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Subject: Winograd Farce
Sambation    2/6/2008 6:25:07 AM
Is anyone surprised? Is anyone even surprised that no one's surprised? Ok-- so Winograd decided on their own (or actually, with Olmert and the High Court) to inject politics into a war report that criticizes a government which injected politics into a war. However, one thing does surprise: no one, not one single member of Winograd Cmt., disapproved of the hijacking of the purpose of the committee enough to do something about it. For one and a half years, Israel has been led around like a dwarf on a rope. A friend the other day asked in which direction-- left wing, right wing-- the country might go from here. My only possible response was to compare Israel's political situation to a plane in tailspin: you can't predict which direction it's going to go, other than down.
 
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Shirrush    Ha Sambation!   2/6/2008 10:17:32 AM
Long time no see!
Have you read the report? Why are you so worked up about it? Everybody here knew that nothing would happen, and nothing happened right away!
Israel's "political situation" is not going down, or anywhere else for that matter. It has hit the bottom a while ago, and is just sitting there like a festering turd. When Nethanyahu gets elected, as it seems inevitable, it'll start digging!

The problem is that the people have lost faith in the political system, and even in democracy itself. So far, the public has been responding with an ever deepening apathy. A rocket just hit a kindergarten in the South, hurting two toddlers. The Olmert government will keep doing what it is doing, that is, using exceedingly expensive guided ammunition in order to provide martyrdom to a couple of martyrdom seekers o'er there in the Strip each time one of their Qassams hurts someone, and remain stuck in to the proportional-response-never-end-the-war rut until...
...One of these rockets really kills a lot of little children and little old ladies.
Then, maybe, it'll stop supplying the rocket factories with electricity in order to assuage all these people in the streets calling for revenge, since all Olmert wants is to keep his job.

If we weren't so apathetic, someone would have cut the power line to Gaza long ago. All it takes is a pound or so of engineering explosive at the foot of a pylon somewhere in the dunes south of Ashki.
No need to hurt anyone. Just boom, and go! Of course, I won't do it, because I'm just a fat slob from Tel-Aviv and I'm all talk, but hopefully someone else will, since it's easy, and the government is not going to raise a finger in defense of the southerners unless they start dying in a spectacular way anyway.



 
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battar    Toddler training   2/6/2008 4:48:06 PM
How low can you go...
 
The standard of living in Gaza is about as low as it gets, cutting electricity will lower it that little bit more.  Remind when of the last time that lowering the standard of living of Islamic fanatics has had any effect on their behaviour.
 
What do you do when your little boy behaves badly? Punish him by sending him to his room, perhaps. What do you do if he misbehaves again? Most parents repeat the punishment. Very, very few realize that what didn't work the first time, is not likely to work the second time either, and a different tactic should be used.
 
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Herald12345       2/6/2008 5:24:22 PM

How low can you go...

You'd be surprised at how resilient Humans are when they are persecuted, but how feeble they are when they are merely inconvenienced.  You have to inconvenience the Gaza population.

The standard of living in Gaza is about as low as it gets, cutting electricity will lower it that little bit more.  Remind when of the last time that lowering the standard of living of Islamic fanatics has had any effect on their behaviour.

None, but you can link discomfort to the terrorists: make them the fall guys. Separate the average palestinian from the Hamas bandit.  Knock down a city block and put the dwellers in a tent city eating sand filled UN rations. each time a Qassam rocket hits Israeli land. Do you know how much the stench of 1.5 million unwashed Human beings smells? Make sure they have to live in it.

What do you do when your little boy behaves badly? Punish him by sending him to his room, perhaps. What do you do if he misbehaves again? Most parents repeat the punishment. Very, very few realize that what didn't work the first time, is not likely to work the second time either, and a different tactic should be used.

When my youngster misbehaves I always variate the punishment and try to make the consequence link directly back to the act. He never knows what to expect. Unpredictable but justifiable and proportionate punishment keeps him consequence afraid and guessing.. .

Example if he lies, one of the methods I use is public humiliation  in the form of making him announce to all and sundry present what the lie he told was, and how he was caught. then i take away something he earned on top of it, to show him that lieing has multiple repercussions.

Or he has to write the apology and publicly billboard it.  Or he has to physically restitute the victom of the lie with service or payment. it varies.

Never get into the pattern,  but punish the lie always. And for each repetition ESCALATE the discomfort consequences.

Herald



 
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Shirrush    To Battar   2/7/2008 4:41:13 AM
You don't get it, do you? I don't care about these people's living standards, I care about the immorality of providing them with the means to keep killing us. Selling them electricity equals supporting terrorism, and it can't go on.
There are no innocent civilians in Gaza. They elected terrorists with a large majority, and since they do not view any of us as an innocent civilian but would rather kill us all, we'd better start thinking about our own collective dignity rather than about these scumbags' humanitarian needs.

 
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Sambation    On Shirrush's note   2/7/2008 5:51:47 AM
Even if they were kind, generous-- or even minimally decent-- people there is no obligation, none whatsoever, for Israel to provide Gaza with anything. There is no law, no conceivable ethical reason, no natural brotherhood that enjoins Israel to see to the well being of Gaza, rockets or not (of course the rockets (and homicide bombers) don't help the case).

We should all get honest about the media, NGO, and popular calls for Israel to end the "blockade": it is yet another tactic to keep Israel in the ethical hole of "occupier," to keep it in a weakened political position (which it seems to love being in).

Nevermind those bollocks, though. I have a question for Shirrush, Herald, Battar, and anyone else who wants to throw in:

*As leader of a grassroots movement in Israel-- or as just an ordinary Private Citizen Joe (or Yossi, as it were)-- what would you do tomorrow, if you were to do something about the situation-- or, if you had to do something about the situation, tomorrow?* (e.g., organize a rally? protest the PM office? give money to a particular party? wait-and-see? join the army? leave the army? etc...)



 
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battar    Bright lights   2/7/2008 2:26:32 PM
1. I don't know what to do about the situation.
2. I'm not the brightest light on the street.
3. It follows that if I could think of an effective course of action, someone smarter than myself would have thought of it first, and done it.
4. This hasn't happened.
 
I don't think there is simple workable answer to this one. I also think Gazans can generate a few watts of electricity on bicycle dynamos. They can do with the excercise. 
 
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Herald12345    Sambation reply.   2/7/2008 3:34:51 PM
I am not kind to bandits, Sambation, having seen what bandits did to my own blood kin.

Whatever is allowed under International Law and domestic law to defend my people from the foreign bandits: and  if the bandit's fellow travelers yowl? Well, they can get stuffed.

I suppose I would write my chief of state and my party representatives first and point out where they fail to do their governing duties. No satisfaction, then I would turn political and organize to replace my current government representatives and administrators, through the political process, with those who will properly undertake their social contract obligations that the state owes its citizens, the first of which is  defending the lawful citizens' lives, civil rights, and property  against foreign invaders.

The state of Israel has the International Law right to defend itself. The people of Israel have the right to demand that the state government, they elected, exercise its self-defense rights to the limit allowed under International Law.

Do it legally, but do it boldly, and ignore those cowards, foreign or domestic, who would secretly wish you harm, individually or collectively, but are too  craven to come out and say so in public and in the open.

I know it isn't internationalist PC or progressive pacifist appropriate to have such a primitive tribal attitude toward foreign bandit invaders, but have you  SEEN this planet?

You protect yourself from the animals. That includes the Human animals, as well as the much less dangerous beasts of the field.

Herald

 
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Ezekiel       2/8/2008 6:59:00 AM
The problem first be identified before it can be given treatment...

It is my opinion that the problem is first and foremost a cultural/societal issue. The battlefield of idea's must be the first victory before and institutional changes can be made. More clearly israel has to renovate bottom up rather then top down. Thus my first changes must be made in world view, recalibration of national goals and a  vision of what  is the relationshi&obligations p between the Israeli state and its respective citizen (national interest vs individual liberty) only when offered an ideological alternative from the secular-globalist elites current monopoly on culture and instituition will we begin to see the possibility for real and endurable progress within Israel and its region.

It is my opinion that the re-establishment of the Jewish nation-state was accomplished by the secular Jews that accepted its nationality/ethnic responsibilities but refused their ideological/spiritual inheritance and through vindictive governance has for the past 3 generations marginalized the nationalist-spiritual camp. Therefore what we are witnessing on an instituitional level, such as myopic leadership, corrupt bureaucracy, cultural malaise/apathy are the manifestations of an ideological paralysis of Israeli society. Vision is the first step, and the Israeli ideological narrative points to the need for a real and all inclusive Jewish conservatism.... The creation of such a movement will in its idea's find the fertility to make the necessary structural and policy changes in order to balance Israeli society and thus its politics.

In israel it begins and ends with the family, you win the family heart and mind and you, there is the potential for greatest change. Equipped with a ideology that will offer an alternative the secular zionism that wishes normalization at any price, even through appeasement of its national security and value sacrifice that attempts to devide rather then unite the Jewish state. In short, the 60 years of jewish globalism and normalization as a ruling national paradigm has run its course, and has begun a phase that is self destructive in nature the vacuum is apparent to all...the question is what will fill it. Or more so what will replace such an ideology that offers Israel the greatest amount of empowerment for the individual and nation.

 
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