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Am I misunderstanding something here? From a couple days ago, I just noticed a story from Breitbart Network claiming the government of Israel was being criticised for not sharing Iron Dome technology with Gaza’s government (i.e. Hamas) so that Hamas could defend its population from bombardment… presumably by Israeli attacks.
Please read the article and then tell me if I have misunderstood this. It seems rather like criticising the government of the United Kingdom in the 1943 for not sharing centimetric radar technology with the German government so that the German government could better protect their population from bombardment… by the RAF.
Either Breitbart Network have got the story wrong or the world is an even more absurd place than even cynical old me realised.
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Not absurd. Iran needs the technology. Hamas is an ally of Iran. Connect the dots.
Breitbart has blown the story out of all proportion, as it so often does these days. I’ll find the relevant quote later tonight and post it. This is a non-story.
OK, here, before I run off:
Being from the UN, she said something stupid/hypocritical, but not nearly as outrages as Breitbart, Washington Times et al made of it.
just because no one else is saying it, doesn’t mean they are thinking it.
the goal is the extermination of israel and all jews. telling israel to share their defensive technology with their mortal enemy is tame in comparison.
Yes that makes much more sense, the story as reported would have been indicative of almost literal lunacy.
The technology is already available to Hamas to prevent Israeli shelling, it’s called “liberty”, but they’ve chosen not to use it.
I find it interesting that under all this there are still 30 or so members of the UN who refuse to recognise Israel as a sovereign entity, this includes Hamas, yet they still insist that UN regulations apply to Israel, something of a hypocritical position. Whilst the UN official is happy to condemn Israel when they apparently ignore international agreements, the same does not seem to apply to Israel’s enemies on their most basic duties of recognition of other UN members.
Perry, I was going to add yet there somewhere, but was in a rush…
I think that she (Ms Pillay) is blaming (who else?) the American government for its unilateral aid efforts and for not providing Hamas with an equivalent to the Iron Dome, which may blow rockets up, but the resultant junk still has to fall somewhere.
Perhaps she has some observations on Lend Lease and the inherent anti-German racism behind it.
I rather doubt she is doing just that, Ed. She is simply saying that Israeli innocents have this protection, while Gazan innocents don’t. It is a half-fair point, under the assumption that had the innocents in Gaza have this protection, they could have used it unimpeded. Of course such an assumption is naive, to say the least, and I have no idea whether Ms Pillay actually believes this herself, but I’m certain plenty of good-meaning, decent, but ignorantly naive people do.
Maybe I’m missing something. I’d swear the only difference is that the castigation is of the U.S. rather than Israel for not supplying Hamas with $ for Iron Dome, and for not supplying them with “heavy weaponry.”
This is dreadful behavior on the part of the U.S., of course. Helping an ally but not the ally’s enemy! Can you imagine such a thing! The noive!
See, it’s like failing to send bomber detachments to help out the Nazis even though the U.S. did send forces in aid of Britain. Tsk.
And then, of course, the U.S. should be using its influence with Israel to make her stop. Bad U.S. Bad! What does this dame think Kerry is trying to do?
In fact, perhaps Israel is waking up to the fact that the present Administration is no friend of Israel.
Alisa, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Haaretz is a more-or-less left-wing paper. When I compare the Haaretz column with the Breitbart story to which Perry links, what I see as the substantive difference is whether wot’s-‘er-name named Israel or the U.S. as the one at fault or failing to supply Hamas. Which to me is still literal lunacy.
Breitbart does remind us of the U.N.’s hypocrisy in assigning guilt for “war crimes.” Interestingly enough, the first link in the Breitbart story is to the Haaretz piece.
And just for grins, here’s a 58-second video from the IDF, on the dreadful mistreatment of Gazan civilians (usual code for frustration of spam-bot):
YT.com/watch?v=31ls3WpCmwk
And from Arutz Sheva (Eeewww! Evil right-wing! COOTIES!) datelined 7/31, on the explosive UNRWA school’s walls, this excerpt, at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183566:
Julie, that first link is not to Haaretz, but to another Breitbart item, although it is mostly similar to the Haaretz one – that is because both seem to be based on an AP item.
Haaretz is as left-wing as they come, yes.
As to UNRWA in Gaza, it is said to be staffed with Hamas people, except for a couple of top officials.
Haaretz.
Roughly the same as British newspaper (during the First World War) supporting the victory of the Keiser.
Is there a treaty of alliance between the US and Israel? I understood that the only treaty between them related to assistance in the event of an attack backed by the Soviet Union from Syria, which is surely defunct.
That’s not Max Keiser of course.
Good question, Ed.
Alisa, there must be some misunderstanding somewhere. (Or perhaps I counted wrong — I didn’t take my socks off.) Here’s the URL for the first Breitbart link, which underlies (is masked by) the word condemned in the first sentence of the Breitbart article:
“The UN’s top human rights official again condemned Israel….”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.608237
which is the same as your link above–copied and pasted below–which I followed before checking the Breitbart piece:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.608237
Thanks for confirming what I thought I knew about Haaretz. :>)
Of course, as Pillay knows, even if it made sense for the US to send money to Hamas for its own defensive Iron Dome, the money would not be used for that. Hamas would find a more offense purpose for it.
In any case, shouldn’t the comment be aimed at Iran, the usual sugar daddy for Hamas?
“She is simply saying that Israeli innocents have this protection, while Gazan innocents don’t.”
Undoubtedly, there are innocent Gazans, especially the children who were born into this madness.
But fundamentally the problem is that Gaza is populated by people who elected Hamas and believe a war to destroy Israel is a good thing.
Until Paelstinians start to understand that they need to live next to Israel – and even realize that living next to a wealthy, high tech Israel is a good thing – there will never be peace.
The problem is rooted in a culture that worships violence.
Chip, the problem is bigger than that. All major advances, from which comes this technology, come from the West, but the Koran assures them that muslims are the best people in the world- thus they should be the ones coming up with this technology! All of the Mohammedan world is still wondering ‘What went wrong?’.
Having a hi-tech country next door just makes the problem harder to ignore.
A lot of people say demographics are against the Israelis and for the Palestinians.
But Israel is well into the knee of the curve in terms of the law of accelerating returns, whereas much of the Muslim world is really just a snapshot of life as it was 1000 years ago.
The technological superiority of the Israelis will eventually be so large – perhaps at the same time that natural gas nullifies the Arab world’s oil wealth – that the Palestinians and others won’t be able to comprehend what’s happening inside Israel and the west.
Iron Dome and other tech is just a taste of the futility yet to come.
Provided the US and Europe don’t commit cultural Hari Kari of course.
Well, Israel sells US weapons to China.
Chip. Interesting point. When our need for Middle Eastern oil runs out (which would happen much quicker without green groups building
alters to the wind and sun god and going for shale) the scum bags in the region will see their income go to basically zero.
The whole lot of them don’t make anything else anyone else in the world wants to buy* So what are hey going to buy their ak47s and rockets with? Iran and Saudi won’t hVe any money to give them. So it will either be machetes and pitchforks or they come to terms and choose to join the 21st century.
Obviously if the lunatics in ME get the bomb before their cash cow runs out then there is a possibility that they’ll drop the damn thing anyway.
* out of curiosity, can anyone name an Muslim country that makes something the world wants to buy? Not something that could have been grown in a field in 1650, something high-tech. Do they even have narks industry hat sin’ dependant on soviet designs?
Julie, now that I have my socks on, I see that you are correct – sorry about the confusion.
Peninsular Malaysia isn’t doing too bad a job of it, considering the statist mindset in the region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Malaysia
Dom, Iran is not really a sugar daddy for Hamas in the regular sense, because as far as I know, they mainly send them weapons. The real sugar daddy, in the financial-support sense, is Qatar, the same country supported by the Obama administration, financially as well as diplomatically.
Stuck-record,
I can. Bangladesh and Indonesia make plenty of clothes for the the British market. You may recall the deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka killed over a thousand garment workers.
Chip, birth rates inside Israel (including its Arab population) are at or above those of its neighbors, where they are actually declining.
As to innocents, its a very complicated issue (duh). Not all Gazans agree with Hamas “policies”, although the majority probably did until a couple of weeks ago. One also has to remember that Hamas terrorizes its own people – no dissent is tolerated etc.
Regardless, my comment was not to make the case for Gazan innocents, but to clarify the point of that UN talking head as I understood it, FWIW. That organization is abominable enough as it is (and has been almost since its inception), no need to make stuff up to make them sound even more idiotic than they actually are.
My view exactly Alisa 😉
Alisa,
“Chip, birth rates inside Israel (including its Arab population) are at or above those of its neighbors, where they are actually declining.”
Out of interest, what birth rates inside Israel excluding its Arab population?
I was aware that birth rates in the Muslim and Arab world generally have passed the peak, which I consider a hopeful sign, as population bulges are a good predictor of violent societies.
However I have read (though I did not read with entire confidence) that the average number of children born to a mother in Gaza is seven. Gulp.
“Peninsular Malaysia isn’t doing too bad a job of it, considering the statist mindset in the region.”
Unfortunately, this is almost entirely due to the non-Muslim Chinese who make up about 30% of the population. You can create a sliding scale of modernity in the region based on the ratio of ethnic Chinese in the country, from Hong Kong to Singapore to Malaysia and then Indonesia and the Philippines, where the tiny population of Chinese run the biggest companies but are frozen out of power on pain of death, as the 1998 Jakarta riots showed.
And double unfortunately, Malaysia is actually drifting into Islamism, with all sorts of kooky pronouncements emerging from the courts lately.
Natalie, from what I’ve read, the highest birth rates in Israel are among the Ultra Orthodox Jews (who are a large minority here). Birth rates among the rest of the Jewish Israelis seem to be similar to those among Israeli Arabs (2.5-3.5 children per couple, IIRC). I’ll try to look up reference later.
Gaza may well be different in reality, although I’d take their reported numbers with more salt than usual. Either way though, Gaza is not a viable society as it is. The territories under the PA rule may have a more hopeful future.
That’s interesting. It “feels” right, but I can’t quite think of a rationale for that…
Surplus males also pose problems. It’s said China will have 35 million more men than women by 2020 thanks to gender selective pregnancies.
Now, what can you do with tens of millions of unhappy, aimless men who might turn their anger on the govt. Give them a rifle and point them toward Japan and the South China Sea.
True, Chip – but there is no known gender preference in the Muslim world, at least not officially?
A friend of mine, who is a gun dealer, recently got very interested in a line of pistols from the UAE. One model in particular has an innovative arrangement of sights that, while useless for target shooting, has the potential to make target acquisition in short range combat a fraction of a second faster, with obvious benefits.
Breitbart started well, but sadly reads more like the right-wing version of a labor union’s house organ these days, full of ‘news’ to motivate the troops.
Indeed, PfP, ever since the founder’s untimely death. Very sad.
Alisa, this link discusses population bulges in detail. Especially with regards to the Middle East.
Thanks jdm, I’ll look.
Ed, here is a list of all the US-Israel treaties and agreements.
Alisa, thanks. Nothing there obliging Israel to help to defend the US against a military threat as far as I can see, or vice versa.
A treaty is, of course, ultimately political, not legal, and so is its enforcement and application.
In particular, see this one:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/mougaza1.html
U.S.-Israel Formal Agreements:
Memorandum of Understanding on Arms Supply to Terrorists
(January 16, 2009)
I don’t suppose this has the standing of a formal, signed treaty, but it surely is a statement of intent.
Among the list of recognitions which explain the Understandings agreed upon at the end, I would point out this one in particular as being exactly to the point:
. . .
But isn’t the treaty issue beside the point? When I said “ally,” I didn’t mean to imply that the U.S. and Israel are formally allied, via treaty, for defense, but rather in the looser sense that presumably our world-views, and political ideals, have a good deal in common, and that we see both practical and moral value in each other.
A and B may not have vowed to love, honor, and cherish, and have the rings to prove it, but still value one another as friends, and therefore come to each other’s aid at need.
It would surely be lunacy for the U.S. to provide weapons and cover to an evil regime so that it could better resist the defensive acts of a good one with which it claims friendship and to which it promises support against terrorists.
Not that the U.S. leadership hasn’t done exactly that: viz., at the least, Clinton, to a degree GWB, and certainly the present creature.
That is my impression too, Ed.
Oh ho. An alliance where Israel sells US technology to China and deliberately sank the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans and wounding another 174, with no repercussions (due to cover-up by traitors such as McNamara and LBJ), hardly the actions of a loyal ally.
“Good”…”Evil”, ah so pleasingly simple the reasoning of Saturday Morning Kid’s Shows.
Pardone
August 6, 2014 at 3:32 am
Have you ever been in a war? There is confusion. Misunderstandings. Accidents happen. And yet Israel and America are still friendly (well except for our current President and a portion of his followers).
And even if it was intentional interest overrides events. Especially if they are not repeated due to better procedures.
There are no ‘loyal’ allies, just nations with a confluence of interests at a given point in history, a point I wish more people in the UK realised when that spout that ‘special relationship’ crap. How ‘special’ was that relationship 1956?
Somebody remembers the SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative (a.k.a. “Star wars”) that President Reagan proposed (and started) in 1983 ?
From Wikipedia: “The ambitious initiative was widely criticized as being unrealistic, even unscientific, as well as for threatening to destabilize MAD and re-ignite “an offensive arms race”.[3] SDI was derided, largely in the mainstream media, as “Star Wars,” after the popular 1977 film by George Lucas. In 1987, the American Physical Society concluded that a global shield such as “Star Wars” was not only impossible with existing technology, but that ten more years of research was needed to learn whether it might ever be feasible.[4]”
There was criticism too: “Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy describing the proposal as “reckless Star Wars schemes”.”. It was deemed (by the good souls) to be “unfair” to the Soviet Union, because it aimed to deprive her of the ability to bomb the US.
I don’t know what anti-missile defense systems the US or Europe posses now. I didn’t research the topic. Let’s hope they will never be needed.
But, maybe the Iron Dome proves that Reagan’s idea (adopted from Edward Teller) wasn’t so “unrealistic, even unscientific”.
I know, there’s no comparing the scale or scope of these two things (Iron Dome is a very small and modest system), still it’s a proof of feasibility.
Ok. The US has the THAAD system for midrange antimissile defense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense
Pardone, I don’t quite understand why you are so sure that the many sites that have tried and hung Israel on the USS Liberty attack are correct. Especially if they’re claiming the Liberty was sunk!
As a starting point, the Wikipedia article (the article’s title is USS_Liberty_incident ) seems to be a reasonably objective report on the facts, worth reading for the factual background. It also discusses the controversial theory that the Israelis knowingly attacked an American ship, where it seems to cite mostly people who claim that they did, and in that section it strikes me as somewhat partisan.
The Liberty was NOT sunk. From Wikipedia, about 1/4 of the way down the page, section “Aftermath,” my boldface:
The article at
http://www.sixdaywar.org/uss-liberty.asp
does not disagree with Wikip’s account of the facts of the incident; but among other things, it does state that various U.S. sailors gave somewhat different and sometimes contradictory statements at different times and in different venues.
There are lengthy rebuttals of various authors’ claims that the attack was purposeful.
There is a table with the bottom-line judgment of six different U.S. enquiries into the innocence or guilt of Israel. It agrees with Wikip’s statements on those reports, with exception of the Clifford report. Wikip says Clifford concluded the attack was because of “gross negligence” and that the Israeli government should be held responsible and its military personnel punished. True: This is paragraph (f) — the final paragraph — of the list of findings. Sixday War says that Clifford stated that there was “No evidence ship was known to be American.” This is also true, as stated in the Clifford Report’s paragraph (a). The report is available at
http://www.thelibertyincident.com/clifford.html
There are examples of other friendly-fire tragedies in war-time, in particular where U.S. forces attacked British allies [loose, common usage!] by mistake.
There were attacks against the Liberty by Israeli torpedo boats. Note this quote from the article:
. . .
The Six-Day War site is a project of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). I am not going to spend what’s left of the day trying to figure whether its reports are generally honest, but anyone giving a pass to sources like rense.com, The History Channel, Counterpunch, Lew Rockwell, and on and on and on, ought to be able to entertain the possibility that he is not getting the straight skinny, and look to some sites NOT prejudiced against the U.S. and Israel for balance. (Not a slam at you, pardone: All these come up on the first page of google’s search results for “Israel fired on USS Liberty.” However, I do wonder who told you the Israelis sank the ship.)
Another site which I believe to have good standards of honesty is — wait for it! — The Jewish Virtual Library. Its article is at
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/liberty1.html
Perry, please accept my personal apologies for Suez. I am very sorry and promise not to do it again.
Um, many of us here do believe there is — or used to be, at least — such a “special relationship,” as we think that you Brits and we Yanks do have a metaphorically familial, hence “special,” relationship: we tend to think of Britain as our cultural, political, philosophical parent, not to mention that Britain is still the Mother Country; as well as having been comrades-in-arms on various rather momentous occasions, which also makes for such a relationship.
Loyalty. Even the strongest of alliances, say that between a thoroughly loving and committed married couple, is occasionally tested when it seems to one of the “allies” that the other has let him or her down: a perceived (and perhaps actual) failure of, among other things, loyalty.
The marriage bond itself depends upon the sense that the partners have a “confluence of interest.” When that sense evaporates, divorce ensues.
The point being that all cooperative efforts depend upon a confluence of interests, and that these may change and the “cooperative effort” collapse. That that is true of nations as well as other groups is obvious.
pardone,
Not to beat up on you or anything, but this from you:
is downright insulting. But having pointed it out, no more need be said on that aspect of your remark.
However, I don’t see how any intelligent entity can fail to observe the difference in moral stature between Hamas and Israel. I find the moral quality of “evil” in the former, which has a stated project of death to all Jews, and of “good” in the latter, which not only has no wish to kill anybody but actually seems interested in acting morally. I am afraid that to reverse the categorizations, or to lump the two regimes together as morally equivalent, strikes me as perverse.
Perry, Britain was at fault for not realising that American elections were coming up! What was an american president to do, but complain? He might have lost votes! Britain should time its’ wars so as not to coincide with the american Electoral Cycle.
About Suez – Britain was at fault for not consulting, not even notifying, her US partner. It thought it was still the British Empire, and failed to adjust it’s thinking and actions to the reality of her diminished power. France was guilty of the same illusions.
Eisenhower was guilty of failing to perceive the true interests of his country and the West and starting an unnecessary row with his allies because of idealistic, Wilsonian, unrealistic thinking.
There was a lot of idiocy, on both shores of the Atlantic, though I tend to agree with Perry that Eisenhower’s was worse.
Not really how I see it. Both the UK and France were successful militarily, only to have to abandon what they had achieved by Eisenhower, essentially for failing to acknowledge client state status rather than because they did something that made no geo-strategic sense (I suspect also Israel would be *vastly* better off today had the US not interfered as it would have changed the entire regional reality).
Nevertheless given the realities of the Cold War, as the US had demonstrated it was not going to tolerate such independent behaviour from Britain, even if what they did was not really against US interests, subsequent UK governments were wise to accept said client state status. It is harder to see the upside of an active roll for the US in UK affairs in the post-Cold War world however (to put it mildly), when the most prominent manifestation of that is US funding and enablement for GCHQ.
It was not so much that Eisenhower was upset by Britain’s independent action. It’s more that he genuinely believed in Wilsonian ideas of self determination and the “anti-imperialist” propaganda of communism. He acted in an idealistic mood, without grasping the true interests of the West. He gave the communists a present (the Suez canal) that he was not forced to give.
And, this act of altruism didn’t buy the US much respect or friendship from the “third world” thugs, like Nasser. It only encouraged them to embark on further military adventures, like Nasser’s war in Yemen and the six day war.
About “active roll for the US in UK affairs” – the Suez affair wasn’t a UK affair, it was an international affair. Britain’s mistake was that she didn’t grasp this fact…
Not at all. The UK of all people understand what international affairs are. Britain’s only mistake was not to realise the US would not just ‘disapprove’ but actually wished to dis-aggrandise the UK and reduce its ability to act independently. They did what they did in order to make it clear the UK was not to conduct substantive international affairs without US approval. And the UK got the message loud and clear. In the Cold War there was nothing that could be done about it as being a US client state was preferable to being a Soviet one.
The Cold War is over now and the UK needs to start taking a more a la carte approach to involvement with American led international affairs (the Syria slapdown was a nice start, but one swallow does not a summer make). And the best first way to really do that would be to stop taking US taxpayers money for GCHQ… a win for US taxpayers and a win for UK civil liberties! Which of course ain’t gonna happen sadly.
The Arab Israeli alliance.
https://screen.yahoo.com/wall-street-journal/israel-egypt-formed-alliance-pressure-133202022.html
The US is basically being cut out of the Middle East – due to unreliability. It may have something to do with Valerie Jarret being a close advisor of 0bama.
“It may have something to do with…” Kerry being an idi*t.
I don’t think Obama is personally interested or active in Middle East (or any other) policy, except as far as the extraction of the US military is concerned.