March 7, 2008: It's been about a week since Israel began pounding the Gaza strip, using munitions many times more powerful than the crude missiles shot into Israel from the region.
Body count so far as of February 27: 182 dead Palestinians, 1 Israeli in Dimona.
Most of the newscast yesterday tried to paint Israel as victim, but very few Israelis have been killed.
So it's another manufactured newsbyte to justify Israeli indignation over being harassed by the Palestinians again.
What really needs to be done is to moderate Arabic sentimentality such that Israelis and Arabs live in harmony, even if that requires more time for a few of the coalition troops from in the Middle East to be redeployed as security training specialists in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This may also require more intensive training of coalition troops to be more culturally sensitive to Afghan, Arab and Iraqi interests.
It's not in America's best interests to totally alienate the Arabs now.
Update: January 13, 2013
As the body count for Palestinians killed on the Gaza strip over the rest of 2008, only 13 soldiers would be injured in the Kerem Shalom suicide bombing on April 19, 2008.
By December 27, the Israelis killed 400 children and 900 adults in Gaza.
In Afghanistan, two cultural traditions must at all costs be condoned: Boy Thursdays and the routine torturing and killing of dogs. If coalition troops cannot stomach this, then cultural sensitivity training needs to be instituted.
It has to be ingrained in each soldier that this is a Don't Ask, Don't Tell special ops mission, not a peace-keeping mission. Otherwise, the body count of remaining coalition members still in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to rise.
In my opinion, the nations that started their war against the Taleban and decided to invade Iraq under a false flag waved by the Bush administration after 911 need to provide both Afghanistan and Iraq with more foreign aid especially of the humanitarian kind.
If this means selecting westernized Turkish in reserve at home to help assimilate the Turkish diaspora in Europe, then so be it.
At the moment, German schools in towns with a high Turkish population require help in tackling the violence against teaching staff which has been ongoing since Germany decided to allow them into the country.
Another nation with the same problem is the UK in cities with no-go zones like Birmingham. Though more assimilated Pakistanis and Sikhs are needed to help assimilate Desis and Pak
Originally posted: March 7, 2008 3:40 PM
References:
Israel declares Gaza "enemy entity" (23 September 2007): http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-declares-gaza-enemy-entity/3282
Israel kills at least 31 Gazabs Today Including 8 Children:
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-kills-least-31-gazans-today-including-8-children/3330
Israeli Atrocities in Palestine, The Real Terrorism in Palestine: http://www.peterloud.co.uk/palestine/
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