General Israel/Palestine discussion thread

[bit_pattern]

Interest stats, when you dig into them they include people killed fleeing a check point, people killed playing in a field from which rockets had just been fired from, people who died in a fire started by a rocket, people who were killed trying to sneak into Israel. A lot of people sadly killed because they were in the wrong place too, though as has been pointed out repeatedly, when a military force places military targets (especially weapons) in places where return fire or that equipment/target being attack can lead to civilian causalties, the responsiblility for those deaths is on the head of those that placed the equipment in the civilian areas.



The difference is that Israel doesn't seek to target children. Yes children and civilians get caught in the crossfire, it's a very sad fact of war, and it gets worse when one side cares so little about it's people that it uses them as human shields and hides amongst the population instead of wearing uniforms.

As long as there are groups who are willing to hide among civilian populations and indiscriminately attack civilians on the other side, they are going to bring their own civilians under threat of attack and death.

There's nothing more nausea inducing than watching someone trying to rationalise to themselves the murder of children. I'd hate to be inside your head right now

 

[PhantomWolf]

Dunno about children, but if we speak about civilians:

At least 6,617 Palestinians and 1,097 Israelis have been killed since September 29, 2000.

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html

From the site of the UN

[qimg]http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/be07c80cda4579468525734800500272/Body/0.7866?OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=jpg[/qimg]

http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/BE07C80CDA4579468525734800500272

Strangely this is exactly what happens when one side deliberately puts its own civilians in harms way and then fires 900+ rockets a year into the other side's cities to try and kill them.

Until we come up with a way of destroying enemy rocket launchers and ammo dumps with no collateral damage, what exactly do you think Israel should do about those firing hundreds of rockets against its people?

 

[bit_pattern]

An Israeli missile strike on Gaza on Wednesday left an aching hole in the home and hearts of the family of 11-month-old Omar Masharawi, who was fatally burned all over his little body.

“My children are not terrorists. They are not devils. They are good people,” said Ali Masharawi, 55, the grandfather of baby Omar, who was killed along with Ali Masharawi’s 20-year-old daughter-in-law, Hiba al-Turk. Ahmad, one of Ali’s sons, was also seriously injured.

Baby Omar, the son of Jihad Masharawi, a BBC staffer in Gaza, is one of several children killed since intensive Israeli bombardment began on Wednesday, including Hanin Tafish, a 10-month-old girl.

(...)

“I have always been peaceful and I even worked in Israel during my youth, but now I feel I want to explode,” Masharawi said at a condolence reception in Gaza City

http://electronicintifada.net/conte...ted-israels-killing-baby-omar-masharawi/11895

 

[bit_pattern]

Thirteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Daqqa vividly recalls the moment his friend and cousin Ahmad Abu Daqqa was killed outside his southeast Gaza home while they were playing football last Thursday afternoon.

“Suddenly, Ahmad fell on the ground and I was surprised to see him sort of bleeding right beneath his heart. An Israeli helicopter was buzzing overhead and other Israeli military jeeps and tanks were seen near the border line,” Muhammad explained.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), the life of the football-obsessed 13-year-old was cut short when a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers stationed nearby hit him in the stomach (“New Israeli escalation against the Gaza Strip,” 11 November).

http://electronicintifada.net/conte...t-israeli-forces-while-playing-football/11880

 

[PhantomWolf]

There's nothing more nausea inducing than watching someone trying to rationalise to themselves the murder of children. I'd hate to be inside your head right now

Pot meet keetle. You are supporting people who stop cars and shoot children in the head at close range, and yet you call the deaths of civilians who are killed during exchanges with milita's murder. Strange world you live in there, but hey, I guess that you think all Americans are murderers too for their military's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan too.

 

[bit_pattern]

http://electronicintifada.net/sites...ner_wide/public/121115-gaza-hospital-baby.jpg

Edited by LashL: 

Changed hotlink to regular link. Please see Rule 5.

[/i]A doctor at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital uses the light of his mobile phone to check the vital signs of critically-injured Haneen Tafish, a one-year-old from the al-Zeitoun neighborhood on 15 November, the second day of a massive Israeli attack on Gaza. (Anne Paq / ActiveStills)[/i]

 

[PhantomWolf]

Let me know when you have finished with your blatant attempts at Appeal to Emotion, and actually want to rationally defend your claims that those killed during attacks against forces hiding within a civilian population are murder?

While you are at it, you might want to explain how you would handle the situation where you are having hundreds of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminantly against your citizens by a militant force hiding in the neighbouring population. We're all ears.

 

[bit_pattern]

While you are at it, you might want to explain how you would handle the situation where you are having hundreds of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminantly against your citizens by a militant force hiding in the neighbouring population. We're all ears.

Oh, that's easy, I wouldn't go around attacking my neighbours and encroaching on their backyard so people wouldn't shoot rockets at me

 

[bit_pattern]

 

[bit_pattern]

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The image of a dead preschooler cradled by the prime ministers of Egypt and Gaza in a hospital hallway has drawn attention to the dangers Gaza's children face in this crowded urban battle zone.

Children make up half of Gaza's population of 1.6 million and seem to be everywhere in the current round of cross-border fighting between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers.

Children loitered Friday outside a Gaza City morgue for a glance at the latest "martyrs." Others followed adults to funerals or even rushed to the site where Israeli missiles had just struck a government building and fire was still smoldering. Despite outward bravado, young boys of elementary school age said quietly that fear of airstrikes kept them awake at night.

So far, six of 28 Palestinians killed in Israel's offensive this week have been children, ranging in age from just under 1 to 14 years, according to Gaza health officials. Most were killed by shrapnel while in or near their homes

http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/n..._host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=US&.lang=en-US

 

[Virus]

Are you familiar with the "start it, get it" theory of war? It goes like this; If you start it, you get it.

 

[bit_pattern]

Are you familiar with the "start it, get it" theory of war? It goes like this; If you start it, you get it.

Those kids didnt "start" anything so yes I'm familiar with the biblical concept of collective punishment. Good to see you still subscribe to bronze age ethics. You're a real testament to the right wing ideology to which you subscribe.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Oh, that's easy, I wouldn't go around attacking my neighbours and encroaching on their backyard so people wouldn't shoot rockets at me

Funny thing, Israel hadn't gone around attacking their neighbours or encroaching on their backyards when they got attacked in 1948. They weren't attacking their neighbours or encroaching in 1967 either when Eygpt decided that they'd create a situation that lead to war. They restored all of Gaza to the Palestinians, that didn't stop the attacks either.

Let's be honest here. As long as Israel exists, they are going to be attacked. What do you think they should do about it?

 

[bit_pattern]

Yeah, those nasty Egyptians, its not like Israel ever invaded them without provocation to try and seize the Suez Canal or anything

.

Let's be honest here. As long as Israel exists, they are going to be attacked. What do you think they should do about it?

Same thing they did with Egypt, land for peace, its pretty elementary really.

Either that or take the WB, expel the population OR take the WB and do the right thing - a single, secular state where Palestinians have the same rights as Jews.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Yeah, those nasty Egyptians, its not like Israel ever invaded them without provocation to try and seize the Suez Canal or anything

Check out the history, the Brits and the French deserve the blame for that one, they convinced the Israelis that Eygpt had nationalised the Suez Canel as a prelude to invasion. Israel merely fell for the ruse and acted as a puppet for people they thought were on their side.

Same thing they did with Egypt, land for peace, its pretty elementary really.

Unfortunately it only works when both sides want peace. Israel has managed to make peace with Eygpt, Jordan, Lebanon, and others. They have repeatedly made offers to and have backed the creation of a Palestinian State, on the condition that they stop getting attacked, and are recognised as a State themselves by those that keep attacking them. If the leaders of Palestine wanted peace, we'd have it by now.

Either that or take the WB, expel the population OR take the WB and do the right thing - a single, secular state where Palestinians have the same rights as Jews.

Israel never wanted the WB in the first place. From the start all they have wanted is to be left alone and to have security. Hard to do that when those around you want to see you erased from the map, and have since at least 1929.

 

[bit_pattern]

Check out the history, the Brits and the French deserve the blame for that one, they convinced the Israelis that Eygpt had nationalised the Suez Canel as a prelude to invasion. Israel merely fell for the ruse and acted as a puppet for people they thought were on their side.
.

That's right. Israel: as innocent as the pure driven snow

That's what ***** me the most about you Israel Über Alles crowd, you can never see the slightest fault in Israel. Your opinions are worthless because your just raging ideologues, you can't see past the self righteousness of Israel.

I suspect a lot if it has to do with Arabs being Muslims, there is a faction of "sceptics" who think scepticism and neoconservative exceptionalism are mutually exclusive do forums like this attract the kinds of people who subscribe to Western chauvinism. With the case of the cold war Islam has become The Enemy so anyone fighting Muslims can do no wrong.

 

[Doctor Evil]

That's what ***** me the most about you Israel Über Alles crowd, you can never see the slightest fault in Israel. Your opinions are worthless because your just raging ideologues, you can't see past the self righteousness of Israel.

Personal attack noted. Moreover, a racist one. Lovely.

Oh, and translation of the second highlighted part: you are all wrong because you disagree with me. Pathetic reasoning.

What a meltdown. Just a dose of the ugly reality, I have seen an estimate of how many people died in Syria yesterday. Its over a hundred. But of course they were not killed by Jews. Here is what one Journalist thinks about it:

Yes, I know that probably 300 people have been murdered in Syria since this Gaza affair started, and no one cares. An acquaintance of mine, a Syrian living in Beirut, wrote me in frustration about this last night. "We get very little interest from the international press compared to the Palestinians. What should we do to get more attention?"

My advice is to get killed by Jews. Always works

(By the way, I do recommend reading what Goldberg has to say. I do not always agree with him, but he is worth listening to.)

 

[PhantomWolf]

That's right. Israel: as innocent as the pure driven snow

I didn't say that. Israel does deserve some of the blame for it, but politically they were minor players and puppets to specially France who dreamed up the war, and the UK who supported it. France used them so that it didn't have to commit its own troops in the action, so lied to them.

Your statement was:

its not like Israel ever invaded them without provocation to try and seize the Suez Canal

It was incorrect. Israel invaded Egypt in the belief that it was acting in self defence against an attack. They were strung the same line by France to pull them into the alliance that the UK tried to then to use on the US to get them to join in as well. The US didn't fall for it, but with the 1948 invasion still ringing in their ears, Israel fell for France's claim hook line and sinker.

The then French President, Peres, claimed that Nasser was a genocidal manic intent upon not only destroying Israel, but also exterminating its people, and as such, Israel wanted a war before Egypt received even more Soviet weapons, and there was still a possibility of victory for Israel if and only if they attacked first. With their then closest ally telling them that if they didn't strike now they were doomed, and that Nasser's actions of buying Soviet Arms and nationalising the cannel proved beyond doubt that Egypt was about to attack.

That's what ***** me the most about you Israel Über Alles crowd, you can never see the slightest fault in Israel. Your opinions are worthless because your just raging ideologues, you can't see past the self righteousness of Israel.

Bollocks. Israel has done a lot of things that are shameful and that they should be held to account for doing. The institutionalised racist inside the country, the allowing of building of settlements that aren't even approved by the state for example. What I disagree with doing is blaming Israel for everything that isn't their fault, of apportioning blame to them greater than that which they deserve to bear.

You can't see far enough past your own hatred of Israel to realise that not everyone that opposes you on this does so purely for the opposing reasons you attack Israel. Sometimes people oppose you because you are wrong.

I suspect a lot if it has to do with Arabs being Muslims, there is a faction of "sceptics" who think scepticism and neoconservative exceptionalism are mutually exclusive do forums like this attract the kinds of people who subscribe to Western chauvinism. With the case of the cold war Islam has become The Enemy so anyone fighting Muslims can do no wrong.

It's nothing to do with Arabs being Muslim, and certainly the idea that "anyone fighting Muslims can do no wrong" is even more bollocks. I doubt that you would find many here that would disagree with NATO's intervention in Kosovo or think that the Russian actions in Chechnya were right. The issue isn't that they are Arabs, the issue is that they have spent the last 64 years trying to wipe Israel off the map and continue to do so all while teaching the children to hate and then putting them in harm's way as a means to create more propaganda against Israel.

If the Palestinians stopped their almost daily rocket attacks and other attempts to kill Israelis and Israel still attacked them, I'd be right beside you, but until they stop acting in a way that is guaranteed to get their people killed to use in their cause, no I won't support them.

If they want to be respected, they should put on uniforms, stop using their own people as shields, and best of all, stop attacking Israel and negotiate in good faith.

 

[bit_pattern]

Go Anonymous!

When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week began taking military action in the Gaza strip against Hamas (as the IDF announced on Twitter), Anonymous declared its own war as part of #OpIsrael. Among the casualties are thousands of email addresses and passwords, hundreds of Israeli Web sites, government-owned as well as privately owned pages, as well as databases belonging to Bank Jerusalem and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Anonymous@YourAnonNews
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs database has been deleted | mashav.mfa.gov.il | #OpIsrael
17 Nov 12

Anonymous@YourAnonNews
Bank of Jerusalem database has been deleted | bankjerusalem.co.il | #OpIsrael #Anonymous
17 Nov 12​

While the hacktivist group doesn’t appear to be anywhere near satisfied yet, the YourAnonNews account, which has over 686,000 followers, did just send out this message:

Anonymous@YourAnonNews
Israel, all your base are belong to us.
17 Nov 12[/indent]

If that’s not a declaration of success, I don’t know what is.

(...)

Yet as already mentioned, we’re talking about more than just DDoS attacks that are overloading Web sites, such as tel-aviv.gov.il, the municipal site for the second most populous city in Israel (after Jerusalem). There are also plenty of defacements, and, as of a few minutes ago, databases have also been wiped.

While the Israeli government almost certainly has backups of the aformentioned databases, these attacks as well as the defacements show Anonymous isn’t just doing its usual spree of overloading target sites. OpIsrael appears to have gotten multiple hackers involved who are interested in doing actual damage, or at least something that is slightly more permanent than just a 404.

Update at 8:20PM EST: The Twitter account is now claiming that over 9,000 sites have been taken down or defaced, but don’t be fooled: this is a meme reference.

 

[bit_pattern]

Personal attack noted. Moreover, a racist one. Lovely.

Another reason why its pointless trying to have dispassionate discussion about the issue with your lot, any criticism is written off as "racism". Pathetic.

And, no, no personal attacks: I didn't say anything personal, I referred to the bloc of pro-hypernationalism, its a reflection on the mindset of an ideology, not a personal attack. But, hey, you guys have come doing way by smearing your opponents