Last week the Philadelphia BDS movement claimed a small victory by apparently pressuring Strauss, the Israel-based co-owners of Sabra hummus, to remove from their English language website their statement of support for the IDF’s Golani Brigade.
I was ready to attack Strauss for this apparently shameful act, but today the support is back up.
Now if only they would bring back their spicy pickles.
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Crossposted from the IDF’s official blog.
Yesterday, Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010, IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, sent to every commander in the IDF a letter in which he expressed his personal thoughts on ethics with regards to several recent incidents that had occurred. This letter was to be read to each and every soldier by the commanders of the IDF, as ordered by Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi.
Below, please find a translation of the letter, whereas the letter itself is originally Hebrew form:
1.
On Tuesday afternoon I was walking home from the Acoyte subway station when I happened across the aftermath of an arrest. There were three police patrol cars, six or seven cops, a bunch of onlookers and the two arrestees. The cops were variously smoking, talking into their radios and writing in notebooks. At their feet - on the street, not on the pavement - two adult males lay face down. They had their hands cuffed behind their backs. The onlookers gaped. It was cold for Buenos Aires in spring and raining lightly.
You’ll find a long article by Amos Harel here about Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, the current Chief of Staff of the IDF. It’s an interesting story of big egos in high places and I was particularly struck by this paragraph:
Continue reading ‘Ashkenazi, The IDF and Democratic Government’
No one who believes that the right of Jews to govern themselves should not depend on a favorable assessment by others of how they exercise it can remain unmoved by the death this week of Israel Tal.
The IDF has released a photograph of Lt. Col. Dov Harari, who was killed today in an unprovoked attack against the IDF by the Lebanese army.
Note that Colonel Harari is standing here in front of a monument to the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. You can make out the name of Mordechai Anielewicz, who led the Ghetto’s fight against the Nazi occupiers. For those who don’t read Hebrew, the cover on the Torah scroll he is carrying bears the name of Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who perished in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003.
Continue reading ‘Dov Harari: Another Victim of Hezbollah and its Allies’
If you take a look here you’ll find a report by the Oxford Research Group about the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The report opposes any such action on Israel’s part but I, like you, knew that before reading it. It’s well worth a read though, in spite of its adherence to the bien pensant received wisdom on the matter in question. There are, however, a couple of questions about it that I’d like to bring up:
The dominant narrative of Zionist storm troopers massacring innocent peace activists on the Mavi Marmara is now so well established that no amount of evidence supporting Israel’s version of events is likely to make any difference. Still, it seems to impossible not to comment on this series of photos published by the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.
The IDF has now released an official clarification regarding the audio released yesterday of a radio communication in which a flotillista tells the Israeli Navy to “Go Back to Auschwitz.” Bottom line: the exchange is genuine. Those who questioned its authenticity - like Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah - have yet again revealed to the world that their grasp of such trifling matters as truth and falsehood is shaky at best.
Continue reading ‘Accusation That Flotilla “Auschwitz” Exchange Was Faked Exposed As, errr, Fake’
1.
The Guardian here makes great play of the fact that the autopsies carried out on those killed on the Mavi Marmara show that five of them received gunshot wounds to the head and one was shot between the eyes. The piece quotes a pro-Palestinian activist in the UK as accusing the Israeli commandos having had a “shoot-to-kill” policy.
The IDF, a gang of brutish, racist, trigger happy European interlopers bent on committing genocide as often as they can. Well, if that’s what you think, I’m not going to argue with you, at least not in this post. What I will do is direct your attention to the fascinating recording above. It shows two IDF soldiers, one Druze and one Bedouin, trading verses of Zajal, semi-improvised Arabic poetry. I found it on Nizo’s blog , where you can find a translation of a fragment of what’s being recited, via a link from Lisa Goldman on Facebook.
Crossposted from The Muqata.
This evening, the IDF Spokesman’s New Media Unit arranged for an exclusive blogger-press-conference with a senior official from COGAT, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which among its responsibilities, includes coordinating the transfer of humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip.
Continue reading ‘Gaza Flotilla Brought “One Day’s Worth” of Aid’
Here are excerpts from an interview I gave to Al Arabiya on the Gaza flotilla.
From the UK’s Channel 4 News. Filmed off someone’s TV screen, but it’s what’s being said that’s important.
Here’s the account of the commander of the naval commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara:
“We knew there would be resistance, but not at such a strong level,” said Captain R., who led one of the teams and was wounded in the mission. “Every [activist] that approached us wanted to kill us.”
Captain R. was the second commando to be dropped from a military helicopter onto the Turkish-flagged ship. During the mission, a large mob of the activists hurled him from the upper to lower deck of the ship.
From the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Captain R. said that every commando who entered the ship was met by a number of activists who charged at the soldiers and attacked them. At least 75 percent of the activists took part in what the soldiers later described as a “lynch.”
“I was the second to be lowered in by rope,” said Captain R. “My comrade who had already been dropped in was surrounded by a bunch of people. It started off as a one-on-one fight, but then more and more people started jumping us. I had to fight against quite a few terrorists who were armed with knives and batons.”
The captain said that he was first forced to cock his gun and shoot once when one of the activists came toward him with a knife.
“At that point, another twenty people starting coming at me from every direction,” said Captain R. “They jumped at me and hurled me to the deck below the bridge. Then I felt a stabbing in my stomach - it was a knife. I pulled it our and somehow managed to get to the lower level. There, was another mob of people.”
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