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Where is the outrage? If Israel had done this...

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by AroundTheWorld, Apr 4, 2015.

  1. AroundTheWorld

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    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...3b3b76-d6bf-11e4-8103-fa84725dbf9d_story.html

    Dozens killed in airstrike at refugee camp in Yemen

    SANAA, Yemen — An airstrike killed dozens of people Monday at a camp for displaced people in northern Yemen, in what appeared to be the single deadliest attack since a Saudi *Arabia-led coalition sent warplanes to target Shiite insurgents advancing across the country.

    As many as 40 people died and about 200 were wounded in the attack on the Mazraq camp in Hajjah province
    , said Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, which runs aid programs at the facility.

    The Yemeni Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, accused the Saudi-led coalition of hitting the camp, located in an area under the control of the insurgents. Saudi officials did not confirm that. But, asked about the bombing, Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri, a coalition spokesman, asserted that the rebels were setting up positions in civilian areas and said that coalition warplanes had taken fire Monday from a residential area, forcing a “decisive response,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency.


    Saudi Arabia began air attacks on Thursday to try to shore up the president of neighboring Yemen in the face of an offensive by the Houthi insurgents. At least 10 countries have joined the coalition against the rebels. The U.S. government is providing logistical and intelligence support to the operation.

    The bombing highlights the risk of worsening civilian casualties in what is becoming a full-scale civil war in this impoverished Arabian Peninsula country — which hosts a formidable affiliate of al-Qaeda. Already, scores of people have been killed in fighting since the coalition operation was launched. On Monday, warships from the coalition entered the fight, pounding the southern city of Aden, residents said.

    The coalition has imposed a naval blockade on Yemen’s ports, Asiri told reporters in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. He said the move is intended to intercept weapons being shipped to the Houthis — seen by Sunni Saudi Arabia as proxies of its primary foe in the region, Shiite Iran.

    The Houthis, who are followers of the Zaydi sect of Shiite Islam, deny receiving weapons and training from Tehran. Residents in Yemen fear that the conflict could turn their country into a sectarian war zone, like Syria, with fighting that is fueled by Iranian-Saudi competition.

    Displaced by earlier battles
    The Mazraq camp is one of several U.N.-supported facilities in the north that were built to house Yemenis displaced by previous bouts of fighting between the government in Sanaa and the Houthis. Established in 2009, the camp holds about 1,100 families.

    Speaking from the Saudi capital, Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen blamed Houthi “artillery strikes” for killing people at the Mazraq camp.

    But a senior Houthi official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, blamed the coalition for striking the facility, which he said demonstrated a “disregard for Yemeni blood.”


    The Houthis firmly control Hajjah, and their positions in the province have been regularly targeted by the coalition, which backs embattled Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. In February, the rebels toppled his U.S.-backed government, which was an ally in fighting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Before fleeing Yemen last week, Hadi attempted to establish a government in Aden to rival the Houthi-controlled government in the capital, Sanaa.

    The aid group Doctors Without Borders said numerous families have taken refuge in the camp in recent days because of bombings in nearby Saada province, which is the Houthis’ homeland. In a statement, the humanitarian organization said Monday’s attack killed at least 29 people, including women and children.

    “People in Al Mazraq camp have been living in very harsh conditions since 2009, and now they have suffered the consequences of an airstrike on the camp,” Pablo Marco, the group’s operational manager for Yemen, said in the statement.

    The Reuters news agency quoted an unidentified humanitarian worker as saying that an airstrike hit a truck carrying Houthi militiamen near the camp’s entrance.

    The Yemeni Defense Ministry, which is under rebel control, also put the death toll at 40, Reuters reported.

    Asiri, the coalition spokesman, emphasized that its forces were trying their best to avoid hitting civilians, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

    Rebel assaults in south
    The Saudi-led military campaign has not stopped the rebels from mounting assaults in the south. Over the past year, the Houthis have become Yemen’s dominant power, in part because of their prowess as hardened guerrilla fighters who have waged multiple wars against the government in Sanaa since 2004.

    Attacks by the Houthis and military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh intensified in the southern city of Aden on Monday, residents said. They reported that tanks began shelling the northern edges of the port city.

    Warships from the coalition stationed off the coast began bombarding rebel positions near the city, they said.

    “The fighting was intense this morning,” said Abdulnaser *al-Arabi, 46, an anti-Houthi activist from the city. At least one coalition airstrike hit a weapons-storage facility in the Green City area of Aden, and warships struck Houthi militias as they attempted to enter the city from the eastern province of Abyan, he said.

    “Those attacks appeared to have slowed the progress of the Houthis,” he said by telephone. He added that Houthi shelling damaged a medical clinic in Aden.

    Saleh, who was deposed by a 2011 uprising, has used the military units that are still loyal to him to support the Houthis against Hadi and his allies.

    Coalition airstrikes also pounded bases of Republican Guard forces loyal to Saleh near Sanaa early Monday. Those strikes — some of which came close to residential areas — are eliminating the air defenses and weapons-storage depots of the rebels, in what analysts say could be preparations for a possible land invasion by coalition ground troops.

    Fighting also surged in other southern provinces between Houthis and local tribes who have long been their antagonists. In the province of Shabwa, heavy clashes killed dozens of Houthis and tribal fighters, said Mohammed al-Fatimi, a leader in the al-Masabein tribe.

    He said that coalition warplanes targeted rebel positions in a mountainous area of the province, adding that aid also came from tribes in the neighboring province of Marib, where anti-Houthi sentiment runs high.

    “The clashes are getting more intense, but the tribes stopped the Houthis and started to push them back,” Fatimi said by telephone.

    ----------------------------

    Pallywood would have been all over this if Israel had done this. Oh, and several posters here would have been OUTRAGED. Where are they now?
     
  2. AroundTheWorld

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    Also, commentary from the ultra-conservative right-wing publication Guardian.

    Made in Britain? The Saudi-led attack on a Yemeni refugee camp

    On Monday, a Saudi-led coalition apparently dropped bombs on a refugee camp in northern Yemen. It’s perfectly likely that, as they have admitted before, the Saudis may have used jet fighters that were made in the UK. After all, Saudi Arabia is the UK defence industry’s largest export market. More than 40 innocent people died. Around 200 were injured, many seriously. The Yemeni state news agency showed pictures of dead children laid out on the floor.

    Apparently, the Saudis were trying to hit a nearby Houthi rebel position. “It could have been that the fighter jets replied to fire, and we cannot confirm that it was a refugee camp,” said a spokesman for the Saudi regime, lamely. Well yes, it was a refugee camp, confirmed the UN. And if the Saudis invade Yemen, thus further extending the widening gyre of Sunni/Shia conflict, expect a lot more of the same. For if you think the Middle East could not get any worse, think again. And if you think it has little to do with us, that’s because we do not choose to remind ourselves that it may well be Rolls-Royce engines, made in Derby, that will be roaring through the sky, and Eurofighters assembled in Lancashire, that will be doing the bombing. We say little because we have a multibillion pound conflict of interest. We supply the weapons, then throw up our hands in horror when they are used.

    Perhaps I also ought to declare an interest. I fell in love with Yemen back in the 90s. Its searing heat, its desert, its ancient architecture, its fearsome mountains. I would lie on the top of our flat roof in Taiz and hear the call to prayer floating over the city, echoed by the barking of wild street dogs. There was little to distinguish any of this from the middle ages – except for trucks, a few Aston Villa football tops, lots of dodgy looking eastern European weaponry and the cigarettes that my friend was flogging out of the back of his Toyota Land Cruiser.

    Yes, Yemen was a political basket case. Indeed, the very idea of some overarching national entity called Yemen hardly shaped the local consciousness. This was a collection of semi-autonomous tribes and communities, especially up in the mountains. They were keep-themselves-to-themselves kind of people. Most of the men spent much of their time lying around chewing khat, a sort of pointless amphetamine version of spinach. I passed my time playing chess with the lepers up at the leper colony run by Mother Teresa’s nuns. Despite the dysentery, despite the humidity, despite the suicidal driving and terrible food, I loved it. It had a wild, epic grandeur and the people a fierce independent mindedness. It doesn’t deserve to be a geo-political battleground for a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Indeed, where does?

    I offer this personal reminiscence because I want to try to humanise a place that can easily seem like little more than a name on a map. Not many people from the UK have reason to visit the Yemen. But this is not to say that we are not up to our necks in this war – worse, we are massively profiting from it. Back in 2012 David Cameron and Lord Stephen Green (of HSBC fame) led a trade delegation to Saudi Arabia, flogging our weapons of war. The coalition government has licensed £3.8bn of arms to a Saudi dictatorship that regularly decapitates its subjects, retains the death penalty for conversion to Christianity, prevents women from having basic human rights, and has exported its extreme version of Wahhabi Islam to other parts of the Middle East, inspiring the likes of Islamic State, to catastrophic effect. “Ethics and values are important to us. They define how we behave towards others and play a major part in how we’re creating a responsible business,” says BAE Systems, who manufactures Eurofighter. That’s a sick joke.

    Think about it: if Israel had dropped bombs on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, it would be on the front page of every paper. But when the Saudis do it, there is hardly a bat-squeak of interest. We fly our flags at half-mast when their king dies. Even a supine Westminster Abbey pathetically follows suit. And all because of Saudi oil money. We ought to be thoroughly ashamed.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/01/britain-saudi-attack-yemen-refugees-arms-deal
     
  3. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    Here is the outrage:

    [​IMG]

    the saudis are basically the worst example of selective human rights criticism from the western powers. that'll continue for as long as oil is essential.
     
  4. AroundTheWorld

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    I do not disagree.

    But I am asking - where is the outrage from the very same posters who get so angry at Israel when something similar happens (despite best efforts to minimize civilian casualties, in Israel's case)?

    Do you really think their lack of interest in it when Saudi Arabia does it vs. when Israel does it is because of oil? Or is it something else...
     
  5. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    oh we're playing this game

    Can I assume that everything you've never voiced an opinion on in this forum you endorse and so by default, there's a whole bunch of people dying everywhere you don't care about?
     
  6. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    I don't even get the premise of the thread as constructed--the green left, if anything, hates Saudi Arabia the most. It's the center/center-right that tends to support Israel that also supports the Saudis--if only because oil is oil.
     
  7. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    Yea, I don't really get the premise that posters here have to get in line and post condemnation of obviously terrible acts.

    Its pretty much common ****ing sense that the death of innocent civilians is awful.
     
  8. AMS

    AMS Contributing Member

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    Lolllll
     
  9. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    Posters here have no problem calling out Saudi's cruel theocratic regime.

    Unfortunately, there is a prevalent segment on this message board that believe Israel is infallible.

    That is exactly why some posters 'call out' Israel more, in order to change perception. There is already a prevalent perception that Saudi violates human rights often.
     
    #9 fchowd0311, Apr 4, 2015
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2015
  10. AroundTheWorld

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    Umm....there are maybe 5, 6 active posters here (if that) who are somewhat pro-Israel (or even neutral). Of the active ones in this subforum, there seems to be much more of an anti-Israel sentiment.
     
  11. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    have you ever seen one pro-Saudi Arabian poster? I think I know like the one poster you're trying to bait with this lol but even he doesn't verge to "Saudi Arabia is America's staunchest ally" melodrama
     
  12. AroundTheWorld

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    adeelsiddiqui
    trustme
    Hydhypedplaya

    to name a few.

    Some of them are clever enough to know that their support of the same ideology as in Saudi Arabia is better not explicitly voiced here all the time.

    Also:

     
  13. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    you're starting threads now to try to bait four people into a response.

    :/

    can't you guys just hangout on GHangout or something. seriously. This might have been a good topic if it wasn't designed to basically trap your political enemies or whatever
     
  14. AroundTheWorld

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    No, five. You have already responded.

    But seriously - it is evident that parts of the media and some posters love to hate Israel - but if someone else - anyone else - does something similar or worse, they don't care.

    The Guardian article says the same.
     
  15. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    right-well you've always attacked the left for incoherent economic policies, but it turns out the Guardian is doing the most on this front because in between their drive for divestment from fossil fuels, they've aligned themselves diametrically opposite to Saudi Arabia, and they have never pulled punches on that front, or on Assad's killings, or on Egyptian military atrocities, or on extremist attacks around the world or on Israel.

    The thing I don't get about this thread is that you tried to construct it as some kind of political trap but the Guardian is a pretty close representation to the left that is unrelenting on Israel--and Saudi Arabia. It's really people who are dependent on oil that won't say anything lol.

    At this point, you're basically trying to point the finger at like Al-Jazeera (maybe?) and like 4 posters on this forum. it's kinda confusing but I guess if you want to take the Nixonian path, that's your prerogative.
     
  16. AroundTheWorld

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    It's people like CometsWin, glynch, Exiled, Remii and other Israel haters who would have 100 % started an OUTRAGED thread about this if Israel had done this.
     
  17. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    I've seen you voice opposition to Western surveillance states and torture regimes as well as slight opposition to Assad and Egyptian military atrocities, but I've never seen you start a thread about them...though admittedly at your pace it'd be hard to track.

    I don't think starting a thread here is like the sole mechanism for expressing anger/discontent at political situations but if you do it makes more sense why you start more threads.

    + people do other things lol. Not everybody can start like 50 threads a week. I'm only on here/my other internet hangouts so much this weekend because it's Easter, and family is 5000 miles away, and I basically have guacamole as my foster parent right now lol that doesn't mean I expect people to have the same conditions and to reply to everything I post :/
     
  18. CometsWin

    CometsWin Breaker Breaker One Nine

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    Marcia Marcia Marcia
     
  19. robbie380

    robbie380 ლ(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿ლ)
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    [​IMG]
     
    3 people like this.
  20. AroundTheWorld

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    Glad you are paying attention.

    Fair enough.

    And I am jet lagged, in Hawaii.
     

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