For, the record, you really need to STFU. about this..
LTS TRN 2 wrote:Well that's why you're properly nicced "Avi," because your toxic Nazi lunacy is precisely that of the most hardcore ultra-right Zionist gangsters, Avigdor Lieberman himself. Former bouncer and Russian mafia thug, he's parlayed his radical bunkered party (like a certain Austrian whom you so admire :wink: ) into a sudden dangerously propped coalition of desperate cornered...well, you fill in the blank!
My man Lieberman is a great statesman and hero of the Zionist movement. We in ZOG are not amused with you comparing this great and heroic Zionist with a useless POS like mvscum.
You have been warned, fool.
Message brought to you by Diogenes.
The Last American Liberal.
Sorry, DioZog (yer new nic, official), but if the shit stinks, it came from an asshole. And one's really the same as another. Avigdor Lieberman, Bugsy Siegel, Bernie Madoff, Mark Rich, Michael Bloomberg, Ariel Sharon, some bunkered Libertarian Survivalist, etc., the list of assholes and gangsters just goes on and on and on. What's yer point again? Oh yeah, you're pretending to huff and puff. Right. Well, just keep using bold type for everything and that'll give your insipid drippings some body and heft.
Did I say"DioZog"? No, I meant ZioDog!! Yep, that's it. Official.
Bugsy would be impressed with the current jungle of Tel Aviv crime families. Five major families in a city of barely 400,000, ruthlessly plunged into the sprawl of opportunities in this hub of international crime--a place uniquely armored and inured from oversight--that they just can't get enough. Bugsy would feel at home.
Crime boss killed in underworld Tel Aviv car bombing
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
A car bomb in central Tel Aviv killed one of Israel's top mafia kingpins on Monday, threatening to unleash an all-out war in Israel's increasingly violent underworld.
Israel Police officials identified the dead man as Ya'akov Alperon, the head of one of the country's most powerful crime families. Medics said three bystanders were also lightly wounded in the explosion, including a 13-year-old boy.
In recent years, mob wars have plagued Israeli towns and cities.
Rival underworld gangs have waged bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, targeting each other with bullets, bombs and even anti-tank missiles in violence that has killed dozens of gangsters and at least eight bystanders in the last three years. Monday's attack was by far the most high-profile incident to date.
Oh sure, you're saying...that was an exception, just some hot heads getting a little rambunctious. Well...not at all. Read on, and start to get a picture of what your tax dollars have been supporting all these years. This article is about two years old. The previous article was from last year.
JERUSALEM - When an explosion goes off on a busy Israeli street these days, it seems as likely to be a mob hit as a Palestinian attack.
Rival underworld gangs are waging bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, targeting each other with bullets, bombs and anti-tank missiles.
Organized crime, long overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, has become such a part of everyday life that Israel has its own “Sopranos”-style TV series, “The Arbitrator,” in which even synagogues are no refuge from hit men.
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The mob wars have killed dozens of gangsters and at least eight bystanders in the last three years, and exposed law enforcement officers in scandalous complicity.
'Should worry'
“Organized crime has always been there, it’s just that now the measures have gotten harsher,” said Yossi Sedbon, a former police commander who spent years tracking the mafia. “This is something that should worry the police and the public.”
Most Israelis continue to be more concerned about potential Palestinian violence, which includes daily rocket barrages on towns next to Gaza and bloody bus bombings with dozens of dead — far more serious than the gang wars.
But criminal violence has several times turned city streets and upscale neighborhoods into battlegrounds.
In a single day in June, for example, the media reported that a reputed mobster — a former soldier in an elite army unit — was killed by an explosion while riding his motorcycle; a large bomb was defused under the car seat of a gangster’s son; and the courts announced increased security for judges threatened by criminals.
Policemen have been caught feeding information to the mob and smuggling drugs from Egypt. A bodyguard of former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres allegedly moonlighted as a hit man for a crime family.
In 1999, policeman Tzahi Ben-Or carried out a mob execution of a patient in a Tel Aviv hospital. He turned state’s witness, then fled to Mexico where he was shot dead in 2004.
Dozens of major crime families
In February, Moshe Karadi was forced to resign as national police chief after a government commission said he ignored ties between senior officers and underworld figures involved in the Ben-Or affair. Karadi insisted he was blameless and that he resigned to “set a personal example.”
Police officials, speaking on condition on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said a dozen major crime families operate in Israel, and are as ethnically diverse as the country’s population. Arab and Jewish crime families are known to work together trafficking drugs.
In the past, rival families would settle their scores quietly. But as the pot gets richer, they are getting bolder, taking more risks and posing a greater threat to public safety. Most crime bosses now travel with bodyguards in armored vehicles.
The official police Web site boasts a 6.9 percent drop in organized crime cases last year, but experts warn the decline may be due to a greater reluctance to complain as the level of violence increases. The figures also say murders were up by 12 percent and attempted murders by 37 percent in 2006. Police say organized crime activity is a major factor in the increase.
In a brazen daylight incident in May, a three-man hit team fought a gun battle in Tel Aviv with a police unit that had the gangsters under surveillance. The police intercepted them as they made their way to kill a rival crime boss, Nissim Alperon. One policeman was seriously wounded, and one gunman was killed.
The media, which report the crime wave with relish, were quick to note that Alperon, like the fictional Tony Soprano seen on TV screens, has pet ducks and was tending them at the time of the shootout. It was the ninth assassination attempt he has survived.
Recycling wars
This particular round of violence was sparked, oddly enough, by a turf war between the Alperons and the rival Abarjil family over bottle-recycling.
Although gambling, drugs and prostitution are the big money-spinners, those 5-cent empties add up to a $5 million-a-year industry, according to estimates by police and environmental groups.
Police say criminals sell restaurants protection in exchange for empties, which leave no paper trail and offer crime families a relatively legitimate source of income.
The Alperons and Abarjils have gotten into several publicized fights over the bottle business. Video surveillance cameras captured Arieh Alperon, Nissim’s brother, head-butting alleged mobster Itzik Abarjil, bloodying his face.
The bottle war has caught the eye of Israel’s favorite TV satire show, “Wonderful Country.” A skit shows an actor impersonating an Alperon brother in what looks like an ad promoting recycling — until the car trunk opens to reveal a man bound and gagged amid piles of empties.
I realize the scope of organized criminality in Israel is all but overwhelming to the dewy eyed lock-step supporter of our Special Friend, so I cued up a news documentary to lay it out a little more. Notice of course how the brazen activities of the Israeli gangsters dovetail straight into astonishing assaults on Americans and their companies, etc. Mind blowing! And of course the Chimp administration did their best to brush all this under the rug. Check it out.
Oh c'mon, Van, don't pretend I'm bringing the same old charges against the ZioNazi gang. As Wayne Newton would say, "All New Show!"" Look, it's hardly just a chant about the massive apartheid structure--the astonishing maze of fences, walls, and checkpoints, constant prowling trigger-happy guards, hovering night-vision, heat seeking helicopters, etc. No, we're peeling back a few layers and getting into the astonishing degree of organized crime that festers in Israel as naturally as pus in a wound. After all, were you really aware of the sheer number of crime families operating and competing within the Middle East's shining example of Democracy?
Well, today's lesson will feature on another hidden aspect of Israel's standard operating procedure, that of spying upon Americans. So, step your game up and get ready to WAKEY WAKE!!
First, you haven't or can't dispute a single fact I've presented. Second, that which you imply passes for interesting material in this palsied forum would bore drying paint. Third, if you suggest that the subject of Israel and the ZIoNazis is not directly pertinent to just about everything except Michal Jackson, you're naive. I understand that you're a tired old fart who pretends that he's a writer, but c'mon, step your game up, bitch.
Now, today's lesson, as suggested, focuses on Israel's brazen history of spying on its Best Friend, the U.S.
Remember Jonathan Pollard? Since his arrest and conviction, AIPAC and so forth have vigorously sought his release, citing an act of "harmless espionage," etc. Well, let us take a closer look at that idea of “harmless espionage”:
Jonathan Pollard is an American of Jewish descent, born in Galveston Texas, who established a career as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy. There have been many theories offered as to why Pollard decided to betray his country of birth to the Jewish state, but that Pollard did betray his country of birth to Israel is beyond all doubt. Pollard’s defense was that he did not spy so much against the United States, only that he spied for Israel, sending them documents that in his opinion the US should have shared with Israel anyway.
That it was never Pollards job to decide what documents Israel should have was apparently irrelevant. Pollard arrogated that authority to himself. From his position of trust within the US Navy, Pollard delivered over 1000 classified documents to Israel for which he was well paid. Included in those documents were the names of over 150 US agents in the Mideast, who were eventually “turned” into agents for Israel.
But by far the most egregious damage done by Pollard was to steal classified documents relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR and send them to Israel. According to sources in the US State Department, Israel then turned around and traded those stolen nuclear secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas from the USSR to Israel. Other information that found its way from the US to Israel to the USSR resulted in the loss of American agents operating inside the USSR. Casper Weinberger, in his affidavit opposing a reduced sentence for Pollard, described the damage done to the United States thus, "[It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by... Pollard's treasonous behavior."
Oh, good times. Now here's another cute example of how these folks really operate. In 1993 the ADL was caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forced the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settled a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.
ANd...this is the regime you're defending ? To the point of calling for the entire removal of all Palestinians from their homeland so these backstabbing gangsters can continue to lie, steal, spy and murder? C'mon, Van, where is your head really at?
You can continue all you want to ramble to yourself about ZioNazi Israel, Al Capone Israel and White Slave trading Israel, and still nobody will care...in large part because it's you doing the rambling.
Let someone who isn't such an obsessed crackpot take up the cudgels and people might actually care to discuss it. Because it's you, however, people just tune it out.
Long ago, you and your broken record diatribes lost the ability to be taken seriously. Where anything to do with Israel is concerned you make Chicken Little seem like Yoda.
You want a real wakey wake? Fine. If the topic is Israel, no one cares about anything you have to say. Your message has been killed by the messenger.
This thread deserves to be posted on the back of a milk carton that sits in a cooler of a 7-11 owned by Ahmed until it expires, then unceremoniously tossed into the bottom of a hot dumpster.
You can continue all you want to ramble to yourself about ZioNazi Israel, Al Capone Israel and White Slave trading Israel, and still nobody will care...in large part because it's you doing the rambling.
Let someone who isn't such an obsessed crackpot take up the cudgels and people might actually care to discuss it. Because it's you, however, people just tune it out.
Long ago, you and your broken record diatribes lost the ability to be taken seriously. Where anything to do with Israel is concerned you make Chicken Little seem like Yoda.
You want a real wakey wake? Fine. If the topic is Israel, no one cares about anything you have to say. Your message has been killed by the messenger.
This coming from the guy who calls for the entire expulsion of all Palestinians? Good ol' Van, whose politics are in lock-step with Avigdor Lieberman? That Van is pronouncing my posts as "rambling"? Well forgive me if I take you about as seriously as fucking "poptart" or "Katy" or the other similar lights around here. Get real, you fake bitch.
Oh, news! WHich is to say, something that happened that you aren't aware of--or from which your attention was diverted.
Let's look at the Israeli machinations surrounding 9/11
2001 It is discovered that US drug agents’ communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, receives an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provides the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, but the FBI does not follow up.
Perhaps you approve of Israel manipulating the U.S. for its purposes. Perhaps you don't. Regardless, you should be aware of what's happening. :wink:
Going to Gaza now is like going to the Warsaw ghetto during 1942...and that would have been a brave if dangerous action of conscience...would you have had those stones?
Hi, nice Jewish folks here standing up- against the abomination constructed in our name. No more silence, no more lies!
Whoh! Not so fast! We've got lots more lies and bullets, schemes and bombs!
Your ability to ignore facts and dismiss/alter history is unprecedented. Almost troll-like in unbelievablility....yet you refuse to eject....
If the ragheads ever choose to recognize Israel's right to exist, ever choose to not initiate terrorism, choose not to follow "leaders" that sacrifice their own to enhance french bank accounts, choose to not celebrate global terrorism, choose to not brain-wash their youth into buying into that 70 virgins thing, then maybe, just maybe, they will have a place of their own instead of being vaporized....though vaporization would, in the short term, make life easier for the rest of the planet....
Until then, keep trying to get western civilization to rally behind the culture of burhkah wearing, flea infested, death worshipping islamists that want to control everything and take away rights of everyone not named abdul....keep trying...you're almost there. any second now....
Damn good point there, Jerkovitch...hello, I'm PW Botha, but you can call me "croc"--and I share your courageous position in this matter of national and racial survival. We have done more for the blacks than they ever did for themselves--the jobs and work are here! We have built the structure by which they can survive--and to which they aspire!
We provide security and shelter and yet they chant "one bullet, one settler" when the sun goes down. We hear them! And we know who they are.
And from the security and shelter of the good apartheid regime of yore, to the bright shiny new home of Israel's favorite banker, Bernie Madoff..
and he won't be alone when it's time to celebrate "1948" day or whatever, because right down the cell block is his philosophical soul mate Jonathen Pollard--who is still a hero in Israel..
Update on the Special Crime State...the gangster Foreign minister is being rung up on the usual...
Israeli police recommend Lieberman indictment
August 2, 2009
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- The Israeli Police's National Fraud Unit recommended that the state prosecutor indict Avigdor Lieberman in a money-laundering scheme.
In a brief turned over Sunday to the Attorney General's office, the police recommended that the foreign minister be indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering, witness harassment and obstruction of justice, Ha'aretz reported.
The investigation has been ongoing for several years, but picked up steam after Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu became the third largest political party in the country in last February's elections. Lieberman petitioned the Supreme Court to speed up the investigation after he became foreign minister.
"For 13 years the police have conducted a campaign of persecution against me," Lieberman said in a statement released Sunday. "As much as my political strength and the strength of Yisrael Beiteinu rise, the campaign of persecution also intensifies."
He is under investigation for establishing shell companies that allegedly funneled millions of shekels to him, continuing after Lieberman took public office. He also is accused of trying to obstruct police investigations.
Lieberman also served as a salaried employee in a company owned by his daughter, Michal, which during his three-year employment received millions of dollars from anonymous sources overseas for consulting, according to Ha'aretz/.
My enemies, blah, blah...I was just following orders, blah, blah..
In the town of Kirvat Yam, Israel, where dozens of people have reported mermaid sightings, a $1 million reward is on the line for anyone who can prove by photo or capture that mermaids do exist, reports the Jerusalem Post.
“Many people are telling us they are sure they've seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other," Kirvat Yam town council spokesman Natti Zilberman told Sky News.
Many of the sightings have taken place at sunset, attracting crowds of tourists and locals alike, hoping to snap a picture of the mythological creature.
"People say it is half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin. It does all kinds of tricks, then disappears," Zilberman said.
Witness Shlomo Cohen was one of the first to identify the mysterious creature, according to IsraelNationalNews.com.
"I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way,” he said. “At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail. At least five of us saw it and we all couldn't believe it."
The town council, which is offering the reward, insists that the mermaid mania is not just a marketing ploy to attract tourists, though it does hope tourists will come out to try their luck at the $1 million prize.
"I believe,” Zilberman said, “if there really is a mermaid, then so many people and tourists will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than $1 million."
I am a Muslim women, yes, and I live in Palestine--and I was on the beach in my bathing suit, which as you can see is designed for modesty, and all of a sudden I see a bunch of screaming Jews running at me. I believe they were tourists. I fled but I understand they are still lurking all around with cameras. They are money crazed...
"Awesome," M-fake? Come now, you dole out superlatives like a New Jersey organ dealer giving out business cards at a Bar Mitzvah. Sheesh!
Oh well, since you're so interested in the fate of brave young Gilad, you'll be happy to know that he apparently will have some company in his Gaza walk-up studio flat (no hot water).
Israel probes soldier kidnap report
Israeli Police have set up dozens of roadblocks in central Israel and the occupied West Bank as the military investigates reports one of its soldiers may have been kidnapped.
The alert was sounded on Thursday evening after a woman soldier said she saw two civilians forcibly pushing another soldier into a vehicle outside an army base near Ben Gurion Airport, south-east of Tel Aviv.
Police were seen carrying out spot checks on vehicles as the military sought to account for all its soldiers.
The Israeli army said it had no evidence of the abduction, but a little known Palestinian group calling itself Al Quds Army claimed responsibility, in an e-mail sent to the Palestinian news agency, Maan, for kidnapping a soldier.
A statement issued by the group and quoted by the news agency said it would provide details later.
There was no confirmation of the claim from any official source and the army did not say where the alleged incident took place.
Israeli media reported that the army had confined soldiers to their bases and were checking for missing soldiers.
The massive security operation highlights Israel's fears of having more soldiers kidnapped.
Israel already has one soldier being held captive. Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas-allied fighters three years ago in a cross-border raid from Gaza.
Shalit has not been seen since then, and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him.
Of course the ZioNazis will gleefully accept this as an excuse to bomb, shoot, and kidnap thousands of Palestinians with "impunity." Because...that's what ZioNazis do. :twisted:
'Sup, truman (worst president til the Chimp)? Is this wet dream of fascist armor supposed to mean something?
pssssst...need a kidney? A healthy kidney from a Brazilian peasant...for you, $50,000...what?......Okay, how about a liver...everyone needs a liver....what?
C'mon, Fader, cut the crap--you want a kidney or not? It's fresh from some poor third worlder who desperately needs the cash, and we're dealing! That's what we do. If you don't need an organ, perhaps you'd be interested in copious amounts of Ecstasy? We're the world's leading dealer of this deceptively dangerous drug. Okay...I can see you're a brass tacks kind of guy. You want guns? Because that's what we really sell. uh, how about a prostitute--for keeps! Seriously, we're big time in human sexual slavery. C'mon, "Rich Fader," we know what you want and we've got it!
And I'm not kidding you..
Top Sweden newspaper says IDF kills Palestinians for their organs
A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.
"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israel Defense Forces, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.
"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.
Boström's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant.
Boström also cites an incident of alleged organ snatching from 1992, during the time of the first Palestinian intifada. He says that the IDF seized a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area, who was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter which transported him to "a place unknown to his loved ones".
Five nights later, Boström says, the young man's body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets.
"The sharp sounds from the shovels were mixed with the occasional laughter from the soldiers who were joking with each other, waiting to go home. When Bilal was put into his grave, his chest was revealed and suddenly it became clear to the present what abuse he had been put through. Bilal was far from the only one who was buried cut-up from his stomach to his chin and the speculations about the reason why had already started," he writes.
So...yes yes, or no no? c'mon...I've got other customers....
Gee, having slandered them as subhuman untermench all these years, I suppose it's easy for you to simply assume they're lying. And...it follows your dented little mental flow chart that you would therefore believe everything the IDF, and AIPAC, and the FOX NEWS hacks tell you. Okay, just checking.
By the way, the indicted New Jersey rabbis dealing third-world organs back to the Promised Land say "Hi" :D
Just an update. Nothing big, in fact entirely routine:
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Indicted
JERUSALEM, Aug. 30 -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was indicted on Sunday in a corruption scandal that forced his resignation last year and set the stage for a rightward shift in Israeli politics.
Prosecutors alleged that Olmert, as mayor of Jerusalem in the 1990s and later as trade minister, profited from a double-billing scheme in which he charged different charities and the government for trips and expenses already paid by other organizations.
About $90,000 collected for trips, often to the United States and sponsored by major Jewish groups, was allegedly accumulated in his account at a travel agency and then used for personal vacations and other expenses, according to the indictment.
His former office manager, Shula Zaken, 52, also was indicted as part of the scheme.
Note the venal, petty nature of his corruption. A crust, as it were, over the deep vile character of the modern ZioNazi.
In the wake of the U.N. investigation determining that Israel had indeed committed a variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sane and reasonable voice has arisen from the Israeli public. Here's Larry Derfner's message:
Maybe this will do it. Maybe the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead will be the thing that finally puts the fear of God into Israeli society, that shocks this country into deciding once and for all that the occupation must come to an end - for our sake if no one else's.
UN investigator Richard...
I don't want to see Israeli political and military leaders brought to The Hague; I don't want them to be unable to get off a plane in a foreign capital. It wouldn't be fair, not if fairness entails equity: There are countless foreign politicians and military men who've done much, much worse things than we did in Gaza who roam the world freely.
But if Israelis have a sense of foreboding since Tuesday's release of the Goldstone report, a fear that the world may really be fed up with our treatment of the Palestinians, then I'm glad. Then I'm hopeful. Because fear is the only thing that might get us to finally set free the 4 million people of Gaza and the West Bank. Of our own accord, of our own moral reckoning, we won't do it. Four years of intifada bus bombings hardened us for a generation, maybe longer. When it comes to Arabs, we've been morally numb for too long to change on our own.
WE JUST don't get it about Gaza. Why, we wonder, doesn't the world understand that we fought a just war, that we were defending ourselves?
We're unable to see that if anybody did to Israel what we did to Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, we wouldn't be talking about war crimes. We wouldn't be talking about crimes against humanity. We would be saying, in one voice, that the end of Israel was upon us, and we would be out to obliterate whoever did that to us.
But, we exclaim, what about the context? What about those thousands and thousands of rockets they fired at Sderot? No country would stand for that. We had to go to war.
We've become so numb, so brainwashed, that we really believe that that's all that happened before we started the war, that that's the entire context. We don't see what the rest of the world saw - that those thousands and thousands of rockets on Sderot caused a tiny fraction of the death and destruction we caused in Gaza at the same time.
In the three years and three months between our disengagement from Gaza and the start of Operation Cast Lead, 28 Israelis were killed by rockets, bombs and bullets from Gaza.
In that same period, more than 1,250 Gazans were killed by missiles, tank shells and all sorts of other ammunition fired by the IDF.
The context of the war - the full context - was that we had blockaded Gaza by air, sea and to a great extent by land, we were racking up a kill ratio of nearly 50 to 1 - then we invaded the country, destroyed thousands upon thousands of homes and public buildings and bumped up the ratio to more than 100-to-1.
And we don't see that we did anything wrong. Somebody's got to tell us. Lots of people have tried, including Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and, last but definitely not least, dozens of our own soldiers.
We've tried to smear them all, to silence them, to drown out the message that keeps repeating itself from one source to another. Now we have the message, the same message again, from one of the world's most respected, accomplished men of justice. South Africa's Judge Richard Goldstone has a record that no one in this country would dare try to tarnish. What's more, he's not only a Jew (and a former president of World ORT), he's also a friend of Israel. He was on the board of directors at the Hebrew University, got an honorary doctorate there, he's visited this country any number of times, his daughter's lived here for awhile.
"Israel," he said Tuesday, "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity." He said Hamas's rockets amounted to the same thing - but there's no comparison in magnitude, not in his report and not on the ground. Before, during and since the war with Gaza, Israel has been overwhelmingly the victimizer, not the victim.
WE MIGHT ask ourselves: What motive does Goldstone have to lie, to do a hatchet job on this nation and its army? (We might have asked ourselves the same question about the combat soldiers from the Rabin academy and Breaking the Silence.) The answer is that he has no such motive. He's telling the truth. More precisely, he's reinforcing the truth about the war that's been told by so many others.
Since we can't stain his record as a scourge of apartheid and of war crimes in Kosovo and Rwanda - and since we don't want to even mention his record - I'm sure we'll try to smear Goldstone as a dupe for Israel-bashers. There are one or two other names he'll no doubt be called - off the record, naturally. Israel is going to war, an information war this time, and the Goldstone report is the enemy.
But it's no use. We can't win the information war - and the reason is that we're blindfolded. We tied the blindfold on ourselves. We did it because we don't want to see what we're doing in Gaza and the West Bank.
But everyone else sees.
Our friend the Obama administration has been trying to tell us and we won't listen. Now our friend Judge Goldstone is telling us, only much less gently.
Will this do it? Will this scare us awake? Will this be the turning point?
I don't know. But I do know that this man has done a mitzva, a big, brave one. In the name of at least some Israelis, I want to say: Thank you, judge. Shana tova to you, too.
Obviously the lunatic Likud will hiss about "anit-Semitism" and so forth, but the game is just about up for the black-check rogue state. And that's a very good thing indeed.
