Airport Security
Tigerhawk notices that Hamas is now asserting its control of the border. The original AP caption said:
A Hamas militant is seen inside of an X-ray machine in front of journalists in the passport processing area of the terminal at the Rafah Border Crossing which is now controlled by Hamas militants, near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 15, 2007. On its first day of full rule in Gaza, the Islamic militant party Hamas on Friday granted amnesty to Fatah leaders, signaling that it seeks conciliation with the defeated forces of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
But there's a method to the madness. Telegraph journalist Charles Levinson answers the question: 'Why does Hamas wear masks?':
Someone asked in the comments why the Hamas fighters are wearing masks? What I can say is that one of the many advantages Hamas had over Fatah was that the identity and address of every security force soldier and officer in every branch was readily available to them. ...
Hamas, like other Islamic organizations throughout the Middle East, remains a highly secretive organization and that is a huge advantage. Not only did the conventional security services not know who was in the Qassam Brigades (Hamas’ armed wing), they didn’t know where their bases were. We asked one Fatah fighter why they didn’t attack Hamas? He said, they don’t have any bases to attack. We chase after them and they dissolve into the population.
This just goes to show how much damage modern political correctness has inflicted on the Geneva Convention. Article IV of the Geneva Conventions provided that the privilege of being treated as a prisoner of war would be given to combatants who fulfilled the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
The advantages of using mufti are well known. And to prevent warfare from becoming an unrecognizable brawl, efforts were made to steer combat into contests betweeen uniformed armies. Incentives were provided to armies which fought in uniform, under discipline and according to normative policies. No longer. The rules of war have been wholly corrupted oddly enough, sometimes by the very same so-called Human Rights Advocates who profess to care for them. Perhaps they thought in the beginning they would only be disadvantaging the United States. But in the end, they wound up corrupting the usages themselves. Welcome to airport security.
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/16/2007 02:47:00 AM
12 Comments:
One can only hope Hamas wasn't smart enough to turn off the x-ray machine...
It's not inconceivable they thought it is some sort of amusement ride. In one end and out the other. Repeat as desired. But Cornelius Ryan in the Last Battle described Soviet soldiers carefully unscrewing lightbulbs from conquered Berlin so they could take them home to light the farmhouse. Didn't keep them from taking Berlin. I bet the Goths who sacked Rome thought the fountains strange. Didn't keep them from sacking Rome.
When engaging in war, one party who truly desires to win looks over at his enemy and addresses how he must wage his war to win. Rules? What rules, I want to win! Winning is my only rule!
Perhaps some have noticed how the definitions of words get changed: Fag, gay, bitch and heroes immediately come to mind. Look further out into society and you will see thousands of words being changed in meaning to satisfy those on the march.
It's all about diversity and Rodney King's super wish: "Can't we all just get along?"
It's good to be a part of something that is going to kill the king: Finally I am empowered (whoops...here's one of those words)!
We are at war, here in our democracy. This mass movement is gaining strength. Soon, most of us will be able to identify the uniforms of our mutual enemies.
Too soon, for they shall be standing right in front of us, clad just as our nightmares predicted.
Check your baggage, please...carefully now!
Hamas in Gaza is now the only current Sunni regime that is not pro-Western (now that Libya has fallen into line). Which make the last few years of rightwing Pali bashing all the more remarkable when we now realize the depths of collaboration between Fatah and their supposed enemies at Mossad and CIA. No wonder PLO/Fatah were never able to get any traction towards liberating their people, instead of fighting Israel they were taking orders from her.
But now we get to replay the Algerian election drama from the early nineties where the Islamists were going to win an election so it was called off. Hamas has won two elections yet were marginalized by the US, EU, and Israel. But instead of facing the competent FLN like the Islamists in Algeria were, Hamas got to go up against the congenital losers known as Fatah with predictable results. Small wonder when all that aid money pouring in was, in the end, just bribery to keep the Palestinian people happy with a leadership more Vichy than de Gaulle. Will Hamas turn to dictatorship or will more elections follow?
It’s an interesting time for Israel, after three decades of trying, their goal of splitting the Palestinians has finally been achieved, albeit perhaps temporarily. Because eventually the struggle will shift to the West Bank, where Jewish colonies sit within easy mortar distance yet no mortars ever fall on them. Where single roads serve to supply these settlers but the roads are never barricaded. Who said all that EU aid money was wasted. But now the pathetic bottle rocket attacks from Gaza will stop; now that Hamas has power they need to concentrate on domestic matters such as shifting an economy based on EU and US welfare checks to something more sustainable and wait a while before moving on the West Bank. Look for Iran and Syria to start announcing factory openings to help in order to force international support for Gaza to take control of its borders, ports and airspace.
And if Mossad had any brains--and I know they do--they would have left some false papers at Fatah headquarters implicating senior Hamas figures in collaborationist activities. The French in Algeria used to leave doctored documents on dead FLN fighters that would lead to internal purges where 10-20% of the total guerrilla fighers would end up being liquidated by their own kind.
But the real battle will be in the West Bank whose people will soon have a stark choice of whether to live under the Zionist or Persian jackboot. After 40 years of collaborationist leaders, if Hamas is able to pull off a year or two of economic independence with no Taliban-like edicts, they will have a good chance of eventually taking the West Bank, and you can then be certain that the building of new colonies will come to an abrupt halt as the mortars start flying and the highway ambushes start happening. The 1967 borders might then even start to be taken seriously as a solution.
But early signs are mixed at best; the talk of summary executions and dragging bodies through the street has a very un-Hezbollah feel to it. For Hamas who have conquered territory by revolutionary military force, there are two models, Mao or Hezbollah. To have any chance to succeed they will need to seriously emulate Hezbollah’s competence in civilian matters and not pull any Mao-like cultural revolutions by attempting to install Sharia law on the mainly secular Palestinians.
But for the time being we get to see US and EU diplomats continue to play Weekend at Bernies dragging around the political corpse of Fatah. Only the incompetence of Hamas could ever revitalize that discredited movement.
(BTW, I had a strange dream this morning that I saw an almost anti-Bush post here on BC, the weird thing is that I have a long comment to it on my word processor so it couldn’t really have been a dream…....)
Israel didn't have to try to split th Palestinian movement, though doubtless they would have tried. Even during the Six Day War the bugbear of the Arabs was that they could only avoid fighting themselves by fighting Israel.
And that's part of the problem with the assertion that "Hamas in Gaza is now the only current Sunni regime that is not pro-Western". They cannot speak in a single voice. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are probably the most dangerous societies to the West today, and keeping the "regimes" onside has a limited effect.
Fatah as losers? I agree. But for decades we were told how invincible they were. How Yasser Arafat was the soul of the nation. Now Hamas is sitting in his office. The office of the symbol of Palestine. But none of that should make us forget that Arafat and his thuggish gang were implacable opposed to Israel's existence. That has not changed with Hamas. What has changed is that they are more clever, more skillful and more modern than the old style terrorists.
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Wretchard wrote: This just goes to show how much damage modern political correctness has inflicted on the Geneva Convention. [Emphasis added].
It is definitely not modern, and this error could be seen as a slander of the modern period. If anything, the Geneva convention helped advance modernity.
But what we have now is a product of the postmodern. You've used the term before, and it couldn't be more accurately ascribed, both to this situation and to the proponents who've made this tragedy possible.
Also, instead of modern or postmodern, you could have used the word contemporary, but then that would have been redundant (unless you wanted to imply that has PC evolved, er, devolved, er, progressed - yeah, progressed!).
I think I experienced what had to be going through your mind and feelings as you composed this line. The error in it reveals both comedy and tragedy, and maybe a desire to avoid editorializing in the direction I went, though I'm pretty sure you didn't intend the comedy.
A more perfect example of the anti-semitism, self-loathing, effeminate worship of killers, hatred of simple decency, excuse-making of third world corrupt tyrants, and desire for kings and absolute rulers among the corrupt, diseased left could not bettered by Kevin's comment.
Alone among peoples and nations, Israel has no right of existence nor self-defense. The constant shelling of Sderot and Ashkelon and other cities are "pathetic bottle rockets" while Kevin carefully avoids any mention of the civilian deaths and deliberate targeting of the same among Israelis by Hamas thugs. In violations of all rules of war and simple common human decency. The only thing I can conclude is that Kevin like all Leftists does not believe Jews or Israelis are people and thus deserving of the fundamental right of self defense. Leftist anti-semitism at it's finest.
Why? Well one partial answer is that like all Leftists, the Left hates Jews and is anti-semitic. The Left HATES Israel because it is Western, Jewish, and fights rather than pose as victims. The Left HATES the ideas of liberty, rule of law, justice, secular society, faith, reason, and an open, changing, upwardly mobile society. Romanticizing as it always does the "noble savage" who tosses his enemies off buildings and poses in masks.
God the Left loves their brutal murderers: Stalin, Hitler, Tookie, Pol Pot, and of course Hamas.
Part of why that is so is the total effeminancy of the Left. None of them actually risk anything. The ideas of courage, honor, decency, compassion, bravery and sacrifice are as alien to them as the idea that Jews as people have human rights. No less than Palestinians. Hence the worship of "ultra-manly" brutality, cruelty, sadism, and murder. Deprived of manhood themselves the Left worships a depraved and diseased parody of it.
And of course part and parcel of the Left's desire to "start from zero" is the destruction of secular rational society. No doubt Kevin is very excited about the possibility of the new, Hamas-led Islamic society that will keep women enslaved in sexual purdah, prohibit all religions save Salafism, and mire the Gazans in primitive tribal superstition. Well why not?
The Left desperately wants a king, a tyrant, an Alexander, a Napoleon, to raise them to the whip hand. So they too can partake of the cruelties and become "men" in their debased thinking.
And the fundamental reason above all is that the Left stands ONLY for the worship of power, absolute power. Men who kill, and like it. It's their god and it's disgusting.
Whiskey199, I think if we can peel out some of the Hezbollist cheerleading, Kevin's post has a lot of sense to it.
I see this Hamas victory as a gigantic wake-up call for Israel (most of all), the US, the whole Western world. It brings us clarity, blessed clarity (or it should).
The "Weekend at Bernie's" line was a gem, that is exactly what the USDOS is trying to do, even though Abbas is the lineal descendant of Arafat and Husseini, who has spent 2.5 years urging his "brigades" to stop fighting each other and turn their guns on the Joooos...The PA hasn't changed a whit in its hateful agit-prop and kid-brainwashing, why on earth shd we cry as Fatah is being liquidated?
Kevin's biggest mistake is assuming the competence of the Israeli security apparatus, had that been the case S. Lebanon wd have been pacified by the mid-80s and the PLO wd have expired by the mid-90s--remember they were literally selling off their offices just prior to Oslo.
Israel's lately pathetic generals and spies need to read our friend R:
"When engaging in war, one party who truly desires to win looks over at his enemy and addresses how he must wage his war to win. Rules? What rules, I want to win! Winning is my only rule!"
Iran and its imps know this. That is why they are cruising to victory. Unless we and Israel [re]learn it.
Why does Kevin assume that the Jews have no right to live? Why are their lives not held precious in his eyes? Are they not people who work and raise families and do the exact same natural things that people all over the world do?
King David was king of Jerusalem about 1500 years prior to the birth of Mohammad. If they, the Jews, have no claim to the land then who has claim to any land anywhere? These Jews have a pedigree of worldwide fame.
The Jews are practicing a morality far above the peoples who hate them and who are trying to destroy them. It is fun to visit Israel. Who in his right mind wants to visit Syria or Iraq or???
Obviously there is a Spiritual agenda unfolding before us. The Bible says the Jews will never be driven out of this land again. That's probably the issue.
It looks like things are just going to get hotter.
Zionist jackboot? Are Kevin and Cedarford the same? They sure sound like it.
Over and over and over again, Israel has offered the Palestinians a deal that the could refuse: Israel would remain and Palestinians would have to give up their dreams of another Nazi Genocide and have to live with Israel next to it.
Palestinians could not accept that, and I doubt they would find Hamas objectionable. If Palestinians wanted peace they could have had it decades ago. They do not. They hold to Adolf Hitler's old dream, "eliminate the Jews" as they both say. Hamas makes that clear to the Jews of Israel and they understand they only have one choice: fight and live for another day perhaps, or lay down and die.
The idea of peace is laughable. A "negotiation" with Hamas? No people can make an agreement with another bent on their destruction.
Even if Israel played the game of false spies (as Hitler did masterfully with Stalin before the War) it won't matter. The entire Palestinian people, to a man, woman, and child, are committed to genocide. Israelis must know that by now, and realize that only total war against their enemies when they do wage it will suffice.
Israel is a tiny nation of less than six million. It cannot sustain lengthy attrition operations. It must defeat the enemy decisively. I expect the old ways, of picking a fight they could decisively win.
You know, if you go on to a left wing site and mention that Blacks would do well to resist some of the more destructive elements of their culture of poverty (violence, anti-intellectualism, disrespect for familial structures, etc.) many people in response will avoid chanllenging you directly on your points but will immediately just start calling you a dirty racist that hates all blacks, and so on.
It is political correctness and multiculturalism gone wild. But what about when the right acts the exact same way if anyone even mentions Israel in less than absolutely glowing terms?
Where exactly in my comments did you get this idea that I hate Israel or that I believe she has no right to exist?
The Zionist jackboot phrase was intentionally exaggerated to invite the reader to take the viewpoint of the average Palestinian. That statement also made reference to the Persian jackboot. I guess I am also denying Iran’s right to exist and have therefore committed a hate crime against Persians everywhere.
I think the problem here is that many on the Right have lost the ability to rationalize from an abstract or disinterested level and instead engage in emotionalism. It’s not about principles, it’s all about who we love or hate. It is the feminisation of discourse – let’s just express out emotions and leave our brains out of it. Now fair enough, if I were forced to choose I would of course love Israel and hate Hamas.
But when a biologist watches a virus and white blood cell interact, do I want to hear about who he is rooting for or some interesting perspective about the characteristics of each? Should he be subjected to abuse for not explicitly stating that he is pro-white blood cell and anti-virus?
But dude, what really threw me was the following:
God the Right loves their brutal murderers: Stalin, Hitler, Tookie, Pol Pot, and of course Hamas.
Dude, Tookie? WTF?
That’s some pretty heavy company he’s hanging with; kind of like promoting the local little league star to the MLB Hall of Fame.
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