General Israel/Palestine discussion thread

[bit_pattern]

Dissecting IDF propaganda on the numbers behind the rocket attacks

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8461/dissecting-idf-propaganda_the-numbers-behind-the-r

 

[John Mekki]

Personally I think that they need to be far more restrained in their responses because killing of civilians is never good,

Agreed on this

and also because of the hysteria that comes out from the Anti-Israel brigaide whenever a child gets killed (though funny thing is it never happens when it is a Jewish child that is killed by a Palestinian. Where was the outrage when a Palestinian rocket was fired into a school bus and kill one of the students?)

Agreed on this

It depends on what you mean. I think that the continued settlements is wrong and needs to stop, that it would be good for Israel to pull back as much as it can, and for the areas along the border, do a decent land swap to compensate. For those that were forced to flee in 1948, compensation should be given.

Agreed on this too.

Mostly that Israel is using collective punishment, which as I previously noted, is wrong and they should stop doing.

Agreed on this too.

No, I'd rather see it come from an independant third party who investigated it and can show the facts without bias in either direction.

There have been allegations in this sense from the Goldstone report among others.
Which were partially retracted later on, by the way.

What land is Israel stealing in Gaza?

I was not referring to Gaza, but to the West Bank.

 

[Mycroft]

all reasonable people must realize that the current situation in israel/palestine is not tenable.
all people have a right to a secure and prosperous life.

With these declarations in mind, can you think of anything Hamas or the Palestinian Authority could do to foster peace?

 

[bikerdruid]

With these declarations in mind, can you think of anything Hamas or the Palestinian Authority could do to foster peace?

without a reasonable israeli government, this will not happen.

 

[John Mekki]

With these declarations in mind, can you think of anything Hamas or the Palestinian Authority could do to foster peace?

Hamas could do a lot, for example, accept the existence of a state of Israel.
The PLO they have accepted that back in 1998, I guess

 

[bit_pattern]

With these declarations in mind, can you think of anything Hamas or the Palestinian Authority could do to foster peace?

Considering Israel is not a a willing partner in peace and has a strategic interest in perpetuating the status quo that is probably a very instructive question to ask. Maybe its time for the Palestinians to remove Israel from the equation all together.

A mass non-violent resistance movement pushing for a one state solution, would be my pref option

Israel would predictably overreact, it would be such a shift in the zeitgeist that the Israeli military machine will inevitably react violently and be exposed for obstructionist force that it is. The world would start to wake up and Israel's position of perpetual occupation would rapidly become untenable, providing just the kind of paradigm shifting short circuit this conflict so desperately needs.

 

[Mycroft]

without a reasonable israeli government, this will not happen.

So...you can't think of anything at all?

What do you think would happen if Abbas said he was willing to come to the negotiation table without preconditions?

 

[bit_pattern]

Hamas could do a lot, for example, accept the existence of a state of Israel.
The PLO they have accepted that back in 1998, I guess

Yeah and look what they got for their efforts - Ariel Sharon and Hamas. Israel us all about divide and rule, railroad moderates, empower extremists, perpetuate the conflict and maintain the status quo - all the while expanding settlements in the territories.

 

[WildCat]

Um... they unilaterally declared a state and immediately initiated a pogrom against the native inhabitants there.

They did? And oh look, you used the word "pogrom"!

Always a good way to forever put your neighbours off side!

Which neighbors were those? Jordan, Egypt, and Syria?

 

[WildCat]

Mostly that Israel is using collective punishment, which as I previously noted, is wrong and they should stop doing.

Please don't fall for the propaganda, much of which is deliberately redefining words so that they apply to Israel. "Collective punishment" refers to such practices as grabbing 100 random men from a village near which one of your soldiers was killed, and summarily executing them in reprisal.

It sure as hell doesn't apply to embargos.

And the Goldstone report has since been thoroughly discredited, even Goldstone has walked back from it.

 

[Morrigan]

Considering Israel is not a a willing partner in peace

And you think Hamas is? Mind-boggling.

and has a strategic interest in perpetuating the status quo

How so?

Israel would predictably overreact, it would be such a shift in the zeitgeist that the Israeli military machine will inevitably react violently and be exposed for obstructionist force that it is. The world would start to wake up and Israel's position of perpetual occupation would rapidly become untenable, providing just the kind of paradigm shifting short circuit this conflict so desperately needs.

Sorry, no one is interested in your wild fantasies and baseless conjectures, we prefer to stick to reality.

 

[trustbutverify]

Considering Israel is not a a willing partner in peace and has a strategic interest in perpetuating the status quo that is probably a very instructive question to ask. Maybe its time for the Palestinians to remove Israel from the equation all together.

A mass non-violent resistance movement pushing for a one state solution, would be my pref option

Israel would predictably overreact, it would be such a shift in the zeitgeist that the Israeli military machine will inevitably react violently and be exposed for obstructionist force that it is. The world would start to wake up and Israel's position of perpetual occupation would rapidly become untenable, providing just the kind of paradigm shifting short circuit this conflict so desperately needs.

So your fantasy is to achieve by a massive propaganda campaign what your heroes failed miserably to do with repeated military adventures; get rid of Israel. Well, I suggest you strap up and get into the fight tough guy- cause your heroic internet campaign ain't gonna get that done.

 

[bit_pattern]

And you think Hamas is? Mind-boggling.

No. That would be a logical fallacy on your part.

How so?

$3.5 billion's worth of shiny new toys from America next year alone, just for starters - $115 billion to date.

And how can Israel continue to expand settlements without perpetual conflict?

Sorry, no one is interested in your wild fantasies and baseless conjectures, we prefer to stick to reality.

No you don't. You stick to a script.

 

[PhantomWolf]

There have been allegations in this sense from the Goldstone report among others.
Which were partially retracted later on, by the way.

The Goldstone Report is not likely to be the best source. Firstly it's clear by their ongoing reports that the UNHRC clearly has an anti-Israel bias which isn't a good start. Secondly they failed to notice the use of civilian structures as bases by Hamas militants, despite it being widely reported, and they made the claim that the Gazan Police were civilians, despite Hamas itself saying otherwise. On top of that Goldstone himself bemoaned that fact that they had failed to uncover any evidence of the crimes that they charged Israel with having commited, though admitted that with the further information they finally had because of Israel's investigations that it was possible that what they had called deliberate targeting wasn't.

Goldstone wrote that "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." He said that the lack of Israeli cooperation had meant that no Israeli officers were interviewed during the writing of the report. In hindsight, incidents that had been interpreted as the deliberate targeting of civilians may have had other explanations, such as poor intelligence information. Goldstone also praised Israel for investigating claims of war crimes while faulting Hamas for its failure to launch any investigations of its own forces.

I was not referring to Gaza, but to the West Bank.

And yet strangely the West Bank aren't the ones firing missiles into Israel by the hundreds. Nor is the West Bank under Israeli airstrikes. In fact the PA and Israel are still in talks to try and come to some sort of arrangement to continue a way to Palestinian Statehood. Funny thing that, you be in talks and don't fire rockets, you don't have air strikes back....

 

[PhantomWolf]

Please don't fall for the propaganda, much of which is deliberately redefining words so that they apply to Israel. "Collective punishment" refers to such practices as grabbing 100 random men from a village near which one of your soldiers was killed, and summarily executing them in reprisal.

It sure as hell doesn't apply to embargos.

And the Goldstone report has since been thoroughly discredited, even Goldstone has walked back from it.

I'm not "falling for Properganda" or talking about the embargoes. However when Israel went in during Cast Lead they did demolish a large number of residential homes which in itself is a collective punishment. Even claiming that a family member of the home was a militant doesn't stop that, since you are punishing the entire family for what a single member did. No matter how you cut it, doing that was plain wrong. Understandable, but still wrong.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Yup. Thought as much. You are not capable of reasonable discussion on this issue. If you think one side in a conflict is completely blameless then its quite apparent you are prepared to discount a lifetime experience of the foibles of human nature because you are so committed to defending your tribe. Its like politics and sports, True Believers© are incapable incapable of seeing fault in their own tribe so will argued until their blue in the face that their tribe is ALWAYS right.

I'm quite willing to have a reasonable discussion on it, just as soon as you drop your double standard that Israelis are child murderers and monsters for doing exactly the same thing everyone else does in defending itself.

 

[PhantomWolf]

without a reasonable israeli government, this will not happen.

Funny thing, that wasn't the question. How about you answer the actual question, and while you're about it, still waiting to hear back as to exactly what Israel did in 1948 to start it all (apart from the fact that Arabs killing Jews in the area goes back at least to 1929 and the Hebron massacre against Jews whose families had been living there in peace for over 800 years.)

 

[trustbutverify]

What a "one-state solution" really means.

● 'One state' can be a cover for the old goal of conquest

The fools do not propose one state with the intention of conquest. But the knaves do. And the knaves run the BDS movement. Writing in a new collection After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine, Omar Barghouti, a founder of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the BDS movement, rejects any expression of Jewish self-determination whatsoever because "by definition it infringes the inalienable rights of the indigenous Palestinian to part of their homeland". You can't be much plainer than that.

The idea of conquest lies only just beneath the surface of one-state discourse. Listen to Makdisi, an English professor at UCLA. "No privileged group in the history of the world has ever voluntarily renounced its privileges… the Israelis will never relinquish their privileges until they are compelled (his italics) preferable by non-violent means… to accept the parameters of a single democratic state." But Israel will never volunteer to dissolve itself, and Makdisi knows this, so his talk of non-violence is mere throat-clearing.

I'm in favor of a just, sustainable two-state agreement. Those who claim to favor one combined state are simply using it as cover for the actual goal-to "erase Israel from the pages of time". Fine; but at least be honest about it.

 

[a_unique_person]

A more nuanced comment on the current conflict.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po...ts-arab-spring-powder-keg-20121117-29ism.html

It's a much more complex issue than presented here.

 

[DreadNiK]

A more nuanced comment on the current conflict.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po...ts-arab-spring-powder-keg-20121117-29ism.html

It's a much more complex issue than presented here.

I started reading that article but it starts off with a completely spurious connecting of the middle-east with the TDKR shooting and then starts calling countries Cinemas....so I stopped reading pretty quickly having lost faith in the intellect of the writer

having another go now - so the timing and fact of the attack might be political in motivation? nothing to do with the days of rocket fire from Hamas? Either the timing is not political, or it is but Hamas picked the time...