West Asia News and Discussions

[Singha]

CNN - just the usual.

(CNN) -- In some of the most gruesome images yet to emerge from the latest mass violence in Syria, videos show militants raising their victims' severed heads on poles.
The amateur videos emerged as a Syrian human rights group reported 1,600 deaths in just 10 days this month.
The latest images come from an area taken over by the militant terrorist group the Islamic State, which recently changed its name from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The group is known for killing dozens of people at a time and beheading some.

At least three videos posted on YouTube by different people show the grisly scene at a roundabout in the city of Reqqa, where Islamic State militants have been carrying out public executions, crucifixions and other acts decided by its Sharia, or Islamic law, court.
A narrator in one of the videos says the bodies are of Syrian soldiers who were killed by Islamic State fighters.

The videos surfaced online along with news that Islamic State took over the Syrian army's 17th Division headquarters, which was considered the Syrian regime's last remaining military base in Reqqa.

[muraliravi]

The Home Min. should be exceptionally alert to prevent Indian Muslim youth from attempting to travel to the various ME conflicts and enlist with the jihadis there.Britain has had hundreds of wannabee martyrs enlisting,there was a piece in the Deccan Chronicle today on the same. But it is going to be impossible for any govt. to prevent sympathisers from doing so once they leave Indian shores.We need both local intel as well as extra scrutiny at Emigration counters at airports ,extra questioning of such youth going abroad to the region,to weed out suspects. Returning jihadis could add to the headache existing already with the IM and Naxals.

ISIS is offering all of these guys citizenship. India should let them travel to the ME and cancel their citizenship the minute they leave indian airspace.

[Philip]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 38765.html

Israel-Gaza conflict: UN accuses Israel of possible war crime after shelling of Gaza schools kills 19

Faiza Al-Tanboura had not spoken for 21 days since a missile strike destroyed her home. In the early hours of this morning she found her voice: “The children. Don't let them kill the children,” she shouted as she ran out into the playground of a UN school under Israeli tank fire.

Today's attack on the Jabaliya Elementary Girls School has been described as a possible war crime by the UN. The Israeli authorities, it said, had been told no less than 17 times that it was full of refugees, the last warning message delivered on 8.50 on Tuesday evening.

But, seven and half hours later, a series of shells smashed into the building, destroying two of the classrooms, killing 19 and injuring more than a hundred others. Pierre Krahenbuhl, the commissioner for UN agency for Palestinian refugees, described the killings as “a source of universal shame”. Investigations clearly showed, he maintained, that Israeli fire was to blame, condemning “in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces.”

The Israeli military stated that militants had been firing mortar rounds from the vicinity of the school and troops had returned fire; a spokeswoman added that an investigation was under way to ascertain what had happened. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had been accused repeatedly of storing and using weapons in civilian areas; and the Israelis have produced photographs showing, they said, rockets being stored in mosques.

The White House condemned the shelling of the school, saying it was “extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in UN designated shelters in Gaza”.

This evening, after Israel had declared a four hour humanitarian ceasefire, came another attack, on a busy market in Shijaiyah, between Gaza City and the Israeli border, leaving 15 dead and 150 injured.

Earlier, Mr Krahenbuhl wanted to stress that those at the school had been placed in the line of fire after they “were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli military. The precise location of the school and that it was housing thousands of people was communicated to the Israeli army 17 times to ensure its protection.”

The Independent met some of the families at the shelter 10 days ago. “I told you that you would come back here,” said Mohammed Abu Jarad this morning amid the destruction. “You remember me saying something like this would happen? Many of us felt this way, but we stayed on, where else could we go? There's nowhere safe”, he added as we watched UN workers gather body parts and remove fragments of ordnance.

Eight members of the Abu Jarad family had been killed in a missile strike at their home in the town of Beit Hanoun 10 days ago. Four of them were children, the youngest Moussa, a baby of seven months. At the funeral his body, and that of two and half year old Hania, with blood on their shrouds and faces, were carried by relays of men. Mahmoud Abu Jarad, an uncle had said: “We want the Israelis to see what they have done. Perhaps they will feel some pity and stop this slaughter.”

The Jabaliya shelter was already full and overflowing when 10 members of the Abu Jarad family arrived there on 19 July, to move into a classroom already hosting 30 people. One of the other families there were the Al-Tanboura, they were deeply worried about Faiza, a woman in her mid-30s, who had barely uttered a word since fleeing her burning house in the town of Al-Atrat. “We will have to take her to a doctor when all this is over, they are busy treating the wounded now”, Somaya, a cousin, had observed.

Palestinians walk next to the collapsed minaret of a destroyed mosque in Gaza City. It was destroyed in an overnight Israeli airstrike on Tuesday (EPA) Palestinians walk next to the collapsed minaret of a destroyed mosque in Gaza City. It was destroyed in an overnight Israeli airstrike on Tuesday (EPA)
“Our capacity is around 700, now we are having to cope with more than 1,600,” the UNRWA director of the school, Nassar Al-Jadiyan had said at the time; now it stands at 3,300. The total death toll for Palestinians on the day was 340, it stands today at around 1,210.

There had been an attack on a UN school in Beit Hanoun last week in which 15 were killed with recriminations afterwards between the UN and Israel over the failure to carry out an evacuation. “Here there was no warning from the Israelis and I am very surprised this has happened” said Mr Jadiyan. “I thought Beit Hanoun, well it was closer to the border, but I don't understand why this should happen here.

“Having an attack was always going to lead to a lot of casualties. We have had the numbers build up here, people were very frightened so they kept coming in, we couldn't turn them away.”

The pressure of numbers meant that many, all of them men, were sleeping outside in a courtyard which was used as the playground when the school was open. Among them were Talal al-Ghamayem and his three sons, five-year-old Ahmed, Younis, 15, and Mohammad, 11, a family from Beit Hanoun who had spoken in previous meetings about how eager they were to get back home and then discovered, on returning during a temporary ceasefire, that there was no home left to go back to.

When the first explosion came, demolishing a classroom at the front of the building where the majority of the deaths had taken place, Halima al-Ghamayem had run out to look for her husband and sons. The next shell landed in the courtyard, hitting her with flying shrapnel and also injuring five-year-old Ahmed.

Ghader, 17, had tried to stop her mother running out. “But I couldn't, she was so desperate. We managed to pick her up after she was injured and drag her inside. She just wanted to know about Ahmed. But, very luckily, he wasn't too badly hurt. But what will happen next time?”

Palestinian children wounded during Israeli shelling in a UN school wait at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia (Getty) Palestinian children wounded during Israeli shelling in a UN school wait at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia (Getty)
Ola Abu Jarad lay on her mattress on the floor listening to the approaching sound of shells landing thinking, she said, of members of her family who had already died. At one point she heard what she thought were cries of pains and feared that an attack had already taken place on the school.

What had happened, in fact, was that paddock nearby had been hit and the screams were from injured donkeys and horses. They had been used by refugees to bring them to the shelter, fuel for cars having long run out in some of the border areas.

The school was hit minutes later; the Abu Jarads spent the next hour trying to find each other in the smoke and confusion. This afternoon Mohammed Abu Jarad was desperately trying to find somewhere else to stay. “We need to get out of here, everyone needs to get out of here. Otherwise you and the other journalists will have to come back here, they will hit this place again. But we can't find anywhere, it's impossible.”

People were rushing in and out of the classrooms, asking about the injured, anxiously wondering whether there was any place at all in Gaza which was safe. Faiza al-Tanboura was oblivious to it all, sitting in a corner, hands clasped around her knees, gently rocking to and fro. “She has stopped talking again,” said a cousin.

Going the whole hog...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/j ... -ceasefire
Gaza: Israel calls up more reservists after rejecting calls for ceasefire
Official says move will allow Israel Defence Forces to expand attacks ‘against Hamas and the other terror organisations’

[Prem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/world ... srael.html
Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent

CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.
Not this time.After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington.
As the Israeli campaign entered its third day, the Palestinian death toll continued to rise. Airstrikes on a house in Khan Younis and an open-air beach cafe killed more than a dozen Palestinians. In southern Israel, rockets from Gaza caused extensive property damage but no serious injuries as Israelis ran for cover with each air raid siren. Rockets headed for Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were rockets launched at Israel from “There is clearly a convergence of interests of these various regimes with Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In the battle with Hamas, Mr. Elgindy said, the Egyptian fight against the forces of political Islam and the Israeli struggle against Palestinian militants were nearly identical. “Whose proxy war is it?” he asked.The dynamic has inverted all expectations of the Arab Spring uprisings. As recently as 18 months ago, most analysts in Israel, Washington and the Palestinian territories expected the popular uprisings to make the Arab governments more responsive to their citizens, and therefore more sympathetic to the Palestinians and more hostile to Israel.But instead of becoming more isolated, Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult, now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an ally in their common fight against political Islam. Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again on Wednesday. The diatribes against Hamas by at least one popular pro-government talk show host in Egypt were so extreme that the government of Israel broadcast some of them into Gaza.“Some pro-government Egyptian talk shows broadcast in Gaza “are saying the Egyptian Army should help the Israeli Army get rid of Hamas,” she said.At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”
Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finding themselves allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran, a rival regional power that has a history of funding and arming Hamas.For Washington, the shift poses new obstacles to its efforts to end the fighting. Although Egyptian intelligence agencies continue to talk with Hamas, as they did under former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi, Cairo’s new animosity toward the group has called into question the effectiveness of that channel, especially after the response to Egypt’s first proposal.For Israeli hawks, the change in the Arab states has been relatively liberating. “The reading here is that, aside from Hamas and Qatar, most of the Arab governments are either indifferent or willing to follow the leadership of Egypt,” said Martin Kramer, president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and an American-Israeli scholar of Islamist and Arab politics. “No one in the Arab world is going to the Americans and telling them, ‘Stop it now,’ ” as Saudi Arabia did, for example, in response to earlier Israeli crackdowns on the Palestinians, he said. “That gives the Israelis leeway.”With the resurgence of the anti-Islamist, military-backed government in Cairo, Mr. Kramer said, the new Egyptian government and allies like Saudi Arabia appear to believe that “the Palestinian people are to bear the suffering in order to defeat Hamas, because Hamas cannot be allowed to triumph and cannot be allowed to emerge as the most powerful Palestinian player.”Egyptian officials disputed that characterization, arguing that the new government was maintaining its support for the Palestinian people despite its deteriorating relations with Hamas, and that it had grown no closer to Israel than it was under Mr. Morsi or Mr. Mubarak.
“We have a historical responsibility toward the Palestinians, and that is not related to our stance on any specific faction,” said a senior Egyptian diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. “Hamas is not Gaza, and Gaza is not Palestine.”Other analysts, though, argued that Egypt and its Arab allies were trying to balance their own overriding dislike for Hamas against their citizens’ emotional support for the Palestinians, a balancing act that could grow more challenging as the Gaza carnage mounts.“The pendulum of the Arab Spring has swung in Israel’s favor, just like it had earlier swung in the opposite direction,” said Mr. Elgindy, the former Palestinian adviser. “But I am not sure the story is finished at this point

[Philip]

The last thing that the "Arab states" want is true democracy ,western style. Hamas due to the impotence of the PLA after the demise of Arafat,won elections in the Palestinian territories due to its militancy and the absence of any movement on the political front in finding a permanent peace solution.The "Oily-garch" Sunni kingdoms and sheikdoms of the region are most happy to see "democracy" at work in Iraq,Syria,Libya,etc.,hopefully for them Iran too,far from their lands where they can rule the roost in Koranic style. The demolition of large oil rich one-time threats like Saddam's Iraq gladdens their hearts.Funding ultra-extremist barbarians and yahoos like ISIS may in the future however backfire,as ISIS has now got its hold on billions of oil wealth and cash,looted in Iraq and can determine its future without the desperate need for oily-garch largesse. The brutal repression of democratic protesters in Bahrein tx to Paki/Saudi help is a pointer to their hatred for any shifting of power to the people.Israel has nothing major to fear from them either ,unless these despots are overthrown in the future by civil strife .

[ramana]

Philip and Bji, Mull over this idea....




The Second Arab Awakening: And the Battle for Pluralism
by Marwan Muasher

English | 2014 | ISBN: 0300186398 | 232 pages |

This important book is not about immediate events or policies or responses to the Arab Spring. Instead, it takes a long, judicious view of political change in the Arab world, beginning with the first Awakening in the nineteenth century and extending into future decades when—if the dream is realized—a new Arab world defined by pluralism and tolerance will emerge.

Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister of Jordan, asserts that all sides—the United States, Europe, Israel, and Arab governments alike—were deeply misguided in their thinking about Arab politics and society when the turmoil of the Arab Spring erupted. He explains the causes of the unrest, tracing them back to the first Arab Awakening, and warns of the forces today that threaten the success of the Second Arab Awakening, ignited in December 2010. Hope rests with the new generation and its commitment to tolerance, diversity, the peaceful rotation of power, and inclusive economic growth, Muasher maintains. He calls on the West to rethink political Islam and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and he discusses steps all parties can take to encourage positive state-building in the freshly unsettled Arab world.

The author is partially correct. The 19 th century event was a reawakening of the Musilm world. What it did was overthrow the antediluvian Ottomans, re-Arabised Islam, created new Muslim states in North Africa and Asia.

And the west channelled this awakening to their benefit and even now are propping up reactionary movements like ISIS and other jihadis outfits to terrorize the reawakening and transformation.

[svinayak]

Philip and Bji, Mull over this idea....

The author is partially correct. The 19 th century event was a reawakening of the Musilm world. What it did was overthrow the antediluvian Ottomans, re-Arabised Islam, created new Muslim states in North Africa and Asia.

And the west channelled this awakening to their benefit and even now are propping up reactionary movements like ISIS and other jihadis outfits to terrorize the reawakening and transformation.

The Arab awakening occurred with the contact of the colonial west over 100 years.
Colonial west wanted the Arab land secure for protecting the route to India.

After the discovery of the oil the Arab land became a target of acquisition for the west. They needed a enlightened Arab land so that there is a mutual beneficial trade with Arabs.

[Singha]

the ottomans may have gone down when the west got its claws into the region, but bear in mind they were one of the longest unbroken chain of command in history nearly 600 years. all (or most) of the innovations of the golden age of islamic civilization came from the settled urban centers and trade routes of the ottomans , mongols and latter day phoenicians like damascus, baghdad, samarkhand, cairo, ancient cities in palestine ... and mighty Istanbul.

the people who guard the holy lands and act as the big dogs under western patronage (the desert and gulf 'proper' arabs) produced next to nothing, had no major trade route or urban center and historical evidence proves this in the lack of monuments or discoveries attributed to these people. the center of gravity was much much more to the northern half of islam.

todays islam is what you get when you hand over the keys and the treasury to a band of miscreants and sideline the traders , scientists and farmers who made a civilization powerful.

the ottomans would have probably crushed nascent movements like the saudi wahabis and egyptian brotherhoods and fumigated the cancers at early stage. but the franco-brits wanted local chowkidars to sit in the oil wells and propped up the saudis.

[kmkraoind]

the ottomans may have gone down when the west got its claws into the region, but bear in mind they were one of the longest unbroken chain of command in history nearly 600 years. all (or most) of the innovations of the golden age of islamic civilization came from the settled urban centers and trade routes of the ottomans , mongols and latter day phoenicians like damascus, baghdad, samarkhand, cairo, ancient cities in palestine ... and mighty Istanbul.

the people who guard the holy lands and act as the big dogs under western patronage (the desert and gulf 'proper' arabs) produced next to nothing, had no major trade route or urban center and historical evidence proves this in the lack of monuments or discoveries attributed to these people. the center of gravity was much much more to the northern half of islam.

todays islam is what you get when you hand over the keys and the treasury to a band of miscreants and sideline the traders , scientists and farmers who made a civilization powerful.

the ottomans would have probably crushed nascent movements like the saudi wahabis and egyptian brotherhoods and fumigated the cancers at early stage. but the franco-brits wanted local chowkidars to sit in the oil wells and propped up the saudis.

Singhaji, you are class apart, take a bow.

[Austin]

Fuel-Air Rockets Arrive In Iraq

[Austin]

Dusk of the Empire: 10 facts about Russia in World War I

[JE Menon]

I wonder what Marwan Muasher means by "pluralism" ... probably pluralism within Islam.

[Johann]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/nathan-thr ... ss-chances

[akashganga]

One must ask why the Hamas/Palestinians are firing rockets into Israel. It is a result of the appalling conditions there due to a 7 yr. blockade

Hamas is firing unguided rockets into Israel is because their interests is in eliminating the kafir jews. Any reduction in kafir is a cause of celebration for these sheep lovers rapists and their supporters. The poverty tag is played for too long. The pure and simple truth is ummah doesn't allow anyone to live anywhere unless one becomes a faithful. period.
Israel is taking on the Arab imperialism and shoving it where the sun doesn't shine. Notes to be taken and learnt. One does not feed the ummah beast by peaceful means.

Yes for hamas and islamists any reduction in kafir and in particular from among arab middle east is a cause of celebration. For them elimination of jews from arab lands is an unfinished business started by the founder of their religion who drove out jews from present day medina and in whose time jewish settlements were spread through out arabia. Fundamentalist christians also cannot stomach the fact that jews are still present and jews never accepted founder of their religion even though the founder was born into a jewish family.

[Philip]

Tx.Ramana.Viewing this period of history (if we don't destroy ourselves by then) a century from now,it will be seen as a continuum of Arab/Muslim reawakening,perhaps more Saracenic than Caliphate.

OIL.The Brits wanted oil for the Royal Navy,unlimited supplies at the lowest cost,therefore control over the oily-rich "Arab" lands was necessary.The Ottomans were therefore duly disposed of,"Arab" lands redrawn to suit tribal boundaries and western interests,but unfortunately WW2 took place and the British Empire collapsed,unable to muster the energy to retain hold,having also used millions of troops from the colonies to fight Hitler,colonies who now wanted freedom. Hence the baton of western imperialism ,Ancient Rome,to Holy Roman Empire,European empires,was transferred to America,the new global overlord and repositry of European culture.It alone had the wherewithal and leadership to fight Communism and the Soviet Empire,cobbling together remnants of the Holy RC,etc.In the last century though,the "Arabs",discovered the power of their oil,the "seven sisters",western oily MNCs collaborated to enrich themselves beyond that of Croesus at the "turd world's" expense.Henry K and despots like the Shah created oil crises and the Yanqui mil-industrial empire with metronomic regularity engineer spats across the globe to test out their new weaponry,scaremonger allies into buying them,and so the cycle goes on; except that at this moment in history,we have beggared ourselves beyond belief thanks to the greed of western crooks and con-men masquerading as bankers (like "Fred the Shred " of RBS infamy to name just one) and can't afford what we want,what the west wants to sell us to keep their economies humming.

But control over OIL and GAS still is he most important factor today,hence the relentless campaign to oust Putin who wrested Russia's crown jewels from the clutches of a cabal of western backed Russian oligarchs who would've left Russia as a penniless backward farmyard.Russian energy wealth is almost limitless.Europe depends upon it,North Sea oil having evaporated and N-power is a dirty word.The fact that BP owns 20% of a Russian oil co. speaks for itself.With the "Arab Spring" sprung the wrong way,the US has is making strenuous efforts to reduce its dependency on Arab oil and Russian energy supplies look far more stable,but for Putin who won't play by "Western rules".There is another monster who has however awoken from its slumber of centuries,far more dangerous and ravenous with the largest appetite of all,and is vacuuming up the world's energy and strategic mineral resources,China.Who can stop it or can it be stopped at all?

Just for the record:
The "Test" score is no longer in the realms of cricket,it's going digital.
Israel-Gaza conflict: At least 100 dead in 24 hours in Rafah
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 44624.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... e-collapse
Xcpt:

Reports from the town's al-Najar hospital described bloodied bodies lying on stretchers and across the floor, as family members searched frantically for missing relatives. In 25 days of fighting, more than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed, as well as 63 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians.

Several other medical institutions have been forced to close or have been badly damaged during four weeks of war.

The bombardment of Rafah appeared to reflect what the IDF called the "Hannibal directive", in which it responds to any capture of a soldier with heavy fire aimed at stopping the captors leaving the scene, even if it risks injury to the Israeli prisoner.

"Israel will take all necessary steps against those who call for our destruction and perpetrate terrorism against our citizens," Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the US secretary of state, John Kerry, in a phone call. Netanyahu convened his cabinet on Friday to decide on a response.

Kerry said: "Hamas, which has security control over the Gaza Strip, must immediately and unconditionally release the missing Israeli soldier. The international community must now redouble its efforts to end the tunnel and rocket attacks by Hamas terrorists on Israel."

Britain's deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, urged Israel to enter direct negotiations with Hamas. Writing for the Guardian, he said: "It is time for the Israeli government to talk to the Hamas political leadership in Gaza."

Clegg has already gone much further than any Conservative government minister by saying Israel's actions appear to be disproportionate and a form of collective punishment.

[vishvak]

Beheading wannabe-caliphate of ISIL trying to be more and more Islamists. Sad state of women and children in Syria and Iraq.

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, Takfiris have now called on citizens to provide personal details of single women and widows link
Notice the word Takfiris, not the most fundamental muslims around.

ISIL recruiting kids link
ISIL are using kids as human shields.

The extremists then roamed the streets and the outskirts of the city, while putting the children in cars, in an effort to prevent any response from the Iraqi armed forces.

[KLNMurthy]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/nathan-thr ... ss-chances

Very instructive article going into the fine-grained politics as well as a broader overview of the issues in the conflict. According to the article, for the moment, Hamas is just content to survive, leaving thoughts of throwing the Jews into the sea for a later time.

it puts the blame squarely on Israel for not sticking to the terms of the previous ceasefire:

During the three months that followed the ceasefire, Shin Bet recorded only a single attack: two mortar shells fired from Gaza in December 2012. Israeli officials were impressed. But they convinced themselves that the quiet on Gaza’s border was primarily the result of Israeli deterrence and Palestinian self-interest. Israel therefore saw little incentive in upholding its end of the deal. In the three months following the ceasefire, its forces made regular incursions into Gaza, strafed Palestinian farmers and those collecting scrap and rubble across the border, and fired at boats, preventing fishermen from accessing the majority of Gaza’s waters.

I have been convinced for some time that the roots of the conflict are emotional, not rational, but no less serious for all that. Practically speaking, Palestinians have admitted the fact of Israeli dominance. At the same time, they remain incapable of undertaking the shift in their emotional makeup which prevents them from recognizing a Jewish state, instead they make all kinds of excuses like, we are being oppressed, so what is the point in forcing us to recognize a Jewish state etc.

At the same time--and this will attract the ire of many of my fellow BRFites--Israel has never come around to acknowledging the fundamental racism of its founding principle: "a land without a people for a people without a land." It is probable that the Palestinians were Jew-haters to begin with, but without trying to draw any kind of moral equivalence, we can note that you can bring a general large-group (Euros in general) racist attitude even to someone programmed to hate your specific smaller sub-group (Euro-Jews). Maybe they are afraid that acknowledging that they essentially snatched Israel by force from modern-day Palestinians will mean that they will accord legitimacy to demands to give it back. Anyway, for their part, they have resisted (analogous to the Palestinian resistance to recognizing Israel) anything that would really require them to give back even Gaza and West Bank which are very unambiguously not theirs (we can't really say that they have given these places back in any meaningful way when they keep them in a trishanku-swargam (limbo) in which they are neither free countries nor actual dependencies of Israel. This, for example, is very different from the way India has handled Jammu & Kashmir--unhesitatingly accepting the people as full and free citizens of India, with all rights; it is a status that a reasonable people could accept and live with, aside from the reality that the jihadis in J&K think it is tantamount to living under "Hindu" rule.).

Either of the parties could call the other one's bluff by just being the first to unilaterally agreeing to the other party's emotional needs. There would be no incremental material disadvantage accruing from making an acknowledgment of moral realities which are fairly easy and obvious--as old-school Christians and Muslims, Palestinians have been wrong in their premise that Jews cannot be allowed to grow and prevail as a state, and the zioninst Jews have been wrong and racist in treating Palestinian Arabs as invisible people. Private Palestinians and Israelis acknowledge these facts all the time without any problem.

With the changed mindset, issues like Israel's security in the long term, in light of the demographic imbalance can be addressed seriously; the future of the region has a huge stake in the survival and prosperity of Israel and the Jews in general, if only the other countries could see it.

But neither side will make the psychological concession at the official level. For the Palestinians, it may mean a serious blow to the integrity of, if not Muslim doctrine, at least strong Muslim tradition--which is, if dhimmis wag their tail too much, they have to be suppressed or crushed. For the Israelis, I guess the implication of saying, simultaneously, "yes, we got our country by force; no we are not going to give up our country; but we can prosper together using our obvious national expertise, provided we can come up with a credible and effective way to ensure that Arabs won't simply use the peace as an interregnum to grow stronger and revive efforts to eliminate Jews, at a later date."

[A_Gupta]

^^^The Haaretz itself has quoted Hamas as saying that recognition of Israel would come as part of a peace deal that also establishes a Palestinian state; that Israel is an established fact.

I don't think this is anything emotional - Zionists have gone off the rail and want to have their Greater Israel, and will sabotage anything that might bring peace.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/0 ... -face-feel

I haven't verified the above, but it appears that Israeli IDFs advanced to a Hamas position during the alleged ceasefire, and Hamas then opened fire; the supposedly kidnapped/captured Israeli soldier was killed there; but that was all it took for Netanyahu to diss POTUS and resume hostilities.

[Johann]

KLNM,

Quite agree.

Part of the problem is that Israelis remain traumatised by the Holocaust. They are looking for a level of control and certainty ('security') that simply can *not* be achieved by any means other than the ones that created the Holocaust in the first place.

With the Palestinians its also the curse of memory. Every single Palestinian knows where their home village is/was, and returning to that particular plot of land is the impossible dream they've all been raised on - its central to their personal identity.

And yes, the problem of citizenship is central here. Israel as a project always defined itself as a nation state primarily for and of Jews, rather as a country where Jews could live safely in their spiritual homeland in and among other people. The goal of maximising the Jewish population and designing a state primarily aimed at serving them a fundamental source of conflict and competition with the non-Jewish population, whether Christian, Muslim or Druze, settled or Bedouin who share space with them.

[Shanmukh]

KLNM,

Quite agree.

Part of the problem is that Israelis remain traumatised by the Holocaust. They are looking for a level of control and certainty ('security') that simply can *not* be achieved by any means other than the ones that created the Holocaust in the first place.

With the Palestinians its also the curse of memory. Every single Palestinian knows where their home village is/was, and returning to that particular plot of land is the impossible dream they've all been raised on - its central to their personal identity.

And yes, the problem of citizenship is central here. Israel as a project always defined itself as a nation state primarily for and of Jews, rather as a country where Jews could live safely in their spiritual homeland in and among other people. The goal of maximising the Jewish population and designing a state primarily aimed at serving them a fundamental source of conflict and competition with the non-Jewish population, whether Christian, Muslim or Druze, settled or Bedouin who share space with them.

This analysis of the situation conveniently leaves out the Islamic imperatives that motivate the Palestinians - just see the thousands of statements by Palestinians themselves (of all hues, too) who have phrased the problem in Islamic terms completely. And the question of the plot of land was very true in the 70s, but not today - most of today's people have not even seen the plot of land that is supposedly theirs, and there is far less attachment to the plot of land as there is to the idea of reconquest. Which is why there were many Christian militants in the 60s and 70s (these were the people who were attached to their land), while today it is almost completely an Islamic enterprise, with the problem phrased completely in Islamic terms.

[Singha]

in a interesting incident a band of syrian militants crossed the border and attacked lebanon today.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebano ... banon.ashx

The Daily Star
BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army vowed Saturday to confront what it said was a systematic plan to target Lebanon and its military, saying it would prevent anyone from moving Syria's battle into the country.

"What happened today is the most dangerous incident Lebanon and the Lebanese have ever faced because it's made clear that there is someone planning and preparing to attack Lebanon as well as planning to sabotage the Lebanese Army and the residents of Arsal," the army said in a statement.

"Armed groups carried out a concentrated attack on the homes of Arsal residents who the army protected ... and kidnapped a number of Army soldiers and members of the Internal Security Forces. They took them hostage and snatched them from their homes where they were celebrating the holiday and asked in return for the release of the most dangerous suspect."

The military said the militants were of different nationalities and commended residents of Arsal for assisting the Army in the clashes.

"The Army will not allow anyone to move the battle in Syria into Lebanon," it said

"Everyone should be aware of the danger facing the Lebanon, the Lebanese and its Army because today's events demonstrated that there is a systematic plan to target the country and the incident was not a matter of coincidence.

"The Army will confront such an attack and will not allow Lebanon to turn into an arena of kidnapping, murder and terrorism."

Saturday afternoon, militants demanding the release of a suspected Nusra Front commander arrested earlier in the day by the Army attacked government checkpoints and police stations in and around Arsal. Two soldiers were killed in Wadi Hmayyed, and at least one was wounded in Arsal, a security source told The Daily Star.

The source said that two Lebanese soldiers had been kidnapped before being freed later in the afternoon by the Army.



Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebano ... z39LGYceRZ
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

[Singha]

whose side is the Lebanese govt and people on - shia or sunni?

are hamas and hizbollah both shia and getting support from iran?

[habal]

Lebanon is very diverse and may well be majority Shia & Christian. So the Lebanese govt are at best fence-sitters.

[Surya]

hamas is Sunni

Hezb is shia

people of lebanon are fragmented along the sunni, shia, druze, christian lines

except when it comes to israel attacking

[A_Gupta]

And the question of the plot of land was very true in the 70s, but not today - most of today's people have not even seen the plot of land that is supposedly theirs, and there is far less attachment to the plot of land as there is to the idea of reconquest.

This is infinitely more true of the Zionists - European Jews who had not seen Israel for many, many centuries.

The whole idea of "Israel belongs to the Jews" stems from the supposed historicity of an Abrahamic book, no different in principle from the Quran.

Anyway, even today, Nazi-looted art is returned to its owners by inheritance who may have never seen that art. By today's standards, Palestinians need to get back what was looted from them. That they present it in Islamic terms (or Jews present it in Zionist terms) does not change the ***modern principle of law***.

PPS: a sign that the world is changing will be when the Abrahamics' books are **routinely** referred to as mythology just as the Hindu books are.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/09/world/eur ... cated-art/

PS: FYI, I am of the opinion that alliance of Heathen/Infidel/Pagan/Gentile with the Abrahamics can be tactical only. The nature of Abrahamic ideology is to seek the end of Heathen/Infidel/Pagan/Gentile civilization. As long as they insist that their Torah/Bible/Quran expresses factual truths about the world rather than just being the expression of a particular tradition, they will not be at peace with the Heathen/Infidel/Pagan/Gentile. Their tolerance is of the form "we shall not molest you now -- until G-d/God/Allah tells us otherwise" rather than "you are as entitled to exist as we are, and nothing that G-d/God/Allah says makes it otherwise".

[Shanmukh]

And the question of the plot of land was very true in the 70s, but not today - most of today's people have not even seen the plot of land that is supposedly theirs, and there is far less attachment to the plot of land as there is to the idea of reconquest.

This is infinitely more true of the Zionists - European Jews who had not seen Israel for many, many centuries.

The whole idea of "Israel belongs to the Jews" stems from the supposed historicity of an Abrahamic book, no different in principle from the Quran.

And a considerable bit of Roman history. The wiping out of the kingdom of Israel in the 1st and second century AD has been recorded in considerable detail by the Roman historians themselves. Then the Arabs recall with gusto their butchery of the Jews, as B-ji has posted in another thread. Please refer to that.

Anyway, even today, Nazi-looted art is returned to its owners by inheritance who may have never seen that art. By today's standards, Palestinians need to get back what was looted from them. That they present it in Islamic terms (or Jews present it in Zionist terms) does not change the ***modern principle of law***.

As you so eloquently put it, the land of Israel was looted from the Jews by the Romans (recorded in Roman history), then the persecutions of the Byzantines and the Muslims for over a thousand years took their toll on Jewish presence in Israel. Consequently, strict justice has been done, and the Jews have got back the land which the ancestors of the Palestinians looted from the looters of the Jews. Why do you insist on drawing the line at some arbitrary point in history to the benefit of the Palestinians?

Their tolerance is of the form "we shall not molest you now -- until G-d/God/Allah tells us otherwise" rather than "you are as entitled to exist as we are, and nothing that G-d/God/Allah says makes it otherwise".

Can you tell me how many Jewish missionaries are working to turn India into a Judaic land?

[sanjaykumar]

Does the Hindu care whose god is winning? Sure the winner will come around to the heathen but it's gonna be a long time coming.

[UlanBatori]

I suggest that this thread be renamed the Africa thread. Most of the action is now involving Africans, not Asians.

Here are the latest jollies from Libya

Benghazi has been declared Shariahstan, Tripoli on the way. Looks like this is The Decade Of The Mahdi.

[Philip]

Israel keeps on whacking UN schools,another hit more killed and wounded.7 hit thus far,Why?
"Bunkum" Moon can rant and rage as much as he wants,but trying to get Bibi N to cease fire is akin to asking the Pakis to stop terror against India.Bibi N has frankly lost it. Time will show how much this slaughter of Gaza will hurt Israel.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... gaza-rafah
Gaza school attack denounced as 'criminal act' by UN chief
Ban Ki-moon calls on those responsible to be held accountable after 10 killed and dozens injured outside school gates

A deadly attack on a school in the city of Rafah in the south of Gaza has been denounced as a "moral outrage" and "criminal act" by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

At least 10 people were killed and dozens more wounded after a projectile struck a street outside the school gates on Sunday morning.

The school was sheltering more than 3,000 people displaced by fighting in the area. It has been the scene of heavy bombardment by the Israeli military and fierce clashes following the suspected capture by Hamas fighters of an Israeli soldier, later declared killed in action.

In a statement, Ban called on those responsible for the "gross violation of international humanitarian law" to be held accountable. He said the "Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have been repeatedly informed of the location of these sites."

At the time of the strike – about 10.50am local time – dozens of children and adults were clustered around the gates buying biscuits and sweets from stalls set up by locals.

The missile struck the ground eight to 10 metres from the open gates. Witnesses at the scene less than an hour after the explosion claimed it had been fired from one of the many unmanned Israeli drones in the air above Rafah.

United Nations officials in Gaza described a "shelling incident" or an air strike.

It was impossible to determine the exact provenance of the projectile, but it was the third time in 10 days that a UN school had been hit. Earlier this week, Israeli tank shells lstruck a school in the northern town of Jabaliya, killing 16 in an attack denounced by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, as "reprehensible".

In all, seven UN schools have been attacked during the conflict.

Israeli spokesmen have previously blamed poorly aimed or malfunctioning Hamas mortar fire or rockets for several such incidents.

Elsewhere in Rafah, more than 30 people were killed in bombing and shelling on Sunday morning, bringing the total number of dead in the city in the past 48 hours to more than 100.

The school – the Rafah Preparatory A Boys school – is one of more than 90 shelters run by the UN in Gaza to provide a safe haven to Palestinians fleeing the fighting. Air strikes and shelling continued across much of Gaza on Saturday despite the Israeli military operation "changing gear", according to spokesmen.

Amid scenes of chaos, wounded from the school were taken to the two small hospital facilities still open in Rafah. With no mortuary facilities available, families collected the bodies of the dead almost immediately. In the corridors of the Kuwaiti hospital, stunned casualties lay on beds or slumped in chairs.

Mohammed Abu Adwan, 15, described how he and his friend, Moaz Abu Rus had been sitting outside the school gates.

"It was just like normal. Some of the kids were buying sweets and that sort of thing. Suddenly there was an explosion. I was hit by shrapnel and they brought me here," he said. His friend, also 15, was killed.

Fatih Firdbari, 30, was outside the school when the explosion occurred.

"I was just talking to my friend and leaning against his tuk-tuk [motorised rickshaw]. There was a big bang. I felt nothing at first and then I fell down. I looked around and saw people lying on the ground. I was wounded in the calf," Firdbari, a farmer who had fled his lands close to the border crossing with Egypt, said.

An hour after the blast, people sheltering in the school washed blood from around the gates and pavement outside.

The dead included a 13-year-old and a 10-year old who live near to the school and had been selling biscuits.

The body of Yusef Iskaafi, 10, was carried into his home by midday, borne by relatives and wrapped in a white shroud. "He was just a normal kid, from a good family. He had no idea what was going on," a neighbour said.

Adnan Abu Hasna, spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said: "It is believed that there was an air strike that hit outside the gate of an UNRWA school, a designated shelter for at least 3,000 displaced residents."

"There were multiple dead and injuries inside and outside the school, including an UNRWA staffer."

Regional efforts to broker a diplomatic end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas have so far proved elusive, with the conflict now in its 27th day with more than 1,700 people killed. Israeli officials say nearly half of these casualties are combatants. However, the UN says only a third are fighters, while local NGOs say four-fifths are civilians.

A Palestinian delegation was to hold truce talks on Sunday in Cairo with senior US and Egyptian officials, but Israel has said it sees no point in sending its negotiators to the meeting, citing what it says are Hamas breaches of previous agreed truces.

Islamic Jihad was also expected to join the talks, along with the US's Middle East envoy, Frank Lowenstein.

Israeli media reported that cabinet ministers have decided not to seek a further negotiated ceasefire agreement with Hamas and were considering ending the military operation unilaterally.

Israel's army announced on Sunday it had begun withdrawing some troops from Gaza.

"We are removing some (forces)," Lieut Col Peter Lerner told AFP that troops were "extremely close" to completing a mission to destroy a network of attack tunnels.

"We are redeploying within the Gaza Strip, taking out other positions, and relieving other forces from within, so it won't be the same type of ground operation," he said.

"But indeed we will continue to operate … (and) have a rapid reaction force on the ground that can engage Hamas if required."

The IDF has claimed that Hamas and other groups launch rockets from close to schools.

"Yesterday Palestinian terrorists fired 11 mortars from the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Zeitoun, Gaza," the IDF said on Twitter about four hours after the strike on the school in Rafah.

The UN has said it has found caches of rockets at schools in Gaza and has criticised those who had put them there for placing civilians at risk.

Israel's assault on Rafah began early on Friday in the opening hours of a 72-hour humanitarian truce, which was quickly shattered when militants ambushed a group of soldiers, killing two.

A third was reported missing, believed snatched in a development that drew sharp condemnation from US and UN officials. But early on Sunday, the Israeli army formally announced the death the soldier, 23-year-old Hadar Goldin, saying he had been "killed in battle in the Gaza Strip on Friday".

Army radio said no body had been recovered, rendering the decision to announce his death "very delicate". There was no word on the whereabouts of his remains.

Hamas's Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades acknowledged its militants had staged an ambush in which two other Israeli soldiers were killed, but denied holding Goldin.

His death raised to 64 the total number of soldiers killed since the start of the operation, its heaviest toll since the Lebanon war of 2006. Three civilians have been killed in Israel. Hamas have fired about 3,000 rockets across the border, Israeli defence officials say.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said that so far on Sunday at least 13 rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel. One was intercepted by Israel's anti-missile system and the rest landed in open areas.

Israel began its air and naval offensive against Gaza on 8 July following a surge of cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas and other guerrillas, later escalating the operation into ground incursions.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, vowed to press on with "Operation Protective Edge", promising that Hamas would pay "an insufferable price" for continued cross-border rocket fire.

"We will take as much time as necessary, and will exert as much force as needed," he said late on Saturday, saying troops would complete their mission to destroy the tunnels after which the next security objectives would be decided.

.

[KLNMurthy]

KLNM,

Quite agree.

Part of the problem is that Israelis remain traumatised by the Holocaust. They are looking for a level of control and certainty ('security') that simply can *not* be achieved by any means other than the ones that created the Holocaust in the first place.

With the Palestinians its also the curse of memory. Every single Palestinian knows where their home village is/was, and returning to that particular plot of land is the impossible dream they've all been raised on - its central to their personal identity.

And yes, the problem of citizenship is central here. Israel as a project always defined itself as a nation state primarily for and of Jews, rather as a country where Jews could live safely in their spiritual homeland in and among other people. The goal of maximising the Jewish population and designing a state primarily aimed at serving them a fundamental source of conflict and competition with the non-Jewish population, whether Christian, Muslim or Druze, settled or Bedouin who share space with them.

I agree that Jewish collective trauma about the Holocaust is a huge factor in their current, shall we say, behavioral choices. And, at the risk of flattering myself as an Indian, I would think that if West Asia were culturally more like India, there would have been no need for an exclusively Jewish state. Jews would be--as they have been--more or less of the same standing as Parsis: sometimes subject of good-natured cultural gibes (which are par for the course for all normal cross-cultural interactions in India) but mostly loved and respected as a people, and a key element of the fabric of India.

The Palestinian trauma and ongoing sorrow and anger at their loss in the 20th century is, if not equivalent, the counterpart of Jewish trauma. What the rest of the world doesn't seem to realize is that, while traumatized entities--people or nations--need to be supported and made whole, they should still be kept in some kind of psychological guardianship / receivership till they heal completely, and not be allowed to make life-and-death decisions both for themselves and for the planet as a whole.

As the Thrall article suggests, even the present horrific killing that is going on still has an aspect of political kabuki about it, from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Case in point: Israel is emphatically interested in keeping Hamas alive but disempowered, as a kind of whipped dog if you will, because they are aware that in the hatred they are engendering, thee will be the seeds for a truly nihilistic enemy. But it is impossible to calibrate killing and debilitation of a people so that they just lose their spirit but don't turn into monsters. So, that state of affairs where sh*t really gets nukularly-real is going to arrive, inevitably. That is the denouement that should interest the rest of the world in dropping platitudes in favor of a serious conversation with both parties.

[KLNMurthy]

KLNM,

Quite agree.

Part of the problem is that Israelis remain traumatised by the Holocaust. They are looking for a level of control and certainty ('security') that simply can *not* be achieved by any means other than the ones that created the Holocaust in the first place.

With the Palestinians its also the curse of memory. Every single Palestinian knows where their home village is/was, and returning to that particular plot of land is the impossible dream they've all been raised on - its central to their personal identity.

And yes, the problem of citizenship is central here. Israel as a project always defined itself as a nation state primarily for and of Jews, rather as a country where Jews could live safely in their spiritual homeland in and among other people. The goal of maximising the Jewish population and designing a state primarily aimed at serving them a fundamental source of conflict and competition with the non-Jewish population, whether Christian, Muslim or Druze, settled or Bedouin who share space with them.

This analysis of the situation conveniently leaves out the Islamic imperatives that motivate the Palestinians - just see the thousands of statements by Palestinians themselves (of all hues, too) who have phrased the problem in Islamic terms completely. And the question of the plot of land was very true in the 70s, but not today - most of today's people have not even seen the plot of land that is supposedly theirs, and there is far less attachment to the plot of land as there is to the idea of reconquest. Which is why there were many Christian militants in the 60s and 70s (these were the people who were attached to their land), while today it is almost completely an Islamic enterprise, with the problem phrased completely in Islamic terms.

For my part, I never leave out the Islamic aspect--it is very clear to me that a key psychological barrier for Palestinians qua Muslims and old-school Merchant-of-Venice era Christians is the inability to accept Jews as a people that are arbiters of their own destiny, let alone as a dominant power with whom realistic negotiations should be carried out for a reasonable modus viviendi.

But we would be making a mistake in ignoring the emotions surrounding the attachment to an idea of an idyllic time before the Romans breaking the Temple or (don't remember the palestinian term for the dispossession) dispossession happened. This idea gets passed down through the generations by family lore. Whether it results in violent revisionism and revanchism spanning generations--as is the case for both Judaism and Islam which have this kind of transgenerational psycho-memorializing technology as an integral element, or, --as is the case with a lot of Indians having roots and (at one time) property in pre-partition Pakjab--in absurd and weirdly submissive efforts to restore an imagined idyllic bhaichara between pakis and themselves, this kind of trans-generational idea is a reality which deeply influences people's mental outlook and behavior. It takes deliberate effort and empathy to try and plug into that kind of sentiment, otherwise we are going to be stuck with saying that the problem is Islamic, as the Palestinians of today's generations have never seen their family plot of land. I mean, yes it is Islamic, but so what? That doesn't give us any further helpful insights that could lead to a solution, unless there is some kind of social engineering equivalent Final Solution of destroying Islam, a solution which at the same time ensures that human beings wouldn't end up becoming something worse than today's followers of Islam. There may be some satisfaction in "proving", yet again, that Islam--or at least some manifest aspects of it--are malignant, but begging pardon, any fool can readily see that. Again, so what?

[KLNMurthy]

...
Can you tell me how many Jewish missionaries are working to turn India into a Judaic land?

I fear this is going to be OT, but let me indulge myself with just one response to you.

Jews have chosen to leave India and make aliyah to Israel, so your question is irrelevant when taken literally.

And, as for turning some place into an X-land, there are two axes, not quite orthogonal: one is that of converts or "souls", and the other is that of share of control over real property and wealth, and wealth-generating tools.

Traditionally, Hindus as a whole have not been players in either dimension. We neither know how to proselytize nor do we really work together for control of property and wealth qua Hindus. (That's not a judgment, it is a consequence of the history and tradition of Hinduism itself.) Whereas, Christian efforts and to some extent Muslim efforts in the "souls" dimension gets a lot of the attention from Hindus, who are mostly clueless as to what is going on, and how to go about responding to it, beyond fulminating about it in forums.

Jews have no interest in collecting souls, but in the other dimension, namely control over property and wealth, they have done very well, both as talented people with a lot of financial and educational advantages (you might say "open quota" in Indian terms) as well "communal" (minus the pejorative implications in Indianese) people working with each other qua Jews (you might say "reserved quota" in Indianese). Generally speaking, both in the Indian as well as in a Western context, I consider this dimension of expansionism as more positive than negative for society as a whole, therefore not generally something threatening, provided some way can be found for others to co-operate and benefit as well. But that's me speaking, as a product of a long tradition and culture of castes evolving to cooperate with each other for the larger good. By contrast, Hitler's campaign to rid Europe of Jews due to angst and envy that Jews are getting too big for their boots was, we might say, a failure on the part of Europeans of the world to be constructively casteist, as India is.

Todays Palestinians and Muslims in general also suffer from that same incapacity to be casteist.

[KLNMurthy]

I suggest that this thread be renamed the Africa thread. Most of the action is now involving Africans, not Asians.

Here are the latest jollies from Libya

Benghazi has been declared Shariahstan, Tripoli on the way. Looks like this is The Decade Of The Mahdi.

They should rename Benghazi as al-Clintonabad in honor of the former Secretary of State who made this devoutly-to-be-wished consummation possible.

[devesh]

As the Thrall article suggests, even the present horrific killing that is going on still has an aspect of political kabuki about it, from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Case in point: Israel is emphatically interested in keeping Hamas alive but disempowered, as a kind of whipped dog if you will, because they are aware that in the hatred they are engendering, thee will be the seeds for a truly nihilistic enemy. But it is impossible to calibrate killing and debilitation of a people so that they just lose their spirit but don't turn into monsters. So, that state of affairs where sh*t really gets nukularly-real is going to arrive, inevitably. That is the denouement that should interest the rest of the world in dropping platitudes in favor of a serious conversation with both parties.

actually, Israel has realized long ago that the Islamics around are the "truly nihilistic enemy," as you put it. there is no more "nihilism" to be achieved. Muslims right from the Founder's time have been fanatically insistent on wiping out the Jew and that pogrom has continued. it is only us distant advice-givers who are under the illusion that somehow Israel has "made the situation worse", in terms of Jihad and Islamism. That's not true. the Muslims have always had it out for any and all non-muslims who lived amidst them.

the only exceptions are when some powerful State finds it useful to keep some "productive" and "useful" non-muslims around to benefit their economies or to provide mediation with other countries. and in essence, this is where the historic Dhimmi non-muslim has always played a role in Islamic States. but the members among non-muslims who are kept alive are isolated into Ghettos and are "nurtured" to serve their useful purposes. beyond that, the basic totalitarian drive to wipe out all other traces of non-muslim history, culture, and belief systems has been a persistent and stubborn feature among all Islamic societies and States.

Israel realized this generations ago. Indians and Hindus who like to live under the illusion of relative safety of last 65 years (even that is not really there if you live in JK; or increasingly in the NE or the SW or other Islamic droplets) have seemingly forgotten 1300 years of Islamic depredations and started lecturing to a nation which is surrounded by swarms of Jihadis on all sides.

oh, and nobody is dropping platitudes here. I'm entirely serious when I say that what Israel is doing is critical service to humanity, because it is choosing to weed out a humanity-destroying and regressive ideology which insists on wiping out anybody and everybody who doesn't bow its head to its totalitarian intentions.

[Singha]

entire north africa could be rolled up by the forces of the Mahdi culminating in a last stand by the Egyptian army in Cairo-Alexandria , following which they too shall go under or more likely desert the ranks in a attritional way. whisky drinking jernails could find a new dose of faith and denounce their former employer, throw away the pin striped pants and medals and adopt the black spartan robes of the Mahdi army.

Jordan shall fall to the ISIS, its takfiri westernized royal family stands no chance of being accepted even in moderately pure mindset.

so finally the two arms of the black crescent shall join in a magnificent caliphate stretching from atlantic ocean in mauritania to the warm waters of the persian gulf and arabian sea.

Unkil will have track2 and track3 channels with all players to bribe them to keep off attacking Unkil and go hunt someone else instead.

[KLNMurthy]

As the Thrall article suggests, even the present horrific killing that is going on still has an aspect of political kabuki about it, from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Case in point: Israel is emphatically interested in keeping Hamas alive but disempowered, as a kind of whipped dog if you will, because they are aware that in the hatred they are engendering, thee will be the seeds for a truly nihilistic enemy. But it is impossible to calibrate killing and debilitation of a people so that they just lose their spirit but don't turn into monsters. So, that state of affairs where sh*t really gets nukularly-real is going to arrive, inevitably. That is the denouement that should interest the rest of the world in dropping platitudes in favor of a serious conversation with both parties.

actually, Israel has realized long ago that the Islamics around are the "truly nihilistic enemy," as you put it. there is no more "nihilism" to be achieved. Muslims right from the Founder's time have been fanatically insistent on wiping out the Jew and that pogrom has continued. it is only us distant advice-givers who are under the illusion that somehow Israel has "made the situation worse", in terms of Jihad and Islamism. That's not true. the Muslims have always had it out for any and all non-muslims who lived amidst them.

the only exceptions are when some powerful State finds it useful to keep some "productive" and "useful" non-muslims around to benefit their economies or to provide mediation with other countries. and in essence, this is where the historic Dhimmi non-muslim has always played a role in Islamic States. but the members among non-muslims who are kept alive are isolated into Ghettos and are "nurtured" to serve their useful purposes. beyond that, the basic totalitarian drive to wipe out all other traces of non-muslim history, culture, and belief systems has been a persistent and stubborn feature among all Islamic societies and States.

Israel realized this generations ago. Indians and Hindus who like to live under the illusion of relative safety of last 65 years (even that is not really there if you live in JK; or increasingly in the NE or the SW or other Islamic droplets) have seemingly forgotten 1300 years of Islamic depredations and started lecturing to a nation which is surrounded by swarms of Jihadis on all sides.

oh, and nobody is dropping platitudes here. I'm entirely serious when I say that what Israel is doing is critical service to humanity, because it is choosing to weed out a humanity-destroying and regressive ideology which insists on wiping out anybody and everybody who doesn't bow its head to its totalitarian intentions.

the fear of a truly nihilistic enemy replacing hamas is not mine but actually the underpinning of official Israeli policy, which is to not destroy Hamas, based on that exact concern. The Thrall article posted by Johann as well as every single policy statement by Israeli officials confirms this.

Israel's agenda has nothing to do with weeding out Islam; it is just trying to clobber a segment of Muslims into total submission, having only very limited success at great cost even with that. "Weeding out Islam" is an impossible thing for anyone, let alone Israel. We have to stop fantasizing about Israel as some sort of avatara-purusha among nations existing for the sake of "vinashaya duskhRtaaM." (By the way, even the Supreme Lord Himself was unable to completely weed out Evil, He could only mitigate its effects, it is not sensible to expect the followers of an ultimately infantile Abrahamic religion to do the job.

You are unnecessarily projecting a lot of things about me forgetting Muslim depredations and so on when you don't know my position on those topics at all. My effort here is only to come up with an understanding about what a solution to the problem means and what the barriers to the solution might be. As I said in a previous post, I find that, simply saying, "Obviously Islam is the problem(while rather brashly implying that anyone who tries to come up with his own analysis is somehow an idiot or just blind to the problem), let us just kill Islam, or let us just pretend Israel is killing Islam and support it" falls more in the realm of fantasy than reality, in my understanding. If someone is capable of presenting something that can be connected to a more practical approach, or even a more fine-grained conceptual understanding, I am quite open to it.

[devesh]

the fear of a truly nihilistic enemy replacing hamas is not mine but actually the underpinning of official Israeli policy, which is to not destroy Hamas, based on that exact concern. The Thrall article posted by Johann as well as every single policy statement by Israeli officials confirms this.

Israel's agenda has nothing to do with weeding out Islam; it is just trying to clobber a segment of Muslims into total submission, having only very limited success at great cost even with that. "Weeding out Islam" is an impossible thing for anyone, let alone Israel. We have to stop fantasizing about Israel as some sort of avatara-purusha among nations existing for the sake of "vinashaya duskhRtaaM." (By the way, even the Supreme Lord Himself was unable to completely weed out Evil, He could only mitigate its effects, it is not sensible to expect the followers of an ultimately infantile Abrahamic religion to do the job.

You are unnecessarily projecting a lot of things about me forgetting Muslim depredations and so on when you don't know my position on those topics at all. My effort here is only to come up with an understanding about what a solution to the problem means and what the barriers to the solution might be. As I said in a previous post, I find that, simply saying, "Obviously Islam is the problem(while rather brashly implying that anyone who tries to come up with his own analysis is somehow an idiot or just blind to the problem), let us just kill Islam, or let us just pretend Israel is killing Islam and support it" falls more in the realm of fantasy than reality, in my understanding. If someone is capable of presenting something that can be connected to a more practical approach, or even a more fine-grained conceptual understanding, I am quite open to it.

what exactly do you think "weeding out" means? also, when did I say Israel was trying weed out Islam? I was talking about Jihad. and still am. however, the true extent of mutual exclusivity between the two is very much open for debate. but that's a debate for another time.

Israel is a small nation. it's population is tiny compared to its neighborhood. so, no, it's not trying to beat them all into submission. but it is prioritizing and "taking care" of the immediate problem because this problem, if ignored, can be the pointed edge of a spear which will keep plunging deeper into the Israel's guts.

but you miss out on the major thrust of my post almost entirely: Israel's realization of the nature of Islamic regimes and the people who are under the thrall of Islam.

this realization is critical because when non-muslim societies have to fight Islamic regimes or States or semi-State structures with almost entirely homogeneously Muslim demographics, the tactics employed by the non-muslim State are dependent on their understanding of Islamic societies. Israel's tactics of ruthlessly wiping out the infrastructure that supports Hamas operations, is based solidly on their understanding of how Islamic extremists operate under offensive memes and ideas which consider any "humanitarian" attitudes of "honor" or "code" among the non-muslims as weaknesses to be exploited.

are you serious: stop building straw-men arguments about "we" seeing Israel as "avatar purusha". this is almost comical if not for the dramatic posturing behind the words that is not even subtle in its insinuations.

I'm spending these precious minutes typing up these posts because I see the writing on the wall very clearly: if this tiny nation, sitting quite literally on the backside of the geographic area to the West of us, were to be run-over by Islamics, India is the next target.

Israel keeps them off balance. they have to perennially wonder how and when and where they might have to face a capable army on their rear, if they are trying to advance to the true jewel: Hindustan.

also, it is not just Israel. the 2 swords that keep the Islamic world in a state of suspended dilemma are Russia and Israel. One is to the North, while the other is to the West. both of them have good capable armies. and both have shown a thorough willingness to ruthlessly punish the Islamics for any adventures.

Russia retreating from is civilizational frontier on the Steppe, and Israel getting run-over: these 2 scenarios, even if 1 of them were to come true, will guarantee that War starts in earnest on India.

Not that Jihad hasn't already started in India. but when I say War, I mean things like what happened in Kosovo: terrorists like JeM or LeT or HizMuj turning overnight from terrorists to "freedom fighters".

think clearly and tell me if that is a scenario you wish to see for India??? because that is exactly what will happen if Palestine is legitimized. Palestine is bordering on the Mediterranean. this not only surrounds Israel by effectively turning Gaza into a base of operations for any Islamic country, but also effectively blunts the one greatest threat that Israel always posed to the Islamic world: unprotected rear flank open to possible attacks by a non-muslim force.

this has nothing to do with "avatar purusha" or other nonsense that you are dreaming about. India in its current shape and form is incapable of dealing with Jihad. yes, even under Modi: especially under Modi, any Jihadi advance will bank on his response. and with his history, he will be pressed on all sides to "tame the Saffron" and maintain "law and order". what do you think happens next? Modi or someone else who is in power at that time will have only one option if they wish to save Hindus. I'll leave that to your imagination. but it would be better if we can stop things before they get that far.

[devesh]

by the way, in case people were wondering why we're having this "theoretical" discussion requiring "fine-grained conceptual understanding", perhaps this might do something to remind that this is very much a practical issue for India. not just some academic discussion:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/in ... shmir.html

Jihadi boss invites Taliban to Kashmir: United Jihad Council head Salahuddin says terrorists including al-Qaeda are welcome to 'liberate' the region

[Austin]

Obama’s ‘helplessness’ an act: Snowden reveals scale of US's Israel backing

[Prem]

http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-air-force-ba ... 01700.html

BAGH-DARBAD (AP) — Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called upon his country's armed forces to help Kurdish forces battle a Sunni militant offensive in northern Iraq that has caused tens of thousands of people from the minority Yazidi community to flee their homes.Iraq's military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said Monday that al-Maliki has commanded the air force to provide aerial support to the Kurds in the first sign of cooperation between the two militaries since Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, was captured by the militants on June 10.
The Islamic State captured the northern towns of Sinjar and Zumar on Saturday, prompting an estimated 40,000 from the minority Yazidi sect to flee, said Jawhar Ali Begg, a spokesman for the community.The Sunni militants have targeted minority communities in areas they have conquered.View galleryThis image made from video taken on SundayTheir towns are now controlled by (Islamic State) and their shrine has been blown up," Begg told The Associated Press. The militant group gave the Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with links to Zoroastrianism, an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a tax or face death, Begg added..Kurdish forces have been battling with the militants for control of several towns stretching between the province of Nineveh and the Kurdish Iraqi province of Dahuk. At least 25 Kurdish fighters were killed in clashes with the militants on Sunday, and another 120 were wounded, according to Muhssin Mohamed, a Dahuk-based doctor.Relations between Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region, which has its own military, and the central government, have long been strained and the announcement about the air force could indicate a degree of rapprochement in the face of the Islamic State attack.A statement Monday by the Islamic State said it had captured dozens of Kurdish prisoners during the clashes and seized "large number" of weapons.