cows come home

click to enlarge  —  imarge by jarcob

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Tom ‘hopes’ Israel committed war crimes

click to enlarge  —  image source

At the height of Israel’s recent war in Gaza, Thomas L Friedman wrote:

I have only one question about Israel’s military operation in Gaza: What is the goal? Is it the education of Hamas or the eradication of Hamas? I hope that it’s the education of Hamas.

Well, go on... ask! — you know he wants you to...

Ahem. So then, Tom, what do you mean by “the education of Hamas”?

Well, in the course of Tom’s exposition it emerges that, by ‘education’, he means that the Israel Defence Force will teach Hamas the error of its ways “by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.”

What Tom is essentially driving at here is that “inflicting heavy pain” on a civilian population, in order to achieve military and geopolitical objectives, is just dandy. While such collective punishment may be in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is apparently de rigeur in the kind of world Tom would have us live in.

And yet, despite his worldly wisdom and wiles, Tom volunteered that he “still can’t tell” whether Israel was trying to eradicate or educate Hamas.

One would think that, as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with both hands around the throat of the Zeitgeist, Tom would surely have seen reports last October that Israel “plans to use disproportionate force” in its next war, citing the authority of senior IDF people; for example:

“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he [GOC Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot] said. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

Where has Tom been lately? Or is he being falsely modest?

Because, such as it is, the Friedman vision-thing is already a working reality!!

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Fish Friday

Hans Nicolaas Stam
(1955-2009)

In Loving Memory

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A (hi)story...

Shameless self promotion... Anceint Warfare Magazine III-2


The dead lay everywhere; the ground onto which they had been driven was a charnel house littered with their corpses. Shattered sarisae, viscera and body parts shared the killing ground with the whole weapons and armour that had been abandoned in the final rout. The foetid odours of blood and bowel fouled the increasingly frigid air as the cries of the dying and the wounded faded with the Persian mid-winter sunset. Litter bearers carried the still living from the blood soaked dust into which they had fallen while carts, the produce of carnage piled high, plied their way to funerary fires as yet unlit. Morale in the camp matched the freezing night air as confusion, tinged with anger at the day's proceedings, spread with the smoke from the campfires. The military prospects were not propitious: the phalanx infantry and, more importantly, its Macedonians were shattered. Any resumption of hostilities on the morrow would prove difficult, if not impossible...

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