Slashdot Mirror
Israeli Army Retweeting 1967 War As It Happened
An anonymous reader writes "This is a new one, twitter as a form of historical reenactment: 'Israel's army is giving a "live" blow-by-blow account of the 1967 Six Day War, tweeting each air strike at the exact time it occurred 46 years ago ... @IDF1967 "is an official Israel Defence Forces account that is aimed at re-tweeting the events of the Six Day War in live time", ... The account was tweeting key events in the battle against the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria that took place from June 5 to 10, 1967 and includes pictures and videos, the army said. The tweets are mostly in Hebrew, with some translated into English. "In response to repeated provocations by Egypt, the State of Israel and the IDF are going to war. We will not sit idly as the enemy forces tighten the noose around our necks," the opening tweet said around 8.00am (1500 AEST) on Wednesday when Israel landed its first preemptive air strike 46 years ago.'"
So when are they going to reenact the attack on the USS Liberty?
Interesting piece of propaganda
Damn. I took a second to sign in, and then this AC goes first, and violates Godwin's Law too. What I was GOING to say, before this nincompoop smeared their greasy fingers all over the comment stream, was that I hoped their tweets would not all be triumphalist, manly statements about their martial prowess, but would also include all the inanities and irrelevancies one finds in a Twitter stream. But it could be that the "funny" Jews aren't involved in this particular effort.
Since when did Slashdot become horribly biased in supporting Israel?
I assume the tweets will come strictly from an Israeli perspective.
Can we have a counter channel with a play-by-play according to the other sides? Then it would actually be historically interesting, and not pure one-sided YAY WAR, YAY ISRAEL propaganda.
When I read an international news story from an American outlet, I also try to read the Al Jazeera version in an attempt to extract the truth from somewhere in the middle. This is kind of like that.
What do you mean, "now".
Here are six mass graves discovered this week, in Jaffa, full of Arab native civilians "cleansed" from their city in 1948.
'The remains belong to people of different ages, including women, children and the elderly, some of which bear signs of violence.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334205/Mass-grave-uncovered-containing-dozens-Palestinians-killed-1948-war-founded-Israel.html
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Ah the 1948 war, where the arabs told the other arabs living in said regions that if they flee, they'll be able to live on the land of the jews that they those arab armies were going to ethnically cleanse. Never mind that said arab armies did in fact commit cleansing...of their fellow arabs, and in those regions among others. That's not new, news.
Om, nomnomnom...
> now they are nazis
Oh come on! Is creating a Twitter account so you can read these "tweets" really that hard?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Oddly enough, the article doesn't say anything about anyone being "cleansed" from their city in 1948.
What it does say is that:
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You talk nonsense. People were murdered and their home stolen. After pushing them onto reservation-type camps, they are still subject to things like collective punishments - which include mass aerial bombardment of civilian homes with white phosphorus, or the interruption of potable water.
Both are war crimes.
None of this can be justified in any way by the alleged rhetoric of some ill-defined "arabs" saying something that - if you are understood correctly - would amount to: "If you leave your property that you own, and your orchards and shops, then after you are refugees, you might be able to squat on the couple of Kibbutz those Poles stole from your parents, instead!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I wonder if that broadcast will include the attack on the US Liberty in which they killed 34 American Sailors and was covered up for MANY years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
That's done already! https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII
It would be most interesting if the tweeting team managed to dig deep enough into the historical documents to recreate the fog of war that blankets all such events, announcing and then retracting as reports arrived at HQ (or whatever).
Full realism would be uninteresting since no real HQ would tweet everything it thought it knew at the moment it knew it. But then, perhaps using declassified documents, we could recreate what it would be like to work at the top levels of a Twitter-based government with Top Secret initial and revised reports and guesses bouncing around, seeing how little time people really had to make decisions that put thousands or millions of lives at risk.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
I wonder if they'll tweet an "oops,our bad #fail #sosorry" when it comes time for them to lay waste to an American military vessel in international waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
how the Israelis would feel if someone created a Twitter account along the lines of "@Treblinka1942" and ran a play by play of the daily events there?
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
And the French Army simply retweets.
...and let's not forget that soon-to-be #tt that's always great at parties and family dinnertime:
Turkey retweets the Funny Thing That Happened With Armenians That Totally Was Not a Genocide or Anything Like That, Turkey Swears.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Why post this article on Slashdot? Its obvious flamebait, bringing out all the hatred, hand-wringing and dubious justifications from all sides of this conflict.
Nothing good is going to come from all the comments in here, ive already seem my fair share of sheer hatred in the comments so far.
Why post this Slashdot? Because its on Twitter?
Last time there were tweets of this nature, Wall Street had a flash crash.
I wonder if the 1.4% drop in the S&P500 today is related in any way.
[Rent This Space]
You're thinking the Yom Kippur war in 1973. The 6 day war the arabs were massing for an attack on all sides, and Israel pre-empted the lot of them.
There was a (relatively lengthy) period of tension building up to that however.
How do you feel about two wrongs making a right?
No. But it does equate to a double standard. A different standard is applied to Israel than to everyone else. What's worse is that the other Arab countries are treating their own people like shit.
That's like you pissing on your family. That's actually WORSE than some stranger doing it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Is there a logical or rhetorical fallacy you won't ignore, in the pursuit of your defense for the outlaw nation?
Yeah, on both sides. Did you know that the Jews globally lost more property than they gained in 1948? After Arabs lost the war, Jews everywhere in the Middle East were essentially evicted and all their stuff was confiscated, depriving them of wealth amounting to almost three billion dollars (1948 dolllar value, try adjusting *that* for current value) and lands larger than the 1948 Israel.
But the people murdered by Stern and Irgun were innocent. Those who lost homes and property were not even indirectly responsible. It's like claiming Catholic farmworkers should be exploited because there are priests who molest children.
It's funny that countries such as Jordan and other, despite supposedly being the same ethnic group, don't actually want these troublemakers.
Yeah. Like why England and Finland weren't asking to accept the whole nation of Croatia in the 90's. Hey! There the same ethnic group. Your racism is vile. "Troublemakers"? They were just born there, descendents of Ancient Greece, Phoenecia, Rome, Egypt, Sumer and - dare I say Judea. But that's "causing trouble".
"Mass aerial bombardment"? And do you actually have anything to support this claim?
Operation Cast Lead
I may be wrong, but isn't it the case that Israel actually provides the water to the West Bank and to Gaza at their own expense, essentially at a loss?
"Here, we stole your aquifers. Aren't we forebaring and even magnanimous in trickling some back, after diverting it to water illegal colonial settlements? Gosh. What's a little matter of war crime, compared to our virtues?"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Hell. You don't even have to focus on what the Nazis did to the Jews. You could completely ignore the Jews and just focus on what the Nazis did to EVERYONE ELSE.
The Nazis were genocidal dirt bags even if you ignore the Holocaust completely.
That's the astounding part of idiots that try to conflate the Nazis and Israel. They don't just have no clue, they have a negative clue.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I wonder why the IDF is doing this? Are they completely tone-deaf to public opinion?
I support Israel, but sometimes their PR blunders make we wonder what exactly they are thinking....
Just a plain dick move
Was that pun intended?
You are on the wrong side of history, and pretty much all of the nonsense you refer to is coming from you. The Arabs in Palestine were following the orders of the Arab leaders to evacuate. They had been making it clear that a genocide was coming, and who wants get pulled into a genocide? If the Israelis hadn't been able to defend themselves and stop the many attacking Arab armies, it is very possible that any Arabs that had remained behind and ignored the commands to leave would have been killed along with the Jews.
Time Now for a Declaration of Mideast Peace; Doomed Arab Refugees
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
Azzam's Genocidal Threat
An October 11, 1947 report on the pan-Arab summit in the Lebanese town of Aley,[9] by Akhbar al-Yom's editor Mustafa Amin, contained an interview he held with Arab League secretary-general Azzam. Titled, "A War of Extermination," the interview read as follows (translated by Efraim Karsh; all ellipses are in the original text):
Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha spoke to me about the horrific war that was in the offing saying:
"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre[10] or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.
"This war will be distinguished by three serious matters. First—faith: as each fighter deems his death on behalf of Palestine as the shortest road to paradise; second, [the war] will be an opportunity for vast plunder. Third, it will be impossible to contain the zealous volunteers arriving from all corners of the world to avenge the martyrdom of the Palestine Arabs, and viewing the war as dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world
"The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle or the final one whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew's morale! Most desert Arabians take pleasure in fighting. I recall being tasked with mediating a truce in a desert war (in which I participated) that lasted for nine monthsWhile en route to sign the truce, I was approached
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Ah the 1948 war, where the arabs told the other arabs living in said regions that if they flee, they'll be able to live on the land of the jews that they those arab armies were going to ethnically cleanse.
Ah yes, you're referring to this
The new state of Israel spread the story that all these Palestinians had left under orders from Arab leaders, citing "Arab broadcasts" telling people to move away so that Arab armies could "operate without interference.” There has never been any evidence for this story. Both US and British intelligence services were monitoring all broadcasts during the period, and not a single "Arab broadcast" telling people to leave was recorded. In fact, several Arab broadcasts were recorded telling the population to stay put. Israeli forces, meanwhile, were using threats, violence, and murder to force many Palestinians out of their homes.
It is no longer the official line of the Israeli Foreign Office that Arab leaders ordered Palestinians to leave Palestine.
Besides, I never even understood the reasoning behind this justification to condemn all Palestinians for an alleged radio broadcast supposedly sent from a different Arab country. If you're a civilian and not part of the military, since when does fleeing a region about to become a battlefield even considered a crime? Are you suggesting that non-military people should just stay there, Arab or not, while two armies are supposedly converging on each other?
Well technically it was the Romans at the behest of the Jewish religious leaders. Jesus kept calling them hypocrites and then they proved him right.
No. But it does equate to a double standard. A different standard is applied to Israel than to everyone else. What's worse is that the other Arab countries are treating their own people like shit.
Despite your flamebait moderation, you are essentially correct.
As far as a double standard against Israel, the UN is a great example of that.
From: Middle East Quarterly - Winter 2004
The Case for Israel
... The Case For Israel ... Dershowitz points out that a full 27 percent of the U.N.'s country-specific resolutions critical of a state have been directed against it. In contrast, no resolution in the history of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has condemned Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, all of which are self-evidently far worse violators of human rights. Israel, asserts Dershowitz, has a "far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." As evidence, he notes that "Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military during wartime" and that "Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war."... The Case for Israel
Fighting the Lies Harder Than Fighting the War - Israel does not "deliberately" target civilians.
Regarding the mistreatment of Arabs by Arabs, two interesting cases that immediately come to mind:
Black September - In Context
Hama 1982 – The Syrian massacre you never heard about (Not for those of weak constitution. The SS had nothing on the Syrian Army.)
For some reason you never really hear about those. What makes it doubly interesting is that Black September was specifically against the Palestinian Arabs.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran. Which, for some reason, also entitled them to seize a great deal of surrounding land, most importantly the West Bank.
Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules. Just as Israel's possession of a couple hundred nuclear weapons means that they should be threatened with economy-destroying sanctions and military strikes, if Iran is threatened with the same in case they someday decide they want a nuclear weapon.
A different standard is applied to Israel than to everyone else.
Yup, like nuclear weapon arming, and massive military investment from the US. The soviet union is long dead.
You're projecting, with the usual bullshit handwaving and the usual canards to justify the unjustifiable. The formation of Israel was impossible without massive land theft from the native population, from a bunch of immigrants just off the boat from Europe.
Then there's the other bullshit in the form of headscratching that the victims of land theft and ethnic cleansing feel some sort of animosity towards their oppressors. Do you also spend a lot of time yelling at the Sioux for being pissed that the Black Hills were stolen from them? Still calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist because he resisted Apartheid?
Zionism is amoral sociopathy. A sense of entitlement to other people's land and property is bullshit, whether it was the Spaniards, the Pope, or the Germans doing it to Jews, and it's bullshit when Zionists do it to the people who have lived in Palestine for centuries.
explore the possibility that the myths of a small tribe in the middle east may have ceased to be relevant as anything other than a historical curiosity
Not as long as religious zealots believe in it. Prophecy is made, people believe in it, hence .. prophecy gets fulfilled. Religion is a whole lot more dangerous than you're giving it credit for. There's never been anything more destructive in human history.
Any particular reason they are choosing to do this?
I am John Hurt.
The point is, if you really cared about helping Palestinians, you would focus on helping Palestinians, because flaming Israel isn't going to accomplish much. Israel is the smallest of the Palestinians' problems.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It is propaganda, but it looks to me like they are testing some kind of whole system that does this...maybe it scrapes updates from some kind of internal database of action reports?
Whatever it is, it's like an "API" for tweeting a war...the IDF has been keen on using twitter as part of it's media relations...or propaganda depending on your view...
They had 18 year old IDF draftees posting pics of themselves with their rifles like it was summer camp...hashtaging with #phonecian
The writings of Zev Chafets are instructive here...you *have* to read between the lines, but his books tell it all...ex: in the troubles in the 80s, commanders were told to give everyone in their units Biblical names for when they had to interact with American troops...shit like that...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran.
So, Israel's justification for attack was an act of war by Egypt? Brilliant!!
Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules.
Wrong again. First, it isn't a total blockade. If it was, the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza would not have been able to build a new shopping center, would they? But weapons are being stopped, like the many Iranian rockets being smuggled into Gaza.
Biggest mall in Gaza Strip opens its doors
Second, Gaza is not a nation state, but a territory. It shouldn't be attacking anyone. Any attacks coming from there are either direct aggression by the Hamas government, or terrorism
Third, it doesn't have an army, navy, or air force.
Just as Israel's possession of a couple hundred nuclear weapons means that they should be threatened with economy-destroying sanctions and military strikes, if Iran is threatened with the same in case they someday decide they want a nuclear weapon.
Israel is not a member of the Non Proliferation Treaty, it has no obligations under the treaty, and its possession of nuclear weapons is unproven. Iran is a member, has obligations, and they seem to be in breach of treaty on top of being rebuked by the UN Secretary General for repeatedly threatening Israel's existence. Note that the issue between Israel and Iran is totally Iran's fault. Israel and Iran were allies when the Shah governed Iran. It was only after the Islamic revolution that the new Iranian government declared Israel an enemy to be destroyed. Israel did nothing to warrant that.
So, you continue to side with would-be genocidal aggressors and repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, often on specious grounds. For some reason this comes to mind:
Queers for Palestine
No single group better exemplifies the cognitive dissonance on display at these rallies than Queers for Palestine, also known as QUIT -- Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. What is left to say about the fundamental self-contradicting nature of such a group?
In Israel, gays live openly and happily in a free and liberal society. There is a thriving gay scene, just as there is in the United States and many other Western democracies.
But in Palestine -- as in most Islamic countries -- being gay is not only frowned upon, it is a crime often punishable by death. Tales of what life is like for gays in Palestinian society are horrifying in the extreme. In fact, gay youth in Palestine frequently flee to Israel if they can get a chance.
So why in the world would gay activists in the most gay-friendly city on Earth protest against one of the other centers of gay liberation (Israel) and for one of the planet's most violently oppressive homophobic societies?
This is the essence of cognitive dissonance -- the condition of holding two differing beliefs that are so incompatible and contradictory that the only way to internally reconcile them is to, well, go insane (to use the layman's term). Because, try as I might, I can't comprehend any other justification for being a member of QUIT other than insanity. ...more
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Which, for some reason, also entitled them to seize a great deal of sur
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Yes, we expect Israel to act like a liberal, enlightened western democracy. And it bloody well should: Israel was not created to act like a warmongering bully but as a safe haven for Jews escaping ethnic and religious prosecution. They have some of the most impressive cultural and scientific communities in the world and should know better.
And we don't expect that same level of civility or liberalism from Syria or Egypt because why would you. It is a double standard, but not one that Israel should be complaining about, nor one that excuses its behaviour.