Fresh off the latest round of Gaza rockets and Israeli airstrikes against the strip, the White House has issued statement endorsing any Israeli attacks on the strip, saying they have the right to take whatever military action they see fit to “defend their nation.”
There have been two spates of rocket fire from Gaza, both by the ISIS-linked Omar Brigades. Neither did any damage. The Israel airstrikes have centered on Hamas, despite Hamas fighting against the Omar Brigades, and warning Israel that the strikes are being done by the smaller faction explicitly to try to start a war they can take advantage of.
Despite the US endorsement of escalation, a top Israeli commander today insisted his country had no intention of starting a new war over a few rockets. It’s unclear if the White House comments reflected a desire for Israel to start a war on flimsy pretext, or simply an expectation that they’d do so given their long history of exactly that.
The Omar Brigades bragged that the rocket strikes against Israel were retaliation against Hamas for killing one of their fighters, reflecting their inability to take on Hamas directly, and their similar expectation that they could sucker Israel into doing their dirty work for them.
Of course. Obama periodically acknowledges the truth, but then goes right back to supporting anything that Netanyahu does anyway. More money, more weapons, more veto, more diplomatic support, all the while saying Netanyahu is being "unhelpful" and that Israel is on the wrong path.
Kind of makes one wonder what it is exactly that the Israelis have on Obama. No intelligent person would be this vacillating and irrational unless it was intentional…I would hope. If it's not intentional, then we are possibly looking at a President who is incompetent or worse, insane. Neither is good for America.
Where's that "super intelligent alien race" that is supposed to visit Earth and declare "Listen up, you yahoos!! You've got 1 week to get your poop in order and start acting like you deserve to exist. If you can't, we can accommodate you."
It is no more complex or mysterious than the Israel Lobby. He dare not offend it.
It is rather amazing he's standing up to it on Iran, perhaps because the price of an Iran War would be too high. But for the Palestinians? Not a high price to Obama.
The Israeli military are against attacking Iran. Netanyahu just uses Iran as an excuse for extracting more money from the US.
Can we convince the israelis that saudia arabia is really behind Hamas?
Ha, yes, then they'd try to ally with them.
WH will back every one that are willing to go along with the neo politics and its ideology in creating catastrophic situation from Ukraine to Yemen to Libya to Iraq and Syria, the WH simply have no other creditable partner in this world to do anything els. USG is a militarism regime, for that reason it cannot create nor there is a willing to create anything else but war.
It's very well saying Israel has a right to defend itself, but just where is itself? What Israel is defending is land it has illegally occupied; it has no right to use force to retain it; the Palestinians have every right to use force to reclaim it.
Being a lawyer Obama should know that
It's exactly the same tactic as was used against the PLO. Back in the 1980s the Israelis saw Hamas as a means to undermine the PLO and giving Hamas a quiet leg up were their means of doing it. Divide e imperia. Now it's the turn of the 'Omar Brigades' to do Israel's dirty work. The intention is to perpetually 'prove' by encouraging their enemies' ever more extreme enemies that the – made-in-Israel Inc. – 'terror cycle' is in itself perpetual.
Elsewhere (the Golan), the Israeli state is giving underhand assistance to al Nusra fighters against Assad to the same end. Stupid, vicious imperialists and their security state gravy train corporations will keep playing the same destructive tricks for as long as TV/tabloid stupefied populations allow them to remain in power.
If Israeli airstrikes wound Isis members will Israel provide medical assistance in order to get the Gaza Isis fighters back firing useless pipe bombs into Israel? Israel openly provides this service to Isis members fighting in Syria. Isis in Gaza is pretext on demand to justify the ongoing Genocide of the Christian and Muslim indigenous people of Palestine.
It's very well saying Israel has a right to defend itself, but just where is itself? What Israel is defending is land it has illegally occupied
Israel has to define it's borders before it has a border to defend.
Tell that to the US Government
Is there anything more ineffectual than a Palestinian rocket?. They have a very limited range, a miniscule payload, and no guidance system. You would be in greater danger being out in a Kansas summer thunderstorm than one of these pathetic rocket attacks. The Palestinians should upgrade their technology to something more advance like the pumpkin canon..
Zouppie,
Does it ever occur to anyone else, that these totally ineffectual Palestinian rockets are actually manufactured and indeed launched by Israeli forces. The Israeli blockade of Gaza is so tight that you can't get macaroni or cement into Gaza, how the hell do the Palestinians get rocket material? A wonderful scheme – generate a non dangerous "threat", hype it up, then use it as an excuse to kill them all. Worthy of a WWII transgressor whose name should be on the tip of everyone's tongue.
"Is there anything more ineffectual than a Palestinian rocket?"
Tony Blair?
Obama — “Israel has the right…”
Not so, for invaders have no rights, occupiers deserve to be terrorized and to rid their nation of such a cancer, Palestine has a right to do whatever gets the job done.
Brought to you by the purchased filth that do the official bidding of the munitions and Israel lobbies, your government. At a moral level, these people are simply sewage.
It's been fifty years of occupation and it still hasn't entered the US consciousness: Palestine can't commit aggression against Israel, because Israel is occupying it.
Palestine has the right to defend itself.
Israel cannot defend itself against a country it is occupying. Doing so is committing a double war crime: occupation and aggression.
MANY MORE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENTS ………
A Wedding in Ashdod during the War with Hamas
Posted by Mordechai Friedfertig at 10:06 AM
[Question from Ha-Rav's radio call-in show from this week]
Question: Is it permissible to travel to a wedding in Ashdod (in Southern Israel) which is in range of the Kassam and Grad rockets or is it forbidden based on the commandment of "You shall surely safeguard your soul" (Devarim 4:15, 23:11)?
Answer: It is permissible. There is a clear distinction in Halachah between a high-probability danger and a low-probability danger. If this were not the case, we would not be able to travel in a car since every year, to our great distress, six hundred people are killed in car accidents in Israel. Many more people have been killed in car accidents since the establishment of the State of Israel than all of the Kassam rockets and all of the terrorist attacks and all of the wars, even when they are added together. We nonetheless travel in cars, obviously with the required cautions, since this is called "a non-frequent damage" in Halachah (Pesachim 8b). In our time there are statistical tools to verify the frequency of a danger. There is a halachic responsum on this subject by Ha-Gaon Ha-Rav Yitzchak Zilberstein, Rabbi of "Ramat Elchanan" (neighborhood in Bnei Brak). A student was learning in a yeshiva in "Yesha" (Yehudah, Shomron or Gush Katif) and his parents were concerned about the danger. Rav Zilberstein proves that "a frequent damage" is five percent. This means that if – G-d forbid – five percent of the students of the yeshiva were murdered, it would be forbidden to learn in that yeshiva. This is obviously far from reality – Baruch Hashem – since the Kassam and Grad rockets are not killing five percent of the population. In fact, Ha-Gaon Ha-Rav Yitzchak Isaac Herzog in Shut Heichal Yitzchak proves based on Shut Rabbi Akiva Eiger (#60) that a frequent danger is not five percent, but one in a thousand, but – Baruch Hashem – Kassam and Grad rockets are not killing one in a thousand people either.
Furthermore, it is permissible to take a "small risk" for the sake of a mitzvah and bringing joy to a groom and bride is a mitzvah. The Tiferet Yisrael discusses this principle on the Mishnah in Massechet Berachot at the end of chapter one. There is a story about Rabbi Tarfon who said the Shema at night while reclining according to the view of Beit Shammai. He endangered himself while doing so and the Sages admonished him for following the view of Beit Shammai instead of Beit Hillel. But the question remains: Why did Rabbi Tarfon endanger himself, since reciting the Shema is not in the category of "Be killed and do not transgress," i.e. requiring one to sacrifice his life for its fulfillment? The Tiferet Yisrael explains that it was permissible since there was only a small risk of danger. There is an additional proof from when Rabbi Akiva was in jail, and he used the water he received for "netilat yadayim" (ritually washing his hands) instead of for drinking. The halachic authorities ask: How could Rabbi Akiva endanger his life for this practice? The answer is that Rabbi Akiva understood that he would obtain more water, the danger he was taking was extremely minute and it is permissible to take a small risk for a mitzvah. This is also the ruling found in "Pitchei Teshuvah" (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 157).
In conclusion:
a. A non-frequent danger is not considered a danger according to Halachah and the danger in Ashdod is a non-frequent one.
b. It is permissible to take a minimal risk for a mitzvah and bringing joy to a groom and bride is a mitzvah.
The UN partition plan created two states, Israel and Palestine. David Ben Gurion rejected the UN plan and simply declared Israel to be in existence. The United States instantly recognized the new nation, whereupon Israel refused to recognize Palestine. It is at that point, the point where Israel refused to grant to Palestine that which Israel claimed for itself; a right to exist, that the other nations in the region refused to recognize Israel.
Under international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention recognizes Palestinian resistance to the occupation as legitimate and legal, especially because the Israelis are deliberately transferring a civilian population into occupied territories, which legally makes every single Jewish settler a member of the occupying army and a legitimate target for the indigenous people of Palestine.
Simply put, the UN Human Rights Council didn't "call out" the Palestinians or Hamas because under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention, what they're doing is legal and legitimate resistance to an occupying army… it's no different than what the French Resistance did during WW II. By contrast, everything Israel is doing is illegal."
Unless they give them their own State, Gaza is part of Israel (so is the West Bank) so they are not "defending their nation"; they are "killing their own people".
Hamas needs to – right now if not sooner- disavow any connection with the ISIS elements engaging Israel with rocket fire, and launch immediate operations to destroy those ISIS elements. If ISIS gets a foothold in Gaza or the West Bank, the Palestinians can kiss an independent nation goodbye forever.
So we stay with the Zionist regime
Gulf of Tomkin anyone.
Israel has a right to defend itself, but not the Palestinians.