector commander) is that younger men will be promoted to these important positions who are a) less experienced, naturally, but more importantly, b) less aligned with the organization’s political leadership, which sits in Damascus and Beirut. This prediction may be borne out by the organization’s surprisingly mild response, after the ceasefire which ended three days of one-sided ass-whooping, to a pointed question about Hamas’s refusal to join in: “There are other ways to help than fighting.” When you’ve just been stomped, you can’t afford to fight with your infinitely big brother as well, I guess.
After falling for the same trap the IJP did and braying loudly about the shameful and cowardly shut-down that preceded the op, the opposition played nice once the guns got going, and rallied behind the government during the weekend military excursion, with Netanyahu finally deigning to show up to a security briefing (it’s mandatory for him as Opposition Leader, and he’s refused to do it for a year so as not to have his cultists see him accord another man PM props). As soon as the ceasefire was declared it was back to business as usual, with all kinds of bitchmoanplainin’ about how Lapid and Defense Minister Gantz dared to be photographed doing their jobs and looking all leader-like in election time. A Bibi mouthpiece named Yaakov Bardugo tweeted stupidly that the Lapid government is leading a “stupid trend” of differentiating Hamas from the IJP. So no, dividing your enemies is actually wise. Problem is, Israel already pulled that with the PLO vs. Hamas – and didn’t use its success to actually do business with the more moderate wing of the broken wishbone. So why should we expect any different in Gaza?
Meanwhile, since the media must have its heroes after a shoot-up, even one that’s really fish in a barrel[1], the “hero” dujour is an IDF shero, who bragged to the media about shooting an unarmed man descending an IJP guard tower on the other side of the border – just shot him, for no reason, no threat, no action, no nothing. But it was open season, so it’s somehow cool. It’s a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh wounds in the world aren’t gonna change that.
So much for the shootin’. You can take a breath, a sip, a toke or whatever before continuing to the intra-Jewish politics below.
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[1] (if Hamas is like David compared to Israel’s Goliath, the IJP is David’s addle-brained baby brother who can barely grasp a sling, let alone use it)
Pretty Boy Fails To Revive Flagging Zionist Spirit
There’s a new alliance in town, and according to initial polls, its seemed to actually be doing its job and dragging the corpse of Yamina across the electoral threshold in the polls. But recall Ran Shimoni’s point – no union of existing actors ever exceeded its initial polling, which means there’s every chance in the world that even with Yoaz Hendel’s “Derech Eretz” party, Yamina will still fall short of the goal line. More recent polls indeed have the new bloc, titled “Zionist Spirit” polling at about 2.6% – far short of the 3.5% of the vote needed.
Who’s Yoaz Hendel, you ask? He’s a dashingly handsome naval commando alum, grew up with a knit skullcap but took it off in his youth. Worked for Bibi’s PM’s Office and resigned in protest when Bibi flouted the court ruling, that said his chief of staff Nathan Eshel, who was caught practicing the sexual offense known as upskirt photography, should be banned from public service. Eshel officially resigned but remained as an unofficial advisor to Bibi and a heavyweight power in “court,” and Hendel correctly said “Fuck that.”
But since this display of fine moral spine, Hendel’s conscience has proved far more limber in terms of political loyalty. His adventures in electoral politics began when he and the Frack to his Frick, Zvi Hauser (who likewise quit Bibi’s inner circle due to Upskirtgate) joined their new and untested “Derech Eretz” party to former IDF Chief Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon, who also formed a new party called Telem, ahead of the 2019 elections (the first of the current neverending cycle of them. There was one in ’19, two in ’20, one in ’21, and the upcomin’ scheduled for November 1st, 2022.)
Along with Ya’alon and Telem, Hendel and Hauser then joined forces with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Benny Gantz’s “Hosen L’Israel” and another former IDF Chief named Gabi Ashkenazi, to form Kachol-Lavan (“Blue and White”) – a brand now left in the exclusive control of Gantz. This alliance vied for electoral supremacy with Bibi’s Likud with considerable success, only breaking up in the third elections (late 2020) when Gantz stabbed his partners and voters in the back and joined Bibi with about half of the unified list’s MK’s – Hendel and Hauser among them, despite their leader, Ya’alon, going the other way.
Then the two jumped ship again and joined Gideon Saar’s New Hope (“Tikva Hadasha”), and now they’re fleeing that host (which united with Gantz, who they already burned and who carries a grudge) and latching on to the dying cadaver of Yamina, which for the first time in all its iterations over the past decade or so, does not have a single religious person in a realistic spot on the list. They’re keeping the 3rd spot open for outgoing Religious Affairs Minister, Matan Kahane – but he already spurned the offer in such disdainful terms, I can’t see him swallowing it and reneging.
Which brings us to another desertion from the listing ship of New Hope, which as the mindful reader may recall, united with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White to form the third largest bloc in Knesset, with 14 seats in the current Knesset and 11-14 in the polls for the next. MK Michal Shir, a long-time ally and follower of New Hope Chairman Saar, announced that she is taking her seat and MK’s funding unit and going over to Lapid’s Yesh Atid. Her reason, btw, is quite hilarious. “Benny Gantz is a socialist leftist” (‘scuse me, as Jimi said, while I fix to die laughin, cause Benny the Goose Boy is about as socialist as Milton Friedman; carry on) and some more shade about how he isn’t fit to be PM (which is what he is explicitly aiming for, and not unrealistically as things are shaking out) and how Yesh Atid “reminds her of the old-school Likud” (i.e. before it was taken over by thugs and religios and Judonazis).
On the left, Zehava Galon did indeed come back to stand for leadership (as predicted by this fine and friendly family feature) and save the day, and the polls give Meretz under her leadership a whole seat more than under dumbass IDF he-man Yair “Being called a lefty is like being called the N-word” Golan. I’ll be shocked if he comes close to beating her. By close I mean 40%.
The upshot of all this is, according to the polls, that if Yamina does indeed clear the bar and get in with 4 seats, or even 3[2], Bibi will have his parliamentary majority, with Judonazis as his senior partner.
Bibi Didn’t Know!
In other news: The defendant Benjamin Netanyahu was under questioning again, this time not as a defendant but under implicit warning. This questioning took place in connection with the Meron Festival disaster, where 45 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede in April 2021 due to overcrowding, a shoddily constructed stand collapsing, and a lack of regulation and oversight undergirding both those factors. Bibi was PM at the time and despite the panel of the inquiry commission showing him more and more instances of communications to him on the subject over the years (this is an annual event that just keeps getting bigger), he kept insisting that he never saw them, that this is low-level stuff that simply doesn’t reach the actual PM’s actual eyes. Thus, even when presented with “The PM’s response to the State’s Comptroller Report,” which mentioned conditions at Meron being ripe for calamity, he insisted that “it’s called the PM’s answer, but in practice it’s written by someone in the office. I didn’t see it.”
What did he see? COVID-related stuff! As there was, somehow, no epidemiological disaster at the festival – it somehow didn’t become a super-spreader event – Netanyahu took a victory lap. And the 45 dead? That’s somebody else’s department, see.
And as us Jews continue our interminable petty squabbles about the precise flavor of the regime of Jewish supremacism in this land, we have (in addition to the spree of carnage in Gaza) continued killing Palestinians in the occupied territories at the clip of 2-3 per week (most recently: An elderly, unarmed mental patient and a 15 year-old boy), and our Supreme Court overturned its own ruling from two years ago, and in an expanded panel ruled that private Palestinian land, stolen for the purposes of creating a settlement outpost that’s illegal even under Israeli laws, does not have to be returned to its owners if settlers are already living on it, because said court ruled that the land was stolen “in good faith” (i.e. the thieves didn’t know it was private property, and thought it was merely public Palestinian land they were appropriating in the name of God’s master race.) The court did pay lip service about how future cases will be held to a high bar of “good faith,” but this one the gonifs get away with.
Post bloodletting polls:
Likud 33 (-2)
Yesh Atid (Lapid) 23 (+2)
JudoNazis 11 (+1)
Blue&White / New Hope (Gantz & Sa’ar) 12 (-)
Shas (Sephardic Ultra Orthodox) 8 (-)
United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi UO) 7 (-)
Joint List (most Arab parties) 6 (-)
Israel Beiteinu (Finance Minister and crook and possible Russian spy Avigdor Liberman) 5 (-)
Labor 5 (-1)
Meretz 4 (-1)
United Arab List (Islamists, were in the last coalition) 4 (-)
Zionist Spirit: Does not make it in 2/3 polls.
Blocs: Bibi Yay 59, Bibi Nay 51, Arabs in the Middle 10
So much for this long-delayed installment, which all you good patrons of this fine and friendly family feature have been patiently awaiting. Don’t forget to tip (be it in the form of dineros or comments, or a share on your preferred public media) on the way out. Till the next time.
[2] Mathematically possible but practically not really
- In: BDS | Israeli politics | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism
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Hello and welcome to WHU Airlines, flight 070211, taking off to budding theocracy, a lynch averted, racist violence, and sabotage on the high seas indicating a surprising capacity for lesson-learning. Fasten your seatbelts, put on your life preservers and don’t make any wrong turns; the Weekend Holyland Update is now in session:
We’ll start with the hot-button issue most of you are probably following: The new Gaza flotilla has been foiled, for now, by a combination of diplomacy and sabotage. Greece was persuaded (probably through indirect application of monetary pressure given its dire financial straits) to prevent one of the ships from leaving port. Meanwhile, two of the other ships met with mysterious malfunctions, which Israel is smirkingly denying any involvement in while its deputy PM is (in an equally smirking manner) hinting (Hebrew) that it did have a hand in it.
I gotta say that all things considered, Israel has shown quite a capacity for learning from its errors. Had it handled the previous flotilla in the same manner (I mean the sabotage, as the diplomacy was a no go with Turkey at the time. Now the Turks are eager to tone down the hostility, so it did what Israel wanted and declared that the Irish ship, one of those that met with mysterious mechanical malaise, broke down before ever arriving in port), it would have avoided the massive diplomatic nightmare it endured last spring.
So not that I support sabotage, or Israel’s stupid siege on Gaza (which benefits Hamas more than anyone, and Israel understands this full well), but one has to admit that sabotaging ships in port is a significant improvement over shooting people in the back of the head. And since I can see no reason why Israel couldn’t have sabotaged the ships last year as well, I have no choice but to conclude that Israel WANTED the bloodshed last time around, as a sort of stupid, thuggish show of force. Nice to see that they’re capable of getting it through their thick skulls that this might not have been as desirable as it may have seemed at first.
Also important to note that the diplomatic component of this relative success was achieved not by the Foreign Ministry, headed by racist international pariah Yvette Lieberman, but by the PM himself, Bibinocchio, who has been buddying up with embattled Greek PM George Papandreou for a year now, an effort which has now paid off (although reports from Greece indicate that it was the US that ordered them to prevent the Gaza-bound ships from leaving). In other words, the Baron von Bibhausen has totally neutered the country’s diplomatic corps for the sake of his precious coalition.
Now we just have to hope that the people of Gaza, who are getting seriously fed up with the thuggish ineptitude of Hamas, manage to oust the reactionary scum and leave Israel with no reason whatsoever to continue bullying the 1.5 million residents of the world’s largest open air prison. Once Hamas is out of power, even Israel’s bitch, the US of A, will be hard-pressed to justify denying the right of Gazan fishermen to sail to where there’s actually fish in the sea (i.e. beyond a 2 mile strip).
The other big story this week was the detaining for questioning of Dov Lior, one of the leading rabies (not an error) of the jehovah-nazi faction among the settlers. Lior, a civil servant (he is paid by the state both as the rabbi of Qirayt Arba and as the head of an “arrangement yeshiva”, where students study torah and do a shortened military service ) was wanted for interrogation in connection with his endorsment of the nazi-like booklet “The King’s Torah”, for which he wrote an introduction. This lovely text states that not only is it allowed to kill any gentile who is thought to endanger Jews, even those considered “righteous among the nations” for having saved Jews and even babies if one suspects they might grow up to endanger Jews, but that any Jew may carry out these murders, without waiting for state sanction. In other words, what we have here is religious sanction for the killing of non-Jews (up to and including babies) just because some Jew decided they were a threat.
So the judo-nazis who wrote it, as well as those who expressed support for it, were wanted for questioning on suspicion of incitement to violence. But for months, Lior refused to report for questioning, asserting that the Torah trumps the laws of the state.
Eventually the po-lice got tired of being flouted, and not wanting a Waco-like standoff by coming to arrest him in his settler stronghold, they got him in his car leaving Jerusalem. Lior was detained for questioning for all of one hour, which was enough time for his supporters to swarm on the plaza in front of the Supreme Court and throw a little tantrum.
When he was released, the leaders of the jehovah-jugend huffed that he been held in custody, blood would have been shed. The leader of the judo-nazis in Knesset, “National Union” chairman Yaacov Katz, threatened even after his mullah’s release that “we shall settle the score with those responsible for this crime” – the crime of enforcing a legal summons, you see.
Official response was tepid, with both Bibinocchio and his Justice Minister, Yaacov Ne’eman (who was accosted later in the week upon daring to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron for his ministerial responsibility for the arrest) issuing extremely restrained statements about the rule of law. Bibinocchio has, not very long ago, called Lior and his ilk “the elite commando unit leading the nation and paving the way”. (h/t @jinjirrie). Meanwhile, even so-called “moderate” state rabies were aghast at this intolerable enforcement of law on one of their own. When the judo-nazis take over, remember this moment.
Remember how last week we recalled what happened when an Arab took a wrong turn into a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur? Well, this week it happened the other way around, when a Jew took a wrong turn into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, and was set on by a mob. The guy may well have died, if not for the village Mukhtar (leader) who pulled him into his own home, where his three sons stood up to guard the poor guy with their lives if need be. This turned out not to be necessary, as the prestige of the Mukhtar was sufficient to hold the mob off until the police and an ambulance arrived. Lynching and mob violence are despicable no matter who does them, despite the people of Issawiya being targeted for ethnic cleansing along with a number of other East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, where Arabs are being evicted to make way for settlers, tourism parks and whatever isn’t Arab homes. This poor guy has nothing to do with that and didn’t deserve to be beaten for it.
Meanwhile, all over the West Bank, settlers have been stoning Palestinian cars, torching Palestinian fields and orchards, to absolutely no effective response from the powers that be. When a settler woman from the extremist settlement of Yitzhar reported that she had been mugged in the neighboring village of Hawara (which sounds wrong – what was a settler woman doing alone there?), the leadership of Yitzhar called their Hawara counterparts to threaten that unless the alleged unknown perpetrator was handed over, they could not be responsible for the results. We’ll keep you posted on that.
I knew I forgot something or two: The Israeli Knesset has approved for final vote two particularly disgusting laws. The first will criminalize the boycott of the settlements and allow anyone claiming to be hurt by a call for such a boycott to sue the person making the call for about $9,000. Let me be the first to say that I piss on this law and will continue to boycott anything made in a settlement and call on other to do so at the top of my lungs. The settlers can repo my debts.
The second repugnant piece of legislation will require Palestinians whose homes are demolished by the occupation to pay for the demolition themselves. I could point out that this is eerily similar to the nazis requiring the Jews of Germany to pay for Krystalnacht, but then I’d be accused of Godwinizing the discussion, and we can’t have that now, can we.
And another thing I forgot: In Tel Aviv, the porkers (that’s the police for you law-abiding citizens) have begun confiscating bicycles from refugees and foreign laborers who can’t prove they bought them. Of course they wouldn’t dare do this to Jewish Israelis, because it’s not like anyone keeps the receipt for their bike on their person, or in most cases at all…
The BDS campaign is aiming at Israel’s finished diamond industry, the country’s leading export commodity, claiming that it is exploiting a loophole in the Kimberly Process to combat conflict diamonds despite the fact that the diamond industry donates some $1B a year to Israel’s armed forces. Said loophole is that the Kimberly process only refers to raw diamonds and not to cut stones.
Finally, speaking of the diamond industry, In the coastal city of Natanya, once famous for being a diamond industry hub and now famous for all its crime families and underworld shootings and bombings, a Jewish man stabbed a Palestinian whom he thought was looking at his sister. Cause, you know, gotta keep the untermenschen away from our women!
That’ll do it for this week. WHU Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments* (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.
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