On Attacks, Collateral Damage and War in South Lebanon

The Dresden firestorm in World War Two killed literally tens of thousands of innocent civilians, all because they made the mistake of living in a city that had war machine factories. This was a triumph of Allied air power, and a congruence with my family’s fate at almost the exact same time in Auschwitz.

When Hezballah or Hamas miss and hit a field instead of an Israeli citizen, house, or factory, they readjust their aim and fire again. Muslim fanatics and their sycophants hand out candy to children after a successful strike at the Jewish Homeland. And then turn around and protest when Israel accidentally hits buildings next to missile launchers, which are set up specifically to shield behind civilians.

Israel is not America in World War Two, and we do not revel in the deaths of civilians, the raison d’être of the terrorists at our borders. While the deaths of civilians is deplorable, horrible in the case of children, it is Hizballah—literally “Army of God”—that is to blame for creating the conditions, and then positioning weapons, to maximize their own civilian casualties.

Of course the civilians, beholden to the generous hand of Hizballah, will anticipate the rebuilding and rehabilitation, yet again, of their country, a mea culpa they will not understand from a terror organization that cynically knows how to sow and harvest their next generation of fanatics.

Copyright © 2005-2006 DaShlom. All Rights Reserved. Contact the author at dashlom (at) gmail dot com for reprinting and republishing or site linking requests.

Despair works best
when it has no reason to.

Explaining the War

I’ve been covering the war on Israel’s northern border and throughout Lebanon, as well as in Gaza, since the first attack by Hamas resulting in deaths, injuries and one soldier kidnapped. Friends, co-workers, vendors, folks in the neighborhood.

The tools available on the web such as Google’s Earth and map web site have been invaluable — to a point. Zoom in on Israel’s northern border and try to move east from the coast. At a certain point, the vision gets vague: satellite imagery gets blurry around Har Meron and Tsfat, and then totally unplottable. Check out this picture: the clear settlement is a border kibbutz, to the right is a land heading east towards Meron. This obviously helps Israel, but I wonder who makes these rules? Before North Korea’s test-spewing of missiles, I was able to track, in painful detail, all of North Korea in search of missile silos and other military structures. Not all that many vehicles up there, by the way, except for near where South Korea might be able to see.

Here’s another example: Lebanon’s Beirut International Airport versus Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. Which one do you think makes for better targeting?

So someone has pull with Google. Microsoft’s Live site solves the problem by simply not providing high-resolution shots at all of Israel, but it’s the same story on the Lebanese side.

I’m glad tactical information about Israel isn’t being made available to Iran for targeting. Google is living up to its motto of doing no evil. But I think it’s interesting that that ability is being governed according to what seem to be United States interests.

Cross-Post Alert

Check the weather report in Israel according to the radio news broadcasts.

Copyright © 2005-2006 DaShlom. All Rights Reserved. Contact the author at dashlom (at) gmail dot com for reprinting and republishing or site linking requests.

Weather Report

This is a cross-post; normally I’d be putting posts on the Middle East on my other blog, Hadofeq (“the pulse” in Hebrew).

I was reminded of the children’s book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” listening to the news on Israeli radio this morning (18ooZ). “The frequency of missile strikes seems to be on the upswing,” he said. “Missiles landed in…” and he rattled off a list of twenty villages and towns. That Tiberias was hit speaks to the continued existence of longer-range bottle rockets in Hizballah’s hands.

“Residents are advised,” he continued, “to stay away from torn or down electrical lines. Also, keep away from electrical substations if they have been hit by missiles.” All delivered in calm, mid-alto tones.

“Two sailors killed have been identified,” he said earlier in the broadcast. “For the information of Sailors, seas will be fairly rough,” ended the weather report.

A postscript: in the three minutes it’s taken me to write this, two more missiles have hit Tveria. At this point reporters and witnesses alike seem more calm, reporting damage and continued ‘kor ru’ach’ — mental calm, in the target zones that were my home.

Captured by the Media

Events are moving faster than reporting can adequately analyze, and I’ve been in full-time media feeding since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, and his tank-mates were killed or injured.

Politics are not a factor at this time. Israel’s response is not a function of Kadima, or Labor, or the Likud. I trained for ‘yom k’rav’ — a day of war — twenty years ago, and this, so far, is scarily close to what I practiced then. I knew then how it would end, and I am glad that the battle plan has been updated.

The IDF, with the missile strike in Haifa, will ‘peel back’ Lebanon’s technological state decade by decade, until the barbarians within will be left with only a barbarian’s standard of life and living. Airports, seaports, long-haul transportation have already been affected. Stand by for loss of all power, water and sewage treatment, and destruction of the transportation infrastructure.

It’s up to ‘brave’ Hizballah, funded by Iran and illegal activities in the US and run by Iran, and ‘fearless’ Hamas, funded by Iran and Arab extremists and run from Syria, to return our soldiers. Only then, perhaps, will they be able to stop cowering behind and within their own civilian populations, and parley for their lives with Israel.

Copyright © 2005-2006 DaShlom. All Rights Reserved. Contact the author at dashlom (at) gmail dot com for reprinting and republishing or site linking requests.

A Backdrop to News from Israel

Poetry.com has a daily ‘Poetry in Motion‘ contest. Here’s mine for today:

beneath paint-brushed golden summer days
I found silky
sunrise
filagree
in my last harvest rain.

Copyright © 2006 Da Shlom. All Rights Reserved.

Why Are There so Many Mean People?

I was perusing Yahoo’s question engine. That’s a service where users submit questions, and then people at large answer them. Stephen Hawking posed a question recently, and I answered it as best I could. Afterwards I trolled for other questions to answer. One in particular caught my eye: “Why are there some many mean people?”

There wasn’t any context for the question, but it got me thinking. There are a lot of people that act selfishly or inconsiderately. I get cut off on the highway daily. People–even my children–leave their messes for me to clean up. I get calls from people that clearly don’t care how insulting they are in tone and/or language.

The question brought me up short, though. Are there so many mean people? What’s our gauge? After all, this site showcases a positive side to news on the planet. To act as a foil for all the negative news.

Bad news sells. Mean people are obvious. A customer support axiom says that if you help someone with a problem, that person will tell one other person about their great experience. But if you irritate or upset a person, that person will tell at least ten more people. Perhaps that’s why there’s a presumption that there are a lot of mean people.

Perhaps, however, there is another side to this. Our brains are wired for survival, to be wary of danger. Scientists know we can tell the difference in lighting of a single lumen. Movement spotted by a single rod or cone in the eye can trigger ‘catching’ our attention. On a lower rung of Maslow’s hierarchy, this is a survival factor.

I believe spotting the mean people around us is an equally important survival factor. Mean people, stories of meanness and the visual and aural cues to mean activity flag us. We want to know about these people, because They. Are. Trouble. In the Maslow structure, recognizing mean people is just a step above making sure you’ve got fresh water and shelter.

So, there may seem to be a lot of mean people out there, but that’s just your survival instinct looking out for you. The nice ones don’t catch your eye, and I’m betting they are in the majority!