Should Israel be banned from Rugby

[Stones of granite]

Nothing to see here except . . .

"The SAMs were fired at Israeli jets which had just raided sites in Syria."

So even the Beeb admits the Israeli jets were invading Syrian airspace. Whether one of their planes was actually shot down or not comes down to a bit of chest-thumping by both sides. The point is, Israel is up to its neck in this war, has been from the start, and this incident exposes it.

They were reported attacking Hezbollah forces, who have allegedly received military equipment to a degree of sophistication that the Israelis are not comfortable with. There is nothing to suggest that Israel has any wider involvement than this. Unless you know different.

[rowan]

Unless you've been keeping your eyes closed for the past 6 years, you will have read about this many times. Even the mainstream press has reported on Israeli bombing raids within Syria during the war. Invariably they claim they are going after Hezbollah (an organization formed in 1982 after an horrific massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees within Lebanon went unanswered by the international community), who, like the Kurds Turkey has been bombing, have been assisting the Syrian government in the fight against the Jihadists and mercenaries sent in by Saudi & the US. So everybody has an alibi and says they are there for this reason or that reason, but Hezbollah has been invited in by the government of Syria while Israel - like the US, which accidently slaughtered about 60 civilians this morning - hasn't.

One example of what Haddad describes as cutting Syria and its allies “down to size” is hostile Israeli military action in Syria of which there have been several reported instances over the past few years. (It is standard Israeli policy never to confirm or deny such attacks in foreign countries.)

In December 2012, Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights, counter-attacking against mortar fire, struck a Syrian artillery unit. In January 2013, American officials said Israel carried out airstrikes on the outskirts of Damascus against what they claim were antiaircraft weapons being transferred to Hizballah.

Less than five months later, Israeli jets “devastated” targets near Damascus that Western and Israeli officials allege were connected to a shipment of Iranian weapons to Hizballah.

Between July 2013 and January 2014, Israel is understood to have bombed Latakia three times. The July attack reportedly saw the Israeli navy strike a shipment of Russian-made anti-ship missiles; that October, a US official said Israel’s air force bombed Russian missiles that the US believed were bound for Hizballah; in January, Israeli planes were said to have targeted a warehouse that apparently held Russian missiles.

A January 2015 bombing in Syria, attributed to Israel killed six members of Hizballah and six Iranians, including a general.

What such attacks show is that Israel is engaged in direct military interventions in Syria that target the Syrian government and thus favor the opposition. In no cases did the US criticize the Israeli bombing of Syria. That the US has only increased the degree to which it arms Israel since these incidents demonstrates at least tacit approval of them and makes the US a party to the acts.

During the Syrian war, Israel has hastened its colonization of the Syrian territory it occupies, the Golan Heights. Israeli planners have oscillated between wanting all sides in Syria to bleed indefinitely, which would render the country too weak to challenge Israel and would bog down Iran and Hizballah, the Syrian government’s allies, and wanting the non-Islamic State group elements of Syria’s opposition to oust the Syrian government because of the blow that would be to Iran and Hizballah. Israel has provided medical care to Syrian opposition fighters and the Israeli military has been in regular contact with Syrian armed groups.

Furthermore, a US-led coalition has bombed Syria more than 7,100 times since the fall of 2014 in the name of defeating the Islamic State, killing between 914 and 1,361 civilians in the process. Earlier this month, the US sent hundreds of troops into northern Syria as part of the effort against the Islamic State.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria ... 0020130505

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/world ... lanes.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 41,00.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24767571

https://electronicintifada.net/content/ ... gees/19886

[Stones of granite]

Unless you've been keeping your eyes closed for the past 6 years, you will have read about this many times. Even the mainstream press has reported on Israeli bombing raids within Syria during the war. Invariably they claim they are going after Hezbollah (an organization formed in 1982 after an horrific massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees within Lebanon went unanswered by the international community), who, like the Kurds Turkey has been bombing, have been assisting the Syrian government in the fight against the Jihadists and mercenaries sent in by Saudi & the US. So everybody has an alibi and says they are there for this reason or that reason, but Hezbollah has been invited in by the government of Syria while Israel - like the US, which accidently slaughtered about 60 civilians this morning - hasn't.

One example of what Haddad describes as cutting Syria and its allies “down to size” is hostile Israeli military action in Syria of which there have been several reported instances over the past few years. (It is standard Israeli policy never to confirm or deny such attacks in foreign countries.)

In December 2012, Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights, counter-attacking against mortar fire, struck a Syrian artillery unit. In January 2013, American officials said Israel carried out airstrikes on the outskirts of Damascus against what they claim were antiaircraft weapons being transferred to Hizballah.

Less than five months later, Israeli jets “devastated” targets near Damascus that Western and Israeli officials allege were connected to a shipment of Iranian weapons to Hizballah.

Between July 2013 and January 2014, Israel is understood to have bombed Latakia three times. The July attack reportedly saw the Israeli navy strike a shipment of Russian-made anti-ship missiles; that October, a US official said Israel’s air force bombed Russian missiles that the US believed were bound for Hizballah; in January, Israeli planes were said to have targeted a warehouse that apparently held Russian missiles.

A January 2015 bombing in Syria, attributed to Israel killed six members of Hizballah and six Iranians, including a general.

What such attacks show is that Israel is engaged in direct military interventions in Syria that target the Syrian government and thus favor the opposition. In no cases did the US criticize the Israeli bombing of Syria. That the US has only increased the degree to which it arms Israel since these incidents demonstrates at least tacit approval of them and makes the US a party to the acts.

During the Syrian war, Israel has hastened its colonization of the Syrian territory it occupies, the Golan Heights. Israeli planners have oscillated between wanting all sides in Syria to bleed indefinitely, which would render the country too weak to challenge Israel and would bog down Iran and Hizballah, the Syrian government’s allies, and wanting the non-Islamic State group elements of Syria’s opposition to oust the Syrian government because of the blow that would be to Iran and Hizballah. Israel has provided medical care to Syrian opposition fighters and the Israeli military has been in regular contact with Syrian armed groups.

Furthermore, a US-led coalition has bombed Syria more than 7,100 times since the fall of 2014 in the name of defeating the Islamic State, killing between 914 and 1,361 civilians in the process. Earlier this month, the US sent hundreds of troops into northern Syria as part of the effort against the Islamic State.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria ... 0020130505

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/world ... lanes.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 41,00.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24767571

https://electronicintifada.net/content/ ... gees/19886

So that's what, 7 incidents in 6 years, all targetting Hezbollah or weapons in Hezbollah hands. Hardly credible evidence of significant contribution by Israel to the conflict.

[rowan]

No, that's the tip of the iceberg - a mere sample of Israel's ongoing involvement in the Syrian war. I think the article itself indicates this quite clearly, so I'm certainly not going to spend 12 hours spoon-feeding every detail to you - while there is also a maximum number of links you can include with any post. As I said, if you want to accept the Hezbollah alibi, fine. Everybody has one. America was just trying to fight ISIS this morning when it bombed a mosque and killed about 60 civilians. The Turks are fighting Kurdish terrorism when they bomb the YPG who have so courageously led the real fight against ISIS (as the Americans themselves will concede). So it comes down to who has been invited by the actual rulers of the country, and is therefore operating within the confines of international law - and that does not include Israel, Turkey or the US, quite simply. Israel's stake in Syria is the disputed Golan Heights they stole after the 1967 war. This according to the UN - which also recently adjudged Israel's settlements in Palestine illegal, though Israel continues to violate that ruling as well.

[rowan]

Reminds me of how the US forced the UN to withdraw a report adjudging Zionism racist. Of course, why would a plot to steal land from native peoples, after driving them off it through whatever methods necessary, be regarded as racist?

A senior United Nations official has resigned, following pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw the landmark report published earlier this week finding Israel guilty of apartheid.

Rima Khalaf, the head of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) which published the report, announced her resignation at a press conference in Beirut on Friday.

Reuters reports that Khalaf took the step “after what she described as pressure from the secretary-general to withdraw a report accusing Israel of imposing an ‘apartheid regime’ on Palestinians.”

“I resigned because it is my duty not to conceal a clear crime, and I stand by all the conclusions of the report,” Khalaf stated.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/al ... eid-report

[Lord Lucan]

Israel has a natural obstacle between itself and those would seek to destroy them.

[rowan]

You must really enjoy cowboy movies too. Yep, that's the way it happened, we bravely fought them injuns to defend our farms & kin like good Christian white folks...

But here's what some prominent Israelis themselves had to say about the 1967 War, initiated by a false-flag & Israeli surprise attack, and which left 20,000 Arabs dead and hundreds of thousands refugees:

In an interview published in Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin said this: “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

On 14 April 1971, a report in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar contained the following statement by Mordecai Bentov, a member of the wartime national government. “The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.”

On 4 April 1972, General Haim Bar-Lev, Rabin’s predecessor as chief of staff, was quoted in Ma’ariv as follows: “We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Days War, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”

In the same Israeli newspaper on the same day, General Ezer Weizmann, Chief of Operations during the war and a nephew of Chaim Weizmann, was quoted as saying: “There was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.”

In the spring of 1972, General Matetiyahu Peled, Chief of Logistical Command during the war and one of 12 members of Israel’s General Staff, addressed a political literary club in Tel Aviv. He said: “The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war.”

In a radio debate Peled also said: “Israel was never in real danger and there was no evidence that Egypt had any intention of attacking Israel.” He added that “Israeli intelligence knew that Egypt was not prepared for war.”

In the same programme General Chaim Herzog (former Director of Military Intelligence, future Israeli Ambassador to the UN and President of his state) said: “There was no danger of annihilation. Neither Israeli headquarters nor the Pentagon – as the memoirs of President Johnson proved – believed in this danger.”

On 3 June 1972 Peled was even more explicit in an article of his own for Le Monde. He wrote: “All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our ‘defence’ against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army.”

[rowan]

U.N. chief wants report on 'apartheid' Israel taken off web
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-is ... SKBN16O1WB

[morepork]

The volume of You Tube testimony on these threads is disturbing.

[rowan]

Al Jazeera produces some good ones on this conflict too:

[morepork]

I meant I thought it not a good thing.

[rowan]

I see. Wouldn't it be wiser to assess them on a case by case basis ??

[morepork]

If you have a short attention span and vids are your thing, then go for it. They are hardly a substitute for actual data and valid reference though.

[rowan]

There was an accompanying link to an article about the UN's decision to retract its 'Apartheid' report on Israel. The video was only intended to juxtapose the UN's lack of fortitude with an image of the reality. Perhaps I should have included a few paragraphs from the article itself so as to draw more attention to the main poin of the post.

[rowan]

A long read, but well worth the effort if you've got the time:

MARCH 22, 2017
McCarthyite Anti-Semitism Smears and Racism at the Guardian/Observer

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/22/ ... nobserver/

[rowan]

Just a video this time, sorry, but Richard Gere has a few things to say ...

[rowan]

UK & others still doing business with Apartheid . . .

Israel’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its defense exports had reached $6.5 billion in 2016, returning to 2013 levels on the back of record sales from Europe.

The figures represented a $800 million increase, or 14 percent, in contracts on the previous year, according to Mishel Ben Baruch, director of the International Defense Cooperation Directorate at the Israeli Defense Ministry (SIBAT).

"The increase in the volume of new contracts signed expresses a global trend of pulling out of the recession,” he said, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Especially in Europe and North America, and increased defense budgets in the face of growing security challenges.”



http://www.newsweek.com/israeli-defense ... les-575858