Sludge Report #100: F16s Back In Action + Feedback

Friday, 10 August 2001, 4:37 pm
Column: C.D. Sludge

In this edition: Sludge #99 is receives instant feedback… + News Link As Bombs Start Falling.
- “You are either ignorant, stupid, or profoundly cynical and dishonest…. Perhaps you should be the victim of a suicide bombing.” A.R. of Chicago
– “I just get so sick of all the one sided media that is full of all-out lies and half truths about what's going on in the Holy Land….Thanks” D.B.
- and C.D. Sludge replies..."The problem with this script is that it has happened so often that with repetition, it starts to seem normal."

NOTE: Authors of this report will be anonymous and wide ranging, and occasionally finely balanced. Indeed you are invited to contribute: The format is as a reporters notebook. It will be published as and when material is available. C.D. Sludge can be contacted at sludge@scoop.co.nz. The Sludge Report is available as a free email service..Click HERE - http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/myscoop/ to subscribe...

Sludge Report #100

Bombs

Sludge #99 is receives instant feedback…

...as the bombs start falling.

YAHOO NEWS LINKS
See...
-
see..
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010809/wl/mideast_dc.html
Israel Seizes Palestinian Offices in East Jerusalem – Retaliates With F16s

And

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Middle_East_Peace_Process/
for YAHOO FULL COVERAGE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS.

Sludge Instant Feedback

************

Scandalous

Dear Sir,

Your article, which claims that Israel itself is to be "blamed" for the bombing, is nothing short of scandalous.

To claim that Israel should stop intercepting organizations on their way to kill Israeli civilians is to tell Israel to cease defending itself.

You are either ignorant, stupid, or profoundly cynical and dishonest.

Perhaps you should be the victim of a suicide bombing. It would do you good. I sincerely hope that you will witness an attack one day, and moreover, that you will be seriously injured.

Sincerely,

A.R.

*************

Thanks

C.D. Sludge,

I was wanting to find a few things from this reporting.

First of all, who feeds you the information with such a backwards slant on reality? I mean, you have a bunch of radical extremist groups that in all honesty want nothing less than the extinction of the Israeli people just because of a difference in beliefs.

I mean, it's not that hard to see that Israel is the one that is being attacked and having to defend itself.

It's clearly visible that they are showing strength in the fact that they are defending themselves, striking back at the involved parties, but showing restraint in not going all out and tearing the enemy apart.

I'm sure that you being an intelligent person can plainly see that Israel has the might to easily wipe out the entire Palestinian force as well as their people without that much effort.

That was easily proven in the 6 day war, and that was long ago when they didn't have all the capabilities they do today.

Either way, it is also very clear that when the Israelis do strike, it is with impressive precision considering they attack the people responsible (namely the ones that actually bomb helpless women and children in civilian areas), with weapons of war that are capable of killing hundreds of people in a single blow in a matter of seconds.

I will call your attention to the fact that the strikes that Israel makes are not wild and reckless intended on hurting the innocent in a cowardly way.

Even when they do certain strikes, it's been shown that when they plan to do something like blow up a Palestinian police station or something like that, they call ahead and inform everyone in the building and let them have time to evacuate.

Now, does that sound like someone that is intentionally trying to slaughter massive amounts of people just to do it? I think not.

Even when you consider what the bombs that the suicidal bombers have are made up of, namely explosives wrapped in nails and all kinds of things made for shrapnel like effects.

That in and of itself shows that the PLO cares nothing of who they are involving in the fight or who gets hurt. The simple fact of the matter is that the Palestinians, (meaning the PLO, not the civilians that don't share in extremist opinion) will never be happy with whatever they are given.

No matter how much Israel tries to bend backwards to try to find common ground with the PLO, it will never be enough. Give an inch, demand a mile.

I just get so sick of all the one sided media that is full of all-out lies and half truths about what's going on in the Holy Land.

I realise that this e-mail will be met with some form of scoff, be MIS-worded and turned around, or just be completely ignored but I sure hope you do some background research from different points of view from what you've been doing and find out the truth outside of what the oil controlled media wants to report.

I'm confident that if done, your insight will be able to cut through all the haze and get the truth which is so badly needed in a time where the price of a gallon of gas can change facts reported on the nightly news.

Thanks

D. B.

*************

C.D. Replies

Thanks I couldn't possibly have said it better myself.

A.R. and D.B… write back soon...

No doubt we will shortly be hearing more about the justification for Israel’s policy of compassionate illegal military strikes conducted during a ceasefire.

D.B. remarks: "Even when they do certain strikes, it's been shown that when they plan to do something like blow up a Palestinian police station or something like that, they call ahead and inform everyone in the building and let them have time to evacuate."

Bullseye D.B.

Let’s hope they got through, it would be a shame if someone’s phone had been cut off. Or someone misread the map.

Even if this justification made a difference. Which at International law it doesn’t (e.g. Can or should Australia bomb the Auckland Police Station if some indigenous rights extremists let off a bomb in a Canberra St?) then it betrays a leap of naïve faith that bombing can somehow be compassionate, or safe. It can’t.

Bombs dropped by F16s are almost by definition imprecise, as was discovered so clearly by NATO in Kosovo in their numerous "accidental" bombings of civilians. Even satellite guided bombs dropped by B2’s can hit the wrong target.

Helicopter launched missiles are equally unjust, as they proved to be in the killing two innocent children in Nablus.

That is why it is illegal to make military strikes against neighbouring countries except when authorised by the United Nations.

In a sense the Israeli policy is legally identical to that followed by the Real IRA in London. They too provide warnings before doing things like blowing up cars outside the BBC.

Israel and the U.S. - who relatively recently (and equally illegally) bombed Afghanistan, Khartoum - reserve the right to use bombing as a normal part of their international relations. Even though it is now illegal.

They are able to do so with impunity solely because of the US veto rights at the Security Council, which they often use.

Anyone else, Indonesia for example, would immediately in such circumstances be told to get back into line and obey the civilised rules.

Perhaps more importantly however Israel has dashed its ability to negotiate with the Palestinians about a lasting peace.

In the process of executing it's assumed rights to arbitrarily bomb the police force of another people's country it has lost any moral authority that it might have had.

And with it all the leverage Israel had to resolve this dispute is gone. It’s righteousness and justification has again evaporated in a haze of high explosive.

It as if the elder brother in an intense domestic dispute, has in retaliation to an attack from his smaller and weaker sibling dealt his younger brother a dreadful hiding, in public as a demonstration.

Why? Seemingly in order to teach him the lesson that he must not challenge him, and perhaps simply to teach him that he is able to give him a hiding whenever he wishes.

And so the conflict will go on.

Why?

Who knows.

In the 24 hours since the deaths of at least 16 innocents in Downtown Jerusalem all we have learned from this incident is Israel remains able and willing to use its military toys seemingly with impunity.

The problem with this script is that it has happened so often that with repetition, it starts to seem normal.

Anti(c)opyright Sludge 2001

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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