360 dead Palestinians to 4 dead Israelis but it’s all the fault of Hamas?
The medias mouthing of Israeli justification over glorified skyrockets fired at Israel which have killed 4 Israeli’s to 360 dead Palestinians is so ridiculous you have to laugh. Remember 2 years ago when Israel launched it’s bullshit farce of a war against Lebanon? Remember how we had so many Israeli apologists on this site defending the action because 2 Israeli soldiers had been kidnapped, and yet once it was revealed that Israel had secretly been planning the attack for 6 months and were just looking for an excuse those apologists went very quiet didn’t they and I suspect that same level of quiet will quickly descend on this despicable massacre as Israel’s butchery becomes less and less defendable. The truly disgusting thing of course is that just as with the failed Lebanon war (which let’s not forget saw Israel dump tens of thousands of cluster bomblets over civilian areas which NZ had to help send bomb disposal units to help clear up – thank you Israel) the motives here are purely political as opposed to any ‘self-defense’ to a real threat. As Israel moves towards it’s next election the remaining Political leaders not currently embroiled in corruption charges have decided to launch a war to keep voters from asking the real questions and they have done it to pre-empt any change a new American Administration under Obama may force Israel to adopt rather than the blank cheque Bush gave them. To play a political poker match with the blood of 360 Palestinians is truly the actions of an ethically bankrupt regime.
To compare the fear of Israeli citizens in their leafy suburbs and air conditioned bunkers caused by home made skyrockets to the pain of Palestinians created by military hardware built in the USA dropped on the most densely populated region on Earth and then attempt to use the fear of one to justify the murder of the other really highlights how desperately international condemnation of Israel and America is needed. For a people who have felt the pain of group punishment to now hand it out with such a level of murder reminds us that violence merely breeds more violence, all Israel have done is create more radicals.
The pointlessness of this massacre and the exacerbating effect it will create, all to gerrymander the response of an incoming American administration demands nothing short of contempt as a response.
posted by Bomber @ 8:53 pm
44 comments
44 Comments:
yup, noone in bombers family has been hurt by these 'glorified skyrockets' its plain to see
As a person sitting in the area hit by the "Skyrockets" and having to go to a bomb shelter from time to time i think it is very easy to criticize from outside a situation which seems cut and dry.
What i would like to know is WHY the palestinians are still shooting these rockets (For over 6 years) after Israel withdrew from the Gazastrip about 2 years ago!!.
Hizbullas "Glorious fighters" kidnapped the 2 Israeli soldiers after Israel withdrew from the south Lebanon!!.
It seems that there is a pattern here which is not discussed in which Israel withdraws from an area and then instead of the local authority rebuilding the area and helping the human misery that exists there the terror organization takes over and uses the area as a platform for attacks!!. You may say what you wish but it is not Israels responsability to build lebanon nor is it her responsability to build Palestine. I think it is time they take responsability and start building instead of shooting cause thats been going on for far too long.
Blogger Brewerstroupe said...
Why do the Palestinians continue to fire rockets?
On the face of it, the weakest nation in the World firing rockets at one of the strongest would seem to be the action of madmen. So why do it?
For decades, Israel’s policy has been to subsidize immigrants to go settle in occupied territory. This is called “creating facts on the ground” and is a War Crime under the Geneva Convention - see:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/boyle.html
It has been going on for a long time:
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
-Moshe Dayan, April 1969.
Palestinians have only one way to slow this process down and that is to counter the Israeli Government’s subsidies and incentives by making settlement appear to be a hazardous enterprise. Hence the rockets. Long-term observers will note that whenever a truce or concession is granted by Israel, the pace of settlement goes up. In this way, Israel uses settlers as an instrument of War.
Rightly or wrongly, Palestinians do not see settlers as innocent civilians, they see them as complicit in a War Crime.
People who take Jonathan from Ashkelon's position remind me of the attorneys who take up the cause of a criminal who, subsequent to holding up a liquor store and shooting the proprietor and a few bystanders, sues the policeman who fired a bullet in his leg to subdue him.
Jonathan from Ashkelon is probably not to blame for his opinion if he has indeed grown up in that area for the history is quite simply obliterated in the Israeli education system, and rarely taught in the West.
The historical record is very clear. It is possible now to trace the origins of this conflict to a deliberate campaign of terror, conquest and ethnic cleansing, perpetrated by the Zionist movement, by sourcing exclusively Israeli documents.
Israelists love to steer the debate toward the acts of resistance that can appear unreasonable if one loses sight of the enormous crimes upon which their "State" was built. These are documented here:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/index.html
Question: Did Hamas not know that these rockets were being fired? Because if they knew, and allowed it, they must have known the consequences....
It's a minor point to be sure, but when did this become the most densely populated region on Earth?
There's no need to make emotive claims in order to express disapproval.
Lisa
If rather macabre footnotes to history are your bent you may be interested in this:
"Zionist factions competed for the honor of allying to Hitler. In 1941, the "Stern Gang," among them Yitzhak Shamir, later Prime Minister of Israel, presented the Nazis with the "Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany."
Avraham Stern and his followers announced that
"The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:
1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and,
3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.
Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side."
There is an article about this document on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(group)
I also recommend a thorough reading of Lenni Brenner's "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
A Reappraisal"
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
"the future Jewish massacre at Armageddon"
Have no idea what this is about.
Put Mel Gibson in charge of the area. He will sort it out.
"It's a minor point to be sure, but when did this become the most densely populated region on Earth?"
The Gaza strip as a whole is not particularly densely populated. But it contains refugee camps which are among the most densely populated regions on earth.
The most famous example is probably the camp at Beach which has over 80,000 people in less than a square kilometre.
There seems to be a lot of Nazi viewpoints on this website.
"There seems to be a lot of Nazi viewpoints on this website."
The politically correct term is 'anti-zionist'
Sad about the number of innocent civilians killed. Of course, some of them were murdered by Hamas gunmen as they sought treatment at a Gaza hospital.
And further, more would be dead if they were not willingly treated by Israeli doctors at Ashkelon Hospital.
http://online.wsj.com/article/best_of_the_web_today.html
Look Hamas are scum. The world is better off without them.
Bless Israel.
http://warrenkinsella.com/index.php?entry=entry081230-151950
Six clichés you are likely to hear constantly in the coming days, and why they’re false, by Yigal Walt. Published today, here.
1. “Israel’s response in Gaza is disproportionate.”
Since when is war a mathematical equation? The basic objective of any warring party is to inflict maximal damage on the enemy while minimizing its own casualties. Was there anything proportional about the US war in Iraq? Or about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait for that matter? Or about Russia’s recent war against Georgia? Israel is doing exactly what any other country has done in the past. This is how war works.
Would a British citizen complain that “too few” British soldiers are being killed in Iraq? Probably not.
And on a more elementary note: Palestinian military inferiority is not an indication of moral superiority. Palestinian insistence on resorting to violence despite this military weakness is an indication of poor judgment perhaps – yet it is by no means an indication of moral virtue. Being militarily weak does not make the Palestinians right.
2. “But Qassams don’t kill.”
Actually, Qassams do kill. Not too often, perhaps, but dozens of Israelis were killed and wounded by rocket fire in recent years. Moreover, at this time the Palestinians are firing long-range Grad rockets with even greater explosive power. Such rockets killed 2 Israelis Monday.
Yet beyond the casualty figures, the psychological damage caused as result of living under an ongoing rocket threat is immeasurable. Would anyone in the West agree to have their family live under constant rocket attacks and be regularly woken up by sirens in the middle of the night? Would anyone living under such conditions appreciate being told that “these rockets don’t kill?” Probably not.
3. “It’s all because of Israel’s siege. Israel should allow aid into Gaza.”
Israel has allowed goods into Gaza regularly throughout the “siege”. Palestinians have been able to complement these deliveries with supplies smuggled through hundreds of tunnels (of course, they would likely be able to bring in even more food had they not used the tunnels to smuggle in missiles.).
The day before operation “Cast Lead” got underway, Israel allowed dozens of trucks carrying aid to enter the Strip. On Tuesday, another 100 trucks – double the normal number –are expected to enter Gaza after Defense Minister Barak approved the move.
In short, Israel is allowing aid into the Strip (but guess who has kept Gaza crossings mostly closed thus far? That’s right, Egypt.)
4. “Why didn’t Israel just agree to renew the Gaza truce?”
First, what truce? Terror groups continued to fire rockets throughout the lull, even if somewhat infrequently, and even if the world didn’t seem to care too much. Nonetheless, Israel clearly declared that it is interested in extending the truce. Our top officials made it clear time and again.
Yet Hamas leaders clearly declared that the truce has ended on December 19th, and proceeded to bombard southern Israeli communities with dozens of rockets daily. In short, it is no wonder that even the Egyptians are blaming Hamas this time.
5. “But Hamas was elected democratically – why can’t Israel accept it?”
Although Hamas won the Palestinian elections, it took Gaza by force, in the process hurling rival Fatah members down to their death from high-rises and shooting others in the knees with the declared aim of maiming them. Some democracy.
In any case, Israel in fact “recognizes,” de facto, Hamas’ rule in Gaza, which is precisely why it is justified in attacking the Hamas-ruled Strip, recognizing that it is indeed being governed by a terror entity. Israel did not launch the operation because Hamas is in power there – rather, it did so because Hamas is a terrorist organization that has deliberately targeted civilians with thousands of rockets over the past 8 years.
6. “Israel is targeting civilians.”
You mean to say that “one of the most powerful armies in the world” has been bombing Gaza for days, deploying massive air power, dropping hundreds of bombs, and ultimately killing a grand total of 50 civilians or so in the “most crowded place on earth?”
There are two options here: A) The Israeli army is not targeting civilians, or B) Israeli pilots suck. We tend to go with option A.
Indeed, Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, by deploying precise ammunition and specialized techniques. In fact, nobody in the world does this better than the Jewish State.
Israel knows full well that when they drop a bomb anywhere in Gaza that there will be ccivilian casualties. Of course when Palestinian civilians are killed it dosen't matter anyway right?
Israel is trying to minimise civilian casualties, but it's an unfortunate fact of war that civilians will always be killed. It's a difficult thing to avoid in dense urban areas like Gaza.
Of course it matters when Palestinian civilians are killed, just like it matters when Israeli civilians are killed. I'll point out now though that the "360 dead Palestinians" comment in this blog post is misleading, since only 51 of those deaths are civilian. The rest are militants.
At least Israel is trying to avoid killing civilians; the Hamas militants are purposely targeting innocent Israeli civilians.
This whole thing was started by Hamas breaking the ceasefire with Israel by attacking innocent Israeli civilians with rockets. (Rockets were actually fired during the ceasefire period. Just no where near as many as now.) This whole thing will stop if Hamas stops firing rockets at Israel.
Good to see maxpower take apart the spin that supporters of terrorism and anti-semites on tumeke have posted.
Lets all hope hamas stops using its own people as human shields for propoganda value when they're killed.
I've watched this for days and am utterly disgusted. I'm sorry bomber, I know you're a pacifist and all but I really want to see a military response from Iran over this. I want to see Israel suffer the same was as Palestine has!
MaxPower is an apologist for murder of innocents.
1.“Israel’s response in Gaza is not only disproportionate but fascist in nature”. Why? Because their attack on Gaza was not for self defence but for political gains. On 30th Dec 08, Israeli navy attack, in International waters off the coast of Gaza, a mercy vessel carrying 3.5 tonnes of medical supplies and 15 aid workers. The is terrorism plain and simple. http://www.freegaza.org for more info.
2.“But Qassams don’t kill.” Of course they kill, infrequently. But the psychological damaged caused by Israeli high tech weaponary is far greater then Israelis having to run suffer sirens and run to bomb shelters. Max's problem is that he views Israeli lives as more precious than Gazan lives. That's why Israeli suffer psychological damage from glorified sky rockets whilst the Arabs deserve bunker busters and cluster bombs.
As for your concern about Katyushas used by Hamas. They can't have more than a dozen of them and they're pretty old tech anyways.
3.“It’s all because of Israel’s siege. Israel should allow aid into Gaza.”
Israel has allowed enough goods into Gaza to keep the people in a state of starvation. Did I mention the humaniatrian aid vessel the Israeli Navy attacked on 30th dec.? http://www.freegaza.org
4.“Why didn’t Israel just agree to renew the Gaza truce?”
Max, you just stated that Israeli was willing to extend a truce that didn't exist. Get a grip son.
Hamas honoured the truce for 6 months and got nothing in return except seeing it's people suffer the siege further.
5.“But Hamas was elected democratically – why can’t Israel accept it?”
Max, think for a minute. How can a democratically elected government take power “by force”? The “force” Hamas showed in Gaza was to uphold the election results and prevent a coup by those that lost the elections.
Israel can't accept this because it doesn't want to negotiate with Hamas. Instead it is negotiating with a puppet Authority that has no democratic mandate. This poses no moral issue for Israel because it is a ethnocratic democracy itself.
6.“Israel is targeting civilians.”
“a grand total of 50 civilian” - yeh right! Tarring all the residents of Gaza as terrorists to reduce the civilian casualty count is mere fascism.
Let's not mention Israel bombing UN positions just for fun.
oh and Max - your history lesson is full of holes.
The Jewish people that you think lived there thousands of years ago are the same Semites that Israeli is bombing today.
Can you tell me the ethnicity of King Herod's mother?
It's not as if the Jews are the only race to have lived in an area thousands of years ago before going elsewhere.
The political leaders after WW2 must have known creating Israel would mean neverending conflict, but they went ahead anyway. Incredible.
I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.
Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?
In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.
It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.
I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.
Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.
The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?
A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, à la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?
Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.
A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/gaza-hamas-israel
Wow it amazes me how delusional some people are.
Karlos: That post you are replying to wasn't written by me. That's why I included the link in my post. But I'll reply to you anyway.
"Because their attack on Gaza was not for self defence but for political gains."
So fighting back against the people firing rockets at you isn't self defence?
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"Of course they kill, infrequently. But the psychological damaged caused by Israeli high tech weaponary is far greater then Israelis having to run suffer sirens and run to bomb shelters. Max's problem is that he views Israeli lives as more precious than Gazan lives. That's why Israeli suffer psychological damage from glorified sky rockets whilst the Arabs deserve bunker busters and cluster bombs."
Who started this? Hamas did by firing rockets at Israeli civilians. It isn't a recent thing either. It's been happening for years. Israel has the right to defend its citizens against these rocket attacks, and is doing so by going after the organisation doing it. I know it's terrifying for innocent Gaza citizens, but Hamas' attacks are terrifying too. Hamas started it, and Israel has the right to self-defence.
I don't need you trying to say what my views are because as you've just proven, you're very wrong. I don't view anyone’s life as more precious than anyone else’s. I think it's terrible that 50 Palestinian civilians have been killed. It's a sad fact of war. Israel is doing its best to minimise those deaths, unlike Hamas who is purposely targeting Israeli civilians.
The rockets being fired by Hamas are not "glorified skyrockets". They are missiles, designed to kill. As for Israel, I was not aware of them using cluster bombs in this campaign. Do you have any proof of this? What they have been doing is using precision weapons to be as accurate as possible, as they want to minimise civilian deaths. By the way, bunker buster bombs aren't particularly deadly compared to other bombs. They're just designed to penetrate heavily reinforced bunkers with a delayed fuse to make them detonate underground.
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"Max, you just stated that Israeli was willing to extend a truce that didn't exist. Get a grip son."
What are you talking about? There was a ceasefire in place for 6 months. Hamas broke it by firing rockets into Israel. Hamas was actually firing rockets into Israel throughout the ceasefire as well, just no where near as many as they have been recently.
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"Hamas honoured the truce for 6 months and got nothing in return except seeing it's people suffer the siege further."
As I said, Hamas was firing rockets at Israel throughout the ceasefire. They certainly weren't honouring it. They then began firing a much larger quantity of rockets at Israel recently. It was then that Israel acknowledged Hamas had broken the ceasefire, after letting it slide for the last 6 months.
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"[Israel] is a ethnocratic democracy."
What are you talking about? Israeli citizens of all races are entitled to vote, and stand for parliament. There are both Jews and Arabs in parliament.
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"“a grand total of 50 civilian” - yeh right! Tarring all the residents of Gaza as terrorists to reduce the civilian casualty count is mere fascism."
What proof do you have that all the independent media outlets stating 50 civilian deaths are wrong? And that it's being done by classifying all residents of Gaza as terrorists?
How many civilian deaths do you think there are? And how many militant deaths do you think there are? As I said earlier, Israel is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas on the other hand are purposely trying to kill civilians.
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"The Jewish people that you think lived there thousands of years ago are the same Semites that Israeli is bombing today."
So do you think Jews and Arabs are the same race? Each has their own ethnicity, religion, culture, language, and beliefs. There is a difference between Jews and Arabs. I'm not saying that's good or bad, I'm just saying that there is a difference
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I can't understand why people like you make up so much rubbish about all this, and have so much hate towards Israel. I don't favour either Israel or Palestine over the other. I'm on the side of who's in the right, and against who's in the wrong. Hamas attacked Israel, and Israel is acting in self defence. It’s that simple. I hate people spouting lies and mistruths.
The facts are that there was a 6 month ceasefire (which Hamas never completely adhered to). Hamas broke it by firing large quantities of rockets at Israeli civilians. This has been happening for years. Israel, after putting up with it for so long, said enough is enough, and that they need to defend their citizens. They are now targeting the group responsible for the attacks, Hamas, to prevent them from doing it anymore. All the while they're making a huge effort to avoid killing civilians in Gaza.
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Anonymous:
"It's not as if the Jews are the only race to have lived in an area thousands of years ago before going elsewhere."
You're right; Jews aren't the only ones to have lived there for thousands of years. Arabs have also lived in that region. That is why the states of Israel AND Palestine were created. Currently Arabs make up over 20% of Israel’s population, and they have the same rights as every other Israeli.
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"The political leaders after WW2 must have known creating Israel would mean neverending conflict, but they went ahead anyway. Incredible."
The British actually wanted to make one state and have Jews and Arabs living there. But after a large amount of violence towards the Jews in the region the UN decided on the plan to have separate Jewish and Arab states. The conflict in the region would be very different today if the Jews didn't have a state to protect them, and had to live in an Arab state.
Anonymous, your post from the guardian is the biggest load of rubbish I've ever read about the whole Israel/Palestine issue. It doesn't even justify a response, but even if it did, I would be here for hours listing everything that was wrong with it, and I don't have time.
Maxpower - excellent post. A few things i'd like to add.
Do you think maybe this is something Hamas wanted? It may sound preposterous, but think about it. Anyone with a clue about Israel knows what will happen if you keep provoking it. You only have to look back to Lebanon - where Hezbollah (after kidnapping the soldiers) launched a rocket attack on Haifa.
There is no way Hamas couldn't have known that Israel would react. But yet they continued to allow the rocket attacks.
So the question is why did they continue, and what are the geopolitical motivations for both Hamas and their backers.
sdm, I wouldn't be surprised if you were right about that. If it is true I think it just shows how evil Hamas really is. That they’d knowingly take actions that would result in the death of their own citizens.
Hamas knows that the world would condemn Israel for any attacks on Gaza in self defence, that being their primary motivation behind the whole thing.
What is also disgusting is Hamas hiding weapons in and operating out of civilian areas. They're happy to use their own citizens as human shields just to make Israel's job more difficult in attacking them. Their actions also increase the civilian death toll in Gaza which, in my opinion, is what they want, so the rest of the world will condemn Israel.
MaxPower: "Who started this? Hamas did by firing rockets at Israeli civilians"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the resistance came after the occupation and all the extra atrocities committed by Israel since 1948.
The previous occupation was to also prevent terrorist acts and to protect their citizens.
The atrocities you talk about are rubbish. Lies and mistruths. Israel just wants to exist in peace, and have its citizens able to live their lives in peace.
That hasn't been possible throughout its existence due to wars started by neighbouring countries, and terrorist attacks. Israel has been defending itself and its citizens, and has many times been fighting just for its mere existence since its birth.
Israel has been fighting for it's existence since it took the Palestinian land by force. You can't expect Palestinians to lie back and take that.
Imagine the conflict if a comittee of foreign politicians decided the North Island should be taken to set up a new state. You can't logically say you would accept the new state as legitimate.
What you fail to realise is that the area that was turned into Israel was already made up of mainly Jewish settlements. Those Jews had lived there for thousands of years. And that land wasn't owned by the Palestinians.
When Israel was created, the entire region was ruled by the British. They took over the land from the Turks who were the previous rulers. There was no Israel, no Palestine, no Syria, no Lebanon, and no Jordan. The British carved up the entire Middle East into nations and gave them to the Arabs living there. At the same time they also carved up a tiny piece of land for the Jewish people living in what is now Israel. That land made up less than 1% of the Middle East. That land wasn't previously owned by Palestinians, it was owned by the British, and before that, the Turks, who had ruled over the region for 400 years, and before that, numerous other empires going thousands of years back. Yes, Arabs lived in that region, but so did Jews. Both races had always been there.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, all of the surrounding Arab nations attacked it vowing to destroy it. Those countries told Arabs in Israel to leave. Israel asked them to stay. The ones who did stay were granted full citizenship, and given the same rights as every other Israeli. Arabs in Israel have more rights than Arabs in any Arab country.
Scroll up and read my post about the creation of Israel. That'll explain it all better.
Your analogy using New Zealand doesn't work. I'll make it fit though. For that analogy to work, New Zealand would need to be ruled by various empires for the last few thousand years. The last empire would need to be defeated by Britain, who would decide to carve up the area into nations for all the different groups of people.
At the same time a tiny area, the size of Timaru (1% of New Zealand’s land area) would be carved off for a group of people living in that region. That group of people would have lived there for thousands of years and have their own race, culture, religion, language, and beliefs. The land given to them would also need to be mainly arid wasteland with the final borders being drawn up by the UN.
After declaring independence, that separate nation would grant all people living in it citizenship and equal rights regardless of their race, religion, or culture.
The point is, if you were Palestinian, the detailed history of the land would be irrelevant.
What would be relevant to you would be the fact that your land was taken by military force, leaving you with shit.
"What would be relevant to you would be the fact that your land was taken by military force, leaving you with shit."
So Israel is at fault for fighting back when attacked.....
"What would be relevant to you would be the fact that your land was taken by military force, leaving you with shit."
Are you talking about when Israel was created in 1948??
I was talking about 1948 and all the illegal confiscations since then.
Of course Israel can be expected to defend itself but the Palestinians can also be expected to be pretty pissed off!
What utter nonsense.
As of 1947, Jews in Palestine owned UNDER 7% of Palestine's lands:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story573.html
Israel has never declared its borders.
That should tell you something!
Israel, after the '48 war, enacted a law preventing Palestinians returning to the lands and property to which, to this day they have title deeds. They then enacted a law permitting the government to resume "abandoned" lands.
"When Israel declared independence in 1948, all of the surrounding Arab nations attacked it vowing to destroy it. Those countries told Arabs in Israel to leave. Israel asked them to stay."
Three deliberate lies in two sentences.
Zionist terror had already caused 250,000 Palestinians to flee before May 15 when the Arab League moved to stabilise the area.
The myth that the League caused Palestinians to quit their homes was thoroughly debunked many years ago.
“Erskine Childers checked transcripts of all Arab radio services monitored by the BBC in 1948, and discovered that, ‘(T)here was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948’, and that to the contrary broadcasts gave flat orders to civilians to stay put[39]. His point is taken by Glazer (1980, p. 101), who writes that not only did Arab radio stations appeal to the inhabitants not to leave, but also Zionist radio stations urged the population to flee, by exaggerating the course of battle, and, in some cases, fabricating complete lies”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Pal estinian_exodus#Opening_of_archives
Maxpower is either an idiot or a Troll
Protest for Gaza tomorrow, Saturday, bottom of Queen Street, 2pm.
I'll be there with eggs
Max: Your entire argument is also fundamentally flawed because it is premised on the assumption that these decisions were collectively made and done with good intentions. You assume Britain or European Jewry had any right to the land in the first place. You keep wanking on about who 'owned' the land. Who decided that? Bunch of white people went in (including jews) and decided in typical colonial fashion that they wil make claim to the land. This claim was supported with another erroneous claim: the land was barren at first and 'flourished' under them. This implies the Lockian notion of land ownership (which is very eurocentric), the belief that if you put your labour into it, you own that land. This, coupled with Balfour's famous declaration in which he claims that the indigeneous people of the land he describes as "savage" shall not be consulted with in these decisions. My point here being, these decisions of who owns what, were the decisions of racists and weren't collective; to draw upon these decisions as part of your defence of Israel is laughable.
AF
I can't keep up with this barrage of anti-Israel comments. I'm fighting a one man battle with you people. There’s little point commenting further since you’re all so convinced of Israel’s evilness.
I want peace in the Middle East as much as anyone, and that all starts with the acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.
I'll leave you with a couple of links, which I'm sure you'll try to debunk as Israeli propaganda. Try to see past your hate though and have a look anyway.
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened
http://multimedia.heritage.org/content/wm/Lehrman-092706a.wvx
Max: i've read extensively on the subject, both from an Israeli perspective and a Palestinian one. I assure you, based on history and political realities, Israel's position has been nothing short of evil. The attack on Gaza just being the latest example.
Until what has been discussed in this thread is dealt with, Israel has no right to be recognised. It doesn't recognise the Palestinians as people, let alone having their own state, what right does it have for recognition?
Another matter to consider, which israel are you talking about? There are two- pre-1967 israel which the government itself hasn't recognised but is recognised internatioanlly and expanding israel.
AF.
Maxpower's links are to one David Horowitz who has been jeered off every campus in America with his "Islamofacism awareness week" campaign. His shtick was to put up a picture of a muslim girl, buried up to the neck in sand being stoned and deliver a lecture on how this was what the "Islamofascists" had in mind for white American virgins. Might have influenced a few of the more soft-brained but it came unstuck when someone discovered that the picture came from a lurid Bollywood movie.
The other link is to Brigitte Gabrielle who is, among other things, a talking head for hire from Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau. (Hasbara is Hebrew for propaganda.)
See:
http://www.israelactivism.com/index.php?mode=speakers
This person has marvellous credentials as a supporter of the Phalangists in Lebanon. Here is what Robert Fisk had to say about them following the massacres of Sabra and Shatila:
http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-fisk180903.htm
More on the lovely looking Brigitte:
http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1481
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