Scores of Gazan Palestinians Killed By Israeli Air Strikes; Many Are Civilians

According to the New York Times:

Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 45 Palestinians, 19 of them civilians, and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year.

The Israeli attacks, mostly from the air on a clear, bright day, were aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, especially after the large city of Ashkelon, 10 miles from Gaza, came under fire from more advanced, Katyusha-style rockets smuggled in from Iran.

Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups, like Islamic Jihad. But as many as 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including 4 children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.

More than 60 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; one Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and five Israelis were wounded on Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.
[…]
An Israeli spokesman, David Baker, said that Israel was conducting “defensive measures” to protect its civilians from rocket fire against cities, which Mr. Baker called terrorism. “We have over 200,000 Israelis in range of Palestinian rockets. We cannot allow this to go on. These rocket attacks on Israelis are sheer terror, designed to kill or maim as many Israelis as possible.”

“We cannot allow this to go on” is a thoroughly reasonable thing to say about Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli towns. The question, though, is whether actions like this are likely to stop or prevent such attacks from going on. Judging by the past, I would say, not likely. To say that Palestinians feel just as terrorized by the IDF’s air strikes as Israelis living near the border feel about Hamas rocket attacks is, in my view, to state the obvious. And if the Israeli air strikes were not also designed to kill or maim as many Palestinians as possible, then what were they designed to do?

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that Mahmoud Abbas called the air strikes “worse than the Holocaust,” which is clearly an outrageous falsehood. In fairness, though, Abbas’s comments were a response to Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister, who threatened Palestinians with “a greater shoah“:

The Fatah head was not the only Palestinian leader to be associating the military maneuvers with the Holocaust – exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal described the operations as “the real Holocaust” on Saturday afternoon.

“Israeli actions in Gaza since Wednesday is the real Holocaust,” Mashaal told reporters in Damascus, where he lives in exile.

He accused Israel of “exaggerating the Holocaust and using it to blackmail the world.”

He also lashed out at Abbas, accusing him of “providing a cover for the Israeli Holocaust” in Gaza by claiming that Hamas terrorists were sheltering al-Qaida terrorists.

He also blamed some European countries, without naming them, for keeping silent on Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians.

“It is shameful that some Western countries try to clear their conscience with regards to the Holocaust that took place on their own land by being silent on the real Holocaust being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people,” he said.

Mashaal’s multiple references to the Holocaust appeared to be a reaction to a statement Friday by Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai who told Israeli Army Radio that Israel had “no other choice” but to launch a massive military operation in Gaza. Vilnai said the Palestinians would be “bringing upon themselves a greater ‘shoah’ because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in airstrikes or on the ground.”

The Hebrew word “shoah” most often refers to the Holocaust but Israelis use it to describe all sorts of disasters. Vilnai spokesman Eitan Ginzburg said the deputy defense minister never intended it as a reference to the Holocaust but used the word “shoah” to denote a disaster.

“Unfortunately Israel is using a term these days that many avoid using for 60 years,” Abbas said in response.

Eitan Ginzburg is being disingenuous at best. Israelis may use the word “shoah” as a generic term for a disaster, but that’s not the meaning most non-Israelis would associate with that word. Ginzburg should know that. When he tells Palestinians they will be “bringing upon themselves a greater shoah,” what does he expect the reaction will be?

Truthdig has a roundup of “links to sources offering varying viewpoints, opinions and estimates [about the air strikes] as of Saturday afternoon.”

“We Built Too Many Houses”

Via Think Progress, this video of Ann Curry interviewing Pres. Bush during his recent Africa trip is from February 18, but I hadn’t seen it. Watch Bush tell Curry that there is no connection between the Iraq war and the recession at home:

Transcript:

Some Americans believe that they feel they’re carrying the burden because of this economy.

G. BUSH: Yeah, well…

CURRY: They say we’re suffering because of this.

G. BUSH: … I don’t agree with that.

CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing do with the economy, the war — spending on the war?

G. BUSH: I don’t think so.

I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs.

CURRY: Oh, yeah?

G. BUSH: Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working.

I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting.

Amanda:

The Iraq war has created jobs — for the administration’s defense contractor allies. Bush’s most recent budget is a windfall for contractors, and between 2000 and 2005, procurement was the “fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending.” (Halliburton has been the biggest beneficiary of the administration’s generosity.)

Five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, however, national unemployment is going up. Between December 2006 and December 2007, the national unemployment rate increased by 13.6 percent in seasonally adjusted terms, from 4.4 to 5.0 percent. Additionally, 68 percent of the American public believes that redeployment from Iraq would help fix the country’s economic woes.

Ann Althouse Is Hallucinating

One of her readers asks, “Why are the letters NIG on the child’s pajamas?” and with the utmost seriousness she posts a solemn, painstakingly painfully reasoned exegesis of whether the letters are actually there, and how shocking it is that Hillary Clinton is planting racial slurs in her campaign ads.

And now I know that the apocalypse must be at hand, because Bluto and Pam actually make sense.

What Foreign Policy Experience?

If you’re running for president and you put out a campaign ad declaring that you are the only candidate who has the experience to handle a foreign policy crisis, you’d better be prepared with at least one real-life example, right?

It was, in this reporter’s opinion, the most interesting moment in today’s Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC’s new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate’s John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

“What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary‘s career where she’s been tested by crisis?” he said.

Silence on the call. You could’ve knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton’s national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak — that she’s been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.

Here’s the audio and here’s the video:

Video via Maha.

Justin Gardner: “She has the wisdom to know when to push basic elements under certain circumstances? What in the hell does that even mean?”

Matthew Yglesias: “How could they go forward with that ad without having a good answer to the question on hand? It’s inept in the extreme.”

Hilzoy sees the ad as “the spiritual heir to Bush’s “Scary Scary Wolves” ad from 2004.”

Remember “If there is a bear…“? Ann Althouse wonders “…how dangerous the world would need to be before I wouldn’t laugh at ‘If there is a bear’ ” …

Anyway, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Democrats try to scare you with children and Republicans try to scare you with animals.

John Dickerson was the reporter who asked the question Clinton’s team couldn’t answer:

I love this question and am glad the Clinton team raised it. The problem is that they’re not so great at answering. When I asked campaign staffers for examples of Clinton being tested by a foreign-policy challenge, their response was pretty weak. As Patrick Healy reported in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton did not have a security clearance during her husband’s administration, so she wasn’t in the room for the brutal moments he faced. Her aides named the slew of uniformed retired military officials who have endorsed her, including several four-star generals. That’s nice, but it’s not proof of her mettle. When you make an ad like this, your case for your woman should be stronger than a list of endorsements.

Mark Penn pointed me to Clinton’s 1995 speech in Beijing, in which she declared that women’s rights were human rights. A fine speech and a great message, and boy, I bet her hosts didn’t like it one bit, but that doesn’t really constitute the testing that this powerful ad brings to mind. Also, if we’re talking about speeches, then I think Obama has that covered. He has been arguing for some time that he made a speech in 2002 about why the Iraq war was a bad idea. And hasn’t the Clinton team been knocking that back as just a speech?

New Definition

After reading this story at The Politico and especially this part

Democrats respond that some of his nominees are flatly unacceptable and that the president hasn’t sought the “advice and consent” of the Senate.

Democrats charge that the federal commissions are not innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire between the White House and the Senate, but rather are targets of an administration happy to watch them die. “They could[n’t] care less,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where many of Bush’s stalled nominations sit. “They dislike government. They dislike the way government works.”

I came up with this definition

Shotgun Governance – The making of relatively un-thought out nominations of government agency administrators in the hope that the agencies will be ineffective.

Thought of the Day

I think that this is especially appropriate after Hillary’s 3 A.M. ad.

“To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.”

The Beauty, Perfection, and Hilarity of a One-Word Response

Check it out.

Obama: “I Will Never Use the Threat of Terrorism To Scare Up Votes”

That statement is in response to Clinton’s fear-mongering “red phone” ad, which is creating a huge stir on Memeorandum.

Here it is.

For those who can’t view videos, it shows a camera panning over sleeping children as the announcer intones, “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing — something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.”

Obama’s response.

Transcript here. Blogger reaction:

Jonathan Chait at The New Republic:

… The narrator tells us, twice, that “it’s 3:00 AM and your children are asleep” when a call comes to the White House. From this we’re supposed to conclude that we need a Tested and Ready president in Hillary Clinton, who as First Lady was apparently answering these calls, perhaps because her husband was shacked up at the time. Okay, fine.

But isn’t pretty much everybody asleep at 3:00 AM? And what do my kids have to do with it? Sure, the president could get a call about a terrorist cell forming in Pakistan or something, but that isn’t going to effect my kids, or me, in the middle of the night. We can wait until morning to read about it in the news.

The image in the commercial seems to be taken for commercials for home alarms, and it’s pretty effective in that context — exploiting the fear that your kids will be snatched from their beds by burglars while you sleep. As a parent of young kids I get paranoid about this all the time late at night. But the president isn’t going to get a call about burglars in your house, and even if they did, I don’t see how Clinton’s First Lady experience would help her catch them better than Obama.

Justin Gardner at Donklephant:

She’s actually playing on parents’ fears of children dying to win votes. Unbelievable.
[…]
… my answer to the question “Who do you want answering the phone?” is “Not Hillary.”

Ron Chusid at Liberal Values:

Hillary Clinton certainly should have known better than to resort to an ad such as this. She should have taken the advice of Bill Clinton while campaigning for John Kerry in 2004:

Now, one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this. If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is try get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.

The Obama people have already put together a campaign ad responding to Clinton’s. Alex Koppelman has it.

Some bloggers are comparing Clinton’s ad to the famous LBJ “daisy girl” ad from the 1964 race against Barry Goldwater. Joe Gandelman remembers seeing that ad on television the one time it aired, and doesn’t think the Clinton ad comes close in terms of scariness. I saw “daisy girl,” too — I was in ninth grade at the time — and I have to agree with Joe on this point. That ad was terrifying. Doesn’t mean that the Clinton ad isn’t trying to use fear to win votes, which is a despicable and, in Clinton’s case, desperate tactic — and it was a typically brainless move on her part; it’s only going to turn people off. Particularly given Obama’s swift and superbly competent response.