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MEDDLING ISRAELIS
The Sunday Times reports:
A Hamas plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.
Hamas’s military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.
Abbas, who became president of the Palestinian Authority last year after the death of Yasser Arafat, was formally warned of the danger by the Israelis and cancelled a planned visit to the territory.
The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to power after elections in January, and Abbas’s Fatah movement.
Sounds almost like ... civil war!
I can’t think of anything suitably sombre to say, but in any case, Blind Freddy would have seen that coming.
I love the irony of Abbas taking a warning from Israel seriously. A muslim trusting a jooooooo?
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 05 07 at 06:31 AM • permalink“The murder plan is the clearest sign yet of the tensions inside the Palestinian Authority between Hamas, which swept to power after elections in January, and Abbas’s Fatah movement.”
Sounds almost like ... civil war!—Tim B.See! See! We warned you! And now there’s a civil war, all because of that Wannabe Emperor, Chimpler Hallipretzel, and his insane plans to bring democracy to Palestine. And now look at all the beautiful children dying because of the fascist American storm troopers machine gunning innocent Arab school children at schools and women in the market places. This is carnage and we grieve, grieve for the innocents.
Oh wait, this is Palestine we’re discussing? Oh, well, Bush isn’t involved in that. Nothing we can do. So sad, people dying and all. But, oh well.
But how global warming and drowing polar bears? Yes, Bush, Bush did that!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 05 07 at 09:44 AM • permalinkCarl H — Shame on you for including the horrible Last Man Standing on that list. Sure, it’s a rip-off of the Sergio Leone idea he ripped off from Kurosawa who lifted it freely from Dashiell Hammett, but do you think the trained monkeys who typed that crap remember who Kurosawa and Hammett were?
And we’re getting grumblings from the ‘progressives’ over here now that the Israeli pullback will destabilize Jordan. Proof once again that Western ‘liberals’ don’t believe brown people can govern themselves…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 07 at 11:09 AM • permalinkAbbas spoke to/trusted the Jooooooos?
Now he’s gone and done it.
He’s given Hamas just the excuse they need to kill him.
Oh, wait….
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 05 07 at 11:11 AM • permalinkWhat were the Israelis thinking? Surely it would be better to let the terrorists kill each other at will, thus leaving the humans in peace. Think back to the 8 wonderful years of the Iran-Iraq war.
Posted by Jim Geones on 2006 05 07 at 11:26 AM • permalinkThe lefties have it right. There is civil war in the Middle East. They just got the country wrong…....
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 07 at 12:17 PM • permalinkI mean, if neither side is joo and/or amerikkkan… how do they decide which side to protest against, have denounced by the UN or talk up in their MSM?
The one that does the least killing is the one they’ll condemn. At least, that’s the pattern they’ve always followed.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 05 07 at 01:00 PM • permalinkif neither side is joo and/or amerikkkan… how do they decide which side to protest against
It doesn’t matter. But for Amerikkka and the Joos, the Middle East would be full of friendly and colorful
militantspacifists all buff and living together in peace and harmony and dancing to folk songs – all in soft focus and set one f-stop too high.Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 05 07 at 01:10 PM • permalinkThe one that is most bestial and thuggish usually get preference, as I recall it. Also, wanton destruction of relative innocents adds prestige. Of course, hysterical and loathesome rhetoric gains points. We could probably flange up some sort of scale.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 05 07 at 02:42 PM • permalinkI sure hope that Israel did not endanger any sources to save Abbas’ worthless skin.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 05 07 at 04:20 PM • permalinkActually, this is a smart move by Israel. As long as Fatah is active and able to oppose Hamas, every round expended between the two groups is a round not shot at the Israelis.
Talk about a low-cost investment with a potential for high pay off!
Maybe we’ll see some suicide bombers inside Palestine, instead of from there.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 07 at 04:44 PM • permalink#27 There are no innocents.
If the will of those you term innocent can be turned to resist the violence, oust the psychopaths and enter into good faith negotiations with Israel, the killing might stop.
Did you consider that?
Did you consider also that in the State of Israel, so roundly condemned for any act of self defense, the “innocents” have—despite the terror—successfully lobbied, urged, marched and coerced their government to concede more and more; only to be punished with terror for every concession made?
There are no innocents.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 07 at 07:24 PM • permalinkNot to be unduly humourless, but how you can say that with such evident glee is beyond me. I have no sympathy for the psychopaths who hold power in Palestine, but suicide bombers are a horrible sight anywhere. There are innocent Palestinians too.
I did consider that aspect of my comment, Nathan. Briefly. Very briefly.
IMHO, the only innocents in Palestine are those children too young to understand what is happening, the unborn being carried by their mothers, and the feeble-minded. It would be tragic if one of those die in a Hamas-Fatah civil war.
Especially as such a war is entirely preventable. By actions on the part of Hamas and Fatah and their supporters. By simply being rational about this matter. Whether or not Israel is included in this is immaterial in an arcane manner, but likely is in practical terms.
Oh, and one minor point, Nathan….if any Palestinians die in a Hamas-Fatah war, I am not the one doing the killing. The Palestinians are. Turn your pleading condescension in their direction, not mine. I can’t stop the killing. I can only sit on the sidelines, and watch the spectacle in fascinated horror.
Agreed, there’s likely a certain percentage of the Palestinian population who prefer raising their families and living the good life. Can’t say as I blame them for wanting to do so.
But exactly the same is true in Israel, and I don’t see much sympathy heading in that direction. Palestine has long been a boil on the butt of civilization, and it needs to be fixed. But Palestine has to heal themselves; experience shows that to be the case. Until and unless those people stop this stupid vendetta, and deal faithfully with the Israelis, they place themselves and their neighbors at risk.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 07 at 09:08 PM • permalink#37 Was it Germany that built the wall between East and West Germany, or was it the USSR?
East Germany did.Interesting comparison with the Israeli wall:
GDR built it to stop the bleeding of all its people across to the capitalist West. It stabilised their oppressive prison for 40 years.
The Left defended it, saying GDR was a fine alternative society under undue pressure.
The Left opposed a united free Germany.Israel builds a wall to stop bomb-belted martyrs bleeding in, to stabilise and protect its people on the street, including Arab and Moslem citizens.
The Left attacks this wall as provocative.
The Left essentially wants Israel to commit suicide.#38…what you said.
I amend my earlier statement (#31), made from the standpoint of semitic culture—on both sides of the wall—as to age and capacity of those classed as “innocents” and those as a responsible and therefore accountable adults.
On both sides of the wall, responsibility for one’s actions (or inaction) comes a lot earlier and lingers a lot longer than in our part of the world.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 07 at 10:03 PM • permalinkThis won’t be the first time the Israelis have protected an Arab leader from the loonies within. In the 1970s, Mossad picked up on an Arab Brotherhood plan to assassinate Anwar Sadat, so Menachem Begin contacted Sadat directly to tip him off so his <ahem> police could <ahem> round up the usual suspects.
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 05 08 at 01:46 AM • permalinkThe Palestinians are a sad and now deranged group of pawns being crushed by the Arab world’s inability to accept a largely unvalued part of “their” (joke) territory being reclaimed by the Jews, just as the Arabs would like to reclaim other lands over which they have no comparably deep historical claim.
The “Palestinians” best interests would have been served by accepting the original Israeli borders and living among them in growing prosperity. Many did, and still do. Many fled as a result of bad advice, and have been kept in misery without end for other nefarious purposes. There is no light on the hill for them yet.
Most people forget that the Jews were returning to Israel long before the state became fact, and that they bought land considered useless or poor from Arab landowners.“East Germany did, and wikipedia’ing for it, it appears that the idea itself also originated in East Berlin; Moscow (specifically, Chrushchev) merely signed off on it.”
ah, so Moscow didn’t really care if East Germans went over to West Germany by the thousands? It gives East Germans a bad name to blame them for the wall. Most did not want it and thousands died trying to get over it.
Well, geez, did I say that the East Germans held a popular referendum to build that wall or anything? When I’m saying the idea originated in East Berlin, I’m obviously referring to Ulbricht and the Central Committee of the SED, not the population…way to miss the point, JerryS.
At any rate, if you’d like to dispute the notion that the building of the wall was conceived by the East German commies and not the Russian commies, kindly present some evidence. I’ll go with the German Wikipedia rather than your drive-by snarking in the meantime.
48 Jerry S
“East Germany did.”
East Germany was run by the USSR.The way you can tell that it wasn’t built by the Russians is that it stayed up for 40 years.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 05 08 at 01:21 PM • permalinkJerryS, you do realize that PW is German, don’t you? Do consider that.
Also, you are being pretty snarky over a minor issue…..the East German government had their noses pretty far up the Soviet butt. While the idea originated in East Germany, Moscow was calling the shots at the time it was built, and supported the East German government until the USSR collapsed.
Add in the fact that the Berlin Crisis was created by the Soviets to gain full control of Berlin,and resulted in the Berlin Wall getting built. So, y’know, Ronald Reagan’s demand to Gorbachov was perfectly reasonable.
So stop harping on this minor detail….you making yourself look pretty foolish.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 08 at 01:21 PM • permalink“The way you can tell that it wasn’t built by the Russians is that it stayed up for 40 years.”
It was built by the East Germans. It was controlled by the Russians. That’s why Reagan spoke to Gorby rather than some East German.
“JerryS, you do realize that PW is German, don’t you? Do consider that.”
My husband is West German and his mother was East German. Chemnitz.
“Also, you are being pretty snarky over a minor issue…..the East German government had their noses pretty far up the Soviet butt.”
Did they have a choice? Did any Eastern European government have a choice? Surely the speed with which East Germany distanced itself from Russia once it was allowed to ought to tell you something.
“While the idea originated in East Germany, Moscow was calling the shots at the time it was built”
Moscow was always calling the shots. There was never a time it wasn’t.
“Add in the fact that the Berlin Crisis was created by the Soviets to gain full control of Berlin,and resulted in the Berlin Wall getting built. So, y’know, Ronald Reagan’s demand to Gorbachov was perfectly reasonable.”
Of course it was. That was my point. Reagan was speaking to the person in control. And that was Gorby.
were there any East German commies before the Russian commies took the place over?
Umm, of course there were. Who do you think the Russians were recruiting from in the 1930s and early 1940s? Take a look at the election results of the Weimar Republic and you’ll see communist parties featuring quite prominently in most elections.
Think of it this way. Had East Germany not become a satellite of the USSR, there never would have been a Berlin Wall.
And if Hitler hadn’t come to power in Germany in the 1930s, it might have been the Communists instead, putting all of Germany under Communist rule without the need of any wall. Historical what-if’s are completely pointless as arguments, you know that, right?
At any rate, nothing you’ve written has really addressed the point you were criticizing me on. Of course the Soviets could have prevented the building of the wall, and they didn’t. Doesn’t change the fact that the ones that were worried enough about the population exodus to come up with the wall-building idea were Ulbricht and company.
Moscow was always calling the shots. There was never a time it wasn’t.
That the Soviets always had veto power over what happened behind the Iron Curtain doesn’t actually imply that domestic communist leaders never had any ideas of their own as you seem to believe. Dubcek and the failed Prague Spring ring a bell? Tito and his peculiar Yugo version of communism?
You seem to have a rather naive view of the dynamics in the Communist bloc.
(What’s really funny - when I started to respond to your post #34, I was going to write that the wall idea originated in Moscow because that just seemed to make the most sense, but then I went to inform myself and came to my eventual conclusion that the East German government were the ones pushing for it. So, thanks for helping me get rid of a misconception of mine, even if you only did so inadvertantly.)
At any rate, let’s not forget that the extent of Soviet supervision of their satellite states varied with whomever happened to occupy the Kreml at the time. To my knowledge, East Germany had been on a fairly long leash for several years even before Gorbachev came along, if only because Honecker and the blockheads around him were considered quite trustworthy. I don’t believe that, say, the Polish government were given that benefit, especially when they failed to get the nascent Solidarnocz movement under control.
Can’t we all just get along?
Can I have a hug?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 05 08 at 04:41 PM • permalink“Umm, of course there were. Who do you think the Russians were recruiting from in the 1930s and early 1940s?”
puppets for their eventual takeover. Is this news?
“And if Hitler hadn’t come to power in Germany in the 1930s, it might have been the Communists instead, putting all of Germany under Communist rule without the need of any wall.”
So, you’re claiming there would have been a Berlin Wall had the USSR not been in control of East Germany. uh, no. and you want to know why? becuase Berlin would have been free and united had it not been for soviet domination. Got it? The clue is that once the soviet domination of East Germany was gone the wall came down and Berlin united.
“Historical what-if’s are completely pointless as arguments, you know that, right?”
It’s hardly worthless to recognize that without the takeover of East Germany by the USSR that there would have been no Berlin Wall.
“At any rate, nothing you’ve written has really addressed the point you were criticizing me on.”
I’ve not criticized you or anyone else.
“Of course the Soviets could have prevented the building of the wall, and they didn’t.”
uh, they are the ones who WANTED the wall.
East Germany was not in control of its own fate any more than any other soviet satellite. How is this news to you?“That the Soviets always had veto power over what happened behind the Iron Curtain”
It was a little more than having veto power over what happened behind the IC. The Soviets controlled what happened behind the IC.
“(What’s really funny - when I started to respond to your post #34, I was going to write that the wall idea originated in Moscow because that just seemed to make the most sense, but then I went to inform myself and came to my eventual conclusion that the East German government were the ones pushing for it.”
and yet you fail to recognize that the East German government were puppets of the soviets. You really must have been terribly confused when Reagan told Gorby to take down the wall.
“To my knowledge, East Germany had been on a fairly long leash for several years even before Gorbachev came along, if only because Honecker and the blockheads around him were considered quite trustworthy. I don’t believe that, say, the Polish government were given that benefit, especially when they failed to get the nascent Solidarnocz movement under control.”
Yes, the leash was so long that the Soviets allowed East Germans to come and go as they pleased, right?
Not a thing you have said has changed the fact that the Berlin Wall was a construct of the USSR. You tried valiently to dodge this way and that, attempting to throw the subject off-course, but in the end, you failed.
Yes, the leash was so long that the Soviets allowed East Germans to come and go as they pleased, right?
You’re just too thick to understand this, aren’t you? When I speak of Russian relations to East Germany, I am talking about the East German government, not the individual people. Please don’t make me tell you this a third time. Geez, you’d think I’m writing in German here or something. Somehow I think you’re just trolling me by being deliberately obtuse because you can’t accept what I’m saying. Or maybe you like arguing against strawmen.
Your other post preceding that paragraph I quoted can essentially be summarized as “The Russians controlled everything. [repeat about five times, and include copious sneering in between]” Not a single shred of actual evidence, just your firm belief that it simply must have been so.
At any rate, feel free to believe whatever you want, JerryS, I’ll go with the historical record rather than the knee-jerk “the all-powerful Soviets were responsible for eeeeeverything” naivete you’re exhibiting here. It’s pretty funny, you seem to be buying into the idea that Soviet central planning actually worked as advertised on the supra-state level. Not to mention that in so doing, you’re absolving a whole lot of very disgusting non-Russian communists from their personal responsibility for what went on behind the Iron Curtain. And I’m the one worthy of your ire for allegedly blaming ordinary East German people for the existence of the wall? Sheesh.
The whole “all communist regimes were helpless puppets of the USSR in all matters possible” notion might make for easily digestible explanations, but it’s not supported by what actually went on in those countries, not by a longshot. Just one example off the top of my head: Do you actually believe that the Soviets consciously ordered East Germany and Romania to have vastly more vicious secret police units (the Staatssicherheit and the Securitate, respectively) than the other communist countries? Nah, of course not; that’s something that was primarily homegrown, especially so in Ceausescu’s totalitarian hellhole.
Since this is getting more tedious by the word, and has started reminding me of arguments I’ve had with creationists and eco-doommongers, I’ll stop now. Feel free to have the last word if you wish.
Oh, one more thing I do have to take issue with, since you plainly didn’t understand me there, either:
Umm, of course there were [Communists in Germany before 1945]. Who do you think the Russians were recruiting from in the 1930s and early 1940s?”
puppets for their eventual takeover. Is this news?
I didn’t write “who were they recruiting?” as your “puppets” response shows you think I did, but “who were they recruiting from?” - I was trying to indicate that there was obviously a sizable segment of homegrown German Communists long before the Russians started exerting direct influence. But hey, better to respond sneeringly to what you think I wrote than what I actually did write.
All right, no more.
#47
Most people forget that the Jews were returning to Israel long before the state became fact, and that they bought land considered useless or poor from Arab landowners.
And most people are unaware that they often had to “buy” the land again, and again, and again in the form of “baksheesh” extorted from them by the Ottoman Turk.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 08 at 09:50 PM • permalink#66 Hmm, Abbas as Napoleon. Interesting.
That would put Israel’s Shin Bet in the role of Marshal Ney, who stalled the Duke of Wellington, splitting the British from the Prussian forces.
Hamas, then, is either Gebhard von Blücher or the Iron Duke (I vote Blücher, since he retired early in disarray at Napoleon’s onslaught, made possible by Ney).
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 09 at 04:24 AM • permalink“When I speak of Russian relations to East Germany, I am talking about the East German government, not the individual people.”
You mean the East German government that was a puppet of the Soviets? Look, you can kick all you want, nothing is going to change the fact that the East German government was a puppet of the Soviets. How you can not know this is stupifying.
“Not a single shred of actual evidence, just your firm belief that it simply must have been so.”
You want evidence that East Germany, as well as all the other Soviet satellites, WERE in fact, Soviet satellites?
“At any rate, feel free to believe whatever you want, JerryS, I’ll go with the historical record”
and you think the historical record indicates that East Germany was not a Soviet satellite? LOL
“rather than the knee-jerk “the all-powerful Soviets were responsible for eeeeeverything” naivete you’re exhibiting here.”
they were of course responsible for everything that happened IN THEIR SATELLITE STATES
“Do you actually believe that the Soviets consciously ordered East Germany and Romania to have vastly more vicious secret police units”
oh, no, I’m sure the orders were most UNconscious.
“I didn’t write “who were they recruiting?” as your “puppets” response shows you think I did, but “who were they recruiting from?”
uh, people INSIDE their puppet state
Not that long ago and some people already cannot remember what happened in Europe from 1930 on. Shame really. It also may be why it could very well happen again in Europe.
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wouldn’t a civil war amongst the camp palestinians cause some real problems for the “standard issue” eurolander?
I mean, if neither side is joo and/or amerikkkan… how do they decide which side to protest against, have denounced by the UN or talk up in their MSM?