Saturday, March 08, 2008

Dialogue Of Weapons

By: Peter Chamberlin
06/03/08
Courtesy Of:
InformationClearingHouse

Whenever aggressors choose to open a "dialogue of weapons," they often discover that the rockets flying overhead make it impossible to control the debate, or to contain the violence. They find that they need a moderator, someone to oversee the conversation, keeping the escalating dialogue within acceptable parameters. The widespread availability of rockets has cancelled-out the usual equations for power projection. No longer is it possible to control a weaker enemy by using overwhelming force without suffering unacceptable damages to your own people or international image.

That's the beauty of rockets, they provide the opportunity to gain a new perspective on things. Once you have seen things from above, it is almost impossible for your adversaries to blind you with the walls meant to enclose you. Model rocketry has advanced to the point where a few hundred determined Palestinians with rudimentary rocket building skills have become a real problem for the Israeli Defense Forces. Their Qassam rockets rely primarily on fertilizer-based propellants and low-grade explosives. They are basically six foot long, thirty pound pieces of shrapnel, falling at approximately three-hundred miles per hour.



http://tinyurl.com/yuwbdx

It would be a simple matter for them to extend the range of the Qassams, by using lighter materials or more reliable engines, until they are capable of joining the ongoing "dialogue" being conducted with Ashkelon by the occasional Grad rocket. Anyone who doubts the potential of pissed-off or deranged rocket builders to reach as far as they want, should check-out the al Qaida instructional video for their own "Abeer" rocket, allegedly capable of lobbing a twenty kilogram warhead twenty kilometers. - http://tinyurl.com/2yobkt

No matter what Israel does to throw up its "Iron Wall" to block Palestinian attacks, rockets will keep flying over it, delivering a message of potential hope to the hopeless people of Gaza, and carrying a message of defiance to the IDF. The same thing goes for the situation in southern Lebanon, where Israeli and American forces are preparing to roll-back Hezbollah. No matter what size or strength of force is used to accomplish the task, thousands of Katyusha and even larger rockets will continue to scream overhead on their deadly ballistic descents into Israeli homes and businesses. But, judging from the fate of the people of Sderot, Israel, purposely placing expendable citizens directly in harm's way seems to be an integral part of the plan to legitimize the colonization of Palestine.

The first inhabitants of Sderot arrived in 1951 to what was then known as the Gevim-Dorot transit camp. Its population is only 19,800 (2006). Its population doubled in the 1990s, because it absorbed a large immigrant population from the Soviet Union. It is 99.8% Sephardic Jewish, composed of half recent Russian immigrants and the rest mostly Moroccan and Persian Jews. Perhaps their Sephardic roots, in light of the way they are treated in Israel explains the ease with which the poor targets of Sderot are sacrificed to the god of war. http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/Perez/entry/a_sephardi_hero_dies_posted

Sderot was first targeted by Qassams on Mar. 5, 2002. Three thousand of the city's residents (comprised mostly of key upper and middle class residents) left after the barrage of May began.

The average monthly wage of those remaining in Sderot is half the national average ILS 3,845/ NIS 6,822 national average.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-673797/Average-Monthly-Wage.html

Here is a Google Map view of Sderot, Israel and its Palestinian neighbor, four miles away, Beit Hanoun: View Larger Map

Not only are the remaining poor and lower class Israelis expected to remain in place as living targets, Olmert's government refuses to provide a "safe room" for each house. The people of Sderot are not helped to relocate. Prime Minister Olmert made the following remarks:

"Throughout our history in this Land, during far more difficult times, we have never run away from our homes. We will not lend a hand to hasty actions that may be good for two or three days but which are liable to have destructive long-term effects. We do not want to take people out of their homes." http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Archive/Press+Releases/2006/11/spokesderot191106.htm

No government funds have been made available to enable the poor of Sderot to create "safe rooms."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204213984823&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

"Sderot's weakest sectors: the poor community of immigrants from the Caucasus which makes up 35 percent of the town... Residents say the government takes their suffering for granted, refusing to fortify a room in each Sderot home despite the certain knowledge that the bombardment will not end soon... Some 20% of the town's population, mostly those who could afford it, have left. Many of those who remain do so because they have no choice. The value of their homes has plunged during seven years of permanent assault, leaving them unable to move even to nearby Negev towns like Netivot. They are trapped on Israel's front lines."

Even though no government funds have been made available for Sderot safe rooms, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'I have recently approved the transfer of NIS 300 million to improve the state and availability of bomb shelters for Ashkelon's 120,000 residents, after two Grad rockets hit the city.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204473062896&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The people of Sderot are hostages of the Israeli government, as is the entire population of Gaza. The depiction in the controlled press of both Jewish and Palestinian people as victims of the Hamas government, not the Israeli government, is meant to fuel international outrage against Hamas. Their portrayal as monsters is necessary to justify monstrous plans to eradicate them. Israel is openly courting world opinion, trying to seduce the eager audience of international leaders into embracing the planned "Shoah" (holocaust) that it is beginning to unleash first in Gaza. http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=52996#cooliris

The name of the game is to bring international troops in to relieve the IDF in Gaza, so that everything can be brought to bear upon Hezbollah in Lebanon, and hopefully upon Iran and Syria as well. Well-paid "cry-babies," who serve an important function in Israel's plans for everyone, like Abe Foxman, reveal the preferred solutions, that the world is being blackmailed into supporting -

"Where are proposals for international forces -- UN, NATO, the Quartet -- to intervene and place themselves in Gaza to prevent the rocket attacks and make it unnecessary for Israel to have to consider reentering Gaza as the only way to change the dynamic and protect its citizens." http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/foxman/entry/world_leaders_need_to_act

Olmert and company are clearly following the Likudist line, which forbids negotiations in favor of forced capitulation. The "Iron Wall" doctrine of militant right-wing Israeli politics holds that negotiations with a people whose land has been brutally stolen is impossible. The only solution that will enable the colonization of all Palestine (and all of Greater Israel) is to apply irresistible force to the local population until it submits out of fears of extinction. They must believe that further resistance will cause the death or forced removal of all Palestinians, so that they will agree to all of Israel's terms of surrender. In this line of thinking, international support of any kind for the dieing Palestinians gives them hope, thus delaying the undetermined point in time when the Palestinian resistance becomes hopeless and surrenders to the irresistable Iron Wall.

The deadly dialogue of violence that Israel has initiated with its neighbors cannot be wished away, or dealt with militarily by non-genocidal means. If Olmert is serious about wanting political discussions with the Fatah faction of the Palestinians, then he will not continue the devastation of Hamas controlled Gaza. If Israel chooses to use the big stick, instead of offering the carrot, then it risks re-uniting the two factions which it has worked so hard for so long to divide. They cannot risk upsetting the gambit that began with Israel's creation of Hamas to divide popular support for Arafat's Fatah faction.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently refused to renounce Palestinian rights to armed struggle, fondly reminiscing about "firing the first shot" in 1965. http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200802/FOR20080228b.html

He has called off peace talks in response to the ongoing Gaza offensive. http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL0219318120080302?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

The brutal Nazi-like violence directed at the innocent people of Gaza and the democratically-elected Hamas government is reversing all the gains made by Israel and the US in dividing the Palestinian people. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959882.html Ironically, the Fatah faction of Abbas was separated from the people of Palestine, to serve as a foil to use against Hamas, which had originally been created by Israel to use against Fatah. Israel's gambit has come full circle.

From, "How the Likud Bloc Mid-wifed the Birth of Hamas," By RAY HANANIA - http://www.jps.org/hanania01182003.html

"Hamas is considered one of Israel's greatest threats, but the Islamic terrorist organization found its beginnings in the misguided Israeli effort [Menachem Begin] to encourage the rise of a religious alternative [humanitarian organization, the Islamic Association] that would undermine the popularity of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasir Arafat...

There is a natural affinity that exists in a limited way between the policies and goals of Hamas and the political objectives of the Likud Bloc that has brought them together...Every time Israeli and Palestinian negotiators appeared ready to take a major step toward achieving peace, an act of Hamas terrorism has scuttled the peace process and has pushed the two sides apart... undermining the peace process has always been the real target of Hamas and has played into the political ambitions of the Likud.... Hamas launched another wave of suicide bombings in the week after Sharon's election. Sharon used these attacks as the pretext to launch a massive invasion of PNA controlled areas of the West Bank and decimating Arafat's government infrastructure..

Arafat and the PLO agreed in 1988 to accept the "two state" solution based on "land for peace" negotiations... Reacting angrily to Arafat's decision to recognize Israel, and seeking to play to Palestinian emotions during the Intifada, the new organization, Hamas, openly embraced armed struggle against Israel."

Since its beginning, Hamas has served as a tool for Likud plans for upsetting peace negotiations and scuttling all talk of a "two-state solution." But Hamas and Likud came up against the secret plans of a known idiot, George Bush. The convergence of Likud's plan to remake the Middle East and Bush's plan to force democracy upon the Muslim world gave Hamas power that Israel never intended for its Islamic proxy to acquire.

According to a report by David Rose in the April issue of "Vanity Fair," American complicity in the Palestinian "civil war" has been confirmed. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

"Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power...

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza...

Rice initiated several rounds of phone calls and personal meetings with leaders of four Arab nations—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. She asked them to bolster Fatah by providing military training and by pledging funds to buy its forces lethal weapons...

On June 7 Haaretz reported that Abbas and Dayton had asked Israel to authorize the biggest Egyptian arms shipment yet—to include dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades, and millions of rounds of ammunition. A few days later, just before the next batch of Fatah recruits was due to leave for training in Egypt, the coup began in earnest." [It was over within a week.]

Hamas could not bear the final treachery, that of seeing Israeli sponsored fighters of Fatah receiving similar training to that which two-hundred of their own forces had once received in preparations for a confrontation with Arafat's Fatah. http://www.jps.org/hanania01182003.html

With the break-out of open fighting between Hamas and Fatah came an accompanying escalation of the rocket attack on Sderot and the settlements around the Gaza Strip.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/62D4FF9A-4EB9-4C8B-9EEC-41691F097D76/0/kassamhits2.jpg

Rocket attack: Daily distribution of identified hits (May 15-31) 2007

When Olmert and Bush have pushed Abbas as far as they dare to go, they will turn they murderous gazes upon Lebanon, once again. An Executive Order (similar to the one outlawing protest against Iraq) has already been issued, to limit public outcry when the bombing commences.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070802-1.html

The positioning of US warships off Lebanon's coast

http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/03/04/egypt-leaks-information-about-an-american-military-campaign-against-syria/ is obviously timed for intervention in Lebanon with Israeli ground forces that are now running tank-training exercises along Lebanon's southern border.

http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=89437 (Southern Lebanon map)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/BlueLine2.jpg

American interference with Arab League negotiators has ended their outside intervention to spare Lebanon from American and Israeli wrath.
http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=89441

Diplomats and their families were yesterday given 48 hours to evacuate the country. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/24F4810C-61CB-4284-AB2B-CCA786434016.htm

The assassination of Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah in Syria was intended to be the catalyst for the renewed war, but the Shiite militia has so far failed to take the bait.

This is Olmert and Bush calling Ahmadinejad out into the streets of Lebanon, before he is ousted in the March 14 elections, because this may be their last best chance to have their "wet dream" of a war with Iran. This is their last chance to preserve the ideology of the war state. If they cannot manage to escalate the cycle of violence by provoking Iranian missteps in Iraq, then perhaps Hamas or Hezbollah can be induced to cause massive Israeli casualties. So far, the Israelis held as hostages by their own government in Sderot to the daily barrages of homemade rockets, have not provided the quantity of Israeli deaths needed to justify a "berserker" response from the IDF. The 4000 rockets fired by Hizballah the last time managed to kill 40 Israelis. Olmert and Bush will have to play their hands more aggressively this time, making sure that 40 or so Israeli martyrs is enough to bring American forces into play, in particular, heavy bombers and missiles.

The same ideology that drives the anti-Palestinian war, drives American/Israeli plans for Lebanon. The problem with trying this in Lebanon against the Shiite resistance forces (Hezbollah) is the quantity and quality of armaments accumulated over the years by the defenders of southern Lebanon against repeated Israeli incursions. Olmert and Bush learned a hard lesson in the 2006 invasion; Israel's "Iron Wall" is not big enough to frighten the fighters of Hezbollah into submitting to invading Zionist forces. The United States must openly demonstrate that its own forces are part of the wall. The demonstration is about to begin.

This is the unfolding drama of two failing states, one of them a superpower, the other, the fifth most powerful military power. They are in collusion to generate a world war, where their overwhelming military investments will bring them their greatest returns. The poor innocent people who are unfortunate enough to live in the neighborhoods chosen by Israel for its forced colonization are the intended victims, their homes the locations of the planned aggression. (Qana video) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14276.htm

For their part in supporting this course of action and urging military actions, the Israeli people are destined to provide many new martyrs of their own, in order to make the outposts of the colony safe from raining rockets. All of this will happen even if Iran refuses to take the bait attached to the tripwire of world war. It's going to be a rough ride.

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