General Israel/Palestine discussion thread

[angrysoba]

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...

I did the same. No way was I going to wade through that, especially when most of it seemed to be based on some metaphor that he must have thought was really good but actually was very bad. It would have been far more prosaic but far more accurate to simply say: "The Middle East is a very violent place, isn't it?"

 

[trustbutverify]

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.

The article doesn't seem to be particularly "nuanced." Seems like pretty standard fare.

 

[a_unique_person]

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...

There is an election soon, is the current action occurring with an eye to that.
Hamas has split with Iran, it's natural allies are now more aligned with the US.
The rocket fire was in response to a political assassination.
There is general instability in the area due to the Arab Spring, with more destabilisation to come, is it wise to make the political situation even more unstable.

There have been numerous rumours here also that Hamas has been smuggling in heavy missiles and weapons. So far, there has not been any evidence of weapons used by them that are causing any real damage to Israel. It is still by far militarily much stronger than the Palestinians.

 

[bit_pattern]

What a "one-state solution" really means.
.

Yes. Because when I want to know what us real or not I turn to the interpretation of partisan bloggers

Coooool source, brah!

 

[bit_pattern]

,......

 

[DreadNiK]

/ignore post

 

[bigjelmapro]

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.

Residential homes were destroyed during Cast Lead, since this war took place in many urban areas. Some were destroyed by the IDF to protect their positions. Others were destroyed by Hamas and other groups in order to collapse them on the IDF when house-to-house fighting took place. Some of these houses had been booby-trapped with Palestinian civilians in them, courtesy of Hamas.

You are leading with a false premise in 2 ways. Assuming the IDF did all the destroying without there being a military objectives of any sort and in wanton fashion (if proven, then there is a case for collective punishment). These two reasons have not been proven. Not in the Goldstone report or even by the ICRC. Quite simply put, the above reason is a fallacious form of arguing.

To my knowledge, the IDF ceased with the practice of destroying the home of those who committed terrorist acts against Israel (notice the distinction). I've never heard of this practice being followed through on during Cast Lead.

 

[WildCat]

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.

Are you saying Israel destroyed homes as a form of punishment during Cast Lead? Cite?

 

[WildCat]

There is an election soon, is the current action occurring with an eye to that.

You mean the rocket and mortar fire from Gaza?

Hamas has split with Iran, it's natural allies are now more aligned with the US.

Say what?????

The rocket fire was in response to a political assassination.

The 150 or so rockets fired before the guy in charge of the rockets was blown up was in response to the guy in charge of the rockets getting blown up? And killing the guy who's shooting missiles at your towns is now a "political assasination"?

There have been numerous rumours here also that Hamas has been smuggling in heavy missiles and weapons. So far, there has not been any evidence of weapons used by them that are causing any real damage to Israel. It is still by far militarily much stronger than the Palestinians.

The dumbest argument put forth in this forum "but the Palestinians can't kill many Jews, so Israel should just ignore them".

Seriously wtf? That makes sense to you?

 

[carlosy]

I stumbled across this video

(Netanyahu Unaware of Camera)
youtube.com/watch?v=JrtuBas3Ipw

Are the subtitles really correct? I don't speak hebrew.

... Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be born...
then the world will say "how come you are conquering again?"
The world won't say a thing. The world will say we are defending.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I fully support their right to deal blows "too heavy to bear" to HAMAS, and yes, the world does ask Israel "why they are conquering" every time they launch Gaza invasions.

There have been numerous rumours here also that Hamas has been smuggling in heavy missiles and weapons. So far, there has not been any evidence of weapons used by them that are causing any real damage to Israel. It is still by far militarily much stronger than the Palestinians.

Yes, sometimes terrorism doesn't kill that many people. The Oslo bomb didn't kill more than about a dozen people, either, even though it could have killed hundreds.

...your point?

The dumbest argument put forth in this forum "but the Palestinians can't kill many Jews, so Israel should just ignore them".
Seriously wtf? That makes sense to you?

In discussions about Israel, adherence to reality seems to be a pretty low priority.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8778836#post8778836

The rocket fire was in response to a political assassination.

No, the rocket fire was part of an ongoing campaign of aggression that started when the UN gave the Israelis their own sovereign country. The Palestinians have never recognized the State of Israel, not even when it was at its 1947 borders. To claim with a straight face that their aggression today is a response to Israelis retaliating is just pathetic.

Oh, and let me also repeat a question I asked a few pages back and never got an answer to:

Finland lost a significant portion of its territory to the Soviets during World War II. Would you support a shift in Finnish national doctrine to a HAMAS-style terror campaign with an official goal of wiping Russia of the map? Would you make the same pathetic excuses if Finnish terrorists started firing rockets into Russian daycare centres and housing areas?

Or for that matter, would you find it completely understandable if Tibetan monks changed their strategy from setting themselves on fire to bombing Chinese targets, such as school buses full of children? Would you refer to such a strategy as "defending their country" or claim that "China started it"?

...or is terrorism only OK when its targeted at Jews?

 

[John Mekki]

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.

OK, then.
What the other links I have posted where it is written that 6000+ civilians from Palestine were killed in the last 10 years or so?

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....

Does this change one iota about the fact whether Israel is right (or not) in taking Palestinian land?

 

[WildCat]

OK, then.
What the other links I have posted where it is written that 6000+ civilians from Palestine were killed in the last 10 years or so?

Maybe Palestinians should stop picking a fight with someone much stronger than they are? Do you think that might reduce the casualty figures?

Do you think there's anything at all Palestinians could do to help themselves?

 

[bikerdruid]

Maybe Palestinians should stop picking a fight with someone much stronger than they are?

when someone is living next door to a bully, should they just keep hiding?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

This makes me feel bad about the Norwegian bombing of Libya. Clearly we killed far more of their people than they killed of ours, in fact I don't think a single Norseman was killed. It is evident that we should have refrained from hostilities or fought the war in a way that allowed them to kill more of our people. We should have had our F-16 pilots throw rocks at Libya's tanks!

Or maybe not.

Do you think there's anything at all Palestinians could do to help themselves?

Good question. Here's your answer:

when someone is living next door to a bully, should they just keep hiding?

No, apparently the only option the Palestinians have is to fire rockets at innocents. There's no other way to be heard.

http://www.allgreatquotes.com/Images/gandhi.jpg

http://econintersect.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/tiananmen-square-hero.jpg

​

Edited by LashL: 

Changed hotlinks to regular links. Please see Rule 5.

If only there was.
Then maybe we wouldn't have nutters defending terrorists like Osama, Breivik, and, currently, HAMAS.

 

[funk de fino]

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.

But you dont understand. It doesn't apply to Israelis. And if you say it does you are an anti semite.

Describe it another way, without using those words, and it is the exactly what they are doing.

 

[Mycroft]

They could give the Palestinian their state under the 1967 UN resolution?

But Israle doesn't want to do that, it wants to take as much of the WB as it can, powerful elements see that as the whole WB, but its populated by millions of people. Either take the land and expel the people or take the people and the land OR go back to the 1967 borders. Anything else is just a slow-burn genocide.

If that's a reference to UNSC Resolution 242, you should know that it doesn't give the Palestinian people a state. It doesn't even talk about it.

 

[bikerdruid]

If that's a reference to UNSC Resolution 242, you should know that it doesn't give the Palestinian people a state. It doesn't even talk about it.

it clearly delineates palestinian territory, which israel has totally ignored.

 

[Toontown]

it clearly delineates palestinian territory, which israel has totally ignored.

The mutual ignoring of UN-delineated territorial rights began the day after the state of Israel was formed. It began with an Arab invasion of Israel. The Arabs' nazi mentors had taught them well.

Jeezus, man. You gotta come up with a new dance. 233 stinking pages of this crap is enough. Papa needs a brand new bag, man. Why don't you go back to advocating voluntary extinction or something.

 

[Mycroft]

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

I agree. They can do that and much more.

So I wonder why it is, with so much that Hamas or the Palestinian Authority could be doing to advance peace but are not, so many from a certain part of the political spectrum can only ever think to put demands on the Israeli side of the equation.