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Sunday 18 November 2012

The Goal of the Operation


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A policeman looks at an unexploded missile fired by an Israeli aircraft in Gaza City, 17 November 2012: photo by Majdi Fathi / APA images


Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of Tahrir Salman and Mohammed Salman in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, 16 November 2012. The two civilians were killed when an Israeli warplane attacked a number of civilians who were in the garden of a house belonging to Ghazi Abed Salman, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: photo by Ashraf Amra / APA images



Palestinian youth throw stones at an Israeli military tower during clashes near Aida refugee camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem in protest of Israeli military strikes on Gaza, 15 November 2012: photo by ActiveStills



Palestinian women mourn four-year-old Mahmoud Raed Sadallah, who was killed following an explosion in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, 16 November 2012: photo by Anne Paq / ActiveStills



A damaged home near the Council of Ministers building in Gaza City, which was completely destroyed during an Israeli airstrike earlier in the day, 17 November 2012: photo by Anne Paq / ActiveStills



A tank on a flat-bed truck sits at an Israeli gas station on its way to the boundary with Gaza, 17 November 2012: photo by ActiveStills



An explosion and smoke are seen after Israeli air strikes in Gaza City, 17 November 2012: photo by Yasser Gdeeh / Reuters



Two rockets are launched from Gaza City towards Israel, 16 November 2012: photo by Naaman Omar / APA images



Israelis take cover as the Israeli military launches a missile from the Iron Dome defense missile system designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, south Tel Aviv, 17 November 2012: photo by Oren Ziv / ActiveStills



Palestinians react to the sound of an Israeli F-16 warplane flying at low attitude above the ruins of the Civil Department of the Ministry of Interior building, which was completely destroyed in the morning in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal al-Hawa, 17 November 2012: photo by Anne Paq / ActiveStills


Demonstrators marched through downtown Boston and rallied outside the Israeli consulate to protest Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, 15 November 2012: photo by Tess Scheflan / ActiveStills



"You see! We're just defending ourselves": Mohammed Amin Musnhi/Reuters/Glenn Greenwald/The Guardian, 18 November 2012


According to Haaretz, Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel's attacks on Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that during their discussions of this "operation".

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 18 November 2012

12 comments:

L'Enfant de la Haute Mer said...

Great post Tom!
Thanks

Mose23 said...

Filling up the tank at the station on the trip out. Not so much a photo as an economic treatise.

Since we've forgone the television, images like these hit with a remarkable force.

TC said...

Thank you friends, appreciate the interest in a subject upon which, in this country, it is widely considered socially inappropriate to comment.

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

The "Overkill Syndrome" in all its g(l)ory.

aditya said...

Completely second WB.

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb? Comes to my mind but ofcourse the innocence has been lost having seen so many bombs dropped all over and the commencement of every new operation being reported in the same vein as the beginning of the Olympic Games World Cups and what have you.

TC said...

Yes, I do agree that the generalized media overload contributes to a loss of sensation, so that the images, even images of human suffering, become drained of affect (much like emoticons). The result is a dulling of the receptivity, the ability to feel compassion. In this bland state the general population of the West sits inert in a continual bombardment of politically generated pseudo-"information". Because in the West this assault repetitively produces and applies the same false "tit for tat" logic, it may be necessary to peer outside the edges of that box in order to get the slightest glimpse of what is really happening.

aditya said...

Following your comment .. Bruegel's Icarus springs up..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Bruegel%2C_Pieter_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_icarus_-_hi_res.jpg

TC said...

Yes, someone is always looking away.

TC said...

10.01 PM GMT : the Guardian Live Blog from Gaza:

"Gilad Sharon, son of the former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been arguing in a piece for the Jerusalem Post that Israel must achieve a 'decisive victory', or as he also puts it: 'A Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated.'

"He adds:

"'There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

"'Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.'"

Hazen said...

Thanks, Tom for taking this on. What you do is a necessary counter-weight to all the “politically generated pseudo-information". That chest thumping by Sharon fils could easily have been lifted, with only a few changes, from one of Mussolini’s speeches in 1930s Italy.

aditya said...

Some you say but heres an entire country (my own) looking away. No coverage on the mainstream channels or anywhere to tell the truth.

TC said...

I fear you're right, my friend. The definition of the mainstream is that it is always looking away, everywhere.

Until it's too late. And then... no one can hear you scream.