dagblog - Comments for "Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US"

A great piece. And not one

artappraiser — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 17:10:40 +0000

In reply to Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US

A great piece. And not one that requires you share Omar’s politics to appreciate. Bullshit is bad, exposing it is good. Brutality is bad, exposing it is good. These are the “issues” at stake here. https://t.co/GtJ7l65w2N
— Real Art Decider (@AliceFromQueens) June 14, 2021

From MSNBC

rmrd0000 — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 19:39:23 +0000

In reply to Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US

From MSNBC

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., asked a question of the secretary of state this week about international law and justice. Since then, she has been the subject of bad faith scorn from her fellow Democrats and threatened with pariah status by Republicans.

Let me say this up front and in no uncertain terms: Ilhan Omar was right. Any headline you see that says otherwise — that her comments this week were antisemitic or promoted hate toward Israel, that she sympathized with or gave cover to terrorists — is accepting a bad faith attack as a truth.

Before I go into what she actually said, some quick context: The International Criminal Court, or ICC, based in The Hague, is charged with prosecuting the worst crimes against humanity imaginable. Over 100 countries have ratified the treaty establishing the ICC's jurisdiction in cases of war crimes, torture, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and even genocide — but not the U.S., even though it helped establish the court in the late 1990s.

Omar asked for the same level of accountability to be upheld on all sides, leaving no war crimes unavenged.

The ICC has been working on two investigations that have stirred a lot of controversy in the U.S. First, the ICC's chief prosecutor has been looking into potential war crimes in Afghanistan, which has ratified the Rome Statute, including those alleged to have been committed by members of both the U.S. military and the Taliban. Second, it announced in February that it would investigate whether Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

The Biden administration opposes both of these investigations, which is what prompted Omar's question to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/ilhan-omar-was-attacked-saying-war-crimes-allegations-should-be-n1270433

After 54 years of occupation,

Aaron Carine — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 12:08:07 +0000

In reply to Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US

After 54 years of occupation, calling Israel a "vibrant democracy" is kind of a bad joke. Leaving aside American and Israeli war crimes from the old days(by which I mean the days before 2000), a number of the drone attacks were deliberate attacks on civilians, and I doubt the slaughter of civilians in Raqqa was "collateral"(Amnesty International said more than half the buildings in the city were hit). Human Rights Watch has charged Israel with targeting civilians, as in their reports "How They Died" and "Promoting Impunity". 70 percent of the Palestinian dead in Protective Edge were noncombatants which doesn't indicate that the IDF was trying to avoid civilian casualties. I don't think any sane person can say that the IDF was trying to avoid civilian casualties when it fired into crowds of unarmed marchers in 2018, killing over a hundred. It's also kind of callous to keep quibbling over whether the many civilians we've killed were "collateral damage". The kids are just as dead if they were collateral.

Response to Ilhan:

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 06:36:00 +0000

In reply to House Democratic leadership

Response to Ilhan:

But, they also said, "drawing false equivalencies between democracies like the U.S. and Israel and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all."

False equivalence between Hamas and Taliban for sure - Taliban is a wildly regressive movement that represses women, destroys culture, has killed people rather indiscriminately, and has torn down actual democratic governments while keeping Afghanistan backwards 40 years.

Hamas is a largely minor league political-quasi military group representing a largely imprisoned minority with the embarrassment of corruption and occasional bloodshed. It's almost like comparing Crips vs Bloods level disruption in the Palestinian ghetto with the Burmese/Myanmar junta that's out bombing its minorities and opposition en masse again. If Hamas did not exist, Israel would be forced to create it. Similarly the 1000s of lowgrade "missiles" fired by Hezbollah at Israel serve to pretend a real threat. It's pretty much pure theater and a type of terrorism, but frankly not as much terror as the Israelis' ability to say destroy 5% of impoverished Gaza's infrastructure at a go (or annexing 5% of it's tiny tiny territory (same size as Philly, 6x the size of Manhattan) as a "security perimeter") and telling international correspondents they have 20 mins to am-scray before demolishing their headquarters just to let the world know that they don't give a fuck about anyone's opinion about what they do. Meanwhile the body count of just Palestinian children killed vs any Israelis in the latest test of Iron Dome is rather imbalanced. Should "Israeli shows of force against largely powerless Palestinians whole increased illegal settlements building all to improve Bibi's chance at re-election" count as terrorism? Or is that too rude?

Glad I'm not running for office, so I don't have to subscribe to all this overly parsed bullshit.

If I look up Hamas, they were a largely ineffectual "terrorist" org - perhaps responsible for 200-300 Israeli deaths during the naughts, who displaced the more peaceful Islamic Brotherhood branch and dimishment if the PLO(?), and successfully overtook Fatah as Palestinians' elected leadership in response to unhappiness with Fatah corruption and ineffectiveness. Since say 2008 - 13 years - i see maybe a couple dozen, let's say no more than 50 Israeli deaths due to Hamas, vs say well over 1000 Israeli caused deaths, mostly civilian, in repeated punishment raids that mostly effect civilians - many actions tied to the continued building if illegal settlements.

https://m.timesofindia.com/world/middle-east/timeline-hamas-and-israel-a...

In the last flareup, the Israelis took out 6-9 hospitals, another 15-20 health clinics, et al. hard to believe not communal punishment against civilians as largely considered illegal under international law. Alright, BBC:

At least 256 people were killed in Gaza, according to the UN, and 13 people were killed in Israel during the hostilities.

[66 children, 39 women on the Palestinian side - PP]

The UN said at least 128 of those killed in Gaza were civilians. Israel's military said 200 were militants; Hamas's leader there, Yahya Sinwar, put the number of fighters killed at 80.

A land and sea blockade of Gaza, which is imposed by Israel and Egypt, looks set to make reconstruction slow and complicated.

This was introduced after Hamas seized full control of the tiny territory from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in a bloody internal battle in 2007, a year after it won the last general election.

It has crippled the economy but has only partly succeeded in its stated security aim: to stop weapons and other supplies from reaching militants.

it's like "they know not what

artappraiser — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 03:01:31 +0000

In reply to Laurence Tribe,

it's like "they know not what they do"

Every single anti-Semitic statement on Twitter, every single anti-Semitic attack against Jews is a reminder of why Israel’s existence is so important. The people who think they’re hurting Israel by condemning Israel for defending its citizens are actually strengthening Israel https://t.co/ToWolKCvaT
— America Has Failed the Jews (@USAfailsJews) May 23, 2021

Every time another video goes viral of a Jew getting harassed or beaten over Israel, another hundred Jews see it and think 'fuck this....I need to move to Israel.'
— Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 22, 2021

I was in Israel shortly after the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi in Paris, and the real estate listings--I'm talking property listings in a broker's window in Tel Aviv--were in French with prices conveniently in Euros.
— Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 22, 2021

This is from last year, but I suspect this year will be the same.

And yes, I looked into it. The backlog at the Jewish Agency is so extreme, I was advised to fly to Israel and apply to the ministry directly as doing so from outside would take forever.https://t.co/ZMrxSYJKoi
— Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 22, 2021

and

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 23:32:26 +0000

In reply to House Democratic leadership

and

Congressional Progressive Caucus comes out in support of Rep. Ilhan Omar: "We urge our colleagues not to abet or amplify such divisive and bad-faith tactics," @PramilaJayapal says. pic.twitter.com/EBtxUEngnL
— aída chávez (@aidachavez) June 10, 2021

House Democratic leadership

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 23:27:56 +0000

In reply to Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US

House Democratic leadership puts out a statement attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar, saying her remark "foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all." pic.twitter.com/PusWVzVNfL
— aída chávez (@aidachavez) June 10, 2021

Laurence Tribe,

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 23:25:24 +0000

In reply to Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US

Laurence Tribe, constitutional law scholar:

As a consistently severe critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, I was deeply offended by @IlhanMN’s recklessly antisemitic equivalence and think she owes every American, as well as every Jew, a clarification and an apology. https://t.co/XnbPfNURZi
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 10, 2021

We will never solve the

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 17:59:40 +0000

In reply to Jewish Dem. lawmakers consider condemning Omar for likening Hamas & Taliban to Israel & US

We will never solve the conflict unless Palestinian children are taught coexistence and peace and not hatred and war. I call on the international community to act on this report immediately making funding conditional on changing the school books and system https://t.co/t6z064pdws
— Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) June 10, 2021