Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

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15 Friday Aug 2014

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Why, then, do the media continue to accept Hamas propaganda unchallenged? Partly because the death of any civilian – particularly children, who are half of Gaza’s population – is heart-rending. Partly because the heat and fog of war make precise figures unknowable until well after the fighting. Partly because the narrative of a guerrilla militia confronting a modern military makes for compelling copy, and partly – perhaps mainly – because of Hamas intimidation and restrictions on the ground.

Hamas mendacity, however, is old news. During its first major clash with Israel in 2008-09, for example, the organization claimed that fewer than 50 of the dead had been combatants. Years later, it conceded that the total had been identical to that acknowledged by Israel: between 600 and 700.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/12/hamas-lies-about-the-gaza-civilian-death-toll-and-the-media-bought-it – 8/12/2014.

Aside

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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Jewish rejectionism — start with Pharaoh (what a lousy deal for everyone else!) — includes the rejection of Jesus and Muhammad as the representation or agent of God on earth. Them’s might be fightin’ words, as some say out in my backyard, but the sensibility may have begun (who knows?) with the idea of taking the power asserted by a deeply narcissistic monster — Pharaoh — and throwing it out into the universe and beyond to become the Almighty, the “King of the Universe”, a god immensely greater than what Pharaoh (today: Baghdaddi) would purport to represent. Not only do the Jews refuse Pharaoh’s legitimacy (and leave — with God’s help and under his aegis) but the “instructions” received refuse also to begin with mention or allusion to either mankind or power — and then the form of discussion invoked is that of vigorous inquiry and argument, a look-twice-and-think-about-it method of understanding one’s own humanity. Against that kind of a start, the Roman gods become decorative as well as instructive in other ways, or we should not speak of nor comprehend in Narcissus in the first place.

After Hillel (“the Elder” and the more obscure), Jesus-Paul-Constantine have the thorn of what to do with the Jews; Muhammad later wrestles the same question with perhaps Arab elan with the seduction ot surrender and subsequent easy slaughter of the Banu Qurayza.

And here we are and with a huge political problem.

If no one gets the story that yesterday imagined, then all are more free to get on to a new footing.

However, yesterday has its charms. Whether I pick up a fountain pen 🙂 or the young, mostly, dress up to “war” in societies of “creative anachronism” — http://www.sca.org/ — or primitives cling and some nutty alphas would be khalifas, the nostalgic affords the comfort of the fixed, known, and in terms of time, spacious. A man at a computer is busy — a man with a fountain pen and foolscap has time for dreaming.

Against this depiction of monotheist man and time, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah dwell in the romance of their own spacious, timeless experience. The technology of the progressive appears in their environment –or they would not be counting on fiber optic communications cables to abet their “defense” of southern Lebanon — but the mind remains locked in a yesterday becoming continuously more distant from the day that has developed around their enterprise.

Writing like that is like reaching back and trying to pull a brother out of a time hole.

“What are you doing back there?”

“Living as we’ve always lived.”

“Is that so good?”

“It’s worked for us a long time.  We have a deep investment in a promise yet to be fulfilled.”

“That’s some promise.”

“It’s the whole world.”

“The whole world isn’t your world.  Perhaps you should try something a little more modest.”

“We’ll think about it.”

“It’s a shame to see you keeping yourself down there.  Frankly, it’s not looking like much fun, rather bloody and self-defeating, but, hey, it’s your call, and trust the world to be around when you’re ready to join with it rather than fight to the end of your day.”

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Another Comment – Gaza and Suzerainty

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Middle East, Regions

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As Hamas and ISIS and others of the Muslim Botherhood continue to ruin the “Religion of Peace” for its peaceful adherents, the promotion of Mahmoud Abbas has been adopted in some quarters as a make-do path for Gaza’s reconstruction.

Not so fast.

From The Awesome Conversation —

Abbas is a non-starter, a first-rate anti-Semite in his own right, and even though he comes out of the Soviet-post-Soviet pan-Arab Nationalist Era of Thuggery, he has still in mind the destruction of Jewry.

Nope.

The near answer for Gaza — and we are nowhere close to it today, but I believe it’s coming: I am just a little ahead of the story — is local Gazan rule within the confines of Israeli or Israeli-Egyptian suzerainty.

Hamas cannot be Hamas without having in mind the expansion of Islam and elimination of Israel and of world Jewry.

Abbas cannot be Abbas without perpetuating the myth of the benign dictator. The closest I’ve seen to that may be Pervez Musharraf, and it is to be noted that he handed in his stars, left office as a civilian president, and handed the military baton to a general who swore not to interfere with the politics of the state. Ever so slowly, Pakistan has been lurching into the present (while Musharraf has been arrested on trumped past deeds . . . dictatorship — and now his — seems a hard habit to break in some places. 🙂

So my two cents reduced to a half-penny: 1) Free Gaza From Hamas; 2) Occupy, disarm, and transform Gaza into a quasi independent city-state, and 3) assign to Gazans the responsibility of educating their children toward modern and peaceful lives, and 4) leave to the United States, Israel, and Egypt the matter of Gaza’s internal and external security.

Among top reasons for the taming of Abbas (ooh, he would not like that!) is that we (the people of the United States) largely write the paycheck for his own Israeli-training-in-Jordan security force. Beyond that, he hasn’t got a better program to offer anyone than Hamas.

Referring to the latest in plans bandied about, Alan Johnson has suggested in World Affairs (August 12, 2014), “Crucially, it also offers a framework to re-establish the authority of those Palestinians who oppose terror, recognize Israel, and want to negotiate a two-state solution—the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.”

To actually want a sincere “two-state solution” would seem to require a great reduction in the leadership’s reserved (and not so hidden) animus for Jews.

Mahmoud Abbas has had a problem with that.

“Since Ahmadinejad left the political stage, Abu Mazen is the number one leader in injecting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel poison,” Yuval Steinitz told a Tel Aviv security conference Wednesday, using the name by which Abbas is popularly known in Arabic.

“Under Abu Mazen the level of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement in the (Palestinian) Authority has reached new highs, where the bottom line is the destruction of Israel,” said Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18454 – 1/30/2014.

Feel welcome to web-search “Mahmoud Abbas, anti-Semite” and let me know know if you find “Abu Mazen’s” inner Martin Luther King.

Gazans, of course, may be expected to have an issue with Israelis for the military operations visited on their sorry heads courtesy of cynical human-shield producing Hamas.

Ask an American southerner about lingering resentments.

Blood has a long afterlife in the land but memory of conditions — of Hamas behaving in a manner ensuring the wasting of lives — proves generally more clarified, more powerful, and more persistent.

Navigational path out of this hell?

First in the heart: eject Hamas and with it the falsely advanced “Palestinian cause” — reference: Efraim Karsh’s Palestine Betrayed (Yale UP, 2010) and others on the industry that has become the “middle east conflict” (never mind all the other concurrent and breathtakingly bloody and cruel middle east conflicts) — and be born again: Gazans!

Then take a fresh look at the neighbor who has been ever ready for peaceful development, humanitarian service, and trade.

One day Gazans will look back at Hamas, which will require looking backward, for to have it otherwise would be like having tried driving somewhere without taking one’s eyes off the rear-view mirror.

Shift

Forward

 Independent

Interdependent

Gaza

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Hamasites – Journalism – The Truth Always Comes Out

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Journalism, Middle East, Regions

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Tell you what . . .

From now on, I will tell you what to do with your life (and

in addition to doing what I tell you to do,

you will pay me for the privilege of my leaving you alone).

*

I will tell you what to see and what to hear,

what to say and what to withhold.

When I tell you what is happening around you,

you are to believe me

and no one else.

I am your authority.

I am your only authority.

*

If you are in the news business, good — you can help me!

*

Every time out, you will make me look heroic (which, naturally, I am) and

not show anything to detract from that image.

*

Call me”Hamas”

Acknowledge that I am greater than you.

And I,

at any time, may

Arrest

Detain

Question

Torture

You

Without explanation.

*

If you so much as breath in Gaza,

I

am your world

I

am all the world

You

will know

______

In Spanish, Gutiérrez, who is writing for Melilla Hoy, tweeted, “On Saturday, 9th of August, Hamas launched a battery of rockets from the press hotel. What was their intent? To provoke Israel to kill us?#SaveGazaFromHamas.”

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/12/spanish-journalist-in-gaza-hamas-launched-rockets-from-press-hotel/ – 8/12/2014.

“Since the war started, one population group in Gaza has disappeared from the streets: people in uniform…They work for Hamas and are targets of Israel… Only at the Shifa Hospital, the big hospital in Gaza City, are a few sitting in uniform. There, they feel protected from the Israeli bombings. In addition, that is where they monitor the international press to prevent it from doing ‘wrong’ things. Local camera crews know this, but foreigners do not: Hamas does not want that killed or wounded fighters appear on camera footage.

Yes, there are many civilian casualties and most of the inhabitants of Gaza live in fear, but Hamas likes to exploit this for its PR. ‘He does not dare to talk to you,’ says the wife of someone who has been placed under house arrest because he is known for criticizing Hamas. She too does not dare to tell his story, because ‘we are being watched’.”

http://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/issues/pages/testimonies-from-gaza-and-hamas-intimidation-of-foreign-journalists.aspx – 8/11/2014.

The media have turned the civilian death toll into the only measure of the justness of the Israeli warfare. The New York Times and Haaretz, for instance, published the Gaza death toll on their front pages every day. The message is clear: The higher the number of civilian casualties, the more “war crimes” Israel is committing.

This measure is groundless. According to its distorted logic, Nazi Germany – which had one million dead civilians in World War II – was the victim of the aggressiveness of the United States, which lost “only” 12,000 civilians, and Britain, which lost “only” 67,000 civilians. This is a logic and ethical failure.

International media failed professionally and ethically in Gaza – http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4557962,00.html – 8/13/2014

The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month,” the statement said. “The international media are not advocacy organizations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-press-group-condemns-hamas-intimidation-in-gaza/#ixzz3AIUmVbgW 8/11/2014.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/07/31/forty-questions-for-the-international-media-in-gaza/ – 7/31/2014.

An Italian reporter, after leaving Gaza, confirms that it was a Hamas rocket that hit a school playground, killing 10 kids, but Obama sent Hamas 50 million bucks anyway, while he cancelled tourist visa applications for Israelis.

http://pamelageller.com/2014/07/italian-journalist-leaves-gaza-tells-truth-free-hamas-retaliation-hamas-killed-kids.html/#sthash.RNKyb2ak.dpuf – 7/30/2014.

1. The Gaza correspondent of Canada’s Globe and Mail, Patrick Martin, wrote in his article from 20 July: “The presence of militant fighters in Shejaia became clear Sunday afternoon when, under the cover of a humanitarian truce intended to allow both sides to remove the dead and wounded, several armed Palestinians scurried from the scene.Some bore their weapons openly, slung over their shoulder, but at least two, disguised as women, were seen walking off with weapons partly concealed under their robes. Another had his weapon wrapped in a baby blanket and held on his chest as if it were an infant.”

http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2014/07/22/hamas-human-shield-tactic-as-reported-by-foreign-journalists/ – 7/22/2014.

As The Guardian reported, the Hamas government in Gaza issued its ban on journalists co-operating or working with Israel’s media due to its “hostility.” It said “offenders will be prosecuted.”

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jan/01/press-freedom-hamas – 1/1/2013.

Threats, physical violence and arbitrary arrest and detention by Hamas security forces are common. A score of journalists were arrested or roughed up during 2010 by the Hamas interior ministry’s security service. Such measures oblige Palestinian journalists to censor themselves. In mid-March last year, security forces harshly broke up meetings in the centre of Gaza City organised by the “March 15 Coalition” calling for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and arrested and beat journalists, including about 20 on 15 March 2011. Security forces raided many local and foreign media offices looking for photos of the crackdown.

http://en.rsf.org/predator-hamas-security-forces-in-gaza,42429.html – 2012.

After 15 days he was released. He then made a statement that it is clear that there is a systematic policy practiced by Hamas in the Gaza Strip with the aim of gagging the media by subjecting journalists to arrest, torture and detention in harsh conditions.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/07/journalist-imprisoned-tortured-by-hamas.html#.U-uumuNdV8E – 7/16/2012.

At least eight journalists were beaten by the Hamas police officers during the rallies. Some had their cameras and laptops confiscated, while others were taken into custody and made to sign a document pledging to refrain from covering such events in the future.

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2011/03/29/gaza-palestinian-women-reporters-beaten-and-tortured-by-hamas/ – 3/29/2011.

Hamas Forces Arrest Two Reporters In Gaza –

http://www.imemc.org/article/62548 – 11/23/2011.

Hamas security services also arrested the journalists: Munir Al-Mawri, Ashraf Abu Khsewan and Mustafa Megdad without informing them of the reasons behind their arrest.

The Hamas’ Internal Security Agency summoned Sunday several Palestinian Journalists including Abdul Karim Haji and Hussein Abdul Jawad Karsou’, without revealing reasons for their arrest.

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/national/3650-hamas-security-forces-in-gaza-arrest-several-journalists – 1/22/2013.

“The political struggle between Hamas and Fatah has inflicted a great deal of damage on the press in the Palestinian Territories,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Many media have been closed and dozens of journalists have been arrested. In the absence of the rule of law, they have no way of defending themselves. Mahmoud Abbas and Ismael Haniyeh cannot remain silent while this goes on. It is in their own interest to ensure there is room for free speech.”

http://en.rsf.org/palestinian-territories-arbitrary-detention-of-journalists-29-08-2008,28353 – 8/29/2008.

Committee to Protect Journalists, search page on Hamas:

http://www.cpj.org/search.php?cx=002635367788333464843%3A1kfp8mbluhy&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=Hamas

Friedman, Matti.  “What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel: The news tells us less about Israel than the people writing the news, a former AP reporter says.”  The Atlantic, November 30, 2014.

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Aside

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Live Leak (18+) reference: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cbf_1376774737 – 8/17/2013 – a storning.

My response:

With regard to Islam in developing or failed states — e.g., Somalia, now Syria, certainly today unsecured northern Iraq — our chatyping class may not appreciate the investment in both evident lore, legend, and promise as well as underlying social formulas that have to do with the exercise of cruelty, force, and will. Some have difficulty leaving their own yesterday, and that thought may apply well to the sentimentality of many a modern Muslim otherwise discomforted by this display of barbarity that well may have been customary in Muhammad’s 7th Century experience.

While the Jews have worked against the infantile and tyrannical from Pharaoh and forward, a look-up of “Hillel and Shammai” — http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/helicopter-carrying-yazidis-crashes-iraq-report-n178681 — may tell that the Jewish navigation of an ethics and morality has entailed a long and enduring progressive intellectual evolution: we argue everything! 🙂

The renegade reading of “The Binding of Isaac” suggests that God’s test was not of absolute obedience (in the text of the Torah, God sets out to “prove” Abraham, but what he’s testing is not explicitly defined) but a test of conscience and courage _that Abraham fails_! Some believe Abraham should have questioned God and defended Isaac’s life.

Among the modern, if we are so, we may want to “come forward” of our own fixed positions and find our better way, now globalized, forward. Clearly, what the Muslim Botherhood groups do and what their counterparts among “malignant narcissists” is not the way any large population should wish to travel.

“Come forward” (of your previous fixed position) may become as much a trope here as “Muslim Botherhood”.

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13 Wednesday Aug 2014

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Several jihadists had travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11 to practice their faith in pure Islamic surroundings. What they actually witnessed on the ground made them wiser for it and they have reformed, many of them now openly speaking against the puritanical version of Islam.

But the actual fight has to take place within the hearts of the Muslim communities here. It’s a sad reality that the successive governments have not paid enough attention towards the Muslim communities, who lag behind in every field and who need greater attention than almost any other community. The ghettos that have been allowed to mushroom across the length and breadth of Britain have become breeding grounds of an extremist narrative.

http://blogs.thenews.com.pk/blogs/2014/07/our-real-jihadist-problem/ – 7/9/2014.

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12 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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And still, as a Palestinian, I must admit: I am responsible for part of what has happened. We can no longer deny our responsibility for the death of our own people.

Most of the Palestinians were against the rocket fire on Israel. They realized that the rockets would not give us anything. They called on Hamas to stop firing, knowing that it had paved the way for the death of its own people.

We knew that Hamas was digging the tunnels which would to lead to our destruction. We knew that three people live on every square meter in Gaza. And Hamas knew that an attack on Israel would lead to mass death, but it’s leaders are more interested in their own victories than in the lives of their victims.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4557777,00.html – 8/12/2014.

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Aside

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Asides, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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One friend who has pursued her own course in conflict and Islamic studies suggests that al-Qaeda represents the authentic Islam and all else are trying to wriggle through it or reform and revolutionize its cultural technology. In that the Ummah is as broad and varied as one might expect a natural human system to be, Muslims on many paths have become the first victims of “those” Muslims, and, indeed, out of themselves must come the army that defeats the past.

While it surprises me that Baghdaddi has gotten as large as he has — he has the basics: an ample treasury and believing or compliant troops — what is coming for him and his followers may surprise him.

Regarding the psychological character of the tropes of Jew hate, I use the term “paranoid delusional narcissistic REFLECTION of motivation”. Their language is their sheet of music, and no attack on any physical body amounts to anything without effort to get in the way of that poetic programming.

Inspiration:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/mass_immigration_and_the_left_have_brought_jew_hatred_back_to_the_west/ 8/12/2014.

One hopes the “radical” (conservative) mosque message finds repudiation among the believers of a more modern cast, but the conservative kafir-side endorses a rightfully cautious paranoia: the speech presages a well-known, well-witnessed fascist evil.

The political program works probably works about the same way for the modern political and religious authority as it may have for Muhammad himself: it deeply manipulates and exploits the believing.  While Hamas, for example, places noncombatants as shields against Israeli strikes at its war making facilities, Khaled Mashaal works the levers from his billionaire’s safety in Doha, his wealth having come out of treating the residents of Gaza as a business enterprise.

One could travel from one Botherhood-promoting Muslim autocrat to another and find pretty much the same canards and abetting political and social structures in place.

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