Another Round Begins in The Middle East

[Sirotnikov]

The rocket fire is so "traumatic" for the same reason that people feer plane crashes far more than car crashes, even though they are orders of magnitude more likely to die in a car than in a plane - the sense of being powerless and having no control.

Israelis like to think that they sit secure behind their expensive army, and that their militarized society will keep them safe. The possibility of being randomly killed by a rocket, no matter how small, destroys that illusion of safety. Another myth they love to hang on to is that if they kill enough of their enemies, their enemies will be too scared of them to attack. Its security through fear, not through acceptance.

What ever you think does not change the argument.

You would expect Israel to grow tolerant and accept the fact that it's southern cities would constantly be barraged by rockets (with a poor hit ratio) as a constant reality, until Hamas is appeased somehow, but only until Hamas decides it wants to do it again.

Would you seriously agree to the same if it was your neighborhood "lightly" and "ineffectively" bombarded?

The level of damage in Gaza since the ground incursion has everything to do with the fact that the IDF decided this time to do everything possible to minimize their casualties and keep general support high, which has meant using immense firepower in densely built areas, which of course leads to massive damage.

This has to do with the very good intelligence we have on the fact that all the Gaza neighborhoods are densely booby-trapped. Most of the houses contain traps, and even tunnels through which Hamas operatives attempted to sneak in suicide bombers.

I have several videos form inside Gaza filmed by Israeli journalists embedded to the IDF forces, which show the amount of booby traps they have to face. It's a bit of a nuisance to post them here though, since they use proprietary microsoft streaming technology.

Hamas tried to trick the soldiers, by sending a suicide bomber to knock on the door of an IDF occupied house, asking for help. Luckily his behaviour was suspicious enough and the soldiers opened fire. How do you expect IDF soldiers not to treat every Palestinian civilian with suspicion following such incidents?

[Sirotnikov]

That's truly pathetic. It appears designed to give Israeli viewers the illusion that the damage they're doing in Gaza is all trumped up. Do you really doubt that over a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the recent fighting, and that the majority have been civilians? So far out of 9 Israeli soldiers who have died about half died from friendly fire, yet the video would have us believe that the IDF is facing hordes of well trained heavily armed Hamas soldiers. Surely with all those heavy machine guns and RPGs they could manage to hit more then 4 or 5 Israelis soldiers. Maybe they're too busy eating catered meals. Yes, the Gazans look so well fed don't they?

Do you really think you can afford to delude yourselves forever?

Don't be an ass.

No one is doubting the number of Palestinians killed nor does anyone doubt that many of them have been civilians.

What is being parodied is the activism of certain foreign networks in their race to dramatize even small incidents to justify a critical point of view.

The Hamas portion is making fun of the Hamas propoganda videos. This video was poorly edited by whomever uploaded it. The oiriginal full sketch had 4 more pieces of making fun of Israeli TV (including the channel's own news team) being incredibly one sided.

Again, I'm having troubles with uploading the whole sketch, but you can see it untraslated here:

http://www.mako.co.il/tv/erez-nehederet/770e3d99ade16110VgnVCM1000004801000aRCRD/videoGallery/itemId=13fb89ed0cc4c110VgnVCM2000002a0c10acRCRD&send=1&cat=cd43b3930d88e110VgnVCM100000290c10acRCRD&vcmid=389824a8a9cce110VgnVCM100000290c10acRCRD

(it's preceded by a loud commercial)

The first bit shows an Israeli TV anchor over-dramatising a Qassam that fell near her post of "on scene reporting" and beginning to dramatically theorize about how this very spot could have been an Israeli city, and the place where the mayor has put a kindergarten.

2nd part is the BBC over dramatizing.

3rd part is the overly-patriotic Hamas TV, that over emphases their military might.

4th part is Israeli sports TV that attempts to commentate IDF bombing videos, using football related terms, and everytime changing their version as to what is being bombed (a hamas HQ/ a school / an ambulance / a missile base)

5th part comes back to the Israeli reporter who dramatizes about how a 5 y/o Israeli girl was miraculously saved from Hamas rockets by being a 56 y/o taxi driver who was miles away from where the rocket hit. She then proceeds to sing the Israeli anthem.

6th part is a mimic of a popular commercial, whose parody talks about how the small print of the war says there are 50% civilian casualties, but how it doesn't matter because a war is a war and every hit in gaza is a good hit.

the 7th part mimics the TV guide channel, where IDF spokesperson talks about how you can watch IDF bombardment on the action channel, the IDF land incursion on the horror channel, and the peace this operation would achieve on the science fiction channel.


So this hardly fits your baseless attempts at blaming Israeli TV for deluding Israeli citizens.

Another example is a sketch they made a week before, making fun of the pro-war military commentator on their own network's news.

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=FXuef8pZ4iU

it's rather long to translate, but generally doesn't need translation, as the point is clear, for Israeli TV being overly patriotic and celebrating palestinian victims.


In short, you and your high horse can gallop away.

[TCO]

Gepap: Israel could kill a lot more civilians with looser ROE. You really come across like a typical anti military liberal Democrat.

[Unimatrix11]

Well, white phosphor does ignite if exposed to sunlight. Just to clear that one up.

Second, I dunno, but a kill-ratio of 9 or 10 to more than a thousand ? Thats not fighting, that´s executing.

´The amount of the recorded and documented anhilations of Hamas fighters is in total xx.xxx.´

(Slightly edited from: telegraph of the SS- and police-leader of warsaw, Stroop, may 16th 1943 - xx.xxx is 56.065 and ´Hamas fighters´ is ´Jews´ in the original).

Provoking ? Yes. Unjustified ? Judge for yourself.

Yeah, the jews did not haul rockets from inside their ghetto. The cause may be, they didnt have any. Should they have hauled, had they had any? Again: Your case to judge...

EDIT: Anyways, those who tried resist the Nazis in warsaw, are regarded as heros, now, aren´t they?

[Unimatrix11]

Dp.

[Dr Strangelove]

Actually... it's a very good argument. I don't care "what the situation that led up to those rockets being launched" was. If a country launched a single missle or more into the US, our response would be quick and brutal.
We would not tolerate somebody attacking our civilians... and would respond in kind. Sure, we would do the ole "military targets" thing... but as we saw in Iraq, that would mean collateral damage to civilians.

Respond in kind? Israel has lost only 4 people to Qassam attacks. Israel has now killed more than 1100 Palestinians. That's a ratio of more than 270 to 1. Is that justified to teach the Palestinians not to launch rockets? Who's going to teach the Israelis to not try to starve out an entire population via blockade?
Would we tolerate someone blockading all of our land, air, and sea routes? Mind you the US at least has the capacity to be self-sufficient. I'm willing to bet that in the face of a total blockade the US would launch some missles too, but the fatalities inflicted on the perpetrator would be more than a million times the 4 victims of Qassam rockets.

[Unimatrix11]

Yeah, they really try to tell us, what a threat these rockets are. I heard they are actually home-made. They show us pictures of an impact on the street on the commentary is all like ´atrocity!!!´, then you get to see the actual impact for the fracture of a second - it didnt even tear up the asphalt of the street. It actually looks like you´d have to hit someone right between the nuts with one of those, in order to inflict some pain (i know i am overstating). Now look at the houses in Gaza being hit. Quite the difference, there.

Then a news reporter is on an israeli playing ground, demonstrating how indiscrimante the attacks are, and explains that he has 15 secs to reach that shelter over there if an alarm rings. He tries it, in front of the cam, and just makes it within 15 secs, but immediately explains, that he doubts that children and old people (he´s 60 or so himself, i´d guess) are as fast as he is. Co-Incidentely a real alarm goes off at that time and he stands there in this ´shelter´ (the palestinensians could have millions of those right now, these bus-station-like things wont do them any good against the isreali rockets, i´d bet) like Herbert Grönemeyer in ´Das Boot´ (scared out of his senses). 15 seconds later you hear a distant ´boom´, like someone lets a firecracker go off somewhere in the distance. Now, seriously, is that supposed to impress anyone? As someone else pointed out already, there is places a lot more dangerous than that. And Gaza certainly is one of them right now (or the Oktoberfest for that matter - overstating again, yeahyeah, but you see my piont).

[DinoDoc]

What would the reaction of any other country be to an assault of thousands of rockets? What would America or a European country do?

[dannubis]

Well, this would be my plan:

1. go to a foreign land and kick out the native inhabitants

2. starve two generations of their people

3. once they start fighting back against me and my citizens, build a wall and create a getto...

4. each time a local election comes up plan a military action in the getto i created killing hundereds of civilians (but since we are aiming at bad guys the civis i killed can be discarted as collateral damage)

5. start from point 2 again...

Now that is a cunning plan...

[TCO]

genocide or force magration sounds more effective.

[Sirotnikov]

Yeah, they really try to tell us, what a threat these rockets are. I heard they are actually home-made. They show us pictures of an impact on the street on the commentary is all like ´atrocity!!!´, then you get to see the actual impact for the fracture of a second - it didnt even tear up the asphalt of the street. It actually looks like you´d have to hit someone right between the nuts with one of those, in order to inflict some pain (i know i am overstating). Now look at the houses in Gaza being hit. Quite the difference, there.

Well it's good to know in advance that I'm speaking to someone well informed.

They are not "home made" as in something you would do in your kitchen.
They have, albeit primitive, explosive laboratories and metallurgy factories where they make the rockets. These aren't the stuff you'd see in NATO armies, but it works, and it kills. They are much more powerful and more far-reaching than standard mortar fire - which no one doubts is a weapon.

They are also supplied with standard 120mm rockets from Iran and Hezbullah as well as russian developed grad (grad p) 122mm rockets.

Then a news reporter is on an israeli playing ground, demonstrating how indiscrimante the attacks are, and explains that he has 15 secs to reach that shelter over there if an alarm rings.

[...] Now, seriously, is that supposed to impress anyone? As someone else pointed out already, there is places a lot more dangerous than that. And Gaza certainly is one of them right now (or the Oktoberfest for that matter - overstating again, yeahyeah, but you see my piont).

Is this some kind of a joke?
No, seriously.

Are you joking?



Do you expect Israeli response to be what exactly?
To indiscriminately shell them back with very weak Israeli rockets? That would be proportionate, right?

And we would live that way for years, with Hamas firing ever increasing rockets and Israel responding with ever increasing proportionate fire power.
Great idea!


It's a stupid opinion held by a person that has never lived under any threat.

Our goal is to make it clear they should stop.
We held previous operations, and that did not make it clear enough.

So we agreed on a truce, that was mostly kept, which they then broke. And anyone in the international community, including arab countries admits that Hamas broke it.

[Sirotnikov]

Respond in kind? Israel has lost only 4 people to Qassam attacks. Israel has now killed more than 1100 Palestinians. That's a ratio of more than 270 to 1. Is that justified to teach the Palestinians not to launch rockets? Who's going to teach the Israelis to not try to starve out an entire population via blockade?

Israel lost 3 dozen people to Qassam rockets over the last several years, and several hundreds were injured.
Thousands of people have had to relocate from the Israeli southern towns, due to the rocket fire.

Would we tolerate someone blockading all of our land, air, and sea routes? Mind you the US at least has the capacity to be self-sufficient. I'm willing to bet that in the face of a total blockade the US would launch some missles too, but the fatalities inflicted on the perpetrator would be more than a million times the 4 victims of Qassam rockets.

The blockade came as a response to continued Qassam rockets, the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier from within Israeli territory, and continuous terrorist attacks on the crossings to Gaza, by Palestinian militants.

[SlowwHand]

Just rout them and be done with it.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Do you have any doubt in ypur mind whatsoever what would happen if a few hundred rockets were launched into the US from Mexico, or better yet a single crude missile from Cuba?

God, the US would **** them up. It would be awesome.

Another myth they love to hang on to is that if they kill enough of their enemies, their enemies will be too scared of them to attack. Its security through fear, not through acceptance.

Myth?

[TCO]

Just keep bombing them Siro. The rest of the world is bored. Do it until they all move to Epypt.