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From yahoo:
Israel hastily musters its citizen army
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JERUSALEM - Roy Bass emerged from the Mediterranean waves at noon Friday for a Popsicle break when, surfboard in hand, he heard his cell phone ringing on the beach. It was a recorded message: "An emergency draft has been activated."
Four hours later, the 27-year-old computer programmer was at an army base, in full uniform, preparing to head to Israel's northern border, where troops were massing to take on Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
Israel's mighty military is comprised of thousands like Bass — ordinary civilians who, at a moment's notice, respond to the call to arms.
On Friday, several thousand reservists were drafted for immediate, emergency duty. By Friday night, the army chief of staff announced the response was full, plus thousands who volunteered on their own initiative.
"The reserves have proven themselves once again," said Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the army chief of staff.
The enthusiastic response highlights the intimate relationship Israel has with its army. Nearly every Jewish Israeli has served in the army, and opinion polls consistently show the army to be the country's most trusted institution.
Since Israel became independent in 1948, reserves have been the backbone of its military, conditioned to drop everything and be mobilized within a day or two to back up the far smaller core of active duty soldiers. Men from all walks of life — and increasingly women with special skills — instantly become soldiers again.
Israel's standing army of about 186,500 troops can jump to 631,500 with rapid mobilization, according to figures from the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.
The system has proven effective in all of Israel's wars. In 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked en masse on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, thousands of reservists were summoned from their homes and synagogues and rushed to the front lines to push back the offensive.
Despite Israel's increasing reliance on technological superiority, military service remains a rite of passage. All 18-year-old men are drafted for three years and will continue to do reserves for about a month a year into their 40s, by which time many will have sons in the army or reserves. Women are drafted for two years.
As Israel's military dominance has grown, it has become less reliant on its reserves. The retirement age has been gradually lowered from 51 to 40 in some cases, and the number of reserves called up has steadily dropped, with the army focusing more on those with specialized skills, such as air force pilots and intelligence officers.
Some view the task the way Americans view jury duty — boring and disruptive, especially for college students and the self-employed. Most, however, welcome it as a break from the rigors of daily life, a chance to bond with old comrades in a setting where a backgammon board is often a more important accessory than a rifle.
In peacetime, a reserve stint is something to be haggled over with a commanding officer with all sorts of excuses — a college exam, an overseas vacation, a spell of dental surgery.
But when the call-up is an "Order 8," military parlance for an emergency summons, the response is visceral.
"All of a sudden it becomes a real war, it changes everything," Bass said by cell phone from his base in northern Israel.
Bass serves annually in his armored battalion, but this is his first Order 8.
Where once Israelis were drafted to war by air raid sirens, passwords over the radio and recruiters going door to door, today they are summoned by computerized calls to their cell phones.
When Bass got his call-up, he sped home and swapped his bathing suit for an army uniform.
"There was no dilemma, no doubt in my mind because it is something you grow up with, that this is the most important thing there is," he said. "It's ingrained deep inside you — if they call you, you go."
also, a friend of mine sent me this:
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i haven't watched it yet but it seems relevant.
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07/22/06
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Zanf
Israelis Are Dying: It Must Be an Escalation - Johnathon Cook
The reporting we are seeing from the BBC and the other broadcasters is racist; there is no other word to describe it. The journalists’ working assumption is that Israeli lives are more precious, more valuable than Lebanese lives. A few dead Israelis justify massive retaliation; many Lebanese dead barely merit a mention. The subtext seems to be that all the Lebanese, even the tiny bleeding children I see on Arab TV, are terrorists. It is just the way Arabs are.
That is why the capture of two Israeli soldiers is more newsworthy to our broadcasters than the dozens of Lebanese civilians dying from the Israeli bombing runs that have followed. The eight Israelis killed on Sunday are worth far more than the 130-plus Lebanese lives taken so far and the hundreds more we can expect to die in the coming days.
There is no excuse for this asymmetry of coverage. BBC reporters are in Lebanon just as they are in Israel. They can find spokespeople in Lebanon just as easily as they can find them in Israel. They can show the far vaster scale of devastation in Beirut as easily as the wreckage in Haifa. They can speak to the Lebanese casualties just as easily as they can to those in Israel.
But they don’t – and as a fellow journalist I have to ask myself why.
My previous criticisms of British reporters over their distorted coverage of Israel’s military assaults in Gaza a few weeks back appear to have struck a raw nerve. Certainly they provoked a series of e-mails – some defensive, others angry – from a few of the reporters I named. All tried to defend their own coverage, unable to accept my criticisms because they are sure that they personally do not take sides. They are not “campaigning” journalists after all, they are “professionals” doing a job.
But the problem is not with them, it is with the job they have to do – and the nature of the professionalism they so prize. I am sure the BBC’s Wyre Davies cares as much about Lebanese deaths as he does about Israeli ones. But he also knows his career at the BBC demands that he not ask his bosses questions when told to give valuable minutes of air time to an Israeli police spokesman who offers us only platitudes.
Similarly, we see James Reynolds use his broadcast from Haifa at noon to show emotive footage of him and his colleagues running for shelter as Israeli air raid sirens go off, only to tell us that in fact no rockets landed in Haifa. That nonevent was shown by the BBC every hour on the hour all afternoon and evening. Was it more significant than the images of death we never saw taking place just over the border? These images from Lebanon exist, because the Arab channels spent all day showing them.
Matthew Price knows too that in the BBC’s view it is his job as he stands in Haifa, after we have repeatedly heard Israeli spokespeople giving their version of events, to repeat their message, dropping even the quotes marks as he passionately tells us how tough Israel must now be, how it must “retaliate” to protect its citizens, how it must “punish” Hezbollah This is not journalism; it’s reporting as a propaganda arm of a foreign power.
Can we imagine Ben Brown doing the same from Beirut, standing in front of the BBC cameras telling us how Hezbollah has no choice faced with Israel’s military onslaught but to start hitting Haifa harder, blowing up its oil refineries and targeting civilian infrastructure to “pressure” Israel to negotiate?
Would the BBC bother to show prerecorded footage of Brown fleeing for his safety in Beirut in what later turned out to be a false alarm? Of course not. Doubtless Brown and his colleagues are forced to take cover on a regular basis for fear of being hurt by Israeli air strikes, but his fear – or more precisely, the fear of the Lebanese he stands alongside – is not part of the story for the BBC. Only Israeli fears are newsworthy.
These reporters are working in a framework of news priorities laid down by faceless news executives far away from the frontline who understand only too well the institutional pressures on the BBC – and the institutional biases that are the result.
They know that the Israel lobby is too powerful and well resourced to take on without suffering flak; that the charge of anti-Semitism might be terminally damaging to the BBC’s reputation; that the BBC is expected broadly to reflect the positions of the British governmment if it wants an easy ride with its regulators; that to remain credible it should not stray too far from the line of its mainly American rivals, who have their own more intense domestic pressures to side with Israel.
This distortion of news priorities has real costs that can be measured in lives – in the days and weeks to come, hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives in both Israel and Lebanon. As long as Israel is portrayed by our major broadcasters as the one under attack, its deaths alone as significant, then the slide to a regional war – a war of choice being waged by the Israeli government and army – is likely to become inevitable.
So to Jeremy Bowen, James Reynolds, Ben Brown, Wyre Davies, Matthew Price, and all the other BBC journalists reporting from the frontline of the Middle East, and the faceless news executives who sent them there, I say: you may be nice people with the best of intentions, but shame on you.
Johnathon Cook - antiwar.com
07/22/06
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ignatius
great post zanf. very interesting. also, sort of always the way it goes unfortunately. the lens is pretty skewed.
07/23/06
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deltasleep
in the future, school children will study september 11 as one of the catalysts that started the 3rd world war.
this situation has all the makings for it- an unstable region holding a valuable resource, and simultaneously a belligerent and aggressive asian power provoking its neighbors.
Its Iran that really bothers me, the wackjob they have in charge is unbelievably dangerous- not that a very very large portion of the nation doesn't support him, its just hard for me to believe a region can be so dedicated to such a sick religiosity. Many muslims in persia believe that the mahdi will return with world war to make islam the supreme religion, but they also beleive that causing an apocalyptic war may precipitate his return. Oddly enough, this return is supposed to involve coming up out of a well in Jamkaran in 941 AD. Iran's constitution has a clause that states that the mahdi shall assume all authority of the country on his return, and komeini told the nation that he was a forerunner of the mahdi.
So, I think reason is probably wasted in general.
07/23/06
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lunatinker
anyone calling a whoooooooooooollle nation "nutjobs" bothers me.
We are the landfill of the world. deal with it.
sometimes they call us robots to help blow things up, but mostly, we outsources our garbage now.
we're just the middle men for the 13th ring of hell...
happy evening...
07/23/06
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Zanf
Ill try and find links for this story of German inspectors discovering a weapons shipment showing that Israel is actualy colluding and selling nuclear device parts to Iran. It was on an Alex Jones clip I watched the other day so it will be somewhere on infowars.
Its bizarre that the US admin signed a deal with Israel last year to give them $12billion in 'military aid' over the next 4 years and that Israel is the US's biggest arms customer. link
07/23/06
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deltasleep
yes, historically speaking, the US has funded 75% of israel's military.
and theres a big difference between the nation of israel selling the nation of iran something, and two private companies selling things to each other. some people will do anything for a buck, but those nations have a difficult time having any interactions, what with the new iranian president having said that israel should be wiped off the map.
most iranian small arms are probably still soviet, and most larger arms are probably chinese. china is the gorilla in the room when it comes to nuclear arms trade, but you'd never see almost any developed nation call them on it because of the massive trade partner china is for the US and europe.
and i thought i was pretty clear i don't think that the region is nuts, just that they've bought into a pretty violent and dangerous leader by popular vote in internationally approved elections. but the voter turn out for most elections in Iran is like 10-20% and i'm only assuming its a combination of fear about dissenting and islam's fundamental incompatibility with democracy.
07/23/06
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energygiant
is this how you make AFXXXBEATZ?!1
edited: Jul 23 2006
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Zanf
deltasleep said: "but the voter turn out for most elections in Iran is like 10-20% and i'm only assuming its a combination of fear about dissenting and islam's fundamental incompatibility with democracy."
I always feel a little uncomfortable when people start talking about other countries administrations and religions having an incompatability with 'democracy' because, invariably, they dont mention that its in incompatability with their perception of democracy. With the mounting evidence of the US being incapable of holding fair and open elections for its administration, it is a case of 'pot calling kettle', whatever 'perception' you hold.
In the UK, in the last elections, Bliar got only about 30% of the vote of an electoral turnout of a little under 60%.
Iran had a turnout of 62%+ in the 2005 presidential election. [ 29,317,042 of a total population not electorate of 68mil], hardly the 10-20% you claimed.
07/23/06
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celibacyclub
some hard core shiz.
im glad i dont have tv.
07/23/06
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ignatius
yesterday on the CBS evening news they did a very sympathetic piece on Lebanon and clearly were critical of Israel and President Bush.. calling the USA "AWOL". they also noted that american arms dealers made an agreement w/israel sometime ago (after approcal by congress).. several months.. for those giant bunker buster bombs and that the order was rushed through so now of course they are being delivered. odd timing.
the most outrageous thing to me was that a couple days ago israel took out the main communications and broadcasting tower/facilities of lebanon's largest New Gathering institution. something that is obviously not controled by hezbollah and was basically just a national television network. it's an obvious attempt to limit the quality and output of information not only w/in lebanon but in the middle east and the world.
a couple days ago i saw a report on how slow the USA acted on evacuating and reccomending evacuations to americans.. apparently other countries were really on the ball w/evacuations. "you're doing a great job browny!"
07/23/06
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SenorFrio
I just love how Bush vetos stem cell research because every life is precious...
And then Condi says they are just going through "growing pains" in the middle east as a new doctrine unfolds.
They are Hipocrit to be square!
07/23/06
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ignatius
SenorFrio said: "I just love how Bush vetos stem cell research because every life is precious...
And then Condi says they are just going through "growing pains" in the middle east as a new doctrine unfolds.
They are Hipocrit to be square!"
the daily show did a whole thing on this. it was great satire. you have to sit through a commercial but then the dailiy show part loads pretty fast.
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if that link doesn't load. go to this link and scroll down a little to "stem cell veto'
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07/23/06
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energygiant
stem cell research is ok though. i mean, the scientists are still studying. and the next (non republican) president will definitely not veto.
its not like his silly government would supply enough money to properly research anyway. wheres bill gates?
07/23/06
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deltasleep
sorry, I was confusing that figure with one I read in an article about Ahmedinejad's election as mayor of Tehran. It was a sort of catapault to his being elected to the presidency. Turnout to it was 12%.
And I totally agree that nations can't be expected to implement a 'one size fits all' democratic plan. There are plenty of democracies of differing sorts in the middle east- turkey's a great example of a relatively functional secular democracy.(though there is a significant political force in the entire region who is totally hostile to secular rule at all- it's the law of man and not god's law.)
But my major problem with the middle east and democracy is that I see secularity as essential to making a democracy in which every citizen has a vote that counts, and some sort of semblance of equality. In Israel, for instance, you cannot vote unless you are a jew. I don't think thats ok. And yes it bothers me that the US extends such a massive amount of our money and resources to a government that is discriminatory.
In America, democracy functions most effectively when we follow our tradition of trying not to involve religion. The more it becomes involved, the nastier the fights(think of the horrible, horrible things said about OBGYN's who perform abortions) With this in mind, I have a difficult time seeing how nations with religious constitutions, national religions, etc. will function with anyone other than muslims in the nation. Couple this with the hostile sect within islam, and I can imagine parliament quickly degenerating into insanity. Iraq's national parliament broke into riot a month or so back when a member's phone rang and the ringtone was a Shiite call to prayer.
It infuriates me to see Israel repeatedly painted as this nefarious military super power holding land hostage while the poor desparate neighbors fight for their freedom. While thats true to some extent, its also true that they fight out of a deep deep hatred of jews because of their religion. I don't think Israel should have ever been created, and I agree that it has no right to exist. But I don't think that makes it ok to destroy the lives of generations worth of israelis and palestinians with pointless violence from either side. Striking civilian targets like bus stops and markets is completely unjustified no matter who does it, whether they do it with missiles or car bombs.
07/23/06
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ignatius
religious states are bad news. religion... in the end.. is bad news. there's so much hatred, ignorance, pride piled on top of more of the same.. it's a giant fucking toxic toilet bowl.
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