Israeli Air strikes in Gaza

[Betty Boop]

140 killed and 240 injured in Gaza, by Israeli air strikes. The cease fire is well and truly over then, where will it all end? :boo hoo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7800985.stm

[hibsbollah]

A proportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks which killed err...NO Israelis at all. :grr: Wait for the entire UN to vote to censure Israel, only for the USA and UK to veto, yet again.

Ever notice how when an Israeli gets killed, it is described in the most graphic terms, but when a Palestinian gets killed, its 'during clashes between Palestinian and Israel forces' :confused: I think its a new media verb; 'to clash-to kill innocent civilans, usually children, in an illegal occupation'

[hibsbollah]

Gordon Brown's response; "I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population. Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties." Cameron's is almost identical. Pathetic:grr:

[Betty Boop]

Gordon Brown's response; "I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population. Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties." Cameron's is almost identical. Pathetic:grr:

Gordon Brown has always been a supporter of Zionism like his father before him! :bitchy: http://www.redress.cc/global/redress20070630

[Sir David Gray]

Hamas were the ones to call an end to the truce last week. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, at regular intervals.

The fact that the rocket attacks have (so far) killed no-one is just by pure chance and totally irrelevant. I defy any country who's being attacked daily, not to respond and defend itself.

Israel pleaded with Hamas to stop the attacks, a couple of days ago, but they took no notice.

Israel then takes action to defend itself and I see nothing wrong with that. Violent extremist groups like Hamas only understand violence and killing, it's in their charter after all.

Whilst the civilian deaths are regrettable, it was the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in the first place and they are the ones causing the problems. Perhaps if a terrorist organisation hadn't been elected into power, none of this would be happening to the extent that we are seeing today. It just goes to show how little Hamas obviously thinks of the people they are meant to represent when they refused to listen to Israel and stop the attacks. They knew fine well what the repercussions would be of refusing to stop the attacks on Israel and consequently their people have suffered as a result of their actions.

There is an aggressor in all of this, but it certainly isn't Israel.

I don't expect many people to agree with me and it'll most probably end up like the last debate on this issue but that's my opinion on the latest instalment on this subject.

[Tazio]

Whilst the civilian deaths are regrettable, it was the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in the first place and they are the ones causing the problems. Perhaps if a terrorist organisation hadn't been elected into power, none of this would be happening to the extent that we are seeing today. It just goes to show how little Hamas obviously thinks of the people they are meant to represent when they refused to listen to Israel and stop the attacks. They knew fine well what the repercussions would be of refusing to stop the attacks on Israel and consequently their people have suffered as a result of their actions.



The people they (legitimately) represent have a right to be angry. They are crammed into a tiny area with electricity supplies down to a few hours a day, next to no medical supplies and widespread serious malnutrition. Why? because Israel won't allow them it. I could go into more reasons for Israels behaviour but it is difficult to get fully into it all without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

[Betty Boop]

Hamas were the ones to call an end to the truce last week. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, at regular intervals.

The fact that the rocket attacks have (so far) killed no-one is just by pure chance and totally irrelevant. I defy any country who's being attacked daily, not to respond and defend itself.

Israel pleaded with Hamas to stop the attacks, a couple of days ago, but they took no notice.

Israel then takes action to defend itself and I see nothing wrong with that. Violent extremist groups like Hamas only understand violence and killing, it's in their charter after all.

Whilst the civilian deaths are regrettable, it was the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in the first place and they are the ones causing the problems. Perhaps if a terrorist organisation hadn't been elected into power, none of this would be happening to the extent that we are seeing today. It just goes to show how little Hamas obviously thinks of the people they are meant to represent when they refused to listen to Israel and stop the attacks. They knew fine well what the repercussions would be of refusing to stop the attacks on Israel and consequently their people have suffered as a result of their actions.

There is an aggressor in all of this, but it certainly isn't Israel.

I don't expect many people to agree with me and it'll most probably end up like the last debate on this issue but that's my opinion on the latest instalment on this subject. Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in fair and free elections. Its not their fault that the United States of Israel doesn't fancy them, they didn'y fancy Arafat and Fatah either! :rolleyes:

[LiverpoolHibs]

Hamas were the ones to call an end to the truce last week. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, at regular intervals.

The fact that the rocket attacks have (so far) killed no-one is just by pure chance and totally irrelevant. I defy any country who's being attacked daily, not to respond and defend itself.

Israel pleaded with Hamas to stop the attacks, a couple of days ago, but they took no notice.

Israel then takes action to defend itself and I see nothing wrong with that. Violent extremist groups like Hamas only understand violence and killing, it's in their charter after all.

Whilst the civilian deaths are regrettable, it was the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in the first place and they are the ones causing the problems. Perhaps if a terrorist organisation hadn't been elected into power, none of this would be happening to the extent that we are seeing today. It just goes to show how little Hamas obviously thinks of the people they are meant to represent when they refused to listen to Israel and stop the attacks. They knew fine well what the repercussions would be of refusing to stop the attacks on Israel and consequently their people have suffered as a result of their actions.

There is an aggressor in all of this, but it certainly isn't Israel.

I don't expect many people to agree with me and it'll most probably end up like the last debate on this issue but that's my opinion on the latest instalment on this subject.

Jesus wept. I might respond to this at length later when I have a bit more time.

However, the (now seemingly definite) idea of lifting of the blockade to get people out on the streets prior to the attacks is the most disgusting aspect to the entire story. Animals.

[Hank Schrader]

However, the (now seemingly definite) idea of lifting of the blockade to get people out on the streets prior to the attacks is the most disgusting aspect to the entire story. Animals.

You are kidding me right?:bitchy:

Absolutely barbaric if true.....

[Arch Stanton]

Hamas were the ones to call an end to the truce last week. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, at regular intervals.

The fact that the rocket attacks have (so far) killed no-one is just by pure chance and totally irrelevant. I defy any country who's being attacked daily, not to respond and defend itself.

Israel pleaded with Hamas to stop the attacks, a couple of days ago, but they took no notice.

Israel then takes action to defend itself and I see nothing wrong with that. Violent extremist groups like Hamas only understand violence and killing, it's in their charter after all.

Whilst the civilian deaths are regrettable, it was the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in the first place and they are the ones causing the problems. Perhaps if a terrorist organisation hadn't been elected into power, none of this would be happening to the extent that we are seeing today. It just goes to show how little Hamas obviously thinks of the people they are meant to represent when they refused to listen to Israel and stop the attacks. They knew fine well what the repercussions would be of refusing to stop the attacks on Israel and consequently their people have suffered as a result of their actions.

There is an aggressor in all of this, but it certainly isn't Israel.

I don't expect many people to agree with me and it'll most probably end up like the last debate on this issue but that's my opinion on the latest instalment on this subject.

You know, until I read your post, I never realised that the German blitz on the likes of London, Liverpool and Clydebank was a legitimate act of war - the civvy *********s in these places, women and children though they may be, obviously deserved their fate for living in a country which defied Germany and it's assimilation of European countries into it's empire. In fact, it almost makes you realise that the victims of terror are really the architects of their own fate - living in aggressor capitalistic states I mean.

!WARNING - SARCASTIC POST!

[Betty Boop]

You are kidding me right?:bitchy:

Absolutely barbaric if true..... The Israelis opened the border with Gaza to allow Aid through after 18 months, then pounded them with airstrikes. :bitchy:

[Tazio]

It now appears that they used the tactic they used in Lebanon in the 80's. You bomb a street, wait long enough for the aid to arrive and then bomb it again.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Hamas were the ones to call an end to the truce last week. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, at regular intervals.

The fact that the rocket attacks have (so far) killed no-one is just by pure chance and totally irrelevant. I defy any country who's being attacked daily, not to respond and defend itself.

Do you think that, maybe, you've just accidentally justified Palestinian attacks on Israel?


Israel pleaded with Hamas to stop the attacks, a couple of days ago, but they took no notice.

Aye, I bet they were down on bended knee.


Israel then takes action to defend itself and I see nothing wrong with that. Violent extremist groups like Hamas only understand violence and killing, it's in their charter after all.

Whereas the State of Israel has an impeccable record in that area.


Whilst the civilian deaths are regrettable, it was the Palestinian people who elected Hamas in the first place and they are the ones causing the problems. Perhaps if a terrorist organisation hadn't been elected into power, none of this would be happening to the extent that we are seeing today. It just goes to show how little Hamas obviously thinks of the people they are meant to represent when they refused to listen to Israel and stop the attacks. They knew fine well what the repercussions would be of refusing to stop the attacks on Israel and consequently their people have suffered as a result of their actions.

Collective responsibility is generally held as illegal. Israel's very fond of the idea, however.


There is an aggressor in all of this, but it certainly isn't Israel.

I don't expect many people to agree with me and it'll most probably end up like the last debate on this issue but that's my opinion on the latest instalment on this subject.

I hope it isn't your 'latest installment' on it. Generally, it's always better to fight your corner rather than acquiesce by not replying.

[GC]

I would not even pretend to know the full story behind the persistant problems that seem to go on in this area between these two.

I am however interested to read exactly where you stand on this LH.

If you don't mind it is, Your arguments on these subjects are normaly insightful and i'd be keen to read your thoughts.

[Sir David Gray]

The people they (legitimately) represent have a right to be angry. They are crammed into a tiny area with electricity supplies down to a few hours a day, next to no medical supplies and widespread serious malnutrition. Why? because Israel won't allow them it. I could go into more reasons for Israels behaviour but it is difficult to get fully into it all without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

I don't deny that they legitimately represent Palestinians. All I'm saying is, the Palestinians voted for Hamas and yet, they failed to protect them from Israel's attacks by failing to take heed of Israel's warning to stop the rocket fire a few days ago. They have now paid a hefty price for that decision.

I'm pretty certain that Israel would not have attacked Gaza in the way they have done today if the rocket fire had stopped a few days ago.


Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in fair and free elections. Its not their fault that the United States of Israel doesn't fancy them, they didn'y fancy Arafat and Fatah either! :rolleyes:

As I've said above, no-one's saying the elections weren't free or fair. As for Israel not "fancying" Hamas, I wouldn't "fancy" someone either if their main goal in life was to wipe me from the Earth and refuse to recognise my right to exist.

In terms of Yasser Arafat, he didn't recognise Israel's right to exist either, until 1988. And Fatah are treated completely differently from Hamas these days. No country (including Israel) has them listed as a terrorist organisation and you never hear of Israel and Fatah being involved in the kind of arguments and threats that are seen regularly between Israel and Hamas.


Jesus wept. I might respond to this at length later when I have a bit more time.

However, the (now seemingly definite) idea of lifting of the blockade to get people out on the streets prior to the attacks is the most disgusting aspect to the entire story. Animals.

Can you provide solid proof that this was done and was done deliberately for the reasons you have said?


You know, until I read your post, I never realised that the German blitz on the likes of London, Liverpool and Clydebank was a legitimate act of war - the civvy *********s in these places, women and children though they may be, obviously deserved their fate for living in a country which defied Germany and it's assimilation of European countries into it's empire. In fact, it almost makes you realise that the victims of terror are really the architects of their own fate - living in aggressor capitalistic states I mean.

!WARNING - SARCASTIC POST!

You cannot possibly compare Nazi Germany to present day Israel. The Jewish State was set up in Israel because the Jews have an historic claim to that land. The land used to be Jewish until several events through history resulted in the Jews being dispersed from the area and scattered all over the world, through no fault of their own and the area has gradually been taken over by Christians and (mainly) Muslims.

They have a claim to a lot more than what they have just now, as well (including the West Bank and Gaza).

I don't believe Germany had any such claim to Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, or any other country that Adolf Hitler wanted to conquer.

[Tazio]

So how far back can an historic claim go?

The fact is that in less than 60 years the ownership of land in that area as a whole has swung by over 90% to jewish ownership.

A big factor is also the ashkenazi influx. The jewish population more and more doesn't understand the way the balance used to be and are more hardcore than ever before. In the same way that the muslim population is becoming more hardcore.

Is it a coincidence that there is an election coming up soon in Israel that the right wing were winning n the polls?

[Sir David Gray]

Do you think that, maybe, you've just accidentally justified Palestinian attacks on Israel?





Aye, I bet they were down on bended knee.




Whereas the State of Israel has an impeccable record in that area.



Collective responsibility is generally held as illegal. Israel's very fond of the idea, however.


I hope it isn't your 'latest installment' on it. Generally, it's always better to fight your corner rather than acquiesce by not replying.



1-No. Israel attacks in retaliation for acts of aggression from Hamas. Hamas go out of their way to attack Israel at every opportunity, whether it be rocket attacks or abducting Israeli soldiers.

2-I've no idea if they were down on one knee or not. All I know is, Israel issued the following statement on Thursday;

I say to you in a last-minute call, stop it,"

"Don't let Hamas, which is acting against the values of Islam, put you in danger. Stop them. Stop your enemies and ours."

"Hamas needs to understand that our aspiration to live in peace doesn't mean that Israel is going to take this kind of situation any longer. Enough is enough."

That sounds awfully like a polite, but firm, request to me.

3-As I've said before, the vast majority of violent action from Israel is in retaliation.

4-Israel does not deliberately set out to target innocent civilians in its raids. The same can't be said for Hamas who view every Israeli citizen as a viable target.

5-Whilst I feel as if i'm wasting my time and simply repeating what I said in a similar thread a few weeks ago, I'll always "fight my corner" in a debate and will always attempt to reply to every post aimed in my direction. I will also always hold a discussion in a civilised manner, which is something that I hope people will realise about me and subsequently give me the same courtesy in return.

Sadly i'm off to bed now and any further replies will have to wait until tomorrow. You can be rest assured, you will get a reply at some point.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I would not even pretend to know the full story behind the persistant problems that seem to go on in this area between these two.

Yeah, that could take a while. :greengrin

Occupation 101 is a fantastic film to watch on the situation, you'll probably find it on googlevideo or the like.


I am however interested to read exactly where you stand on this LH.

Me?! I usually incite rather than offer insight. :wink:


If you don't mind it is, Your arguments on these subjects are normaly insightful and i'd be keen to read your thoughts

Let's not mince words, it's bordering on genocidal.

I despise Hamas as an organisation and in no way condone indiscriminate attacks, but it's easy to forget that it's even enshrined in the constitution of the U.N. that an occupied and oppressed people is legitimised in resistance of their occupier.

Israel is turning to the Right again after a promising and vibrant Leftist, anti-Zionist movement over the last few years, which is hugely depressing.

On the other side Mahmoud Abbas has made the journey from Holocaust denier to apologist for Israel. Which are two lovely positions to hold.

N.B. If anyone calls anti-Semitism they automatically lose the argument. :greengrin

[Betty Boop]

Where is Tony Blair the invisible "Middle East Peace Envoy" ? :rolleyes:

[RyeSloan]

Israel / Palestine always seems to polarise people's opinions in a way few other subjects do.

Personally I think it's clear that there is no right or wrong side here...the situation is at the extreme of tit for tat, with every side claiming he started it.

Clearly the answer is for both sides to stop, sit down and agree a compromise...just as clearly neither side is prepared to do this in any meaningful way so the cycle of violence and death continues to perpetuate. You can argue all day long on the historic reasons of the battle and each sides right to defend themselves but in my mind they are both now as culpable as each other for the desire to continue fighting.

[hibsbollah]

Israel / Palestine always seems to polarise people's opinions in a way few other subjects do.

Personally I think it's clear that there is no right or wrong side here...the situation is at the extreme of tit for tat, with every side claiming he started it.

Clearly the answer is for both sides to stop, sit down and agree a compromise...just as clearly neither side is prepared to do this in any meaningful way so the cycle of violence and death continues to perpetuate. You can argue all day long on the historic reasons of the battle and each sides right to defend themselves but in my mind they are both now as culpable as each other for the desire to continue fighting.

This is the problem with the way the conflict has been presented to us for 40 years since the Israelis illegally occupied Arab land in 1967. 'Theres no right or wrong side, they just need to sit down and make friends etc etc'. There is a 'wrong' side, and thats Israel. People weren't making moral equivalency between Mugabe and the MDC, the Serb army and Bosnian civilians in 1991 and dare i say it, Stormtroopers and jewish civilians on Cristalnacht. The Israeli state is a murderous disgrace.

[RyeSloan]

Where is Tony Blair the invisible "Middle East Peace Envoy" ? :rolleyes:

Invisible...why cause you have not looked for him or he hasn't appeared in the Sun recently?

Quite quietly Tony Blair has been busy in the back ground in the middle east and as and when Americas new approach is launched he will be one of the main architech's although you wont see his name on the front.

Tony Blairs team have been spending the last year busy on the ground orchestrating UN help in the area and starting what he calls his 'northern ireland' approach to things which is to get the detail right on the ground to start the progression to peace...an interesting change of tact from the international community which has favoured a headline peacedeal first then action on the ground...

Has it done any good...too early to tell, will it do any good who knows but surely it's worth a shot and god forbid a bit of support. While a new man in the Whitehouse is probably the real best chance for any progress in the middle east if I'm honest I don't fancy either of their chances too much as sadly the main protagonists seem to have no real interest in peace at all, which will stymie even the best efforts of Blair, Clinton, Obama or anyone else for that matter.

[RyeSloan]

This is the problem with the way the conflict has been presented to us for 40 years since the Israelis illegally occupied Arab land in 1967. 'Theres no right or wrong side, they just need to sit down and make friends etc etc'. There is a 'wrong' side, and thats Israel. People weren't making moral equivalency between Mugabe and the MDC, the Serb army and Bosnian civilians in 1991 and dare i say it, Stormtroopers and jewish civilians on Cristalnacht. The Israeli state is a murderous disgrace.

Which is my point really...While of course Israel weilds the bigger club I'm sure an Israel sympathiser could come on and call Hamas a murderous disgrace.

The arguement around the middle east conflict always seems to revert to who has the moral right to kill the other and who is the murderous disgrace...the fact is both sides are so entrenched in believing they are the moral richeous that this will never change so why focus debate on this area instead of approaching the present situation and attempting to move on from a ruinous and unwinable arguement.?

[Arch Stanton]

You cannot possibly compare Nazi Germany to present day Israel. The Jewish State was set up in Israel because the Jews have an historic claim to that land. The land used to be Jewish until several events through history resulted in the Jews being dispersed from the area and scattered all over the world, through no fault of their own and the area has gradually been taken over by Christians and (mainly) Muslims.

They have a claim to a lot more than what they have just now, as well (including the West Bank and Gaza).

I don't believe Germany had any such claim to Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, or any other country that Adolf Hitler wanted to conquer.

I was making no such comparison with Nazi Germany and I didn't mention Israel's right to exist - I could as easily have included the bombing of Cologne as an example. THe point is I see the bombing of civilians as indefensible whereas you seem to think it is fine if you can put together a good enough PR exercise justifying it.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Which is my point really...While of course Israel weilds the bigger club I'm sure an Israel sympathiser could come on and call Hamas a murderous disgrace.

But support for the Palestinian cause doesn't equate to support for Hamas, whereas support for Israeli cause obviously means support for the State of Israel.

[Betty Boop]

The Gaza Strip is the worlds largest concentration camp in which Israel uses as a shooting gallery against defenseless people. They real agressor is Israel and always has been since it's creation in 1948. This is all the fault of the Balfour Declaration. That is all!

[Tazio]

The Gaza Strip is the worlds largest concentration camp in which Israel uses as a shooting gallery against defenseless people. They real agressor is Israel and always has been since it's creation in 1948. This is all the fault of the Balfour Declaration. That is all!

Actually you could argue that the entire regions problems were started with Sykes-Picot.

Also the fact that the Balfour Declaration very clearly stated that the creation of a Jewish state should in no way prejudice the rights of the present population. Of course as soon as the Jewish state was declared after the WWII the Jewish/Israeli commando groups set about clearing towns and villages of their existing population. While the world looked on.

[Sir David Gray]

This is the problem with the way the conflict has been presented to us for 40 years since the Israelis illegally occupied Arab land in 1967. 'Theres no right or wrong side, they just need to sit down and make friends etc etc'. There is a 'wrong' side, and thats Israel. People weren't making moral equivalency between Mugabe and the MDC, the Serb army and Bosnian civilians in 1991 and dare i say it, Stormtroopers and jewish civilians on Cristalnacht. The Israeli state is a murderous disgrace.

The way I see it is, the Israelis haven't illegally occupied anything, that land is theirs. The Israeli army has forcibly removed the Jews from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and that, to me at least, was wrong.

Just so everyone knows where I stand on the whole subject and my beliefs on what has happened in the past and what will happen in the future, I will write them all down here.

I believe that the Jews are the chosen people, they have been since day one. However they have brought suffering upon themselves for thousands of years with their refusal to recognise Jesus as their saviour.

It has been prophesied that the Jews would be dispersed from their homeland and scattered worlwide, which happened. It was also prophesied that the Jews would get their homeland back. Although it is nowhere near what they once had and what they are entitled to, this was also partly fulfilled in 1948, when the state of Israel was established. It had been considered to make the Jewish homeland in British East Africa, under the British Uganda Programme in today's Kenya, but this proposal was eventually dropped.

Israel will continue to find itself in trouble until eventually, they go too far, in the eyes of their enemies and their people will be attacked in a very big way (possibly from nuclear Iran), it will be bigger than any attack we have ever seen before but the Jews will NOT be completely destroyed. Countries that once stood beside Israel, such as the UK and even the USA, will turn against them. I believe that, despite his current position towards Israel, Barack Obama may well turn out to be the man to turn America away from supporting Israel, which will be the USA's eventual downfall.

Only after this huge attack has occurred, will some of its people finally wake up and turn to Jesus to be their saviour (and become Messianic Jews) and a remnant of Israel will be formed.

When that remnant eventually turns to Jesus, it will signal His return to Earth and He will rule as King of the Jews in the Messianic Age.

This will be the time when the Jews who have turned to Him, and also the Church that truly believes, will be saved and all enemies of Israel, of the Jewish people and those who have not accepted Jesus as their saviour, will be defeated.

Although some people have made predictions, no-one knows when the End Times will be. What I do know is, events in Israel are all related to it and every time some trouble erupts in the Middle East (like what we are seeing at the moment) we get a step closer to witnessing what I have said above.

I know that this will seem a bit too far fetched for a lot of people and I don't expect anyone on here to share my views, but that is what my beliefs are, in a nutshell, and why I will always strongly support Israel.

[Betty Boop]

The way I see it is, the Israelis haven't illegally occupied anything, that land is theirs. The Israeli army has forcibly removed the Jews from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and that, to me at least, was wrong.

Just so everyone knows where I stand on the whole subject and my beliefs on what has happened in the past and what will happen in the future, I will write them all down here.

I believe that the Jews are the chosen people, they have been since day one. However they have brought suffering upon themselves for thousands of years with their refusal to recognise Jesus as their saviour.

It has been prophesied that the Jews would be dispersed from their homeland and scattered worlwide, which happened. It was also prophesied that the Jews would get their homeland back. Although it is nowhere near what they once had and what they are entitled to, this was also partly fulfilled in 1948, when the state of Israel was established. It had been considered to make the Jewish homeland in British East Africa, under the British Uganda Programme in today's Kenya, but this proposal was eventually dropped.

Israel will continue to find itself in trouble until eventually, they go too far, in the eyes of their enemies and their people will be attacked in a very big way (possibly from nuclear Iran), it will be bigger than any attack we have ever seen before but the Jews will NOT be completely destroyed. Countries that once stood beside Israel, such as the UK and even the USA, will turn against them. I believe that, despite his current position towards Israel, Barack Obama may well turn out to be the man to turn America away from supporting Israel, which will be the USA's eventual downfall.

Only after this huge attack has occurred, will some of its people finally wake up and turn to Jesus to be their saviour (and become Messianic Jews) and a remnant of Israel will be formed.

When that remnant eventually turns to Jesus, it will signal His return to Earth and He will rule as King of the Jews in the Messianic Age.

This will be the time when the Jews who have turned to Him, and also the Church that truly believes, will be saved and all enemies of Israel, of the Jewish people and those who have not accepted Jesus as their saviour, will be defeated.

Although some people have made predictions, no-one knows when the End Times will be. What I do know is, events in Israel are all related to it and every time some trouble erupts in the Middle East (like what we are seeing at the moment) we get a step closer to witnessing what I have said above.

I know that this will seem a bit too far fetched for a lot of people and I don't expect anyone on here to share my views, but that is what my beliefs are, in a nutshell, and why I will always strongly support Israel. " The chosen people" chosen for what and by who?:confused:

[IndieHibby]

Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in fair and free elections. Its not their fault that the United States of Israel doesn't fancy them, they didn'y fancy Arafat and Fatah either! :rolleyes:

Didn't hear about many Palestinians dying in the West Bank today. Wonder why that is?

[IndieHibby]

Jesus wept. I might respond to this at length later when I have a bit more time.

However, the (now seemingly definite) idea of lifting of the blockade to get people out on the streets prior to the attacks is the most disgusting aspect to the entire story. Animals.

Might that have been a strategy to reduce civilian deaths?

[LiverpoolHibs]

The way I see it is, the Israelis haven't illegally occupied anything, that land is theirs. The Israeli army has forcibly removed the Jews from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and that, to me at least, was wrong.

Just so everyone knows where I stand on the whole subject and my beliefs on what has happened in the past and what will happen in the future, I will write them all down here.

I believe that the Jews are the chosen people, they have been since day one. However they have brought suffering upon themselves for thousands of years with their refusal to recognise Jesus as their saviour.

And with that sentence I will cease to take your thoughts on the matter seriously.

If that sounds dismissive and arrogant, sorry, but so-be-it.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Might that have been a strategy to reduce civilian deaths?

Well, as the plan was to get Hamas out on the streets to distribute the aid and therefore increase casualties, probably not - no.

[Betty Boop]

Didn't hear about many Palestinians dying in the West Bank today. Wonder why that is? Don't think the Israelis bombed the West bank today.

[hibsbollah]

I'm not going to get involved with FH's post, because it is based on his religious faith. I'm not sure logical argument is going to persuade him if he thinks God is involved. What angers and saddens me in equal measure is the BBC 10 o clock news report by Jeremy Bowen tonight. There is such a severe pro-Israeli bias in the media it is almost laughable. The BBC website headline 'Israeli bombers target terrorist tunnels' is almost Kafkaesque. They are killing innocent people.

[IndieHibby]

This is the problem with the way the conflict has been presented to us for 40 years since the Israelis illegally occupied Arab land in 1967. 'Theres no right or wrong side, they just need to sit down and make friends etc etc'. There is a 'wrong' side, and thats Israel. People weren't making moral equivalency between Mugabe and the MDC, the Serb army and Bosnian civilians in 1991 and dare i say it, Stormtroopers and jewish civilians on Cristalnacht. The Israeli state is a murderous disgrace.

The Golan Heights, West Bank Gaza, as an example of contested territory, were secured by Isreal while fighting off a total of 11 countries who were intent on driving the country into the sea.

If England, Ireland and Wales (with support from France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Holland and Austria) tried to invade Scotland and destroy our entire country, and we destroyed their armies in 6-days, then I wouldn't really feel too bad about securing some 'safety buffering' in the name of preventing our enemies' stated aims from materialising.

I wouldn't care much for people who thought we were 'wrong' either.

Just my opinion.

[LiverpoolHibs]

The Golan Heights, West Bank Gaza, as an example of contested territory, were secured by Isreal while fighting off a total of 11 countries who were intent on driving the country into the sea.

If England, Ireland and Wales (with support from France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Holland and Austria) tried to invade Scotland and destroy our entire country, and we destroyed their armies in 6-days, then I wouldn't really feel too bad about securing some 'safety buffering' in the name of preventing our enemies' stated aims from materialising.

I wouldn't care much for people who thought we were 'wrong' either.

Just my opinion.

Apart from the perculiar analogy and huge oversimplification you also seem to have a pretty major misunderstanding of the history of the Six Day War or the Yom Kippur War - depending on which you mean.

[IndieHibby]

Well, as the plan was to get Hamas out on the streets to distribute the aid and therefore increase casualties, probably not - no.

Another way of seeing it, if your starting objective was to reduce Hamas' infrastructure and capability as opposed to killing Hamas members, would be to reduce the numbers in buildings being struck.

I'm not saying this is factually correct, just that there are other ways to view the same information. Fair play?

Unless, of course, you happen to know the plans of the IDF...

[IndieHibby]

Apart from the perculiar analogy and huge oversimplification you also seem to have a pretty major misunderstanding of the history of the Six Day War or the Yom Kippur War - depending on which you mean.

The original reference, to which I was replying, was to the 1967, 6-day war, in which Isreal gained territory.

In what way is my analogy peculiar and oversimplified?

As I am not a historian, I only have my understanding of the history. If you care to indulge me, I'd be keen for you to correct my misunderstandings.

[Betty Boop]

Good article by Robert Fisk http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21558.htm

[IndieHibby]

Good article by Robert Fisk http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21558.htm

No offence (other than to Fisk), but that it a terrible article.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Another way of seeing it, if your starting objective was to reduce Hamas' infrastructure and capability as opposed to killing Hamas members, would be to reduce the numbers in buildings being struck.

I'm not saying this is factually correct, just that there are other ways to view the same information. Fair play?

Unless, of course, you happen to know the plans of the IDF...

From an Israeli paper no less...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html


The original reference, to which I was replying, was to the 1967, 6-day war, in which Isreal gained territory.

In what way is my analogy peculiar and oversimplified?

As I am not a historian, I only have my understanding of the history. If you care to indulge me, I'd be keen for you to correct my misunderstandings.

Well, who were the eleven nations opposing Israel in the Six Day War? And who started the war?

The analogy relies on this bizzare version of history where Israel was sat quietly going about its business while 'eleven' nations gathered to invade it. Rather than the actuality of Israel launching a 'pre-emptive strike'.

[LiverpoolHibs]

No offence (other than to Fisk), but that it a terrible article.

What's terrible about it?

[IndieHibby]

From an Israeli paper no less...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html



Well, who were the eleven nations opposing Israel in the Six Day War? And who started the war?

The analogy relies on this bizzare version of history where Israel was sat quietly going about its business while 'eleven' nations gathered to invade it. Rather than the actuality of Israel launching a 'pre-emptive strike'.

Egypt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt), Jordan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan), and Syria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria). The nations of Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq), Saudi Arabia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia), Sudan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan), Tunisia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia), Morocco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco) and Algeria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algeria) also contributed troops and arms to the Arab forces.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War#cite_note-krauthammer-4) Krauthammer, Charles (2007-05-18). "Prelude to the Six Days (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051701976.html)", The Washington Post, pp. A23. Retrieved on 20 June 2008.

As I understand it, the pre-emptive strike was on Egyptian war planes. Didn't Egypt provide Israel with causus belli by blockading the strait of Sinai?

I think we could go on forever trying to determine whose 'version' of history is 'right', so I don't really fancy that. I often find that people, including myself, choose our sources depending on whether or not they suit what we expect/want to hear.

So my opinion is informed by placing myself in the shoes of the protagonists in any dispute, as regards the 6-day war, I feel that Isreal was justified in defending itself, against stupidly huge odds.

[IndieHibby]

What's terrible about it?

An opinionated rant that shifts topic without really offerering any analysis...

[LiverpoolHibs]

Egypt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt), Jordan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan), and Syria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria). The nations of Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq), Saudi Arabia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia), Sudan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan), Tunisia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia), Morocco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco) and Algeria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algeria) also contributed troops and arms to the Arab forces.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War#cite_note-krauthammer-4) Krauthammer, Charles (2007-05-18). "Prelude to the Six Days (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051701976.html)", The Washington Post, pp. A23. Retrieved on 20 June 2008.

As I understand it, the pre-emptive strike was on Egyptian war planes. Didn't Egypt provide Israel with causus belli by blockading the strait of Sinai?

I think we could go on forever trying to determine whose 'version' of history is 'right', so I don't really fancy that. I often find that people, including myself, choose our sources depending on whether or not they suit what we expect/want to hear.

So my opinion is informed by placing myself in the shoes of the protagonists in any dispute, as regards the 6-day war, I feel that Isreal was justified in defending itself, against stupidly huge odds.

Maths isn't my strongest suit but that looks like nine to me. With, as I understand it, 3-4 genuinely combatant nations.

We're getting far away from the point, but the origin of that particular conflict is really in the Suez Crisis. No doubt Israel was somehow defending itself against the odds in that one also.

[IndieHibby]

Maths isn't my strongest suit but that looks like nine to me. With, as I understand it, 3-4 genuinely combatant nations.

We're getting far away from the point, but the origin of that particular conflict is really in the Suez Crisis. No doubt Israel was somehow defending itself against the odds in that one also.

9, yes, my mistake. Doesn't really change the terms of the debate.

From what I can gather, Egypt was the agitator in the Suez crisis (reneged on it's treaty with Britain and rejected the UN resolution detailing the sovereignty of the canal). Moral of that tale? - don't pick a fight unless you can win it....

[LiverpoolHibs]

9, yes, my mistake. Doesn't really change the terms of the debate.

As Israel had the military and financial backing of the US and most of Europe, then yes it does.

It's odd that's not included whereas the Arab backers are, isn't it?


From what I can gather, Egypt was the agitator in the Suez crisis (reneged on it's treaty with Britain and rejected the UN resolution detailing the sovereignty of the canal). Moral of that tale? - don't pick a fight unless you can win it....

Yes, how dare those pesky natives demand to have control of their own land!

And do you really think Egypt lost?

[IndieHibby]

As Israel had the military and financial backing of the US and most of Europe, then yes it does.

It's odd that's not included whereas the Arab backers are, isn't it?



Yes, how dare those pesky natives demand to have control of their own land!

And do you really think Egypt lost?

Odd? Given that the 'Arab backers' commited troops, not just money, not really... I don't think any British or American soldiers lost their lives in 1967.

The canal was paid for by the British and:

The Convention of Constantinople (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Constantinople) (1888) declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection.[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#cite_note-SIS:_Suez_Canal-7) In ratifying it, the Ottoman Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire) agreed to permit international shipping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping) to freely pass through the canal, in time of war and peace.[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#cite_note-Sachar-8)

Would you consider the Falkland islands Argentinian 'native' land?

Egypt would have lost if America hadn't threatened to bring the British economy to it's knees.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Odd? Given that the 'Arab backers' commited troops, not just money, not really... I don't think any British or American soldiers lost their lives in 1967.

The canal was paid for by the British and:

The Convention of Constantinople (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Constantinople) (1888) declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection.[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#cite_note-SIS:_Suez_Canal-7) In ratifying it, the Ottoman Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire) agreed to permit international shipping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping) to freely pass through the canal, in time of war and peace.[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#cite_note-Sachar-8)

Why would Egypt/Nasser feel any compulsion to abide by a treaty ratified by a moribund nation?


Would you consider the Falkland islands Argentinian 'native' land?

How is that in anyway applicable? If I have to answer, I'm not sure. But Britain certainly has no logical or moral hold over them except for having gone, 'Yep, they're ours!', in the past.

But as I say it isn't a similar situation in any way.


Egypt would have lost if America hadn't threatened to bring the British economy to it's knees.

That isn't the point. You said they lost.

[IndieHibby]

Why would Egypt/Nasser feel any compulsion to abide by a treaty ratified by a moribund nation?



How is that in anyway applicable? If I have to answer, I'm not sure. But Britain certainly has no logical or moral hold over them except for having gone, 'Yep, they're ours!', in the past.

But as I say it isn't a similar situation in any way.



That isn't the point. You said they lost.

I'm not sure if I would call Britain, at the time or ever, a moribund nation and even less sure why, if he held that opinion of Britain, it would impact on Nasser's decision to follow it's treaty.

With regards to the Falklands, I was comparing Suez being a part of Egypt, as you asserted in your definition of it being 'native' (to Egypt), with our distant sovereignty over islands in closer geographical proximity to Argentina.

They may be the 'Malvinas', but the people on them are most certainly British, and I for one would defend their right to remain so, even if you wouldn't.

Correct me if I am wrong and apologies in advance if I am, but it would appear to me that you would side with the Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians (as your bias in viewing history leads me to conclude).

I don't claim Britain is without historical crimes, just as no country or people are, but it is my country and I certainly do not side with people who regard me as their enemy.

N.B. - I didn't say they lost; I said they shouldn't have picked a fight with stronger opponents. The fact that they lost in 1967 and 1973, wars they started, IMO, gives strength to this point.

[Tazio]

They may be the 'Malvinas', but the people on them are most certainly British, and I for one would defend their right to remain so, even if you wouldn't.
.

An interesting viewpoint, and rather ironic considering your stance on the Israeli situation.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I'm not sure if I would call Britain, at the time or ever, a moribund nation and even less sure why, if he held that opinion of Britain, it would impact on Nasser's decision to follow it's treaty.

:confused:

I was referring to the Ottoman Empire as the moribund nation...


With regards to the Falklands, I was comparing Suez being a part of Egypt, as you asserted in your definition of it being 'native' (to Egypt), with our distant sovereignty over islands in closer geographical proximity to Argentina.

Sorry, do you really think that's in any way comparable?


They may be the 'Malvinas', but the people on them are most certainly British, and I for one would defend their right to remain so, even if you wouldn't.

As I said, Malvinas/Falklands is a situation I have trouble with. I'll only say that I'm deeply uncomfortable with any element of British control there.


Correct me if I am wrong and apologies in advance if I am, but it would appear to me that you would side with the Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians (as your bias in viewing history leads me to conclude).

That would involve a huge generalisation (reduction?) of the people of those countries, so no. I'm not a fan of any of their governing bodies but I am - using an incredibly broad term - pro-Palestinian.


I don't claim Britain is without historical crimes, just as no country or people are, but it is my country and I certainly do not side with people who regard me as their enemy.

Who regards you as an enemy?


N.B. - I didn't say they lost; I said they shouldn't have picked a fight with stronger opponents. The fact that they lost in 1967 and 1973, wars they started, IMO, gives strength to this point.

You said 'don't pick a fight unless you can win it'. And, in the long term, they came out of Suez very well. We're getting so far away from the point that I'm not going to reply to the last point.

[LiverpoolHibs]

The Guardian's take on the Haaretz article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/29/israel-attack-hamas-preparations-repercussions

Unlike the confused and improvised Israeli response as the war against Hizbullah in Lebanon unfolded in 2006, Operation Cast Lead appears to have been carefully prepared over a long period.
Israeli media reports, by usually well-informed correspondents and analysts, alluded yesterday to six months of intelligence-gathering to pinpoint Hamas targets including bases, weapon silos, training camps and the homes of senior officials. The cabinet spent five hours discussing the plan in detail on December 19 and left the timing up to Ehud Olmert, the caretaker prime minister, and his defence minister Ehud Barak. Preparations involved disinformation and deception which kept Israel's media in the dark. According to Ha'aretz, that also lulled Hamas into a sense of false security and allowed the initial aerial onslaught to achieve tactical surprise - and kill many of the 290 victims counted so far.
Friday's decision to allow food, fuel and humanitarian supplies into besieged Gaza - ostensibly a gesture in the face of international pressure to relieve the ongoing blockade - was part of this. So was Thursday's visit to Cairo by Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, to brief Egyptian officials. The final decision was reportedly made on Friday morning.

[Killiehibbie]

It is lost in the mists of time exactly why they are fighting. My god is better than your god/ dad is bigger than your dad crap. Just another example of religious beliefs being used as an excuse to kill each other. I agree with FH that it might well end up nuclear with the iranian nutters probably launching the first one that is the worring thing for me.

[Betty Boop]

No offence (other than to Fisk), but that it a terrible article. Sorry you found it terrible. :greengrin

An interesting article from earlier on this year http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19458.htm

[LiverpoolHibs]

It is lost in the mists of time exactly why they are fighting. My god is better than your god/ dad is bigger than your dad crap. Just another example of religious beliefs being used as an excuse to kill each other. I agree with FH that it might well end up nuclear with the iranian nutters probably launching the first one that is the worring thing for me.

This type of argument probably annoys me more than that of the most rabid Zionist. It suits an agenda to try and stretch it back to the dawn of time when in fact it's a very modern problem both in ideology - that of the nation state - and chronologically.

Similarly the religious aspect is, I believe, constantly overplayed (just as was done with the north of Ireland) as a means to denigrate the conflict and the grievances on both sides.

In both cases it's a means of avoiding actually having to think and learn about the problem and then make a judgement upon it.

[Betty Boop]

Protests outside the Israeli Embassy in London, police have already drawn their batons once.

[Killiehibbie]

This type of argument probably annoys me more than that of the most rabid Zionist. It suits an agenda to try and stretch it back to the dawn of time when in fact it's a very modern problem both in ideology - that of the nation state - and chronologically.

Similarly the religious aspect is, I believe, constantly overplayed (just as was done with the north of Ireland) as a means to denigrate the conflict and the grievances on both sides.

In both cases it's a means of avoiding actually having to think and learn about the problem and then make a judgement upon it.

Who tells the truth? Without actually living there we are believing what that particular reporter choses to tell us. If we believe it the jews would have us think they are the most persecuted people that have ever lived. If we believe the palestinians they themselves are.
A modern conflict? Have they not been fighting over the holy land since biblical times?
I don't judge anyone. If they have a cause they are prepared to kill or be killed for it must mean a great deal to them either that or they just like a fight

[toaosi]

I'm not going to get involved with FH's post, because it is based on his religious faith. I'm not sure logical argument is going to persuade him if he thinks God is involved. What angers and saddens me in equal measure is the BBC 10 o clock news report by Jeremy Bowen tonight. There is such a severe pro-Israeli bias in the media it is almost laughable. The BBC website headline 'Israeli bombers target terrorist tunnels' is almost Kafkaesque. They are killing innocent people.

If you want some balanced (inbalanced reporting ?) try Sky 515, The Press Channel with amongst other George Galloway and the channel under it Al Jazeera. Watch one for 10 minutes then switch around between them for a while. It sure don't make things any clearer about any balance.

One big difference I did notice yesterday was the 2 other channels were showing lots of dead bodies in the pictures which was distressing viewing to say the least, whereas Sky and the BBC showed only the normal injured bodies being carried around. Two different reasons for that balanced reporting as well.

[hibsbollah]

If you want some balanced (inbalanced reporting ?) try Sky 515, The Press Channel with amongst other George Galloway and the channel under it Al Jazeera. Watch one for 10 minutes then switch around between them for a while. It sure don't make things any clearer about any balance.

One big difference I did notice yesterday was the 2 other channels were showing lots of dead bodies in the pictures which was distressing viewing to say the least, whereas Sky and the BBC showed only the normal injured bodies being carried around. Two different reasons for that balanced reporting as well.

Thanks for the advice (genuinely, I really do want to get some better reports on the situation) but George Galloway is a pantomime horse of a journalist, sometimes I think he was created by the right wing media to make real left wingers look bad:wink: Channel 4 News is usually my best best, or BBC World News. Orla Guerin the Irish journalist is based in the occupied territories and is usually quite objective, but her on the ground reports for BBC News are suddenly conspicuous by their absence. I wonder why?

Objective reporting is not necessarily good reporting. Sometimes there really is one good side and one bad side. I trust those journalists that tell a story the way they see it, not pandering to false 'objectivity' when the facts blatantly tell a different story. Sometimes a pantomime villain comes along and the media can have some fun demonising him (Robert Mugabe), but in general we never know whats really happening by watching TV news analysis.

[Arch Stanton]

Didn't Israel also try to take out Hezbollah in Lebanon a while back? Since they failed in that objective I can't fathom why they think they can take out Hammas who must be gaining strength by the day, if not the hour.

[Sir David Gray]

And with that sentence I will cease to take your thoughts on the matter seriously.

If that sounds dismissive and arrogant, sorry, but so-be-it.

It does, but like I said in my previous post, I'm not at all surprised that you feel that way.

All I can do is offer my views on the subject (which is what the forum is for) and tell you the truth, from my perspective at least, of what is happening and, more importantly, why it is happening. If you, or anyone else, chooses to disregard those opinions then that is entirely your choice.

I will continue to defend Israel whenever these threads are brought up regardless of whether you take my opinions seriously or not, just like you, and several others, will continue to defend the Palestinians.

However I will not go down the path that you have chosen to follow by dismissing my thoughts. I will continue to value and respect all opinions on this subject, even if I strongly disagree with those views.

It's unfortunate that you feel you can't do likewise, but there you go.


I'm not going to get involved with FH's post, because it is based on his religious faith. I'm not sure logical argument is going to persuade him if he thinks God is involved. What angers and saddens me in equal measure is the BBC 10 o clock news report by Jeremy Bowen tonight. There is such a severe pro-Israeli bias in the media it is almost laughable. The BBC website headline 'Israeli bombers target terrorist tunnels' is almost Kafkaesque. They are killing innocent people.

Just shows how two people can view things so differently. I believe the British media, the BBC in particular, is extremely anti-Israel. However, maybe the headline said that, because Israel WAS targeting terrorist tunnels. No-one's suggesting that innocent Palestinians haven't been killed but the fact that Hamas members make up the vast majority of the present death toll, suggests to me that Israel is targeting Hamas militants and not ordinary Palestinians. Unfortunately, like with any military action, innocent people are caught up and killed.


" The chosen people" chosen for what and by who?:confused:

Chosen by God.

You probably won't be interested but if you are, then read the following links, they explain everything that I have just been talking about. You won't believe any of it unless you believe the Bible but perhaps you can read it anyway, even just to gain some knowledge of the opposing viewpoint on the whole situation.

Article 1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_as_a_chosen_people).
Article 2 (http://www.patrobertson.com/Speeches/IsraelLauder.asp).
Article 3-read "Israel + the church" section (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism#Israel_and_the_Church).
Article 4-read "The Israel Covenant" section (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_(biblical)#The_Israel_Covenant).
Article 5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promised_Land).
Article 6 (http://www.theocracywatch.org/christian_zionism.htm).
Article 7 (http://www.theocracywatch.org/christian_zionism_dispensationalism.htm).

[IndieHibby]

Sorry you found it terrible. :greengrin

An interesting article from earlier on this year http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19458.htm


Much, much better - thanks! :thumbsup:

However, as ever when reading about this conflict, it does leave one with a feeling of despondency.

On the one hand, Hamas has the advantage of being better with it's PR in the territories (building school's, enforcing order, dealing with corruption) yet it is strategically inept - any Palestinian that thinks it is sensible to stick to a declaration of intent in wiping Israel off the map is fatally stupid, imo.

Fatah/PLO has the advantage of being somewhate more moderate, open to negotiations and able to deal with change. But decades of being the only 'authority', it's proximity with 'western' influnces leave it jaded in the eyes of the average Palestinian.

The fact that Hamas is idealogically/financially tied to the Iranians is also a barrier to progress I feel.

Anyway, the desirable outcome in this conflict is easy to ascertain; a two-state solution.

The process of getting there seem insurmountable.

As it is, the Palestinians are in the weakest position. Their suffering and misery is greater, ergo, they should be the ones who need to concede most in negotiations. That fact may make some people uneasy, but it is how I see it.

Unfortunately, Hamas is not going to solve the Palestinian problems. I doubt Fatah is either. Isreal knows this and from it's point of view, if they can destroy them, why not? I may help the Palestinians in the end, but somehow, I would be surprised if that was their motivation (!).

Finally, Arab muslims need to stop demonising Jews in their culture. Bringing up children to think that Jews are 'pigs' and 'dirty' only serves to create an unwillingness to deal with them.

Imagine seeing black people on Emmerdale every day being referred to in the same way and you'll get some idea of what 'some' Arabic TV is like.

Just my opinion.

[IndieHibby]

:confused:

I was referring to the Ottoman Empire as the moribund nation...



Sorry, do you really think that's in any way comparable?



As I said, Malvinas/Falklands is a situation I have trouble with. I'll only say that I'm deeply uncomfortable with any element of British control there.



That would involve a huge generalisation (reduction?) of the people of those countries, so no. I'm not a fan of any of their governing bodies but I am - using an incredibly broad term - pro-Palestinian.



Who regards you as an enemy?



You said 'don't pick a fight unless you can win it'. And, in the long term, they came out of Suez very well. We're getting so far away from the point that I'm not going to reply to the last point.

Yeah, it occurred to me just after I posted that you were referring to the Ottoman Empire. Stupid me, lol....

Anyway, as I see it, when 9/11 happened, large numbers of Arab Muslims, down to ignorance rather than their religion, mind you, were cheering in the streets. "Death to America/Britain" etc etc.

These are the people I regard as 'enemies', not because I chose them as enemies, but because they chose me.

When innocent muslims die as a result of our actions, I don't go cheering into the street, I feel remorse. When innocent westerners die, 'some' Muslims see it as a cause to celebrate.

Even those who live among us in the UK.

[Sir David Gray]

Much, much better - thanks! :thumbsup:

However, as ever when reading about this conflict, it does leave one with a feeling of despondency.

On the one hand, Hamas has the advantage of being better with it's PR in the territories (building school's, enforcing order, dealing with corruption) yet it is strategically inept - any Palestinian that thinks it is sensible to stick to a declaration of intent in wiping Israel off the map is fatally stupid, imo.

Fatah/PLO has the advantage of being somewhate more moderate, open to negotiations and able to deal with change. But decades of being the only 'authority', it's proximity with 'western' influnces leave it jaded in the eyes of the average Palestinian.

The fact that Hamas is idealogically/financially tied to the Iranians is also a barrier to progress I feel.

Anyway, the desirable outcome in this conflict is easy to ascertain; a two-state solution.

The process of getting there seem insurmountable.

As it is, the Palestinians are in the weakest position. Their suffering and misery is greater, ergo, they should be the ones who need to concede most in negotiations. That fact may make some people uneasy, but it is how I see it.

Unfortunately, Hamas is not going to solve the Palestinian problems. I doubt Fatah is either. Isreal knows this and from it's point of view, if they can destroy them, why not? I may help the Palestinians in the end, but somehow, I would be surprised if that was their motivation (!).

Finally, Arab muslims need to stop demonising Jews in their culture. Bringing up children to think that Jews are 'pigs' and 'dirty' only serves to create an unwillingness to deal with them.

Imagine seeing black people on Emmerdale every day being referred to in the same way and you'll get some idea of what 'some' Arabic TV is like.

Just my opinion.

:agree: Correct. As you quite rightly state, radical Islam demonises the Jews in such a way that it portrays them as sub-human. You are also talking about people who are quite proud to sacrifice their sons in the name of Allah, so long as they kill Jews. They believe they will go to eternal Paradise as a martyr.

And some people seriously expects Israel to be able to work with such people!

The only part of your post I disagree with is your call for a two state solution. I believe that Israel must have full control over the present state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I don't believe this will ever happen though, as even Israel itself fails to recognise its right to that land.

[Tazio]

:agree: Correct. As you quite rightly state, radical Islam demonises the Jews in such a way that it portrays them as sub-human. You are also talking about people who are quite proud to sacrifice their sons in the name of Allah, so long as they kill Jews. They believe they will go to eternal Paradise as a martyr.

And some people seriously expects Israel to be able to work with such people!

The only part of your post I disagree with is your call for a two state solution. I believe that Israel must have full control over the present state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I don't believe this will ever happen though, as even Israel itself fails to recognise its right to that land.

Have you ever heard Israelis views on arabs. especially Palestinians. I would imagine that you would want Israel to have it's biblical borders? And no coincidence that these all seem to go to major rivers such as the Jordan and the Litani? Israel wants and needs one thing from the nations around it. Water.

And as for all your stuff about the Israelis being the chosen people? Chosen by who? God, or should I say your god.

[IndieHibby]

:agree: Correct. As you quite rightly state, radical Islam demonises the Jews in such a way that it portrays them as sub-human. You are also talking about people who are quite proud to sacrifice their sons in the name of Allah, so long as they kill Jews. They believe they will go to eternal Paradise as a martyr.

And some people seriously expects Israel to be able to work with such people!

The only part of your post I disagree with is your call for a two state solution. I believe that Israel must have full control over the present state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I don't believe this will ever happen though, as even Israel itself fails to recognise its right to that land.

I don't particularly care who thinks they have a 'right' to this land or that, tbo, I just feel that the Palestinians have a right to have some land, as does Isreal and it really wouldn't harm them to live side by side. Gaza only really needs an open border with Egypt and the West Bank is big enough for both populations really.

If I lived in Gaza today, I really would be voting with my feet and try to get into the West Bank, if only to get away from the ******s that run Hamas.

[IndieHibby]

Have you ever heard Israelis views on arabs. especially Palestinians. I would imagine that you would want Israel to have it's biblical borders? And no coincidence that these all seem to go to major rivers such as the Jordan and the Litani? Israel wants and needs one thing from the nations around it. Water.

And as for all your stuff about the Israelis being the chosen people? Chosen by who? God, or should I say your god.


So two wrongs make a right, eh?

As for FH views, he is only stating his opinion, which, clearly, is informed by his faith. If you want to challenge him on an issue of faith, which, by definition, can have no actual proof to engage you with in debate, then you are barking up the wrong tree. No, sorry, you are pissing into the wind. Best just to leave it be, imo.

[Tazio]

If I lived in Gaza today, I really would be voting with my feet and try to get into the West Bank, if only to get away from the ******s that run Hamas.

Ah but there is the problem, you can't get in or out of Gaza, and haven't been able to for years. And there is a rather large illegal wall around most of the West Bank. And that is after you negotiated going through Israeli territory as a Palestinian without the correct papers. Maybe some sort of badge would help. Like one sewn onto your clothes to be worn at all times?

[Tazio]

So two wrongs make a right, eh?

As for FH views, he is only stating his opinion, which, clearly, is informed by his faith. If you want to challenge him on an issue of faith, which, by definition, can have no actual proof to engage you with in debate, then you are barking up the wrong tree. No, sorry, you are pissing into the wind. Best just to leave it be, imo.

This is supposed to be a message board, for debate. And no, two wrongs don't make a right but some people are only seeing one wrong.

[IndieHibby]

:agree: Correct. As you quite rightly state, radical Islam demonises the Jews in such a way that it portrays them as sub-human. You are also talking about people who are quite proud to sacrifice their sons in the name of Allah, so long as they kill Jews. They believe they will go to eternal Paradise as a martyr.

And some people seriously expects Israel to be able to work with such people!

The only part of your post I disagree with is your call for a two state solution. I believe that Israel must have full control over the present state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I don't believe this will ever happen though, as even Israel itself fails to recognise its right to that land.

P.S. In my experience, it is a far more pervasive, cultural manifestation of a general hatred toward Isreali/Jew that fuels this particular aspect of Arabic/Mulsim culture.

The radicals are a minority, in a league of their own....

[IndieHibby]

Tazio,

Yes, this forum is for debate, but you cannot 'debate' with someone about their views, if the basis of their views is their faith (unless you have to same faith, in which case you would both accept the terms of the debate - and I suspect you do not hold the same faith as FH?). So asking someone to question the equivocacy of their argument (as you did: "whose god?, your god", etc,) by pointing out that other people have different views (based on equally proof-less faith) is a little pointless, no?

But it doesn't matter to me. If you want hit your head against a brick wall, don't let me stop you :wink:

In response to your comment, "some people only see one wrong", the comment FH was referring to was mine, which stated that arbabic culture is full of anti-semetic commentary, some subtle some not so. I wasn't stating that Isrealis don't hold the same views, I'm sure some do, but I doubt it is at the same pervasive and cultural level, nor as extreme as some of the Arabic stuff. The only reason this matters, is that neither Isreali or Arabic children are left to make up their own mind, so the attitudes become entrenched and change is hamgstrung in the very people that would enable it to occur - the young.

As for moving to the West Bank, it may be hard, but where there is a will, there is a way. My will would be pretty strong if my only other option was to sit and get bombed because the idiots arond me voted for people who cast my destruction in stone by declaring their intent to take on the Goliath that is the IDF.

Bearing in mind, of course, that I said that's what i'd do if i lived in Gaza, which, given that I don't, is kind of a pointless comment, even if I do say so myself...:rolleyes:

[Sir David Gray]

Have you ever heard Israelis views on arabs. especially Palestinians. I would imagine that you would want Israel to have it's biblical borders? And no coincidence that these all seem to go to major rivers such as the Jordan and the Litani? Israel wants and needs one thing from the nations around it. Water.

And as for all your stuff about the Israelis being the chosen people? Chosen by who? God, or should I say your god.

No, not the Israelis, the Jews. There is a (slight) difference in that not all Israeli citizens are Jewish.

And yes it is my God, you're quite correct. But since there only is one God, then there's no reason to say "my God".


So two wrongs make a right, eh?

As for FH views, he is only stating his opinion, which, clearly, is informed by his faith. If you want to challenge him on an issue of faith, which, by definition, can have no actual proof to engage you with in debate, then you are barking up the wrong tree. No, sorry, you are pissing into the wind. Best just to leave it be, imo.

Cheers for the understanding Stueyn. I don't expect anyone on here to agree with my views, all I ask is that people give the same respect to my opinions that I give to other people's. Some are better than others at doing that as has been shown in this thread.

[Gerard]

Hamas have been firing rockets into Israel for several months and the Jewish people could not allow this to continue. Hamas have no concern for the people who live in the Gaza strip because they are using these people as human shields to fire their rockets from areas where civillains live and work.

I believe that the state of Israel has a right to exist and has a right to take action against these terror attacks. I would also like to see the people who organised these attacks being put on trial for the murder of the people who have died in the Gazza strip and Israel.
G

[hibsdaft]

if Hamas are made toothless this will be a massive moment for Bin Laden and his ilk.

i would point out that this is totally against the interests of the UK.

[Betty Boop]

The Christian Bishop of Washington clearly has a different view. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21566.htm

[IndieHibby]

The Christian Bishop of Washington clearly has a different view. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21566.htm

"Israel’s excuse for its violence is that from time to time the Palestinian resistance organization, Hamas, fires off rockets into Israel to protest the ghetto life that Israel imposes on Gazans. The rockets are ineffectual for the most part and seldom claim Israeli casualties. However, the real purpose for the Israeli attack is to destroy Hamas."

This is complete bias. The rockets are constant - 5000 so far, hardly from time to time, when rockets are fired that is legitemate protest, the ghetto life is imposed by Isreal (stop smuggling weapons and Isreal might let you use it's land, until then, don't expect anything else...), it's OK to fire rockets because they are ineffectual (mainly due to Israeli precautions) etc, etc, etc.

I liked the last line; "...the real purpose..." Everything that Israel has said now and in the run up to these events has been along the lines of "we can destroy you and we will, if you continue to attack our citizens with missiles". Talk about trying to convince the readers that one side are liars.

"Ehud Barak, who is overseeing the latest act of Israeli aggression, said in interviews addressed to the British and American publics that asking Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas would be like asking the US to agree to a ceasefire with al Qaeda. The terrorism that Israel inflicts on Palestinians goes unremarked."


This is complete nonsense. Israel has been patient when dealing with rocket attacks, they even repeatedly warned Hamas that action would follow if they didn't stop. Do Hamas ever warn Israelis that they are going to fire missiles into their areas?

How many days reporting was given to the rocket attacks by Hamas? How many days reporting has been given to the recent IDF action?

Every time there is a ceasefire, Hamas continues to dig tunnels, make bombs and prepare for violence. Israel knows this because it can watch it all happen. If your neighbour said "peace" but did "prepare for violence", then I know I would pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

I could spend all day detailing the bias in this article, but I will sum it up with the fact that they chose to refer to the late Harold Pinter, R.I.P, who, by anyone's measure, couldn't see a fair comment about America if it was written in a play.

Now, journalists are entitled thier bias, but don't expect everyone to buy into it.

In the interests of fairness, Betty Boop, I wonder if you could point me in the direction of some articles from "informationclearinghouse" that are biased in favour of Isreal/America/Britain/White/Christian people?

It would be interesting to compare the two... Thanks.

[Betty Boop]

"Israel’s excuse for its violence is that from time to time the Palestinian resistance organization, Hamas, fires off rockets into Israel to protest the ghetto life that Israel imposes on Gazans. The rockets are ineffectual for the most part and seldom claim Israeli casualties. However, the real purpose for the Israeli attack is to destroy Hamas."

This is complete bias. The rockets are constant - 5000 so far, hardly from time to time, when rockets are fired that is legitemate protest, the ghetto life is imposed by Isreal (stop smuggling weapons and Isreal might let you use it's land, until then, don't expect anything else...), it's OK to fire rockets because they are ineffectual (mainly due to Israeli precautions) etc, etc, etc.

I liked the last line; "...the real purpose..." Everything that Israel has said now and in the run up to these events has been along the lines of "we can destroy you and we will, if you continue to attack our citizens with missiles". Talk about trying to convince the readers that one side are liars.

"Ehud Barak, who is overseeing the latest act of Israeli aggression, said in interviews addressed to the British and American publics that asking Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas would be like asking the US to agree to a ceasefire with al Qaeda. The terrorism that Israel inflicts on Palestinians goes unremarked."


This is complete nonsense. Israel has been patient when dealing with rocket attacks, they even repeatedly warned Hamas that action would follow if they didn't stop. Do Hamas ever warn Israelis that they are going to fire missiles into their areas?

How many days reporting was given to the rocket attacks by Hamas? How many days reporting has been given to the recent IDF action?

Every time there is a ceasefire, Hamas continues to dig tunnels, make bombs and prepare for violence. Israel knows this because it can watch it all happen. If your neighbour said "peace" but did "prepare for violence", then I know I would pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

I could spend all day detailing the bias in this article, but I will sum it up with the fact that they chose to refer to the late Harold Pinter, R.I.P, who, by anyone's measure, couldn't see a fair comment about America if it was written in a play.

Now, journalists are entitled thier bias, but don't expect everyone to buy into it.

In the interests of fairness, Betty Boop, I wonder if you could point me in the direction of some articles from "informationclearinghouse" that are biased in favour of Isreal/America/Britain/White/Christian people?

It would be interesting to compare the two... Thanks. Both the Bishop of Washington and Harold Pinter are both white, and one is most definitely Christian. :duck:

[Flynn]

If anyone cares to look on the net you will find the amount of land stolen by Israel from the Palestinians has steadily increased since 1948. Ben-Gurion in his infinite wisdom decided that his beloved Israel should have no defined borders which enabled future Israeli leaders to pillage the best arable land and water from the muslims. And people wonder why they are pissed off!

A so-called promise from God in a 2000+ year old fairy tale is not a claim to land that would hold up in a court of law or in any sane mind.

Would have been better after ww2 to ship them all off to Australia and live in the ****ing outback. Let them annexe the land of kangaroos.

I wonder why the Native Americans who were systematically wiped out in a far worse atrocity than the holocaust were not given a bit of land in America like the Jews have in the middle east?

[Betty Boop]

If anyone cares to look on the net you will find the amount of land stolen by Israel from the Palestinians has steadily increased since 1948. Ben-Gurion in his infinite wisdom decided that his beloved Israel should have no defined borders which enabled future Israeli leaders to pillage the best arable land and water from the muslims. And people wonder why they are pissed off!

A so-called promise from God in a 2000+ year old fairy tale is not a claim to land that would hold up in a court of law or in any sane mind.

Would have been better after ww2 to ship them all off to Australia and live in the ****ing outback. Let them annexe the land of kangaroos.

I wonder why the Native Americans who were systematically wiped out in a far worse atrocity than the holocaust were not given a bit of land in America like the Jews have in the middle east? :top marks

[Killiehibbie]

If anyone cares to look on the net you will find the amount of land stolen by Israel from the Palestinians has steadily increased since 1948. Ben-Gurion in his infinite wisdom decided that his beloved Israel should have no defined borders which enabled future Israeli leaders to pillage the best arable land and water from the muslims. And people wonder why they are pissed off!

A so-called promise from God in a 2000+ year old fairy tale is not a claim to land that would hold up in a court of law or in any sane mind.

Would have been better after ww2 to ship them all off to Australia and live in the ****ing outback. Let them annexe the land of kangaroos.

I wonder why the Native Americans who were systematically wiped out in a far worse atrocity than the holocaust were not given a bit of land in America like the Jews have in the middle east?

So would the world be a better place if the jews were stuck in The Outback or maybe the nazis should've been left to solve the problem forever?

[LiverpoolHibs]

If anyone cares to look on the net you will find the amount of land stolen by Israel from the Palestinians has steadily increased since 1948. Ben-Gurion in his infinite wisdom decided that his beloved Israel should have no defined borders which enabled future Israeli leaders to pillage the best arable land and water from the muslims. And people wonder why they are pissed off!

A so-called promise from God in a 2000+ year old fairy tale is not a claim to land that would hold up in a court of law or in any sane mind.

Would have been better after ww2 to ship them all off to Australia and live in the ****ing outback. Let them annexe the land of kangaroos.

I wonder why the Native Americans who were systematically wiped out in a far worse atrocity than the holocaust were not given a bit of land in America like the Jews have in the middle east?

That's incredibly tastelessly worded, but in the interests of the previous point...

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/2448/maphw2.jpg

[Loobrush]

Just got this email. I had to seperate lots of words and put into paragraphs myself as it turned into a big mess when I pasted it, so there may be a few mistakes.


Today we are all Palestinians. Protests across the world have affirmed that despite the huge propaganda offensive which Israel has unleashed in recent days to justify its barbaric, atavistic assault on civilians and civilian targets in Gaza, and despite the considerable exertions of a largely compliant mainstream media in echoing this justification, people are rising up with one voice in condemnation of Israel’s brutal attack and in active solidarity with its victims – the Palestinians.

Mainstream commentator after mainstream commentator has attempted to browbeat Palestinian spokespeople with the same question: Why are Hamas launching these homemade rockets? The answer, in truth, is really very simple: Because they do not have Merkava tanks, Hellfire missiles, and F16 fighteraircraft at their disposal. With its usual, come-to-be-expected pusillanimity our trusty mainstream journalists have sought to portray this is a conflict between two equal sides.

Yet thinking about it for a moment, you really can't blame them, can you? After all, on one side you have the state of Israel with a population in 2007 of just over 7 million; a per capita GDP of around $26,600; a military budget of some $8 billion enabling it to amass the 4th largest and one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world, including 450 aircraftand a nuclear arsenal comprising an estimated 200 warheads. On the other side you have Palestine with a population of around 4 million, 1.5 million of whom are currently under siege in the Gaza Strip, in addition to another estimated 5.5 million refugees scattered around the world, predominately in the Middle East; a per capita GDP of $830 (after the usual remittances are siphoned off to the Israeli government for the pleasureof allowing Palestinian exports to pass through its hands); and no military budget to speak of, thus enabling it to amass a deadly arsenal of homemade rockets, stones and petrol bombs, including an unknown number of slingshots. It is this Palestinian military might, built up over many years with the kind of sneakiness of which only the Arabs are capable, which constitutes a clear and existential threat to only Western-style democracy in the Middle East. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to state that the Palestinian people with their insistence on survival constitute a clear and existential threat to civilisation itself.

And yet perhaps not. Perhaps in their reluctance to be ground into the dust the Palestinians of Gaza are only following the advice of no less a heroic figure than the first Prime Minister of Israel, one David Ben-Gurion, who said just before he died:“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

Zionism, beginning as a self consciously secular, nationalist movement, had by this point absorbed the religious justification for Israel’s existence, evidenced in the section of the aforementioned quote in which Ben-Gurion, in the manner of an aside, promulgates the view that God promised the land to the Jewish people.

Interestingly, as we fast approach 2009 this is a view which still enjoys common currency not only in Israeli society but in capitals throughout the West. Indeed our very own Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, ina speechto the Israeli Knesset earlier in the year to mark the 60th anniversary ofthe state of Israel, said: “I am especially pleased - as the first British Prime Minister to address the Knesset - to congratulate you at this sixtieth anniversary on the achievement of 1948: the centuries of exile ended, the age-long dream realised, theancient promise redeemed - the promise that even amidst suffering, you will find your way home to the fields and shorelines where your ancestors walked.” He went on to say in the same speech: “And you proved that while repression can subjugate it can never silence; while hearts can be broken hope is unbreakable; while lives can be lost the dream could never die; that - in the words of the prophet Amos - 'justice would roll down like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream'.”

Now I don't know about you, but in the world I live in people who hold such beliefs of divine exceptionalism are not in need of their own land, they're in need of psychiatric care.To put it another way, imagine smashing down the door of a stranger’s house, informing him that you and your family have been promised his house by God, preparatory to forcing him and his family into the boxroom, and then calling in the police when he tries to force his way out again. In any civilised society you wouldn't just be arrested for such a crime, you'd be sectioned. Yet this in microcosm describes the fate of the Palestinian people, though with one significant caveat. Rather than those who have invaded their home criminalised, it is they who've been not only criminalised but demonised.

The militant protests that have already taken place in London outside the Israeli Embassy against Israel’s assault on civilians in Gaza reflect a mood of determination and anger when it comes to Palestinian solidarity that is long overdue. Watching news reports of protestors pushing the police backwas asight to gladden the eye of anyone interested in universal human rights and justice. In the coming days, with protests planned to continue around the country, let’s ensure that the pro-Israel consensus which currently and egregiously dominates the body politic in this country is rocked to its very foundations. Let’s ensure also that the international campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel called for by Palestinian civil society is placed at the heart of every organisation’s solidarity work with the Palestinian people from here on in. Finally, let’s ensure that by the time we're finished Gordon Brown, George Bush, and Ehud Olmert et al are left in no doubt that when it comes to our Palestinian brothers and sisters - the people have spoken.

John Wight

Edinburgh,Scotland

[LiverpoolHibs]

Just got this email. I had to seperate lots of words and put into paragraphs myself as it turned into a big mess when I pasted it, so there may be a few mistakes.


Today we are all Palestinians. Protests across the world have affirmed that despite the huge propaganda offensive which Israel has unleashed in recent days to justify its barbaric, atavistic assault on civilians and civilian targets in Gaza, and despite the considerable exertions of a largely compliant mainstream media in echoing this justification, people are rising up with one voice in condemnation of Israel’s brutal attack and in active solidarity with its victims – the Palestinians.

Mainstream commentator after mainstream commentator has attempted to browbeat Palestinian spokespeople with the same question: Why are Hamas launching these homemade rockets? The answer, in truth, is really very simple: Because they do not have Merkava tanks, Hellfire missiles, and F16 fighteraircraft at their disposal. With its usual, come-to-be-expected pusillanimity our trusty mainstream journalists have sought to portray this is a conflict between two equal sides.

Yet thinking about it for a moment, you really can't blame them, can you? After all, on one side you have the state of Israel with a population in 2007 of just over 7 million; a per capita GDP of around $26,600; a military budget of some $8 billion enabling it to amass the 4th largest and one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world, including 450 aircraftand a nuclear arsenal comprising an estimated 200 warheads. On the other side you have Palestine with a population of around 4 million, 1.5 million of whom are currently under siege in the Gaza Strip, in addition to another estimated 5.5 million refugees scattered around the world, predominately in the Middle East; a per capita GDP of $830 (after the usual remittances are siphoned off to the Israeli government for the pleasureof allowing Palestinian exports to pass through its hands); and no military budget to speak of, thus enabling it to amass a deadly arsenal of homemade rockets, stones and petrol bombs, including an unknown number of slingshots. It is this Palestinian military might, built up over many years with the kind of sneakiness of which only the Arabs are capable, which constitutes a clear and existential threat to only Western-style democracy in the Middle East. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to state that the Palestinian people with their insistence on survival constitute a clear and existential threat to civilisation itself.

And yet perhaps not. Perhaps in their reluctance to be ground into the dust the Palestinians of Gaza are only following the advice of no less a heroic figure than the first Prime Minister of Israel, one David Ben-Gurion, who said just before he died:“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

Zionism, beginning as a self consciously secular, nationalist movement, had by this point absorbed the religious justification for Israel’s existence, evidenced in the section of the aforementioned quote in which Ben-Gurion, in the manner of an aside, promulgates the view that God promised the land to the Jewish people.

Interestingly, as we fast approach 2009 this is a view which still enjoys common currency not only in Israeli society but in capitals throughout the West. Indeed our very own Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, ina speechto the Israeli Knesset earlier in the year to mark the 60th anniversary ofthe state of Israel, said: “I am especially pleased - as the first British Prime Minister to address the Knesset - to congratulate you at this sixtieth anniversary on the achievement of 1948: the centuries of exile ended, the age-long dream realised, theancient promise redeemed - the promise that even amidst suffering, you will find your way home to the fields and shorelines where your ancestors walked.” He went on to say in the same speech: “And you proved that while repression can subjugate it can never silence; while hearts can be broken hope is unbreakable; while lives can be lost the dream could never die; that - in the words of the prophet Amos - 'justice would roll down like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream'.”

Now I don't know about you, but in the world I live in people who hold such beliefs of divine exceptionalism are not in need of their own land, they're in need of psychiatric care.To put it another way, imagine smashing down the door of a stranger’s house, informing him that you and your family have been promised his house by God, preparatory to forcing him and his family into the boxroom, and then calling in the police when he tries to force his way out again. In any civilised society you wouldn't just be arrested for such a crime, you'd be sectioned. Yet this in microcosm describes the fate of the Palestinian people, though with one significant caveat. Rather than those who have invaded their home criminalised, it is they who've been not only criminalised but demonised.

The militant protests that have already taken place in London outside the Israeli Embassy against Israel’s assault on civilians in Gaza reflect a mood of determination and anger when it comes to Palestinian solidarity that is long overdue. Watching news reports of protestors pushing the police backwas asight to gladden the eye of anyone interested in universal human rights and justice. In the coming days, with protests planned to continue around the country, let’s ensure that the pro-Israel consensus which currently and egregiously dominates the body politic in this country is rocked to its very foundations. Let’s ensure also that the international campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel called for by Palestinian civil society is placed at the heart of every organisation’s solidarity work with the Palestinian people from here on in. Finally, let’s ensure that by the time we're finished Gordon Brown, George Bush, and Ehud Olmert et al are left in no doubt that when it comes to our Palestinian brothers and sisters - the people have spoken.

John Wight

Edinburgh,Scotland

:top marks

[Flynn]

Can't work out how to seperate quotes:

Killiehibbie wrote: So would the world be a better place if the jews were stuck in The Outback?

In a word, yes. Or perhaps the world (read USA & UK) should have just let the Jewish people try to get on with their lives without the need to establish a Jewish state and antagonise millions of Muslims who'd lived there for thousands of years in the process. Should one of your descendents in the far off future have a rightful claim to your season ticket seat just because you happened to sit there 2000 years ago? Put it this way, the world would be certainly be a safer place if the Jewish homeland was in the Outback or better yet, in a state within the USA.

Killiehibbie wrote: or maybe the nazis should've been left to solve the problem forever?

No, and I find your insunuation offensive. Where did I ever say I think the Jews deserved to be persecuted in any period of history. Muppet. I am anti-zionist not anti-semitic. There's a huge difference.

[The Green Goblin]

From The Independent.


Robert Fisk: Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.

Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West. Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now.

Alas for the Palestinians, their most powerful political voice – I'm talking about the late Edward Said, not the corrupt Yassir Arafat (and how the Israelis must miss him now) – is silent and their predicament largely unexplained by their deplorable, foolish spokesmen. "It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in," Said once said of Gaza. "It's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa."

Of course, it was left to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to admit that "sometimes also civilians pay the price," an argument she would not make, of course, if the fatality statistics were reversed. Indeed, it was instructive yesterday to hear a member of the American Enterprise Institute – faithfully parroting Israel's arguments – defending the outrageous Palestinian death toll by saying that it was "pointless to play the numbers game". Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed – against two dead Palestinians – be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate violence would be all too relevant. The simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths. True, we know that 180 of the dead were Hamas members. But what of the rest? If the UN's conservative figure of 57 civilian fatalities is correct, the death toll is still a disgrace.

To find both the US and Britain failing to condemn the Israeli onslaught while blaming Hamas is not surprising. US Middle East policy and Israeli policy are now indistinguishable and Gordon Brown is following the same dog-like devotion to the Bush administration as his predecessor.

As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers. As for Hamas, they will, of course, enjoy the discomfiture of the Arab potentates while cynically waiting for Israel to talk to them. Which they will. Indeed, within a few months, we'll be hearing that Israel and Hamas have been having "secret talks" – just as we once did about Israel and the even more corrupt PLO. But by then, the dead will be long buried and we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.

[LiverpoolHibs]

It does, but like I said in my previous post, I'm not at all surprised that you feel that way.

All I can do is offer my views on the subject (which is what the forum is for) and tell you the truth, from my perspective at least, of what is happening and, more importantly, why it is happening. If you, or anyone else, chooses to disregard those opinions then that is entirely your choice.

But the basis for your opinions is so divorced from any kind of rationality or genuine morality so as to render them meaningless. As is shown by your later post suggesting Gaza and The West Bank (and presumably other parts outside of Israel's ever-expanding borders) be subsumed into the Israeli State. It would be pointless for anyone who didn't agree with your starting point to argue with you. Insulated arguments aren't much use.

[Killiehibbie]

Can't work out how to seperate quotes:

Killiehibbie wrote: So would the world be a better place if the jews were stuck in The Outback?

In a word, yes. Or perhaps the world (read USA & UK) should have just let the Jewish people try to get on with their lives without the need to establish a Jewish state and antagonise millions of Muslims who'd lived there for thousands of years in the process. Should one of your descendents in the far off future have a rightful claim to your season ticket seat just because you happened to sit there 2000 years ago? Put it this way, the world would be certainly be a safer place if the Jewish homeland was in the Outback or better yet, in a state within the USA.

Killiehibbie wrote: or maybe the nazis should've been left to solve the problem forever?

No, and I find your insunuation offensive. Where did I ever say I think the Jews deserved to be persecuted in any period of history. Muppet. I am anti-zionist not anti-semitic. There's a huge difference.

Well if you want to dump them in The Outback( is that with or without barbed wire?) who knows where the likes of you would stop to make the world a better place.

[The Green Goblin]

Well if you want to dump them in The Outback( is that with or without barbed wire?) who knows where the likes of you would stop to make the world a better place.

Possibly the same place the Israeli Government is aiming for with the Palestinians.

After all, they block food, electricity and medical supplies to the Gaza area and kill civilians by the hundreds (not even including the current airstrikes) behind an enclosed wall and checkpoints. They deny them the right to a nationality and make it impossible to work within Israel. They destroy their houses with bulldozers and tanks, sometimes while the occupants are still inside. Some elderly and inform people have been killed in these demolitions. They throw them off the land they have been moved to, then throw them off that land when they decide they want more land. They ignore UN resolutions (including the crucial Resolution 242, which states that land acquired by war is not legally entitled to be held on to). They buy billions of dollars in weapons from the U.S and deploy it against the `stone-throwing youths` who watch their children slaughtered daily and see no way out of their living, rightless, imprisonment except to try and bring about some kind of feeble, defiant resistance. They are the occupiers but somehow they have convinced the world they are simultaneously the victims. Go figure that one out.Their politicians describe the Palestinians as `animals` and other `sub-human` adjectives.

Who knows where Israel will stop to make their world a better place right enough.

GG

[Darth Hibbie]

I have spent quite a bit of time reading through what everybody has to say .

At the vey begining of thread I could see the point Falkirkhibs was trying to make about how Hamas had broke a ceasfire and the airstrikes were a retaliation to this. The problem however is that they were not stratigic strikes aimed at taking out those responsible for the rocket attacks they were just aimed at causing maximum damage.

Where FH's argument loses credibility is when you bring religion into it. They are gods people so they can do whatever they want. Funnily enough the same arguements that Bin Laden and his mates use. butYes Hamas are considered a terrorist organistion but so was the ANC 20 years ago.

Palestine and Isreal have to come to a peaceful agreement but I fear that the two sides are to far apart that it does not look much like happening. So that leads to the question is it right to fight for equality?

America and Britain thought so in Iraq. The UN are quick to get involved around the world with peacekeeprs but seem unwilling to involve themselves fully in this debate. Why do none of these countries act. I think its probably because it has nothing to offer them no oil or such and the area is to volatile to offer a military stratigic advantage so really they have no interest in the area itself so just leave them to get on with it.

[Killiehibbie]

Possibly the same place the Israeli Government is aiming for with the Palestinians.

After all, they block food, electricity and medical supplies to the Gaza area and kill civilians by the hundreds (not even including the current airstrikes) behind an enclosed wall and checkpoints. They deny them the right to a nationality and make it impossible to work within Israel. They destroy their houses with bulldozers and tanks, sometimes while the occupants are still inside. Some elderly and inform people have been killed in these demolitions. They throw them off the land they have been moved to, then throw them off that land when they decide they want more land. They ignore UN resolutions (including the crucial Resolution 242, which states that land acquired by war is not legally entitled to be held on to). They buy billions of dollars in weapons from the U.S and deploy it against the `stone-throwing youths` who watch their children slaughtered daily and see no way out of their living, rightless, imprisonment except to try and bring about some kind of feeble, defiant resistance. They are the occupiers but somehow they have convinced the world they are simultaneously the victims. Go figure that one out.Their politicians describe the Palestinians as `animals` and other `sub-human` adjectives.

Who knows where Israel will stop to make their world a better place right enough.

GG

Does Israel have a right to exist? I think they do in their ancestral home which that were driven out of by acts of war. Some clown asked if I could claim back my family season ticket 2000 years later. If I had built and owned that seat and that stand was later returned to the home support after being overrun by the great unwashed for many a season why not?
It all boils down to money and military might the arabs will never beat Israel without nuclear strikes and if that happens it's goodnight everyone.

[NaeTechnoHibby]

Sometimes I wonder if the Jews were relocated in the "right" place after WW2 ??

Why decamp or allow them to settle in lands some of them had ever or barely knew? and, more importantly had chose to leave???

That is why we have this today IMO

Useless UK and US Nimcompoops :boo hoo:

[Darth Hibbie]

Does Israel have a right to exist? I think they do in their ancestral home which that were driven out of by acts of war. Some clown asked if I could claim back my family season ticket 2000 years later. If I had built and owned that seat and that stand was later returned to the home support after being overrun by the great unwashed for many a season why not?
It all boils down to money and military might the arabs will never beat Israel without nuclear strikes and if that happens it's goodnight everyone.

I am not saying you are wrong cause I don't know who is right but I believe that Islam makes the same claims about the area.

No matter who should or should not be there it canot be decided through violence and should either side continue the violence the rest of the world must step in to prevent it.

[The Green Goblin]

Does Israel have a right to exist? I think they do in their ancestral home which that were driven out of by acts of war. Some clown asked if I could claim back my family season ticket 2000 years later. If I had built and owned that seat and that stand was later returned to the home support after being overrun by the great unwashed for many a season why not?
It all boils down to money and military might the arabs will never beat Israel without nuclear strikes and if that happens it's goodnight everyone.

Killiehibee, you haven`t addressed a single point I made. Not one, single point. The `ancestral home` you spoke of was created in 1948 by forcibly displacing a million and half Arab people onto the cesspit that was Gaza. Now, my history is a little hazy, but remind me, was it the Arabs in Palestine who carried out the Holocaust of the Jewish people in the 1940s? I think not, but it was them who paid for it and who are still paying for it.

Also, your use of the term "great unwashed" in the context of your argument is quite clear and just a little unfortunate. I think I can see the level you think on, so unless you can see yourself to actually debating or even acknowledging some of my points, I`ll be signing off on my discussion of this with you here.

GG

[Tazio]

Does Israel have a right to exist? I think they do in their ancestral home which that were driven out of by acts of war. Some clown asked if I could claim back my family season ticket 2000 years later. If I had built and owned that seat and that stand was later returned to the home support after being overrun by the great unwashed for many a season why not?
It all boils down to money and military might the arabs will never beat Israel without nuclear strikes and if that happens it's goodnight everyone.

It's an ancestral home that most of them had left. The Jewish population were a minority by a huge percentage and it was boosted by Eastern European jews who quite rightly didn't want to live under communist rule. And of course it got the Western European countries out of the tricky situation of who was going to take a displaced population.

The result was a huge amount of people moving into an area that didn't understand the dynamic of the area and how the population got on and respected each other.

[Sir David Gray]

The Christian Bishop of Washington clearly has a different view. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21566.htm

As I've already pointed out the last time we had a similar discussion, the fact that this guy is a Christian proves nothing.

The Bishop John Chane is a member of the Episcopal Church (part of the Anglican community) which, although officially part of the Reformed Church, is generally closely aligned with the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholics generally believe in an ideology known as Supersessionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism) which states that the Church replaced the Jews in their covenant with God after the Jews failed to recognise Jesus as their saviour. They therefore believe that the Jews are no longer the chosen people.

This belief is in complete contrast to the ideology of Dispensationalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism), which is held by many Conservative Protestants. This states that the covenant between God and the Jews is everlasting and the Church never has, and never will, replace them. This is very closely linked with Zionist ideology.

It is therefore no surprise that those people who believe in Supersessionism, do not fully support the State of Israel and those that believe in Dispensationalism, are fully behind a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. That is where the split is created between Christians, with regards to support of Israel, that I spoke about in the previous thread.


Hamas have been firing rockets into Israel for several months and the Jewish people could not allow this to continue. Hamas have no concern for the people who live in the Gaza strip because they are using these people as human shields to fire their rockets from areas where civillains live and work.

I believe that the state of Israel has a right to exist and has a right to take action against these terror attacks. I would also like to see the people who organised these attacks being put on trial for the murder of the people who have died in the Gazza strip and Israel.
G

I don't agree that the people who organised the attacks on Gaza should be put on trial, but other than that, it is a cracking post.

Well said. :top marks


If anyone cares to look on the net you will find the amount of land stolen by Israel from the Palestinians has steadily increased since 1948. Ben-Gurion in his infinite wisdom decided that his beloved Israel should have no defined borders which enabled future Israeli leaders to pillage the best arable land and water from the muslims. And people wonder why they are pissed off!

A so-called promise from God in a 2000+ year old fairy tale is not a claim to land that would hold up in a court of law or in any sane mind.

Would have been better after ww2 to ship them all off to Australia and live in the ****ing outback. Let them annexe the land of kangaroos.

I wonder why the Native Americans who were systematically wiped out in a far worse atrocity than the holocaust were not given a bit of land in America like the Jews have in the middle east?

The Israelis haven't stolen any land, it has simply been reclaimed after more than a thousand years of ongoing oppression against the Jewish people and them subsequently being exiled from their rightful homeland.

It is also certainly no fairytale but if that's your opinion then you're entitled to it. In the case of this particular land issue, it has nothing at all to do with what UN laws, EU directives or US peace plans have to say. They are totally irrelevant.

As for Israelis believing that they should have no defined borders. Their state, to which they are entitled, falls into the borders of the Land of Israel, which includes all of the present state of Israel (with the exception of the southern tip of the Negev and Eilat), Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and small sections of Syria.

I don't know of anyone who thinks Israel has a right to expand beyond those borders. I also believe that most pro-Israel people would be content with just the West Bank and Gaza Strip being fully under Israeli authority, as they have no chance of getting Lebanon or the sections of Syria.

As for the third paragraph in your post, that is one of the most derogatory comments I have ever read on this website.


Just got this email. I had to seperate lots of words and put into paragraphs myself as it turned into a big mess when I pasted it, so there may be a few mistakes....

I'm aware that the above post is not your own work but i'm going to reply to it as if it was as i'm guessing that you share similar views.

First of all, is that the same poor Palestinians whose main political party gets financial aid from Iran, whose government has openly vowed to relentlessly support Hamas until the destruction of Israel is achieved?

I know that Israel gets significant support from the USA (at least they have done until now, i'm not certain that Obama will support them to the extent that George Bush has done) but to portray the Palestinians as people who "have no military budget to speak of" is nonsense.

As for the "psychiatric care" remark. That's really tolerant of views that differ to your own...:rolleyes:

What gets me is that many people on the left go on about bigotry being present amongst those on the right. It is therefore highly ironic when those same people call for anyone who brings their religious beliefs into a discussion, to be sectioned or to seek "psychiatric care" and whatever else.

As for the final paragraph, good luck with all of that. I may be wrong, but I think you'll need it.

[NaeTechnoHibby]

The `ancestral home` you spoke of was created in 1948 by forcibly displacing a million and half Arab people onto the cesspit that was Gaza. Now, my history is a little hazy, but remind me, was it the Arabs in Palestine who carried out the Holocaust of the Jewish people in the 1940s? I think not, but it was them who paid for it and who are still paying for it.

G


Mine too, I'll try ansd come back tomorrow with some better argument :greengrin but I have worked days and evening job for the last 4 out of 5 days :yawn:

FWIW it's a blOODy shambles that this is still going on and does no country any favours.

[Killiehibbie]

Killiehibee, you haven`t addressed a single point I made. Not one, single point. The `ancestral home` you spoke of was created in 1948 by forcibly displacing a million and half Arab people onto the cesspit that was Gaza. Now, my history is a little hazy, but remind me, was it the Arabs in Palestine who carried out the Holocaust of the Jewish people in the 1940s? I think not, but it was them who paid for it and who are still paying for it.

Also, your use of the term "great unwashed" in the context of your argument is quite clear and just a little unfortunate. I think I can see the level you think on, so unless you can see yourself to actually debating or even acknowledging some of my points, I`ll be signing off on my discussion of this with you here.

GG

Where the jews not forced out of Jerusalem a few times over the years? Judaism dates back over 3500 years Islam is a relative newcomer. The arab muslims would wipe them out the jews are fighting , maybe not fairly in your eyes, for what they believe in.My use of the great unwashed was aimed at visiting supporters taking over my end in response to someone else.

[Tazio]

Where the jews not forced out of Jerusalem a few times over the years? Judaism dates back over 3500 years Islam is a relative newcomer. The arab muslims would wipe them out the jews are fighting , maybe not fairly in your eyes, for what they believe in.My use of the great unwashed was aimed at visiting supporters taking over my end in response to someone else.

But this wasn't the case prior to the foundation of the state of Israel. The two communities lived side by side carrying out their respective businesses. In much the way that jews stereotypically fitted into other communities. Businessmen, lawyers tradesmen etc. The balance was tipped terribly after 1948.

[Sir David Gray]

I have spent quite a bit of time reading through what everybody has to say .

At the vey begining of thread I could see the point Falkirkhibs was trying to make about how Hamas had broke a ceasfire and the airstrikes were a retaliation to this. The problem however is that they were not stratigic strikes aimed at taking out those responsible for the rocket attacks they were just aimed at causing maximum damage.

Where FH's argument loses credibility is when you bring religion into it. They are gods people so they can do whatever they want. Funnily enough the same arguements that Bin Laden and his mates use. butYes Hamas are considered a terrorist organistion but so was the ANC 20 years ago.

Palestine and Isreal have to come to a peaceful agreement but I fear that the two sides are to far apart that it does not look much like happening. So that leads to the question is it right to fight for equality?

America and Britain thought so in Iraq. The UN are quick to get involved around the world with peacekeeprs but seem unwilling to involve themselves fully in this debate. Why do none of these countries act. I think its probably because it has nothing to offer them no oil or such and the area is to volatile to offer a military stratigic advantage so really they have no interest in the area itself so just leave them to get on with it.

It is very difficult, almost impossible, to truly back Israel without some religious insight.

Sure, there is a logical argument for backing Israel's right to defend itself against a terrorist group, after all, a lot of atheists sympathise with Israel and condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation. But eventually they will always resort to condemning Israel's "disproportionate use of force" and call for a two state solution etc, which will not materialise.

This conflict is unlike any other dispute in the world. It is not down to logic or anything that most people can understand.

I am not insane and I do not require psychiatric help. I feel sorry for the innocent people on both sides of this war who have lost relatives or who have been physically and mentally scarred by the bombs etc., but I genuinely believe that no human will ever influence the outcome of this conflict.

I never used to believe in what I have been saying on this thread. I used to think it was exaggerated nonsense. It has only been since I have witnessed what's been happening in the Middle East in recent months and years that I began to change my mind.

I don't blame anyone for thinking that it's garbage as it is quite difficult to comprehend it all.

It is also not like the arguments that Bin Laden and co. use. At no point have I ever said that Israel or the Jewish people in general have the right to murder innocent people who are in the Jewish land. That would be utterly wrong and completely against everything that I believe.

Bin Laden calls for non-Muslims to be indiscriminately killed, particularly those that are in Muslim lands, in the name of Allah. No-one is exempt from their fanatical supporters, sometimes not even other Muslims, themselves.

[Betty Boop]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yRb2kM_y7C8

[Flynn]

The Israelis haven't stolen any land, it has simply been reclaimed after more than a thousand years of ongoing oppression against the Jewish people and them subsequently being exiled from their rightful homeland.

Thousands of years ago! Because of a belief that the land was bestowed upon them by god. Which, incidentally, is what the Muslims believe as well. Go figure. History changes and nations rise and fall. A 2000 year absence should have ruled them out of ever having their homeland back, especially when it means displacing millions of people who lived there for generations. Brilliant, 60 years of constant turmoil and violence in a region of the world that was fairly peaceful before. What a fantastic idea that was :bitchy:

This picture would certainly suggest the Israelis DO steal land:
Palestinian Land loss since 1948 (http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/2448/maphw2.jpg%5B/URL)

It is also certainly no fairytale

In my opinion, future civilizations will look back at humanities quaint but dangerous superstitious and religious beliefs in the same way we do with Greek and Roman mythology. It will be entertainment for them.

As for Israelis believing that they should have no defined borders. Their state, to which they are entitled

Entitled by who? Please don't say God because that would not stand up in a court of law.

As for the third paragraph in your post, that is one of the most derogatory comments I have ever read on this website.

Gee, thanks. I do try.



It is a piss poor situation anyway. No doubt some people will be on Israels corner and support them no matter what. I tend to root for the underdog and the oppressed.

[Tazio]

People tend to over look the fact that this has become a religious issue. It was initially about land and property. Land and property that was stolen from the existing population of Israel, against agreements in place.

[Darth Hibbie]

It is very difficult, almost impossible, to truly back Israel without some religious insight.

Sure, there is a logical argument for backing Israel's right to defend itself against a terrorist group, after all, a lot of atheists sympathise with Israel and condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation. But eventually they will always resort to condemning Israel's "disproportionate use of force" and call for a two state solution etc, which will not materialise.

This conflict is unlike any other dispute in the world. It is not down to logic or anything that most people can understand.

I am not insane and I do not require psychiatric help. I feel sorry for the innocent people on both sides of this war who have lost relatives or who have been physically and mentally scarred by the bombs etc., but I genuinely believe that no human will ever influence the outcome of this conflict.

I never used to believe in what I have been saying on this thread. I used to think it was exaggerated nonsense. It has only been since I have witnessed what's been happening in the Middle East in recent months and years that I began to change my mind.

I don't blame anyone for thinking that it's garbage as it is quite difficult to comprehend it all.

It is also not like the arguments that Bin Laden and co. use. At no point have I ever said that Israel or the Jewish people in general have the right to murder innocent people who are in the Jewish land. That would be utterly wrong and completely against everything that I believe.

Bin Laden calls for non-Muslims to be indiscriminately killed, particularly those that are in Muslim lands, in the name of Allah. No-one is exempt from their fanatical supporters, sometimes not even other Muslims, themselves.

Please don't think I was directing the Bin Laden comments at you was referring to extemists in general.

I do not think any right minded person can agree with all that happens out there. Do you think that the UN etx should do more or just leave it alone.

I agree that a two state system will probably not work because of all that has gone on in the past but would you not agree that it i the common sense solution. Better still in a perfect world a one state system where everybody can live together.

[Gerard]

As I've already pointed out the last time we had a similar discussion, the fact that this guy is a Christian proves nothing.

The Bishop John Chane is a member of the Episcopal Church (part of the Anglican community) which, although officially part of the Reformed Church, is generally closely aligned with the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholics generally believe in an ideology known as Supersessionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism) which states that the Church replaced the Jews in their covenant with God after the Jews failed to recognise Jesus as their saviour. They therefore believe that the Jews are no longer the chosen people.

This belief is in complete contrast to the ideology of Dispensationalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism), which is held by many Conservative Protestants. This states that the covenant between God and the Jews is everlasting and the Church never has, and never will, replace them. This is very closely linked with Zionist ideology.

It is therefore no surprise that those people who believe in Supersessionism, do not fully support the State of Israel and those that believe in Dispensationalism, are fully behind a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. That is where the split is created between Christians, with regards to support of Israel, that I spoke about in the previous thread.



I don't agree that the people who organised the attacks on Gaza should be put on trial, but other than that, it is a cracking post.

Well said. :top marks



The Israelis haven't stolen any land, it has simply been reclaimed after more than a thousand years of ongoing oppression against the Jewish people and them subsequently being exiled from their rightful homeland.

It is also certainly no fairytale but if that's your opinion then you're entitled to it. In the case of this particular land issue, it has nothing at all to do with what UN laws, EU directives or US peace plans have to say. They are totally irrelevant.

As for Israelis believing that they should have no defined borders. Their state, to which they are entitled, falls into the borders of the Land of Israel, which includes all of the present state of Israel (with the exception of the southern tip of the Negev and Eilat), Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and small sections of Syria.

I don't know of anyone who thinks Israel has a right to expand beyond those borders. I also believe that most pro-Israel people would be content with just the West Bank and Gaza Strip being fully under Israeli authority, as they have no chance of getting Lebanon or the sections of Syria.

As for the third paragraph in your post, that is one of the most derogatory comments I have ever read on this website.



I'm aware that the above post is not your own work but i'm going to reply to it as if it was as i'm guessing that you share similar views.

First of all, is that the same poor Palestinians whose main political party gets financial aid from Iran, whose government has openly vowed to relentlessly support Hamas until the destruction of Israel is achieved?

I know that Israel gets significant support from the USA (at least they have done until now, i'm not certain that Obama will support them to the extent that George Bush has done) but to portray the Palestinians as people who "have no military budget to speak of" is nonsense.

As for the "psychiatric care" remark. That's really tolerant of views that differ to your own...:rolleyes:

What gets me is that many people on the left go on about bigotry being present amongst those on the right. It is therefore highly ironic when those same people call for anyone who brings their religious beliefs into a discussion, to be sectioned or to seek "psychiatric care" and whatever else.

As for the final paragraph, good luck with all of that. I may be wrong, but I think you'll need it.

Hamas have used the civillian people as human shields and because of this they are responsible for the death of every person in Gaza. They can not be allowed to walk away from causing the deaths of the civillian population. The state of Israel has no choice but to take action against Hamas.

The state of Israel will not be destroyed by terror attacks and by the actions of vicious anti-semites. I think that the next administration in the USA will continue to carry out the established policy of being a good friend and ally to the state of Israel.

The Jewsih people will not be kicked into the sea and will never give up the land that they consider has being given to them by the person they call Hashem or Gd.
G

[Tazio]

The Jewsih people will not be kicked into the sea and will never give up the land that they consider has being given to them by the person they call Hashem or Gd.
G

And the Afrikaaners believed that they were to keep Southern Africa for the return of the Messiah.

[Gerard]

And the Afrikaaners believed that they were to keep Southern Africa for the return of the Messiah.

The situation is different as the Afrikaaners have not been kicked into the sea. The Jewish people have been persecuted by many nations which was to result in the Shoah when at least 6 million Jewish people were murdered.

The Jewish people have paid for the land that they were given by their Gd by the death of millions of their people.
G

[Betty Boop]

Hamas have used the civillian people as human shields and because of this they are responsible for the death of every person in Gaza. They can not be allowed to walk away from causing the deaths of the civillian population. The state of Israel has no choice but to take action against Hamas.

The state of Israel will not be destroyed by terror attacks and by the actions of vicious anti-semites. I think that the next administration in the USA will continue to carry out the established policy of being a good friend and ally to the state of Israel.

The Jewsih people will not be kicked into the sea and will never give up the land that they consider has being given to them by the person they call Hashem or Gd.
G What evidence do you have for that? I wouildn't say they have much room for manouever having been blockaded in the worlds biggest refugee camp for 18 months. As regards your comments "vicious anti-semites", is it not possible to criticise the actions of the Israeli war machine without being an anti-semite?

[Tazio]

The Jewish people have paid for the land that they were given by their Gd by the death of millions of their people.
G

So their God takes precedence over anyone else's because of the Holocaust?? Should the Armenians be given a random piece of land that someone already lives on? Or the survivors in Rwanda? Or are their Gods not powerful enough, or perhaps don't have the correct friends?

[Darth Hibbie]

The situation is different as the Afrikaaners have not been kicked into the sea. The Jewish people have been persecuted by many nations which was to result in the Shoah when at least 6 million Jewish people were murdered.

The Jewish people have paid for the land that they were given by their Gd by the death of millions of their people.
G

So if two different religions claim that their god gave them the same piece of land. Who is right?

I cannot possibly be solved without compromise or the obliteration of one set of the people. I know which I would prefer.

[Sir David Gray]

It is a piss poor situation anyway. No doubt some people will be on Israels corner and support them no matter what. I tend to root for the underdog and the oppressed.

Someone can't steal something that belonged to them in the first place. Since I believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, then i'm obviously not going to agree with your summary that Israel has stolen Palestinian land.

You don't subscribe to that belief so it's therefore no surprise that you think it has been stolen.


Please don't think I was directing the Bin Laden comments at you was referring to extemists in general.

I do not think any right minded person can agree with all that happens out there. Do you think that the UN etx should do more or just leave it alone.

I agree that a two state system will probably not work because of all that has gone on in the past but would you not agree that it i the common sense solution. Better still in a perfect world a one state system where everybody can live together.

As I said earlier, I don't believe it matters who gets involved as no-one will influence this conflict's outcome. However I think the UN will eventually get more involved and I think the EU will also have more involvement, in the future.

As for what is the common sense solution. If this was another conflict we were talking about and not Israel-Palestine, I would fully support ANY solution and if that meant a two state solution, then fine.

Since it IS Israel-Palestine, I don't believe in such a solution and even if I did, I do not believe that solution is possible.

What I would like to see happen is a one state solution (Israel) set up to govern the present Israeli state, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and for the whole land to be under Jewish law. The Law of Return, the policy that allows all Jewish people the right to reside in Israel should remain and the current Palestinian population should be given equal rights as ethnic minority citizens.

With Hamas playing a major role in Palestinian politics and countries like Iran having a major influence, that is extremely unlikely to happen, either.


What evidence do you have for that? I wouildn't say they have much room for manouever having been blockaded in the worlds biggest refugee camp for 18 months. As regards your comments "vicious anti-semites", is it not possible to criticise the actions of the Israeli war machine without being an anti-semite?

Evidence of Hamas' use of human shields. (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58118)

[Betty Boop]

Someone can't steal something that belonged to them in the first place. Since I believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, then i'm obviously not going to agree with your summary that Israel has stolen Palestinian land.

You don't subscribe to that belief so it's therefore no surprise that you think it has been stolen.



As I said earlier, I don't believe it matters who gets involved as no-one will influence this conflict's outcome. However I think the UN will eventually get more involved and I think the EU will also have more involvement, in the future.

As for what is the common sense solution. If this was another conflict we were talking about and not Israel-Palestine, I would fully support ANY solution and if that meant a two state solution, then fine.

Since it IS Israel-Palestine, I don't believe in such a solution and even if I did, I do not believe that solution is possible.

What I would like to see happen is a one state solution (Israel) set up to govern the present Israeli state, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and for the whole land to be under Jewish law. The Law of Return, the policy that allows all Jewish people the right to reside in Israel should remain and the current Palestinian population should be given equal rights as ethnic minority citizens.

With Hamas playing a major role in Palestinian politics and countries like Iran having a major influence, that is extremely unlikely to happen, either.



Evidence of Hamas' use of human shields. (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58118)
By Aaron Klein Jerusalems bureau chief! :faf:

[Tazio]

What I would like to see happen is a one state solution (Israel) set up to govern the present Israeli state, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and for the whole land to be under Jewish law. The Law of Return, the policy that allows all Jewish people the right to reside in Israel should remain and the current Palestinian population should be given equal rights as ethnic minority citizens.

Yep that sounds good, apartheid I believe it should be called. Utter, utter rubbish basically. You want a religious state ruling all religions, so what is your view on the intolerance of other religions in places like Saudi and Iran?

And the law of return is farcical in that all you need is proof of jewish grandparents. Should someone in that situation have control over someone whose family have lived there for thousands of years?

With Hamas playing a major role in Palestinian politics and countries like Iran having a major influence, that is extremely unlikely to happen, either.

Why because of religious intolerance? Or the intolerance of outside influence?


[/URL]

Thoughts in bold

[Darth Hibbie]

As for what is the common sense solution. If this was another conflict we were talking about and not Israel-Palestine, I would fully support ANY solution and if that meant a two state solution, then fine.

Since it IS Israel-Palestine, I don't believe in such a solution and even if I did, I do not believe that solution is possible.

What I would like to see happen is a one state solution (Israel) set up to govern the present Israeli state, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and for the whole land to be under Jewish law. The Law of Return, the policy that allows all Jewish people the right to reside in Israel should remain and the current Palestinian population should be given equal rights as ethnic minority citizens.

With Hamas playing a major role in Palestinian politics and countries like Iran having a major influence, that is extremely unlikely to happen, either.



Just one last question before I finish up for the night and please tell me to "go away" if you wish. If the option was a two state solution or continued fighting would you consider a one state solution to be worth fighting for?

[Sir David Gray]

By Aaron Klein Jerusalems bureau chief! :faf:

You asked for evidence, so I provided some. I can't help it if you don't like where the evidence has originated from.

The truth is, Hamas, like several other Islamist terrorist groups, regularly uses ordinary people as shields. They deliberately hide out in residential areas so when Israel attacks the area, they kill innocent people, which makes Israel out to be the bad ones.

They also have been known to use children as suicide bombers, who are brainwashed from an early age into thinking that they are killing "pigs" and doing it for Allah so that they can go to Paradise and get their 72 virgins.

I'm not sure you can get any lower than that.


Just one last question before I finish up for the night and please tell me to "go away" if you wish. If the option was a two state solution or continued fighting would you consider a one state solution to be worth fighting for?

There would always be fighting, even with a two state solution. Hamas doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and its stated aim is the obliteration of Israel and for the whole state to be Islamic.

A two state solution is not workable in any way and would not bring peace.


Thoughts in bold

It's not apartheid. Most countries in the world, apart from the most extreme Muslim nations, such as Saudi Arabia (where practicing anything other than Islam is illegal), have many groups of people who exist as ethnic minorities. It doesn't mean to say that they should be oppressed or treated badly. I believe Israel should be a Jewish state with Jewish laws and principles but also have a tolerant approach to other religious beliefs (as it has just now) where non-Jews play a vital role in everyday life.

Just like I would like to see Britain become a Christian state with Christian laws and principles but also have a tolerant approach to other religious beliefs where non-Christians play a vital role in everyday life.

[Flynn]

Someone can't steal something that belonged to them in the first place. Since I believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, then i'm obviously not going to agree with your summary that Israel has stolen Palestinian land.

You don't subscribe to that belief so it's therefore no surprise that you think it has been stolen.


Just playing devils advocate here: Haven't Christians just as much right to the so-called holy land. Our lord and saviour was born and crucified in that region. Surely we, as Christians, have a religious and moral claim to Israel as well. Why do the Zionists have sole rights to the area?

God gave them the lands in the old testament but that was before they denied the ultimate truth that Jesus was the messiah, son of God, and had a hand in him being condemned to death. Doesn't that mean by Christian standards all Jews will burn in the lake of fire? I'd say directly, or indirectly, killing the son of God would make any pre-existing contract with the big man null and void.

The only reasons Christians support the Zionists is because they are deluded in thinking the return of the Israeli's will herald the 2nd coming of Christ, and to quote Bill Hicks, "bring about that wacky fire and brimstone revelations ending" that fundamentalist Christians are so keen to have come to pass.

Religion is really the cause of so many of the worlds problems. It breeds so much intolerance to each other. You don't see atheists blowing the crap out of one another.

Just sad, really, really sad.

[The Green Goblin]

Okay, I suggest those debating this issue have a look at this. It includes commentary by many eminent Jewish people, including members of the Israeli Defence Force. Stick with it, please, and watch it all the way through, especially those who can`t see past this idea that this whole thing is all about retaliation against Hamas` rockets. The link is to the playlist:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eCL6WdnuNp4&feature=PlayList&p=5B8A3E2A865B42BD&playnext=1&index=15

GG

[Betty Boop]

Okay, I suggest those debating this issue have a look at this. It includes commentary by many eminent Jewish people, including members of the Israeli Defence Force. Stick with it, please, and watch it all the way through, especially those who can`t see past this idea that this whole thing is all about retaliation against Hamas` rockets. The link is to the playlist:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eCL6WdnuNp4&feature=PlayList&p=5B8A3E2A865B42BD&playnext=1&index=15

GG Watching that makes my blood boil, ethnic cleansing and apartheid alive and kicking, while the World turns a blind eye. Shameful! :grr:
__________________

[LiverpoolHibs]

There would always be fighting, even with a two state solution. Hamas doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and its stated aim is the obliteration of Israel and for the whole state to be Islamic.

Evidently, you don't believe in Palestine's right to exist, want its obliteration and the whole state to be Jewish - so if this isn't the epitome of hypocrisy I don't know what is!

[Darth Hibbie]

Okay, I suggest those debating this issue have a look at this. It includes commentary by many eminent Jewish people, including members of the Israeli Defence Force. Stick with it, please, and watch it all the way through, especially those who can`t see past this idea that this whole thing is all about retaliation against Hamas` rockets. The link is to the playlist:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eCL6WdnuNp4&feature=PlayList&p=5B8A3E2A865B42BD&playnext=1&index=15

GG

A really interesting video. Thanks for posting it. Amazing how much influance Israel has over the media.

Watching that makes my blood boil, ethnic cleansing and apartheid alive and kicking, while the World turns a blind eye. Shameful! :grr:
__________________

You would not think it was 2008.

[Killiehibbie]

Watching that makes my blood boil, ethnic cleansing and apartheid alive and kicking, while the World turns a blind eye. Shameful! :grr:
__________________

How can you watch over an hours worth of video in 40 minutes?

[Flynn]

Have just watched the 30mins of part 1. Brutal. How anyone can defend Israel after watching that is beyond me. Part 2 playing now. :grr:

[Betty Boop]

How can you watch over an hours worth of video in 40 minutes?

Part 1 actually lasts 30mins 25 secs, not got time to watch it all just now. That ok with you? :bye:

[Killiehibbie]

Part 1 actually lasts 30mins 25 secs, not got time to watch it all just now. That ok with you? :bye:

Well as the man said "stick with it to the end" it might be game of 2 halves.

[Betty Boop]

Well as the man said "stick with it to the end" it might be game of 2 halves. Don't worry I'll be going back to watch it in full. :greengrin

[Killiehibbie]

Don't worry I'll be going back to watch it in full. :greengrin

Then you can pass comment on it.

[Hank Schrader]

Then you can pass comment on it.

Since when have you become the Hibs.net authority on when people can or cannot pass comment on something?:confused:

[Killiehibbie]

Since when have you become the Hibs.net authority on when people can or cannot pass comment on something?:confused:

Who rattled your cage? It was said in a lighthearted manner not meant to taken seriously.

[Gerard]

What evidence do you have for that? I wouildn't say they have much room for manouever having been blockaded in the worlds biggest refugee camp for 18 months. As regards your comments "vicious anti-semites", is it not possible to criticise the actions of the Israeli war machine without being an anti-semite?

No country or person is beyond critcism.
G

[Betty Boop]

Who rattled your cage? It was said in a lighthearted manner not meant to taken seriously.

I take it you forgot to add a smiley then? :greengrin I will be watching part 2 of peace, Propoganda and the Promised Land shortly, while eating my tea. By the way what were your thoughts on the film?

[Killiehibbie]

I take it you forgot to add a smiley then? :greengrin I will be watching part 2 of peace, Propoganda and the Promised Land shortly, while eating my tea. By the way what were your thoughts on the film?

War is a nasty business. The jihadists have said they will win no matter how long it takes 50, 100 or 1000 years all the non believers will be wiped out.

[Sir David Gray]

Just playing devils advocate here: Haven't Christians just as much right to the so-called holy land. Our lord and saviour was born and crucified in that region. Surely we, as Christians, have a religious and moral claim to Israel as well. Why do the Zionists have sole rights to the area?

God gave them the lands in the old testament but that was before they denied the ultimate truth that Jesus was the messiah, son of God, and had a hand in him being condemned to death. Doesn't that mean by Christian standards all Jews will burn in the lake of fire? I'd say directly, or indirectly, killing the son of God would make any pre-existing contract with the big man null and void.

The only reasons Christians support the Zionists is because they are deluded in thinking the return of the Israeli's will herald the 2nd coming of Christ, and to quote Bill Hicks, "bring about that wacky fire and brimstone revelations ending" that fundamentalist Christians are so keen to have come to pass.

Religion is really the cause of so many of the worlds problems. It breeds so much intolerance to each other. You don't see atheists blowing the crap out of one another.

Just sad, really, really sad.

Christians certainly have a right to visit the Holy Land, as you say it is where Jesus was born, lived and was crucified, but it should be a Jewish state for the reasons I have already said several times. One day, as I stated a few days ago, Israel WILL be attacked in a massive way, whilst its former allies turn their backs on them. Only then will the Jewish people turn to Jesus and ask for help, the first time that they will ever have done that.

So in effect, Israel will eventually be Christian.

The views you express in your second paragraph, again as I have explained already, are in keeping with Roman Catholicism attitudes (supersessionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism)), which sees the covenant between God and the Jews as broken due to the failure of the Jews to recognise Jesus as the saviour. It states that the Church has subsequently replaced the Jews in that covenant.

The opposing view, held by many Protestants, states that the covenant between God and the Jews cannot be broken, no matter how Jewish people view Jesus.

I would dispute that the views are "deluded" but if that's how you view it all then you're entitled to it.

There has been anti-Jewish sentiment amongst some "Christians" over the centuries. It is probably fair to say that the majority of those people are those that believe in the Supersessionist ideology, spoken of above, and who believe that the death of Jesus should be forever blamed on the Jews.


Evidently, you don't believe in Palestine's right to exist, want its obliteration and the whole state to be Jewish - so if this isn't the epitome of hypocrisy I don't know what is!

Palestine has never been a sovereign state so it would be impossible to call for its obliteration.

Since the Jewish oppression, and their subsequent dispersal from the Land of Israel, began under the Romans about 1,700 years ago, the land has been under control of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Islamic Empire, Crusades, Mamluk period and then the Ottoman Empire until the end of WWI, when the British Mandate of Palestine was created.

I do not believe that any part of Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip should be an Islamic state (which it would be if Palestine was created). However, I never have, and never will, call for non-Jews in the area to be obliterated.

And that is the fundamental difference between Israelis and the Palestinians. Israelis who want a single Jewish state do not call for non-Jews in the land to be slaughtered so they can achieve their goal, whereas many people on the Palestinian side believe the setting up of an Islamic state should be achieved by slaughtering the Jewish people, if necessary.

[Nakedmanoncrack]

Christians certainly have a right to visit the Holy Land, as you say it is where Jesus was born, lived and was crucified, but it should be a Jewish state for the reasons I have already said several times. One day, as I stated a few days ago, Israel WILL be attacked in a massive way, whilst its former allies turn their backs on them. Only then will the Jewish people turn to Jesus and ask for help, the first time that they will ever have done that.

So in effect, Israel will eventually be Christian.

The views you express in your second paragraph, again as I have explained already, are in keeping with Roman Catholicism attitudes (supersessionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism)), which sees the covenant between God and the Jews as broken due to the failure of the Jews to recognise Jesus as the saviour. It states that the Church has subsequently replaced the Jews in that covenant.

The opposing view, held by many Protestants, states that the covenant between God and the Jews cannot be broken, no matter how Jewish people view Jesus.

I would dispute that the views are "deluded" but if that's how you view it all then you're entitled to it.

There has been anti-Jewish sentiment amongst some "Christians" over the centuries. It is probably fair to say that the majority of those people are those that believe in the Supersessionist ideology, spoken of above, and who believe that the death of Jesus should be forever blamed on the Jews.



Palestine has never been a sovereign state so it would be impossible to call for its obliteration.

Since the Jewish oppression, and their subsequent dispersal from the Land of Israel, began under the Romans about 1,700 years ago, the land has been under control of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Islamic Empire, Crusades, Mamluk period and then the Ottoman Empire until the end of WWI, when the British Mandate of Palestine was created.

I do not believe that any part of Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip should be an Islamic state (which it would be if Palestine was created). However, I never have, and never will, call for non-Jews in the area to be obliterated.

And that is the fundamental difference between Israelis and the Palestinians. Israelis who want a single Jewish state do not call for non-Jews in the land to be slaughtered so they can achieve their goal, whereas many people on the Palestinian side believe the setting up of an Islamic state should be achieved by slaughtering the Jewish people, if necessary.

I have to conclude that you are at the wind up, anything else would make you ignorant & offensive in the extreme, either way you are clearly a seriously unpleasant individual.

[The Green Goblin]

And that is the fundamental difference between Israelis and the Palestinians. Israelis who want a single Jewish state do not call for non-Jews in the land to be slaughtered so they can achieve their goal, whereas many people on the Palestinian side believe the setting up of an Islamic state should be achieved by slaughtering the Jewish people, if necessary.

They don`t have to call for it though do they, because it has been happening for years already, and is still happening as I type this. The Israeli government has been destroying houses and slaughtering the people living on the additional land it wants for itself for decades.

As I wrote previously, it`s incredible how some people still see this as some kind of evenly matched conflict, as well as this totally misplaced idea of Israel as a `victim`. Israel is an occupying force over millions of Palestinian people - so says the UN and so says the evidence (watch the video I linked to please).

By definition therefore, as an illegally occupying force, Israel can not simultaneously be the victim in this situation, however it has convinced much of the world that it is exactly that. Shameful.

GG

[Betty Boop]

They don`t have to call for it though do they, because it has been happening for years already, and is still happening as I type this. The Israeli government has been destroying houses and slaughtering the people living on the additional land it wants for itself for decades.

As I wrote previously, it`s incredible how some people still see this as some kind of evenly matched conflict, as well as this totally misplaced idea of Israel as a `victim`. Israel is an occupying force over millions of Palestinian people - so says the UN and so says the evidence (watch the video I linked to please).

By definition therefore, as an illegally occupying force, Israel can not simultaneously be the victim in this situation, however it has convinced much of the world that it is exactly that. Shameful.

GG:agree: Mahmoud Abbas has stated that he will pull out of Peace Talks with Israel, if it fails to stop its bombardment of Gaza, which has entered its sixth day.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Palestine has never been a sovereign state so it would be impossible to call for its obliteration.

Since the Jewish oppression, and their subsequent dispersal from the Land of Israel, began under the Romans about 1,700 years ago, the land has been under control of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Islamic Empire, Crusades, Mamluk period and then the Ottoman Empire until the end of WWI, when the British Mandate of Palestine was created.

I do not believe that any part of Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip should be an Islamic state (which it would be if Palestine was created). However, I never have, and never will, call for non-Jews in the area to be obliterated.

Hmm, why do you think it has never been a sovereign state? And how is it impossible to call for the obliteration of somewhere just because it is not a sovereign state?

And it's complete supposition to claim Palestine would become an Islamist (presumably you mean that rather than Islamic) state were it to achieve national status. Why on earth do you think Hamas are so popular in certain areas and at certain times as opposed to other areas and other times.

I'm not sure why I'm continuing this with you, in all honesty.

N.B. Are you a believer in British-Israelism, just out of interest?

[Betty Boop]

The international media have been denied access to report on what is happening in Gaza. Thought that only happened in North Korea and Burma! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/31/israelandthepalestinians-middleeast2

[Tazio]

Christians certainly have a right to visit the Holy Land, as you say it is where Jesus was born, lived and was crucified, but it should be a Jewish state for the reasons I have already said several times. One day, as I stated a few days ago, Israel WILL be attacked in a massive way, whilst its former allies turn their backs on them. Only then will the Jewish people turn to Jesus and ask for help, the first time that they will ever have done that.

So in effect, Israel will eventually be Christian.

The views you express in your second paragraph, again as I have explained already, are in keeping with Roman Catholicism attitudes (supersessionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism)), which sees the covenant between God and the Jews as broken due to the failure of the Jews to recognise Jesus as the saviour. It states that the Church has subsequently replaced the Jews in that covenant.

The opposing view, held by many Protestants, states that the covenant between God and the Jews cannot be broken, no matter how Jewish people view Jesus.

I would dispute that the views are "deluded" but if that's how you view it all then you're entitled to it.

There has been anti-Jewish sentiment amongst some "Christians" over the centuries. It is probably fair to say that the majority of those people are those that believe in the Supersessionist ideology, spoken of above, and who believe that the death of Jesus should be forever blamed on the Jews.



Palestine has never been a sovereign state so it would be impossible to call for its obliteration.

Since the Jewish oppression, and their subsequent dispersal from the Land of Israel, began under the Romans about 1,700 years ago, the land has been under control of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Islamic Empire, Crusades, Mamluk period and then the Ottoman Empire until the end of WWI, when the British Mandate of Palestine was created.

I do not believe that any part of Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip should be an Islamic state (which it would be if Palestine was created). However, I never have, and never will, call for non-Jews in the area to be obliterated.

And that is the fundamental difference between Israelis and the Palestinians. Israelis who want a single Jewish state do not call for non-Jews in the land to be slaughtered so they can achieve their goal, whereas many people on the Palestinian side believe the setting up of an Islamic state should be achieved by slaughtering the Jewish people, if necessary.

I don't want to be offensive with it being the season of good will and all that but....

[andrew_dundee]

it has to be said that Israeli government can only carry out the attrocities they do because of western support. without the financial support of western powers and without the resources sold to them by western powers they would not be able to do what they do. As a result the situation is man made and as a result can only be solved by mankind as opposed to whatever absurd superstitions some of us may have.

to suggest that they have a right to do what they do because of an ancient prophecy is ignorant in the extreme, i have my own views andopinions on things but i fully accept that people shouldnt all be forced to live their life as i see fit for them.

FH you said that no man can solv the situation but you would have to accept that it's mankind who has created the situation and it's certainly not God who's been selling WMD to the Israeli state and propping them up financially and it's certainly not been God who has been ignoring or serially vetoing UN resolutions has it?

[Sir David Gray]

I have to conclude that you are at the wind up, anything else would make you ignorant & offensive in the extreme, either way you are clearly a seriously unpleasant individual.


I don't want to be offensive with it being the season of good will and all that but....

Thanks guys.

A Happy New Year to you, too.


Hmm, why do you think it has never been a sovereign state? And how is it impossible to call for the obliteration of somewhere just because it is not a sovereign state?

And it's complete supposition to claim Palestine would become an Islamist (presumably you mean that rather than Islamic) state were it to achieve national status. Why on earth do you think Hamas are so popular in certain areas and at certain times as opposed to other areas and other times.

I'm not sure why I'm continuing this with you, in all honesty.

N.B. Are you a believer in British-Israelism, just out of interest?

To obliterate something (in this instance Palestine) then surely it has to have existed in the first place in order for obliteration to be achieved? Since there is no such state as "Palestine", I don't see how it's possible to obliterate it.

As for British Israelism, it's not something that I am too familiar with, if i'm being honest.

Having done a quick scan, I wouldn't say that I subscribe to such a belief.

My interest in Israel related discussion does not really extend beyond the current state of Israel and the conflicts that they are involved in.

As for the debate about a Palestine state being Islamist or Islamic, perhaps it was my fault for mentioning that in my last post, but it is largely irrelevant. A proposed Palestine could just as well be Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Atheist.

I don't support Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip being anything other than a single state under Jewish control.


Just playing devils advocate here: Haven't Christians just as much right to the so-called holy land. Our lord and saviour was born and crucified in that region. Surely we, as Christians, have a religious and moral claim to Israel as well. Why do the Zionists have sole rights to the area?

God gave them the lands in the old testament but that was before they denied the ultimate truth that Jesus was the messiah, son of God, and had a hand in him being condemned to death. Doesn't that mean by Christian standards all Jews will burn in the lake of fire? I'd say directly, or indirectly, killing the son of God would make any pre-existing contract with the big man null and void.

The only reasons Christians support the Zionists is because they are deluded in thinking the return of the Israeli's will herald the 2nd coming of Christ, and to quote Bill Hicks, "bring about that wacky fire and brimstone revelations ending" that fundamentalist Christians are so keen to have come to pass.

Religion is really the cause of so many of the worlds problems. It breeds so much intolerance to each other. You don't see atheists blowing the crap out of one another.

Just sad, really, really sad.

I forgot to mention this in my last reply to this post but I felt it was worth replying to the bit in bold.

Whilst religion is the root cause of a lot of world conflicts and atheists might not "blow the crap out of each other", people in power of Atheist Communist states are in charge of some of the most oppressive regimes in the world.

You only need to see the Human Rights records of present states like North Korea and PR China, and historical ones like the Soviet Union, to see that atheists are just as likely to exert cruelty onto others as religious people are.

Also an update from the latest in the conflict, which has not been reported on here. I wonder why?

Israel has killed a senior Hamas leader in the latest round of air strikes on Gaza, which again suggests that Israel is aiming at Hamas targets. Only yesterday, Nizar Rayyan called on Hamas to increase the attacks on Israel and take Israelis hostage. He has also promoted the use of suicide bombings in Israel.

It has also been reported by the UN that 75% of the 400 Palestinians that have died in the last six days, are Hamas militants.

But I guess that's not quite as newsworthy, to the anti-Israel brigade, as reporting suffering by women and children.

As terrible as that undoubtedly is, the above two facts overwhelmingly suggest that they are not the targets.

[LiverpoolHibs]

To obliterate something (in this instance Palestine) then surely it has to have existed in the first place in order for obliteration to be achieved? Since there is no such state as "Palestine", I don't see how it's possible to obliterate it.

So you couldn't obliterate, for example, the British Mandate of Palestine? Or the short-lived U.N. Mandate or what was enshrined in Resolution 242 or 338?


My interest in Israel related discussion does not really extend beyond the current state of Israel and the conflicts that they are involved in.

But that isn't true is it? It stretches back to ancient times and forward to this Biblical prophecy you subscribe to. Disingenuous doesn't cover that.


As for the debate about a Palestine state being Islamist or Islamic, perhaps it was my fault for mentioning that in my last post, but it is largely irrelevant. A proposed Palestine could just as well be Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Atheist.

I don't support Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip being anything other than a single state under Jewish control.

Also an update from the latest in the conflict, which has not been reported on here. I wonder why?

Israel has killed a senior Hamas leader in the latest round of air strikes on Gaza, which again suggests that Israel is aiming at Hamas targets. Only yesterday, Nizar Rayyan called on Hamas to increase the attacks on Israel and take Israelis hostage. He has also promoted the use of suicide bombings in Israel.

Why would you wonder why anyone would not report that on here? It goes without saying that they're targetting senior Hamas members. Just that the utterly indiscriminate nature of leads to pretty justifiable charges of genocide. I'd say it's more telling that you haven't mentioned the fact that Israel's claims of 'surgical strikes' have been proven to be utter lies - footage released (by Israel) of them apparently taking out a truckload of Hamas soldiers having been proved to be full of civilians. And that is just what has filtered through to the mainstream British media.


It has also been reported by the UN that 75% of the 400 Palestinians that have died in the last six days, are Hamas militants.

But I guess that's not quite as newsworthy, to the anti-Israel brigade, as reporting suffering by women and children.

As terrible as that undoubtedly is, the above two facts overwhelmingly suggest that they are not the targets.

Could you provide a link for the UN figures, please. **** knows how they're getting them since Israel isn't allowing anyone in.

[Jamesie]

Thanks guys.
As terrible as that undoubtedly is, the above two facts overwhelmingly suggest that they are not the targets.

Just out of interest, do you think the USS Liberty was a target in 1967?

[Gerard]

Just out of interest, do you think the USS Liberty was a target in 1967?

I think that this ship was a terrible mistake of friendly fire that happens in war situations.
G

[Betty Boop]

I think that this ship was a terrible mistake of friendly fire that happens in war situations.
G http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/LIBERTY.html

[Sir David Gray]

So you couldn't obliterate, for example, the British Mandate of Palestine? Or the short-lived U.N. Mandate or what was enshrined in Resolution 242 or 338?



But that isn't true is it? It stretches back to ancient times and forward to this Biblical prophecy you subscribe to. Disingenuous doesn't cover that.



Why would you wonder why anyone would not report that on here? It goes without saying that they're targetting senior Hamas members. Just that the utterly indiscriminate nature of leads to pretty justifiable charges of genocide. I'd say it's more telling that you haven't mentioned the fact that Israel's claims of 'surgical strikes' have been proven to be utter lies - footage released (by Israel) of them apparently taking out a truckload of Hamas soldiers having been proved to be full of civilians. And that is just what has filtered through to the mainstream British media.



Could you provide a link for the UN figures, please. **** knows how they're getting them since Israel isn't allowing anyone in.

First point-The British Mandate of Palestine was exactly that, a mandate.

There's a bit of a difference between calling for the obliteration of a state and disagreeing with the terms of a mandate.

The British involvement in Palestine was farcical anyway.

On one hand, they promised the Arabs they would create a united Arab country that covered most of the Middle East, in return for Arab support in war.

On the other hand, a year later, they promised to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In the early stages of the mandate, the British Government had no problems with Jewish immigration to the region. As the 1930's approached and the rise of Nazism, and subsequent Jewish persecution in Europe began, there was an increased number of Jews migrating to Palestine.

As the Arabs rioted, due to the fact that the British highly valued their relations with several Arab nations, they began to put quotas on the amount of Jews that could legally enter Palestine. Only Jews with a certain amount of wealth were admitted regardless of the quotas, so as not to disrupt the economy.

This coincided with the beginning of WWII and the Holocaust and once the annual quota of Jews that were legally allowed into Palestine was exceeded, the rest of the Jewish people fleeing the Nazis, were sent to detention camps and sent to far flung regions.

At a time when the Jewish people needed a friend to rely on, when they were being brutally tortured and gassed by the Nazi regime, and despite initial promises to help set up a Jewish homeland, Britain badly let them down.

So it's no surprise that I don't think much of British mandates on Palestine.

As for the UN plan, that was even worse. Their plan was to partition Palestine into two states and an international region, containing Jerusalem. However the proposal included plans for the Arab state to be 99% Arab and 1% Jewish and for the Jewish state to be 55% Jewish and 45% Arab, whilst the international region would be populated 51%-49% in favour of Arabs.

A vast amount of the Jewish state was also to be in the inhospitable desert region in the Negev, which was heavily populated by Bedouins. This meant that at the time of creation, the Jewish state would actually have had a majority non-Jewish population.

Second point-Yes, you're quite correct, I have mentioned those things. However both of them (the existence of the Jews in the Land of Israel in Biblical times and Biblical prophecies) are directly linked to the current state of Israel and the conflicts that they are involved in. Which, as I've already said, is as far as my interest in Israel goes.

I have little interest in beliefs such as British-Israelism.

Third point-It's no surprise that it hasn't been reported on here because the vast majority of people who have contributed to this thread, are anti-Israel. It's not quite as convenient to report that Israel has taken out a major player within Hamas and that the UN has reported that 75% of those killed by Israel in the last week are members of Hamas. But as soon as the media reports on women and children being rushed to hospital, there is a massive outcry against the Israelis.

I am in no way trivialising the suffering of the ordinary people in Gaza, I have said on numerous occasions that I feel sorry for the innocent casualties on both sides of the conflict. However there has been a lot of critical reporting of Israel in the past week, I'm simply attempting to balance things up.

Final point-Here is your proof of UN figures, regarding the current death toll.


The UN says at least 25% of the 402 Palestinians killed were civilians

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7807124.stm

The 75% figure may be even higher as I saw on teletext last night that 60 Palestinian civilians have died in the past week, which would mean that 85% of those killed by Israel are Hamas members.

Either way, I think it's pretty conclusive that any civilian deaths up until this point have been the result of tragic, unfortunate circumstances that happen in every armed conflict, where ordinary people are sometimes killed.

That's not dismissing their deaths, it's just a fact.


Just out of interest, do you think the USS Liberty was a target in 1967?

I have little knowledge of the circumstances either leading up to, or including, that particular incident. I would therefore not like to comment either way.

What I will say, after doing a little bit of research, is that after more than 40 years, there is still a great deal of dubiety, and uncertainty, as to whether the attack on the ship was a deliberate act, or a mistake. I therefore don't see how anyone from either viewpoint can really make a proper judgement.

It goes without saying that if Israel did deliberately bomb the ship, then it would be a completely unjustifiable act and would be deserving of widespread condemnation.

[Betty Boop]

First point-The British Mandate of Palestine was exactly that, a mandate.

There's a bit of a difference between calling for the obliteration of a state and disagreeing with the terms of a mandate.

The British involvement in Palestine was farcical anyway.

On one hand, they promised the Arabs they would create a united Arab country that covered most of the Middle East, in return for Arab support in war.

On the other hand, a year later, they promised to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In the early stages of the mandate, the British Government had no problems with Jewish immigration to the region. As the 1930's approached and the rise of Nazism, and subsequent Jewish persecution in Europe began, there was an increased number of Jews migrating to Palestine.

As the Arabs rioted, due to the fact that the British highly valued their relations with several Arab nations, they began to put quotas on the amount of Jews that could legally enter Palestine. Only Jews with a certain amount of wealth were admitted regardless of the quotas, so as not to disrupt the economy.

This coincided with the beginning of WWII and the Holocaust and once the annual quota of Jews that were legally allowed into Palestine was exceeded, the rest of the Jewish people fleeing the Nazis, were sent to detention camps and sent to far flung regions.

At a time when the Jewish people needed a friend to rely on, when they were being brutally tortured and gassed by the Nazi regime, and despite initial promises to help set up a Jewish homeland, Britain badly let them down.

So it's no surprise that I don't think much of British mandates on Palestine.

As for the UN plan, that was even worse. Their plan was to partition Palestine into two states and an international region, containing Jerusalem. However the proposal included plans for the Arab state to be 99% Arab and 1% Jewish and for the Jewish state to be 55% Jewish and 45% Arab, whilst the international region would be populated 51%-49% in favour of Arabs.

A vast amount of the Jewish state was also to be in the inhospitable desert region in the Negev, which was heavily populated by Bedouins. This meant that at the time of creation, the Jewish state would actually have had a majority non-Jewish population.

Second point-Yes, you're quite correct, I have mentioned those things. However both of them (the existence of the Jews in the Land of Israel in Biblical times and Biblical prophecies) are directly linked to the current state of Israel and the conflicts that they are involved in. Which, as I've already said, is as far as my interest in Israel goes.

I have little interest in beliefs such as British-Israelism.

Third point-It's no surprise that it hasn't been reported on here because the vast majority of people who have contributed to this thread, are anti-Israel. It's not quite as convenient to report that Israel has taken out a major player within Hamas and that the UN has reported that 75% of those killed by Israel in the last week are members of Hamas. But as soon as the media reports on women and children being rushed to hospital, there is a massive outcry against the Israelis.

I am in no way trivialising the suffering of the ordinary people in Gaza, I have said on numerous occasions that I feel sorry for the innocent casualties on both sides of the conflict. However there has been a lot of critical reporting of Israel in the past week, I'm simply attempting to balance things up.

Final point-Here is your proof of UN figures, regarding the current death toll.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7807124.stm

The 75% figure may be even higher as I saw on teletext last night that 60 Palestinian civilians have died in the past week, which would mean that 85% of those killed by Israel are Hamas members.

Either way, I think it's pretty conclusive that any civilian deaths up until this point have been the result of tragic, unfortunate circumstances that happen in every armed conflict, where ordinary people are sometimes killed.

That's not dismissing their deaths, it's just a fact.



I have little knowledge of the circumstances either leading up to, or including, that particular incident. I would therefore not like to comment either way.

What I will say, after doing a little bit of research, is that after more than 40 years, there is still a great deal of dubiety, and uncertainty, as to whether the attack on the ship was a deliberate act, or a mistake. I therefore don't see how anyone from either viewpoint can really make a proper judgement.

It goes without saying that if Israel did deliberately bomb the ship, then it would be a completely unjustifiable act and would be deserving of widespread condemnation. Along with 13 members of his family and several of his neighbours, but thats alright they are referred to as "colateral damage" :rolleyes:

[Jamesie]

I think that this ship was a terrible mistake of friendly fire that happens in war situations.
G

More than just a couple of shots of friendly fire though was it not?

[Sir David Gray]

Along with 13 members of his family and several of his neighbours, but thats alright they are referred to as "colateral damage" :rolleyes:

If you go around with high profile terrorist figures, as he undoubtedly was, then you can only expect one outcome. Especially at a time when the enemy is actively trying to destroy the organisation that your acquaintance belongs to.

If those other people who died really were innocent people, with no sympathies at all with Hamas, then it's sad that they have lost their lives.

But at the end of the day, Israel's stated aim at the outset of this campaign was to stop Hamas from firing rockets into Israel. This was to be achieved by destroying Hamas compounds and killing Hamas members.

By killing this individual, that aim is one step closer to being achieved and if it helps to destabilise Hamas and deters Hamas from firing as many rockets into Israel, both now and in the future, then it will have been worth it.

Senior Hamas member targeted=Senior Hamas member dead=Successful operation.

[Betty Boop]

If you go around with high profile terrorist figures, as he undoubtedly was, then you can only expect one outcome. Especially at a time when the enemy is actively trying to destroy the organisation that your acquaintance belongs to.

If those other people who died really were innocent people, with no sympathies at all with Hamas, then it's sad that they have lost their lives.

But at the end of the day, Israel's stated aim at the outset of this campaign was to stop Hamas from firing rockets into Israel. This was to be achieved by destroying Hamas compounds and killing Hamas members.

By killing this individual, that aim is one step closer to being achieved and if it helps to destabilise Hamas and deters Hamas from firing as many rockets into Israel, both now and in the future, then it will have been worth it.

Senior Hamas member targeted=Senior Hamas member dead=Successful operation. What about these five sisters frim the same family killed by "surgical precision strikes" would you call that a successful operation? http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=50118&s2=30

[Gerard]

If you go around with high profile terrorist figures, as he undoubtedly was, then you can only expect one outcome. Especially at a time when the enemy is actively trying to destroy the organisation that your acquaintance belongs to.

If those other people who died really were innocent people, with no sympathies at all with Hamas, then it's sad that they have lost their lives.

But at the end of the day, Israel's stated aim at the outset of this campaign was to stop Hamas from firing rockets into Israel. This was to be achieved by destroying Hamas compounds and killing Hamas members.

By killing this individual, that aim is one step closer to being achieved and if it helps to destabilise Hamas and deters Hamas from firing as many rockets into Israel, both now and in the future, then it will have been worth it.

Senior Hamas member targeted=Senior Hamas member dead=Successful operation.


:top marks

[The Green Goblin]

There`s some pretty chilling stuff being posted on this thread regarding, or should I say `disregarding` the reality of the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of civilians.

If a bomb goes astray and kills 12 Palestinian civilians in a marketplace or a building, it`s described as a `tragedy` and `regrettable`, however ultimately also justified because the `cause` is right, or even more laughable, it`s the `enemy`s` fault.

Here`s the thing, if a bomb attack kills 12 Israeli civilians, it`s an `outrage`, a `terrorist outrage`, a `crime against freedom`, a justification for extreme responses, yet there is no difference between the incidents - lives are brutally ended in both cases. The end result is the same.

More civilians died from U.S bombs in the first 3 months of the aerial bombardment in Afghanistan than died in the twin towers on 9/11, yet there`s no monument bearing their names, no ceremonies to recall the hideous circumstances in which they died, through no fault of their own. How can some people not see the disgusting shame of these double standards? "Their" civilians` lives are worth less than ours, right?

So Falkirkhibee, when you say that it`s "sad" when the likes of those 5 sisters aged from 4 - 17 died as they slept in their beds when their house was bombed (I`m assuming the 4 year-old wasn`t a Hamas supporter by the way) you`ll forgive me if I think you`re talking out of your hoop. The truth is, you couldn`t care less about them. To you, their deaths are nothing more than a consequence, a statistic, perhaps even justified, because of what other individuals have done. You do not stop to consider what has actually happened here.

Would you feel differently if you stood in the street looking down at their dead faces, or would you remind yourself that it was `regrettable`? If they were Israeli children, you would be telling us that the people who did it are disgusting cowards who have no compunction about taking human lives, and how right you are, only not the way round you see it.

What exactly makes it okay for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not okay for people living amongst those civilians to retaliate? What is the moral difference? except for the massively disproportionate strength of the two sides? You agree with the actions of one of them but not the other. I disagree with the actions of both. Killing is killing. You may be able to justify it, but I will never be able to.

There is this strange detachment from responsibility that seems to accompany the deaths of civilians who met their deaths because a computer fired a missile or a pilot pressed a button in a strike designed to take out an `enemy` target. The `terrorist` who plants a car bomb is no different from the missile operator or pilot in terms of the responsibility he or she has for the direct result of their actions: the intentional and violent taking of human lives.

The difference lies in the perspective on what the lives of different nationalities are worth.

You see the deaths of those people in Gaza as an acceptable consequence of a justified course of action but simultaneously condemn the deaths of those Israeli people who died from Hamas rocket fire as victims of terrorist actions. Double standards. They are all victims of violence, Israeli or Palestinian. None of them should have lost their lives and certainly not in the way they did.

I disagree with your `solution` to the problem though. The answer is not in bombing and killing these people with Israel`s highly modernised army. Allow those people all the things strictly controlled and denied to them by the Israeli government: running water, a nationality, food, medical supplies, infrastructure, jobs, hope and dignity and they will have alternatives to attempting desperate ways of resisting. Stop stealing more and more of their land, destroying hundreds of their houses, shooting their children and they may find that support for violence is slowly undermined. Treat them like human beings and not like vermin whose deaths en masse are `regrettable` or `sad` (shame on you) but which are in reality totally uncared about, and there may be peace and security for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Of course, given your arguments, you see it from one side. Israel deserves peace. Israel deserves security. Yes, of course it does, I agree that it does but so do the Palestinians. What would you do with them? Would you grind them down in their camps and their open prisons until they all die? Do you even see them as human? Can you not see the real historical irony in all of this: a well-armed and powerful nation systematically killing the stateless citizens it controls with massive force and remorseless intent? You join the dots.

Or do you really believe that being God`s chosen people gives Israel the right to massacre people including those 5 little girls and countless others like them under the rubble in Gaza?

Would God approve? Would He say the slaughter from American F-16S and 1-ton bombs onto crowded city streets and buildings was justified? Would He nod and watch approvingly as one of the most advanced armies in the world sent missiles and bombs and bullets into the bodies of men, women and children cowering in doorways, going to school, praying in mosques, sleeping in their beds?

Would He look at the utter desperate misery imposed upon the people of Gaza by Israel; the 75% unemployment, the poverty, the hunger, the blocking of medical supplies and food at the checkpoints as women gave birth to stillborn babies and patients died because medicine was refused entry and electricity was shut off....

Would He see all of these things and justify it as you do?

GG

[flash]

The way I see it is, the Israelis haven't illegally occupied anything, that land is theirs. The Israeli army has forcibly removed the Jews from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and that, to me at least, was wrong.

Just so everyone knows where I stand on the whole subject and my beliefs on what has happened in the past and what will happen in the future, I will write them all down here.

I believe that the Jews are the chosen people, they have been since day one. However they have brought suffering upon themselves for thousands of years with their refusal to recognise Jesus as their saviour.

It has been prophesied that the Jews would be dispersed from their homeland and scattered worlwide, which happened. It was also prophesied that the Jews would get their homeland back. Although it is nowhere near what they once had and what they are entitled to, this was also partly fulfilled in 1948, when the state of Israel was established. It had been considered to make the Jewish homeland in British East Africa, under the British Uganda Programme in today's Kenya, but this proposal was eventually dropped.

Israel will continue to find itself in trouble until eventually, they go too far, in the eyes of their enemies and their people will be attacked in a very big way (possibly from nuclear Iran), it will be bigger than any attack we have ever seen before but the Jews will NOT be completely destroyed. Countries that once stood beside Israel, such as the UK and even the USA, will turn against them. I believe that, despite his current position towards Israel, Barack Obama may well turn out to be the man to turn America away from supporting Israel, which will be the USA's eventual downfall.

Only after this huge attack has occurred, will some of its people finally wake up and turn to Jesus to be their saviour (and become Messianic Jews) and a remnant of Israel will be formed.

When that remnant eventually turns to Jesus, it will signal His return to Earth and He will rule as King of the Jews in the Messianic Age.

This will be the time when the Jews who have turned to Him, and also the Church that truly believes, will be saved and all enemies of Israel, of the Jewish people and those who have not accepted Jesus as their saviour, will be defeated.

Although some people have made predictions, no-one knows when the End Times will be. What I do know is, events in Israel are all related to it and every time some trouble erupts in the Middle East (like what we are seeing at the moment) we get a step closer to witnessing what I have said above.

I know that this will seem a bit too far fetched for a lot of people and I don't expect anyone on here to share my views, but that is what my beliefs are, in a nutshell, and why I will always strongly support Israel.

Never mind Middle East i read this and thought i had woken up in the Middle Ages.

Medieval claptrap.

[richard_pitts]

They don`t have to call for it though do they, because it has been happening for years already, and is still happening as I type this. The Israeli government has been destroying houses and slaughtering the people living on the additional land it wants for itself for decades.

As I wrote previously, it`s incredible how some people still see this as some kind of evenly matched conflict, as well as this totally misplaced idea of Israel as a `victim`. Israel is an occupying force over millions of Palestinian people - so says the UN and so says the evidence (watch the video I linked to please).

By definition therefore, as an illegally occupying force, Israel can not simultaneously be the victim in this situation, however it has convinced much of the world that it is exactly that. Shameful.

GG

The occupied lands were taken as security in response to 1967 when Israel was attacked from all sides by its Arab neighbours. It has given a fair whack of it back, most notably to Egypt in return for a recognition of its right to exist. Consequently its relations with Egypt are much better than with its other neighbours. It's also worth pointing out that the situation in the West Bank is much better than in Gaza.

Some 7,000 rockets have hit Israeli towns and cities over the past few months and a lot of the bombing goes unreported. I don't believe what Israel is doing is going to do anything other than prolong the loss of life there but think about this: If people in Fife were lobbing rockets into Leith and indiscriminately killing people, what do you think public opinion would be in Leith about what to do? This is without considering that the people lobbing them have sworn to the destruction and extermination of your homeland and your people and sworn not to stop until it happens by any means.

This conflict cannot be viewed in simple terms - it operates at a number of levels. The left in this country a la Liverpool Hibs et al takes the view that my enemy's enemy is necessarily my friend. Not so. That is how the US armed the Taleban because they were fighting the USSR in Afghanistan.

Hamas are the taleban with good PR. Goggle Wahibbi and you'll see what I mean. Also why has Palestine the highest per capita aid of any country in the world and the lowest living standards? Corruption - How did Arafat accumulate such a huge fortune for example? I note his widow currently lives in France in luxury :bitchy:

The only positive thing about the Lebanon campaign was Sheikh Bakri Al-Mohammed begging to be let on a British warship to escape a conflict his rhetoric had demanded and for which he was deported from Britain for encouraging British Muslims to join. With leaders like that there really is no hope.

Oh and Falkirk Hibee, **** off back to the stone-age: you appear to be no better than Hamas you religous fundamentalist nut-job. :bitchy::grr:

[Betty Boop]

Israeli ground troops have entered Gaza. :boo hoo:

[GC]

Israeli ground troops have entered Gaza. :boo hoo:

This could escalate is a very short space of time.

[LiverpoolHibs]

There`s some pretty chilling stuff being posted on this thread regarding, or should I say `disregarding` the reality of the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of civilians.

If a bomb goes astray and kills 12 Palestinian civilians in a marketplace or a building, it`s described as a `tragedy` and `regrettable`, however ultimately also justified because the `cause` is right, or even more laughable, it`s the `enemy`s` fault.

Here`s the thing, if a bomb attack kills 12 Israeli civilians, it`s an `outrage`, a `terrorist outrage`, a `crime against freedom`, a justification for extreme responses, yet there is no difference between the incidents - lives are brutally ended in both cases. The end result is the same.

More civilians died from U.S bombs in the first 3 months of the aerial bombardment in Afghanistan than died in the twin towers on 9/11, yet there`s no monument bearing their names, no ceremonies to recall the hideous circumstances in which they died, through no fault of their own. How can some people not see the disgusting shame of these double standards? "Their" civilians` lives are worth less than ours, right?

So Falkirkhibee, when you say that it`s "sad" when the likes of those 5 sisters aged from 4 - 17 died as they slept in their beds when their house was bombed (I`m assuming the 4 year-old wasn`t a Hamas supporter by the way) you`ll forgive me if I think you`re talking out of your hoop. The truth is, you couldn`t care less about them. To you, their deaths are nothing more than a consequence, a statistic, perhaps even justified, because of what other individuals have done. You do not stop to consider what has actually happened here.

Would you feel differently if you stood in the street looking down at their dead faces, or would you remind yourself that it was `regrettable`? If they were Israeli children, you would be telling us that the people who did it are disgusting cowards who have no compunction about taking human lives, and how right you are, only not the way round you see it.

What exactly makes it okay for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not okay for people living amongst those civilians to retaliate? What is the moral difference? except for the massively disproportionate strength of the two sides? You agree with the actions of one of them but not the other. I disagree with the actions of both. Killing is killing. You may be able to justify it, but I will never be able to.

There is this strange detachment from responsibility that seems to accompany the deaths of civilians who met their deaths because a computer fired a missile or a pilot pressed a button in a strike designed to take out an `enemy` target. The `terrorist` who plants a car bomb is no different from the missile operator or pilot in terms of the responsibility he or she has for the direct result of their actions: the intentional and violent taking of human lives.

The difference lies in the perspective on what the lives of different nationalities are worth.

You see the deaths of those people in Gaza as an acceptable consequence of a justified course of action but simultaneously condemn the deaths of those Israeli people who died from Hamas rocket fire as victims of terrorist actions. Double standards. They are all victims of violence, Israeli or Palestinian. None of them should have lost their lives and certainly not in the way they did.

I disagree with your `solution` to the problem though. The answer is not in bombing and killing these people with Israel`s highly modernised army. Allow those people all the things strictly controlled and denied to them by the Israeli government: running water, a nationality, food, medical supplies, infrastructure, jobs, hope and dignity and they will have alternatives to attempting desperate ways of resisting. Stop stealing more and more of their land, destroying hundreds of their houses, shooting their children and they may find that support for violence is slowly undermined. Treat them like human beings and not like vermin whose deaths en masse are `regrettable` or `sad` (shame on you) but which are in reality totally uncared about, and there may be peace and security for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Of course, given your arguments, you see it from one side. Israel deserves peace. Israel deserves security. Yes, of course it does, I agree that it does but so do the Palestinians. What would you do with them? Would you grind them down in their camps and their open prisons until they all die? Do you even see them as human? Can you not see the real historical irony in all of this: a well-armed and powerful nation systematically killing the stateless citizens it controls with massive force and remorseless intent? You join the dots.

Or do you really believe that being God`s chosen people gives Israel the right to massacre people including those 5 little girls and countless others like them under the rubble in Gaza?

Would God approve? Would He say the slaughter from American F-16S and 1-ton bombs onto crowded city streets and buildings was justified? Would He nod and watch approvingly as one of the most advanced armies in the world sent missiles and bombs and bullets into the bodies of men, women and children cowering in doorways, going to school, praying in mosques, sleeping in their beds?

Would He look at the utter desperate misery imposed upon the people of Gaza by Israel; the 75% unemployment, the poverty, the hunger, the blocking of medical supplies and food at the checkpoints as women gave birth to stillborn babies and patients died because medicine was refused entry and electricity was shut off....

Would He see all of these things and justify it as you do?

GG

Brilliant post. :agree:


The occupied lands were taken as security in response to 1967 when Israel was attacked from all sides by its Arab neighbours. It has given a fair whack of it back, most notably to Egypt in return for a recognition of its right to exist. Consequently its relations with Egypt are much better than with its other neighbours. It's also worth pointing out that the situation in the West Bank is much better than in Gaza.

Some 7,000 rockets have hit Israeli towns and cities over the past few months and a lot of the bombing goes unreported. I don't believe what Israel is doing is going to do anything other than prolong the loss of life there but think about this: If people in Fife were lobbing rockets into Leith and indiscriminately killing people, what do you think public opinion would be in Leith about what to do? This is without considering that the people lobbing them have sworn to the destruction and extermination of your homeland and your people and sworn not to stop until it happens by any means.

This conflict cannot be viewed in simple terms - it operates at a number of levels. The left in this country a la Liverpool Hibs et al takes the view that my enemy's enemy is necessarily my friend. Not so. That is how the US armed the Taleban because they were fighting the USSR in Afghanistan.

Hamas are the taleban with good PR. Goggle Wahibbi and you'll see what I mean. Also why has Palestine the highest per capita aid of any country in the world and the lowest living standards? Corruption - How did Arafat accumulate such a huge fortune for example? I note his widow currently lives in France in luxury :bitchy:

The only positive thing about the Lebanon campaign was Sheikh Bakri Al-Mohammed begging to be let on a British warship to escape a conflict his rhetoric had demanded and for which he was deported from Britain for encouraging British Muslims to join. With leaders like that there really is no hope.

Oh and Falkirk Hibee, **** off back to the stone-age: you appear to be no better than Hamas you religous fundamentalist nut-job. :bitchy::grr:

I beg your pardon, where are you getting this from? I despise Hamas (I think I've already stated that in this thread), though I fully support Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation and repression - though not necessarily the means this takes - as (again as I've said in this thread) is enshrined in the constitution of the U.N.


Israeli ground troops have entered Gaza. :boo hoo:

And here's hoping (though not expecting) they get sent back on their ****ing *****

[LiverpoolHibs]

'Erses' (with an 'A') is censored? Seriously?

[Betty Boop]

And here's hoping (though not expecting) they get sent back on their ****ing *****
I fear a bloodbath! :boo hoo:

[Gerard]

And here's hoping (though not expecting) they get sent back on their ****ing *****
I fear a bloodbath! :boo hoo:

How can the state of Israel stop the rocket attacks that they are enduring?
G

[RyeSloan]

Interesting thread with a lot of well put argumentds but one ultimately rather of despair...8 pages of argument over who is right and who is wrong (predictably with little compromise from either side) yet hardly one suggestion of how to resolve the issue. If only people could turn as much vigour to debating a solution as they do to justifying their hatred for the other side.

[LiverpoolHibs]

How can the state of Israel stop the rocket attacks that they are enduring?
G

Mercy, that's some edit from the original. :greengrin

[Gerard]

Mercy, that's some edit from the original. :greengrin

A little change.
G

[Betty Boop]

How can the state of Israel stop the rocket attacks that they are enduring?
G
Well, they could start by pulling down their apartheid wall, and stop their blockade of Gaza.

[andrew_dundee]

i would reccomend all interested parties to listen to Talksport on www.talksport.net (http://www.talksport.net) ian collins is hosting a show until 1 which has actually been pretty good- however as it's the slot allocated to George Galloway there's a bit of a leftie bias

[LiverpoolHibs]

A little change.
G

More than a little, and to reverse the question since you're such an apologist for Israeli violence and not Palestinian. How do you think Palestinians should react to over sixty years of...:

The illegal occupation of Palestinian land (now an invasion) and occupation of other sovereign territories (Golan Heights), anti-Palestinian pogroms, limiting of water and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip ammounting to a siege, stop-and-search and shoot-to-kill operations, bulldozing of Palestinian olive-groves (one of the few opportunities for Palestinians to make a living) and houses, indiscriminate and murderous bombings of 'terrorists', denial of access to medical treatment, denial of the freedom of movement and illegal 'collective punishment'.

?

[Gerard]

More than a little, and to reverse the question since you're such an apologist for Israeli violence and not Palestinian. How do you think Palestinians should react to over sixty years of...:

The illegal occupation of Palestinian land (now an invasion) and occupation of other sovereign territories (Golan Heights), anti-Palestinian pogroms, limiting of water and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip ammounting to a siege, stop-and-search and shoot-to-kill operations, bulldozing of Palestinian olive-groves (one of the few opportunities for Palestinians to make a living) and houses, indiscriminate and murderous bombings of 'terrorists', denial of access to medical treatment, denial of the freedom of movement and illegal 'collective punishment'.

?

There must be no more rocket attacks on the state of Israel and no more suicide bombing attacks in Israel. Hamas and its fellow travellors must accept that the state of Israel has a right to exist. When that happens I think that all the concerned parties can exist peacefully.

I am happy to be associated with the Jewish cause period.

At the moment the state of Israel has almost 1 million people who are having to live in bomb shelters due to the rocket attacks that Hamas are firing into Israel.

I blame Hamas for firing rockets into Israel and using the civillian population as human shields by placing thier rockets and military hardware in civillian areas.

The state of Israel is again having to fight for its survival against an enemy that does not want peace.I hope that Hamas will see sense and stand down its actions and then there will be peace. The Jewish people have a right to a soverign state and so do the people who are known as Palestinian.

G

[Sir David Gray]

What about these five sisters frim the same family killed by "surgical precision strikes" would you call that a successful operation? http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=50118&s2=30

I think I have made my feelings quite clear on this but just for the purposes of clarity, i'll say it again.

I don't like it when any innocent civilians are being killed and it's extremely distressing to hear of anyone who has no hand in violence, being caught up in the fighting and losing their lives.

If Israel has, at any time, deliberately targeted an ordinary Palestinian and killed them in cold blood then I completely condemn such actions.

If an innocent civilian dies as a result of targeting a member of Hamas then, of course it's still tragic, but unfortunately these things happen in any armed conflict.

In my experience of this conflict, Hamas always uses the former method to kill Israeli citizens and innocent Palestinian deaths normally come about by the latter. Which is one of the reasons why I support Israel in this particular conflict.

I don't know how else I can say that I don't rejoice in the killing of innocent people.


There`s some pretty chilling stuff being posted on this thread regarding, or should I say `disregarding` the reality of the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of civilians.

The truth is, you couldn`t care less about them. To you, their deaths are nothing more than a consequence, a statistic, perhaps even justified, because of what other individuals have done. You do not stop to consider what has actually happened here.

What exactly makes it okay for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not okay for people living amongst those civilians to retaliate? What is the moral difference? except for the massively disproportionate strength of the two sides?

The difference lies in the perspective on what the lives of different nationalities are worth.

You see the deaths of those people in Gaza as an acceptable consequence of a justified course of action but simultaneously condemn the deaths of those Israeli people who died from Hamas rocket fire as victims of terrorist actions. Double standards. They are all victims of violence, Israeli or Palestinian. None of them should have lost their lives and certainly not in the way they did.

I disagree with your `solution` to the problem though. The answer is not in bombing and killing these people with Israel`s highly modernised army. Allow those people all the things strictly controlled and denied to them by the Israeli government: running water, a nationality, food, medical supplies, infrastructure, jobs, hope and dignity and they will have alternatives to attempting desperate ways of resisting. Stop stealing more and more of their land, destroying hundreds of their houses, shooting their children and they may find that support for violence is slowly undermined. Treat them like human beings and not like vermin whose deaths en masse are `regrettable` or `sad` (shame on you) but which are in reality totally uncared about, and there may be peace and security for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Of course, given your arguments, you see it from one side. Israel deserves peace. Israel deserves security. Yes, of course it does, I agree that it does but so do the Palestinians. What would you do with them? Would you grind them down in their camps and their open prisons until they all die? Do you even see them as human? Can you not see the real historical irony in all of this: a well-armed and powerful nation systematically killing the stateless citizens it controls with massive force and remorseless intent? You join the dots.

GG

I'll deal with the bit in bold first as that is simply a scandalous remark and one that I totally reject.

I do care about innocent people dying, i've said so all the way through this thread that I feel extremely sorry for the innocent casualties on both sides. Like i've said to Betty Boop, I really don't know how else I can express those feelings.

Second of all, I am not someone who loves war and who advocates violence just for the sake of it.

In the case of Afghanistan, of course the innocent people who have lost their lives in that war is terrible. But just like with the situation in Israel, that war only began as a direct result of the most despicable act of terrorism I have ever witnessed-9/11/01. Members of the group responsible-Al Qaeda, were protected and harboured by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and America and their allies were rightly looking to get revenge for what happened on that terrible morning. If 9/11 hadn't occured, the events in Afghanistan wouldn't have happened and innocent Afghans wouldn't have lost their lives.

However, I do not believe that Israel should have to put up with Hamas sending rockets into Israel on a daily basis. Up until a week ago, Israel had shown incredible restraint. They gave Hamas a final warning on Christmas Day and pleaded with them to stop the attacks.

Hamas ignored this warning (of course you would do that if you don't recognise someone's existence) and Israel was left with no option but to respond. Israel does not want war with anyone but are willing to respond to aggressive behaviour, to protect the interests of its citizens. For the past 60 years, ever since Israel's creation in 1948, their neighbours have actively sought its destruction and elimination from the map.

I hope Israel goes all the way until the whole Hamas organisation and all of their supporters have been taken out. Israel has signed up to truces and ceasefires in the past and Hamas has broken them (it was them who broke the last one and refused to renew it). They laugh in the face of any truce because their whole ideology is based upon Israel being wiped off the face of the Earth. You cannot deal with such people and if Israel does sign another ceasefire before Hamas is obliterated then it will only be a matter of time before they break it and the rockets start firing into Israel again. Then we are back to square one.

As for what to do with the Palestinian people. I have already said what I would do. There should be one state (Israel) with the Palestinians given equal rights as ethnic minority citizens. Normally I would have no problems with anyone having their own national identity but a two state solution is unworkable and any future Palestinian state would simply act as a launchpad for more Hamas rockets to be fired into Israel. I also find your insinuation that I might not view the Palestinians as human, highly offensive and without any kind of substance. I prefer to leave those kind of views to Hamas, whose members see the Jews as little more than "pigs".

Also you ask why is it ok for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not OK for people living with those civilians to retaliate

There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that if that's what had actually happened. It was Hamas who began all the violence and it is Israel who has retaliated.

And this whole argument that Israel is wrong to attack Gaza because they happen to be more heavily armed than Hamas, is nonsense as well. If you are in a fight with someone who has really annoyed and provoked you, and you happen to be a lot stronger than them, do you just use the amount of strength that they have? Of course you don't. If anything, it shows the stupidity of the weaker person that they would start a fight against a stronger opponent, in the first place. Hamas knew they had no chance of beating Israel if Israel brought out all its military might, which it has now done, and yet they continued to push further and further until Israel's patience has finally snapped. Hamas knew that if Israel was going to respond by attacking them in Gaza, then their people (people who had voted Hamas in 3 years ago) would suffer but they continued to provoke Israel, which for me, is a clear sign of the contempt that Hamas has for its own people and the complete disregard that they have for their safety.

I would liken the whole situation to a 5ft 2in 12 year old boy going up to a 6ft 5in 18 year old, and starting to call him names. The 18 year old initially takes it on the chin but the harrassment continues and turns physically violent. The 18 year old eventually says enough is enough and warns the 12 year old that if he doesn't stop it, he will regret it.

Eventually after days of continual attacks, the 18 year old responds and the 12 year old ends up worse off.


Never mind Middle East i read this and thought i had woken up in the Middle Ages.

Medieval claptrap.

Thanks for the insightful and in-depth contribution...


Oh and Falkirk Hibee, **** off back to the stone-age: you appear to be no better than Hamas you religous fundamentalist nut-job. :bitchy::grr:

If you don't agree with me then fine, I have no problems whatsoever with a difference of opinion.

But there is absolutely no need for that kind of personal abuse. I strongly disagree with the vast majority of people on this thread about this particular issue, but I never have and never will resort to petty name calling against anyone. I'd far rather get my point across in a civilised and well presented argument.

But so far i've been told to "**** off back to the stone age", been called a "nutjob", been told that I belong in the Middle Ages and been called a "seriously unpleasant individual" all because I've dared to give my opinions on a particular subject, that just happen to against the majority view.

What happened to freedom of speech, or is that right only given to the anti-Israel protesters that have marched in the UK over the past couple of days?

[GhostofBolivar]

There must be no more rocket attacks on the state of Israel and no more suicide bombing attacks in Israel. Hamas and its fellow travellors must accept that the state of Israel has a right to exist. When that happens I think that all the concerned parties can exist peacefully.


Of course it has nothing to do with the country that has spent 60 years killing Palestinians, stealing their land, abusing their most basic human rights and denying them a future to call their own.

It works both ways. Israel has never recognised the legitimacy of Palestinian greivance because if they did they might have to give land back and/or pay compensation. Why should the Palestinians recognise Israel, when the voice of their deomcratically elected representatives is systematically ignored?

If the Israeli government won't negotiate with terrorists all I can say is that it must make for short cabinet meetings.

The murder, repression and pointless cruelty exhibited by both sides must stop for there to be a hope of peace. Nore more rockets. No more F-16s dropping bombs on apartment blocks. No more suicide bombs. No more soldiers killing 7 year olds.


I am happy to be associated with the Jewish cause period.

At the moment the state of Israel has almost 1 million people who are having to live in bomb shelters due to the rocket attacks that Hamas are firing into Israel.

Which is about the same number of people that Israel walled in Gaza.


I blame Hamas for firing rockets into Israel and using the civillian population as human shields by placing thier rockets and military hardware in civillian areas.

The state of Israel is again having to fight for its survival against an enemy that does not want peace.I hope that Hamas will see sense and stand down its actions and then there will be peace. The Jewish people have a right to a soverign state and so do the people who are known as Palestinian.


Gaza is on of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Where, pray tell, are Hamas going to station their forces?

Also, this is a bull**** excuse. Most countries do exactly the same. Redford barracks, for instance, is in that sparsely populated area known as Colinton. Aldershot - HQ of both the Parachute Regiment and the SAS, among others - is the thirtieth largest population centre in the country. Google Earth RAF Brize Norton and have a look at the built up areas right outside it. Never
driven past a TA drill hall? Never seen an RN ship docked at Rosyth? On top of this, many of our military bases are also home to the families of servicemen and women. Wives. Children. Innocents all around.

So if someone attacked us, any civilian deaths would be our fault for using human shields, right? Or would they be innocent victims of a war crime? I think we all know what the Daily Mail would say.

Oh, and the IDF is hitting things like police stations, power stations and infrastructure, too. The Israelis like collective punishment (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-security-costs-girl-her-dream-1015852.html).

Look, if you're Israeli, I don't want to offend you - mostly because I don't want you coming round here, stealing my house, fencing me in a corner of the back garden and shooting my kids, but Israel is the poster child of terrorist states. **** them and **** their casual barbarity.

[GhostofBolivar]

There`s some pretty chilling stuff being posted on this thread regarding, or should I say `disregarding` the reality of the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of civilians.

If a bomb goes astray and kills 12 Palestinian civilians in a marketplace or a building, it`s described as a `tragedy` and `regrettable`, however ultimately also justified because the `cause` is right, or even more laughable, it`s the `enemy`s` fault.

Here`s the thing, if a bomb attack kills 12 Israeli civilians, it`s an `outrage`, a `terrorist outrage`, a `crime against freedom`, a justification for extreme responses, yet there is no difference between the incidents - lives are brutally ended in both cases. The end result is the same.

More civilians died from U.S bombs in the first 3 months of the aerial bombardment in Afghanistan than died in the twin towers on 9/11, yet there`s no monument bearing their names, no ceremonies to recall the hideous circumstances in which they died, through no fault of their own. How can some people not see the disgusting shame of these double standards? "Their" civilians` lives are worth less than ours, right?

So Falkirkhibee, when you say that it`s "sad" when the likes of those 5 sisters aged from 4 - 17 died as they slept in their beds when their house was bombed (I`m assuming the 4 year-old wasn`t a Hamas supporter by the way) you`ll forgive me if I think you`re talking out of your hoop. The truth is, you couldn`t care less about them. To you, their deaths are nothing more than a consequence, a statistic, perhaps even justified, because of what other individuals have done. You do not stop to consider what has actually happened here.

Would you feel differently if you stood in the street looking down at their dead faces, or would you remind yourself that it was `regrettable`? If they were Israeli children, you would be telling us that the people who did it are disgusting cowards who have no compunction about taking human lives, and how right you are, only not the way round you see it.

What exactly makes it okay for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not okay for people living amongst those civilians to retaliate? What is the moral difference? except for the massively disproportionate strength of the two sides? You agree with the actions of one of them but not the other. I disagree with the actions of both. Killing is killing. You may be able to justify it, but I will never be able to.

There is this strange detachment from responsibility that seems to accompany the deaths of civilians who met their deaths because a computer fired a missile or a pilot pressed a button in a strike designed to take out an `enemy` target. The `terrorist` who plants a car bomb is no different from the missile operator or pilot in terms of the responsibility he or she has for the direct result of their actions: the intentional and violent taking of human lives.

The difference lies in the perspective on what the lives of different nationalities are worth.

You see the deaths of those people in Gaza as an acceptable consequence of a justified course of action but simultaneously condemn the deaths of those Israeli people who died from Hamas rocket fire as victims of terrorist actions. Double standards. They are all victims of violence, Israeli or Palestinian. None of them should have lost their lives and certainly not in the way they did.

I disagree with your `solution` to the problem though. The answer is not in bombing and killing these people with Israel`s highly modernised army. Allow those people all the things strictly controlled and denied to them by the Israeli government: running water, a nationality, food, medical supplies, infrastructure, jobs, hope and dignity and they will have alternatives to attempting desperate ways of resisting. Stop stealing more and more of their land, destroying hundreds of their houses, shooting their children and they may find that support for violence is slowly undermined. Treat them like human beings and not like vermin whose deaths en masse are `regrettable` or `sad` (shame on you) but which are in reality totally uncared about, and there may be peace and security for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Of course, given your arguments, you see it from one side. Israel deserves peace. Israel deserves security. Yes, of course it does, I agree that it does but so do the Palestinians. What would you do with them? Would you grind them down in their camps and their open prisons until they all die? Do you even see them as human? Can you not see the real historical irony in all of this: a well-armed and powerful nation systematically killing the stateless citizens it controls with massive force and remorseless intent? You join the dots.

Or do you really believe that being God`s chosen people gives Israel the right to massacre people including those 5 little girls and countless others like them under the rubble in Gaza?

Would God approve? Would He say the slaughter from American F-16S and 1-ton bombs onto crowded city streets and buildings was justified? Would He nod and watch approvingly as one of the most advanced armies in the world sent missiles and bombs and bullets into the bodies of men, women and children cowering in doorways, going to school, praying in mosques, sleeping in their beds?

Would He look at the utter desperate misery imposed upon the people of Gaza by Israel; the 75% unemployment, the poverty, the hunger, the blocking of medical supplies and food at the checkpoints as women gave birth to stillborn babies and patients died because medicine was refused entry and electricity was shut off....

Would He see all of these things and justify it as you do?

GG

:top marks:top marks:top marks

[Betty Boop]

Has the Middle East Peace Envoy made an appearance yet? His silence is deafening! :bitchy:

[IndieHibby]

I think I have made my feelings quite clear on this but just for the purposes of clarity, i'll say it again.

I don't like it when any innocent civilians are being killed and it's extremely distressing to hear of anyone who has no hand in violence, being caught up in the fighting and losing their lives.

If Israel has, at any time, deliberately targeted an ordinary Palestinian and killed them in cold blood then I completely condemn such actions.

If an innocent civilian dies as a result of targeting a member of Hamas then, of course it's still tragic, but unfortunately these things happen in any armed conflict.

In my experience of this conflict, Hamas always uses the former method to kill Israeli citizens and innocent Palestinian deaths normally come about by the latter. Which is one of the reasons why I support Israel in this particular conflict.

I don't know how else I can say that I don't rejoice in the killing of innocent people.



I'll deal with the bit in bold first as that is simply a scandalous remark and one that I totally reject.

I do care about innocent people dying, i've said so all the way through this thread that I feel extremely sorry for the innocent casualties on both sides. Like i've said to Betty Boop, I really don't know how else I can express those feelings.

Second of all, I am not someone who loves war and who advocates violence just for the sake of it.

In the case of Afghanistan, of course the innocent people who have lost their lives in that war is terrible. But just like with the situation in Israel, that war only began as a direct result of the most despicable act of terrorism I have ever witnessed-9/11/01. Members of the group responsible-Al Qaeda, were protected and harboured by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and America and their allies were rightly looking to get revenge for what happened on that terrible morning. If 9/11 hadn't occured, the events in Afghanistan wouldn't have happened and innocent Afghans wouldn't have lost their lives.

However, I do not believe that Israel should have to put up with Hamas sending rockets into Israel on a daily basis. Up until a week ago, Israel had shown incredible restraint. They gave Hamas a final warning on Christmas Day and pleaded with them to stop the attacks.

Hamas ignored this warning (of course you would do that if you don't recognise someone's existence) and Israel was left with no option but to respond. Israel does not want war with anyone but are willing to respond to aggressive behaviour, to protect the interests of its citizens. For the past 60 years, ever since Israel's creation in 1948, their neighbours have actively sought its destruction and elimination from the map.

I hope Israel goes all the way until the whole Hamas organisation and all of their supporters have been taken out. Israel has signed up to truces and ceasefires in the past and Hamas has broken them (it was them who broke the last one and refused to renew it). They laugh in the face of any truce because their whole ideology is based upon Israel being wiped off the face of the Earth. You cannot deal with such people and if Israel does sign another ceasefire before Hamas is obliterated then it will only be a matter of time before they break it and the rockets start firing into Israel again. Then we are back to square one.

As for what to do with the Palestinian people. I have already said what I would do. There should be one state (Israel) with the Palestinians given equal rights as ethnic minority citizens. Normally I would have no problems with anyone having their own national identity but a two state solution is unworkable and any future Palestinian state would simply act as a launchpad for more Hamas rockets to be fired into Israel. I also find your insinuation that I might not view the Palestinians as human, highly offensive and without any kind of substance. I prefer to leave those kind of views to Hamas, whose members see the Jews as little more than "pigs".

Also you ask why is it ok for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not OK for people living with those civilians to retaliate

There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that if that's what had actually happened. It was Hamas who began all the violence and it is Israel who has retaliated.

And this whole argument that Israel is wrong to attack Gaza because they happen to be more heavily armed than Hamas, is nonsense as well. If you are in a fight with someone who has really annoyed and provoked you, and you happen to be a lot stronger than them, do you just use the amount of strength that they have? Of course you don't. If anything, it shows the stupidity of the weaker person that they would start a fight against a stronger opponent, in the first place. Hamas knew they had no chance of beating Israel if Israel brought out all its military might, which it has now done, and yet they continued to push further and further until Israel's patience has finally snapped. Hamas knew that if Israel was going to respond by attacking them in Gaza, then their people (people who had voted Hamas in 3 years ago) would suffer but they continued to provoke Israel, which for me, is a clear sign of the contempt that Hamas has for its own people and the complete disregard that they have for their safety.

I would liken the whole situation to a 5ft 2in 12 year old boy going up to a 6ft 5in 18 year old, and starting to call him names. The 18 year old initially takes it on the chin but the harrassment continues and turns physically violent. The 18 year old eventually says enough is enough and warns the 12 year old that if he doesn't stop it, he will regret it.

Eventually after days of continual attacks, the 18 year old responds and the 12 year old ends up worse off.



Thanks for the insightful and in-depth contribution...



If you don't agree with me then fine, I have no problems whatsoever with a difference of opinion.

But there is absolutely no need for that kind of personal abuse. I strongly disagree with the vast majority of people on this thread about this particular issue, but I never have and never will resort to petty name calling against anyone. I'd far rather get my point across in a civilised and well presented argument.

But so far i've been told to "**** off back to the stone age", been called a "nutjob", been told that I belong in the Middle Ages and been called a "seriously unpleasant individual" all because I've dared to give my opinions on a particular subject, that just happen to against the majority view.

What happened to freedom of speech, or is that right only given to the anti-Israel protesters that have marched in the UK over the past couple of days?

FalkirkHibee, I strayed away from this debate, precisely because I knew what kind of people I was dealing with in parts of this thread; so all credit for you for sticking it out and maintaining decorum in this debate. Some of the other posters on this thread would do well to learn from your example.

1. Some people are anti-war/conflict/guns/bombs etc, and cannot agree on any cause that leads to violence. While these uncompromising principles are noble, they are naive and ultimately weak. They are the "Chamberlains" of the world and if left in charge would have our border's surrounded by our enemies, they just don't realise it.

2. When someone resorts to debating strategies like that, you know that they are unable to articluate their viewpoint in a better way, or that they have no viewpoint and can only insult. Either way, their opinion becomes null and void.

I find it funny that some people attack you for being "divorced from responsibility" with regard to civilian deaths. As if you fire those guns!! I bet they don't take responsibility for deaths from rockets or suicide bombers! Yet they defend the right of one side to 'resist' ( a euphamism if I ever heard one )

I don't agree with a lot of what you have said, but I support your right to do it in civility and applause your patience in dealing with some of our more 'colourful' posters.....

[Flynn]

When Palestine gets 3 billion pounds/dollars aid a year (from whatever country) for their military budget then it will be a fair fight. Palestinians are fighting with the equivalent of wrist catapults compared to Israels M-16's. Hardly a fair fight so they resort to terrorism. Not condoning the actions of either side but desperate people do desperate things.

[hibsbollah]

There`s some pretty chilling stuff being posted on this thread regarding, or should I say `disregarding` the reality of the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of civilians.

If a bomb goes astray and kills 12 Palestinian civilians in a marketplace or a building, it`s described as a `tragedy` and `regrettable`, however ultimately also justified because the `cause` is right, or even more laughable, it`s the `enemy`s` fault.

Here`s the thing, if a bomb attack kills 12 Israeli civilians, it`s an `outrage`, a `terrorist outrage`, a `crime against freedom`, a justification for extreme responses, yet there is no difference between the incidents - lives are brutally ended in both cases. The end result is the same.

More civilians died from U.S bombs in the first 3 months of the aerial bombardment in Afghanistan than died in the twin towers on 9/11, yet there`s no monument bearing their names, no ceremonies to recall the hideous circumstances in which they died, through no fault of their own. How can some people not see the disgusting shame of these double standards? "Their" civilians` lives are worth less than ours, right?

So Falkirkhibee, when you say that it`s "sad" when the likes of those 5 sisters aged from 4 - 17 died as they slept in their beds when their house was bombed (I`m assuming the 4 year-old wasn`t a Hamas supporter by the way) you`ll forgive me if I think you`re talking out of your hoop. The truth is, you couldn`t care less about them. To you, their deaths are nothing more than a consequence, a statistic, perhaps even justified, because of what other individuals have done. You do not stop to consider what has actually happened here.

Would you feel differently if you stood in the street looking down at their dead faces, or would you remind yourself that it was `regrettable`? If they were Israeli children, you would be telling us that the people who did it are disgusting cowards who have no compunction about taking human lives, and how right you are, only not the way round you see it.

What exactly makes it okay for an Israeli pilot to kill hundreds of civilians but not okay for people living amongst those civilians to retaliate? What is the moral difference? except for the massively disproportionate strength of the two sides? You agree with the actions of one of them but not the other. I disagree with the actions of both. Killing is killing. You may be able to justify it, but I will never be able to.

There is this strange detachment from responsibility that seems to accompany the deaths of civilians who met their deaths because a computer fired a missile or a pilot pressed a button in a strike designed to take out an `enemy` target. The `terrorist` who plants a car bomb is no different from the missile operator or pilot in terms of the responsibility he or she has for the direct result of their actions: the intentional and violent taking of human lives.

The difference lies in the perspective on what the lives of different nationalities are worth.

You see the deaths of those people in Gaza as an acceptable consequence of a justified course of action but simultaneously condemn the deaths of those Israeli people who died from Hamas rocket fire as victims of terrorist actions. Double standards. They are all victims of violence, Israeli or Palestinian. None of them should have lost their lives and certainly not in the way they did.

I disagree with your `solution` to the problem though. The answer is not in bombing and killing these people with Israel`s highly modernised army. Allow those people all the things strictly controlled and denied to them by the Israeli government: running water, a nationality, food, medical supplies, infrastructure, jobs, hope and dignity and they will have alternatives to attempting desperate ways of resisting. Stop stealing more and more of their land, destroying hundreds of their houses, shooting their children and they may find that support for violence is slowly undermined. Treat them like human beings and not like vermin whose deaths en masse are `regrettable` or `sad` (shame on you) but which are in reality totally uncared about, and there may be peace and security for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Of course, given your arguments, you see it from one side. Israel deserves peace. Israel deserves security. Yes, of course it does, I agree that it does but so do the Palestinians. What would you do with them? Would you grind them down in their camps and their open prisons until they all die? Do you even see them as human? Can you not see the real historical irony in all of this: a well-armed and powerful nation systematically killing the stateless citizens it controls with massive force and remorseless intent? You join the dots.

Or do you really believe that being God`s chosen people gives Israel the right to massacre people including those 5 little girls and countless others like them under the rubble in Gaza?

Would God approve? Would He say the slaughter from American F-16S and 1-ton bombs onto crowded city streets and buildings was justified? Would He nod and watch approvingly as one of the most advanced armies in the world sent missiles and bombs and bullets into the bodies of men, women and children cowering in doorways, going to school, praying in mosques, sleeping in their beds?

Would He look at the utter desperate misery imposed upon the people of Gaza by Israel; the 75% unemployment, the poverty, the hunger, the blocking of medical supplies and food at the checkpoints as women gave birth to stillborn babies and patients died because medicine was refused entry and electricity was shut off....

Would He see all of these things and justify it as you do?

GG

Can't add anything to that:top marks

[richard_pitts]

FalkirkHibee, I strayed away from this debate, precisely because I knew what kind of people I was dealing with in parts of this thread; so all credit for you for sticking it out and maintaining decorum in this debate. Some of the other posters on this thread would do well to learn from your example.

1. Some people are anti-war/conflict/guns/bombs etc, and cannot agree on any cause that leads to violence. While these uncompromising principles are noble, they are naive and ultimately weak. They are the "Chamberlains" of the world and if left in charge would have our border's surrounded by our enemies, they just don't realise it.

2. When someone resorts to debating strategies like that, you know that they are unable to articluate their viewpoint in a better way, or that they have no viewpoint and can only insult. Either way, their opinion becomes null and void.

I find it funny that some people attack you for being "divorced from responsibility" with regard to civilian deaths. As if you fire those guns!! I bet they don't take responsibility for deaths from rockets or suicide bombers! Yet they defend the right of one side to 'resist' ( a euphamism if I ever heard one )

I don't agree with a lot of what you have said, but I support your right to do it in civility and applause your patience in dealing with some of our more 'colourful' posters.....

Okay Stueyn,

First I spent a long time in my post putting forward an argument to counter a lot of what other posters had said regarding the realpolitik of the situation, where i agreed with a lot of FH's original points, although personally I fear I can't ever see this ending and regardless of who's right and who's wrong I want that more than anything.

Stueyn you've stayed away from this debate because of the reaction it provokes. Have you read FH's jesus post? How is one supposed to argue with a line of reasoning that basically says that because the Jews don't recognise Jesus, god has inflicted the Palestinians on them? Or that if they recognise Jesus, their enemies will be defeated either before during or after the second coming of christ? I think that belongs in the stone age.

I can't see any sound theological basis for any of the above or indeed any basis for it at all. To use god as a justification for any atrocities or killing just makes me wretch: Why is that any better than hamas? I would love to know, particularly as Hamas use a seriously dodgy interpretation of the Quran to justify the extinction of Israel.

Is the above based on the Old Testament's instructions to smite the unbelievers? How does that square with Matthew 7:1 or the countless examples in the Bible of people who did not recognise god but who did his work being rewarded anyway? Just curious. Jesus H himself always believed in persuasion. Anyway on the logical strength of Falkirk Hibee's arguments, the Muslims are better than Jews as they actually recognise Jesus as a prophet! :wink:

Is the second coming of christ before or after we win the Scottish Cup? - I always thought that would signal the second coming!? :faf:

Liverpool Hibs, I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a good deal of it re other issues. However to take any sides on this conflict lands you with some unpleasant bedfellows, and you can't divorce yourself from realpolitik by principle in this one.

[Darth Hibbie]

Okay Stueyn,

First I spent a long time in my post putting forward an argument to counter a lot of what other posters had said regarding the realpolitik of the situation, where i agreed with a lot of FH's original points, although personally I fear I can't ever see this ending and regardless of who's right and who's wrong I want that more than anything.

Stueyn you've stayed away from this debate because of the reaction it provokes. Have you read FH's jesus post? How is one supposed to argue with a line of reasoning that basically says that because the Jews don't recognise Jesus, god has inflicted the Palestinians on them? Or that if they recognise Jesus, their enemies will be defeated either before during or after the second coming of christ? I think that belongs in the stone age.

I can't see any sound theological basis for any of the above or indeed any basis for it at all. To use god as a justification for any atrocities or killing just makes me wretch: Why is that any better than hamas? I would love to know, particularly as Hamas use a seriously dodgy interpretation of the Quran to justify the extinction of Israel.

Is the above based on the Old Testament's instructions to smite the unbelievers? How does that square with Matthew 7:1 or the countless examples in the Bible of people who did not recognise god but who did his work being rewarded anyway? Just curious. Jesus H himself always believed in persuasion. Anyway on the logical strength of Falkirk Hibee's arguments, the Muslims are better than Jews as they actually recognise Jesus as a prophet! :wink:

Is the second coming of christ before or after we win the Scottish Cup? - I always thought that would signal the second coming!? :faf:

Liverpool Hibs, I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a good deal of it re other issues. However to take any sides on this conflict lands you with some unpleasant bedfellows, and you can't divorce yourself from realpolitik by principle in this one.

A good post :top marks

I always try to respect other peoples opinion and even like to listen to them. I find religion really interesting, probably because I do not follow any. The problem I have is I jut don't understand how in 2009 people still put absolute faith in what others consider to be stories and that one religion is correct one over all others. :dunno:

Again in terms of this conflict I do not support either side as their is wrong on both sides and it is going to take a massive compromise on both sides to stop the violence but I fear that the extemists on both sides will never let his happen.

Israels treatment of Palestine is totally unacceptable and the UN should step in. The Hamas response to this is also totally unacceptable and two wrongs do not make a right. The Israel retaliation is just excessive in the extreme.

Neither side will get my support. Simple as. The ones who do get my support are the innocents being killed every day. Enough is enough.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Okay Stueyn,

First I spent a long time in my post putting forward an argument to counter a lot of what other posters had said regarding the realpolitik of the situation, where i agreed with a lot of FH's original points, although personally I fear I can't ever see this ending and regardless of who's right and who's wrong I want that more than anything.

Stueyn you've stayed away from this debate because of the reaction it provokes. Have you read FH's jesus post? How is one supposed to argue with a line of reasoning that basically says that because the Jews don't recognise Jesus, god has inflicted the Palestinians on them? Or that if they recognise Jesus, their enemies will be defeated either before during or after the second coming of christ? I think that belongs in the stone age.

I can't see any sound theological basis for any of the above or indeed any basis for it at all. To use god as a justification for any atrocities or killing just makes me wretch: Why is that any better than hamas? I would love to know, particularly as Hamas use a seriously dodgy interpretation of the Quran to justify the extinction of Israel.

Is the above based on the Old Testament's instructions to smite the unbelievers? How does that square with Matthew 7:1 or the countless examples in the Bible of people who did not recognise god but who did his work being rewarded anyway? Just curious. Jesus H himself always believed in persuasion. Anyway on the logical strength of Falkirk Hibee's arguments, the Muslims are better than Jews as they actually recognise Jesus as a prophet! :wink:

Is the second coming of christ before or after we win the Scottish Cup? - I always thought that would signal the second coming!? :faf:

Liverpool Hibs, I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a good deal of it re other issues. However to take any sides on this conflict lands you with some unpleasant bedfellows, and you can't divorce yourself from realpolitik by principle in this one.

No more than it does in pretty much any other conflict in history. I certainly wouldn't have been worried about taking the Allied side in WWII despite it making me a bedfellow of the U.S. (it's genocidal history against American Indians, a de facto and de jure apartheid system etc. etc.), Britain (and it's litany of crimes in it's Imperial - and contemporary - past) and the Soviet Union (led by Stalin nonetheless).

I hate 'enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend' politics. But, again, I have no issue with siding wholeheartedly with the Palestinian people on this one; Hamas are not Palestine, they're not even the Gaza Strip - they're the unfortunate by-product of Israeli occupation and oppression. As I've already said, as much as I hate Hamas I sincerely hope they give the IDF a ****ing hiding in Gaza.

[The Green Goblin]

I find it funny that some people attack you for being "divorced from responsibility" with regard to civilian deaths. As if you fire those guns!! I bet they don't take responsibility for deaths from rockets or suicide bombers! Yet they defend the right of one side to 'resist' ( a euphamism if I ever heard one )

I need to respond to that, because it`s clearly referring to something I wrote. Some people can not see that there`s no difference between one of "our" bombs killing x number of civilians and one of "theirs" doing the same thing.

The language used to describe such incidents (by politicians/media) is what exposes the double standards. Deaths from our bombs are `regrettable`, a `tragedy`, as if it`s somehow no-one`s fault, least of all `ours`. Deaths from `their` bombs are an` outrage`, a `crime against humanity`. What exactly is the difference?

GG

[GC]

I need to respond to that, because it`s clearly referring to something I wrote. Some people can not see that there`s no difference between one of "our" bombs killing x number of civilians and one of "theirs" doing the same thing.

The language used to describe such incidents (by politicians/media) is what exposes the double standards. Deaths from our bombs are `regrettable`, a `tragedy`, as if it`s somehow no-one`s fault, least of all `ours`. Deaths from `their` bombs are an` outrage`, a `crime against humanity`. What exactly is the difference?

GG

No difference. you are completely correct.

However maybe it is because most of these regimes sole aim in life is to destroy the west/Israel that they are treated in such a way politically and in the media.

Just to make it clear I am impartial to this whole situation and others like it as I do not have the knowledge of the situation and I am not nor will I ever be in possesion of the full facts.

[The Green Goblin]

In the case of Afghanistan, of course the innocent people who have lost their lives in that war is terrible. But just like with the situation in Israel, that war only began as a direct result of the most despicable act of terrorism I have ever witnessed-9/11/01. Members of the group responsible-Al Qaeda, were protected and harboured by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and America and their allies were rightly looking to get revenge for what happened on that terrible morning. If 9/11 hadn't occured, the events in Afghanistan wouldn't have happened and innocent Afghans wouldn't have lost their lives.

By that argument, I could say that if the United States hadn`t given the Taliban millions of dollars and massive amounts of weaponry in the 80s to kill Soviet solders and defeat the `Communist threat` then they wouldn`t have gained power and used their CIA training to hijack those planes and 9/11 wouldn`t have happened and innocent Americans wouldn`t have lost their lives.

Or does the blame game only work one way?

GG

[Sir David Gray]

FalkirkHibee, I strayed away from this debate, precisely because I knew what kind of people I was dealing with in parts of this thread; so all credit for you for sticking it out and maintaining decorum in this debate. Some of the other posters on this thread would do well to learn from your example.

1. Some people are anti-war/conflict/guns/bombs etc, and cannot agree on any cause that leads to violence. While these uncompromising principles are noble, they are naive and ultimately weak. They are the "Chamberlains" of the world and if left in charge would have our border's surrounded by our enemies, they just don't realise it.

2. When someone resorts to debating strategies like that, you know that they are unable to articluate their viewpoint in a better way, or that they have no viewpoint and can only insult. Either way, their opinion becomes null and void.

I find it funny that some people attack you for being "divorced from responsibility" with regard to civilian deaths. As if you fire those guns!! I bet they don't take responsibility for deaths from rockets or suicide bombers! Yet they defend the right of one side to 'resist' ( a euphamism if I ever heard one )

I don't agree with a lot of what you have said, but I support your right to do it in civility and applause your patience in dealing with some of our more 'colourful' posters.....

I'm beginning to think you had the right idea.


Okay Stueyn,

First I spent a long time in my post putting forward an argument to counter a lot of what other posters had said regarding the realpolitik of the situation, where i agreed with a lot of FH's original points, although personally I fear I can't ever see this ending and regardless of who's right and who's wrong I want that more than anything.

Stueyn you've stayed away from this debate because of the reaction it provokes. Have you read FH's jesus post? How is one supposed to argue with a line of reasoning that basically says that because the Jews don't recognise Jesus, god has inflicted the Palestinians on them? Or that if they recognise Jesus, their enemies will be defeated either before during or after the second coming of christ? I think that belongs in the stone age.

I can't see any sound theological basis for any of the above or indeed any basis for it at all. To use god as a justification for any atrocities or killing just makes me wretch: Why is that any better than hamas? I would love to know, particularly as Hamas use a seriously dodgy interpretation of the Quran to justify the extinction of Israel.

Is the above based on the Old Testament's instructions to smite the unbelievers? How does that square with Matthew 7:1 or the countless examples in the Bible of people who did not recognise god but who did his work being rewarded anyway? Just curious. Jesus H himself always believed in persuasion. Anyway on the logical strength of Falkirk Hibee's arguments, the Muslims are better than Jews as they actually recognise Jesus as a prophet! :wink:

Is the second coming of christ before or after we win the Scottish Cup? - I always thought that would signal the second coming!? :faf:

Liverpool Hibs, I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a good deal of it re other issues. However to take any sides on this conflict lands you with some unpleasant bedfellows, and you can't divorce yourself from realpolitik by principle in this one.

So you are capable of making a proper argument to counter someone's opinions after all, instead of simply telling them to "**** off back to the stone age" and calling them a "religious fundamentalist nutjob"?

I thought it was best to give my full and honest beliefs and views on this whole situation, from both a political perspective and a religious one. It was something that I knew, beforehand, would differ from all other opinions on this thread, and I knew a lot of people would strongly disagree with me.

But perhaps I overestimated how tolerant people are of certain viewpoints and maybe I was naive to think that I wouldn't be mocked, abused and treated like an insane lunatic by certain people on this thread for doing nothing more than speaking my mind.

I will always continue to be completely honest in the way I comment on current affairs as I believe that honesty is the best policy when trying to have a full and frank discussion on such a hotly debated topic.

However, next time I comment on such an issue, i'll be much better prepared for the backlash.


By that argument, I could say that if the United States hadn`t given the Taliban millions of dollars and massive amounts of weaponry in the 80s to kill Soviet solders and defeat the `Communist threat` then they wouldn`t have gained power and used their CIA training to hijack those planes and 9/11 wouldn`t have happened and innocent Americans wouldn`t have lost their lives.

Or does the blame game only work one way?

GG

As far as i'm aware, Afghanistan wasn't attacked by America because anyone thought the Taliban had taken any direct part in the 9/11 attacks. It was attacked because the Taliban protected Al Qaeda militants (the group who did plan and carry out the attacks) and created a safe haven for them in Afghanistan.

[hibsbollah]

Falkirk, i dont think you've been that harshly treated on this thread, and it looks to me that you've taken refuge in self-pity that no-one agrees with you. I'm not surprised that folk get exasperated when you continue to defend the indefensible; this mornings news about Gazan children being burned alive by phosphorus bombs makes me realise more than ever that Israel just doesnt value Palestinian life. Perhaps the most evil regime since apartheid South Africa.

[The Green Goblin]

As far as i'm aware, Afghanistan wasn't attacked by America because anyone thought the Taliban had taken any direct part in the 9/11 attacks. It was attacked because the Taliban protected Al Qaeda militants (the group who did plan and carry out the attacks) and created a safe haven for them in Afghanistan.


Ducking the issue being discussed here...., which is that you offer a justification for the thousands of civilian deaths the U.S bombs caused whilst simultaneously condemning the same number of civilian deaths on 9/11. My point is that it`s never justified, whether from hijacked planes or laser-guided bombs.

You seem to be able to accept one of these situations because of morally mitigating circumstances, as you do with the current Israeli campaign. I see them both, indeed any such incidents, as extremely ugly examples of mass murder.

GG

[The Green Goblin]

From this morning`s Independent, with emphasis on the last paragraph, which almost word for word restates the point I have been making on this thread. FalkirkHibee, perhaps you`ll actually look at this one. I`m still waiting for your response to the video documentary I linked to.

Gaza: The death and life of my father

For Fares Akram, The Independent's reporter in Gaza, the Israeli invasion became a personal tragedy when he discovered his father was one of the first casualties of the ground war

By Fares Akram in Gaza

Monday, 5 January 2009

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-the-death-and-life-of-my-father-1225793.html


The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time. It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof. Nestled in a flat fertile agricultural plain north-west of Beit Lahiya, it had lemon groves, orange and apricot trees and we had recently acquired 60 dairy cows.

It was the closest farm to the northern border with Israel. Ironically, we always thought the biggest danger there was not from Israeli troops, who usually went straight past if they were mounting an incursion, but from stray Hamas rockets aimed at the Israeli towns north of us.

But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48. Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness. It was one of those F16 airstrikes that killed my father.

The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either. "Just a pile of flesh," my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty.

Like most Gazans, my mother, my sisters and my wife – who is nine months' pregnant – and I have spent the past week of the Israeli onslaught trapped inside our flat in the city. But my father had decided to stay up at the farm; he knew it would be impossible to get back to tend the livestock if the expected troop invasion began. But he called us every day.

The last time I saw him was on Thursday when he brought cash and a bag of flour. We talked about the imminent birth of my first child and how we would get my wife, Alaa, to hospital amid the bombing and chaos. Of course, on Saturday evening there was no hope of getting an ambulance up to the farm because the roads were cut off by the Israelis. So my uncle and brother drove the 8km and the rest of us sat, in shock, shivering in the dark apartment, bed covers over us to keep warm, the sound of non-stop tank shelling around us. Deep down we all knew Dad was dead. He would have been in or near the house, and if an F16 strikes directly at your house you know what it means.

They arrived to find a smoking pile of rubble. Most of the cows lay dead; others had run off injured. Mahmoud, a teenage relative, was with my father when the Israeli bomb smashed into the house. The force of the airstrike threw him 300 metres. They found Mahmoud's body in a neighbour's field.

We buried my father and Mahmoud yesterday morning in a very quick funeral, knowing Israeli tanks were just 3km away, on the outskirts of the city. We could hear the rattle of the machine-gun fire accompanying the tanks. The Israelis may say there were militants in the area of our farm, but I'll never believe it. The most advanced point for rocket-launchers is 6km south. Up at the border, it is just open farmland with nowhere to hide.

My father, Akrem al-Ghoul, was no militant. Born in Gaza and educated in Egypt, he was a lawyer and a judge who worked for the Palestinian Authority. After Hamas took over, he quit and turned to agriculture. Dad's father, Fares, who had been driven out of his home in what is now Israeli Ashkelon in 1948, had bought the land in the 1960s.

During the second intifada and until the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the farm was taken over by Israeli settlers, but after 2005 we went there every holiday. In Gaza, the only escape is the beach or, if you are lucky enough, the farmland. My father hated what Hamas was doing to Gaza's legal system, introducing Islamist justice, and he completely opposed violence. He would have worked hard for a just settlement with Israel and a better future for Palestinians. When the PA gained control over the West Bank, he moved to Ramallah to help establish the courts there.

My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza. What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket? I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father.

[Darth Hibbie]

From this morning`s Independent, with emphasis on the last paragraph, which almost word for word restates the point I have been making on this thread. FalkirkHibee, perhaps you`ll actually look at this one. I`m still waiting for your response to the video documentary I linked to.

Gaza: The death and life of my father

For Fares Akram, The Independent's reporter in Gaza, the Israeli invasion became a personal tragedy when he discovered his father was one of the first casualties of the ground war

By Fares Akram in Gaza

Monday, 5 January 2009

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-the-death-and-life-of-my-father-1225793.html


The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time. It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof. Nestled in a flat fertile agricultural plain north-west of Beit Lahiya, it had lemon groves, orange and apricot trees and we had recently acquired 60 dairy cows.

It was the closest farm to the northern border with Israel. Ironically, we always thought the biggest danger there was not from Israeli troops, who usually went straight past if they were mounting an incursion, but from stray Hamas rockets aimed at the Israeli towns north of us.

But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48. Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness. It was one of those F16 airstrikes that killed my father.

The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either. "Just a pile of flesh," my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty.

Like most Gazans, my mother, my sisters and my wife – who is nine months' pregnant – and I have spent the past week of the Israeli onslaught trapped inside our flat in the city. But my father had decided to stay up at the farm; he knew it would be impossible to get back to tend the livestock if the expected troop invasion began. But he called us every day.

The last time I saw him was on Thursday when he brought cash and a bag of flour. We talked about the imminent birth of my first child and how we would get my wife, Alaa, to hospital amid the bombing and chaos. Of course, on Saturday evening there was no hope of getting an ambulance up to the farm because the roads were cut off by the Israelis. So my uncle and brother drove the 8km and the rest of us sat, in shock, shivering in the dark apartment, bed covers over us to keep warm, the sound of non-stop tank shelling around us. Deep down we all knew Dad was dead. He would have been in or near the house, and if an F16 strikes directly at your house you know what it means.

They arrived to find a smoking pile of rubble. Most of the cows lay dead; others had run off injured. Mahmoud, a teenage relative, was with my father when the Israeli bomb smashed into the house. The force of the airstrike threw him 300 metres. They found Mahmoud's body in a neighbour's field.

We buried my father and Mahmoud yesterday morning in a very quick funeral, knowing Israeli tanks were just 3km away, on the outskirts of the city. We could hear the rattle of the machine-gun fire accompanying the tanks. The Israelis may say there were militants in the area of our farm, but I'll never believe it. The most advanced point for rocket-launchers is 6km south. Up at the border, it is just open farmland with nowhere to hide.

My father, Akrem al-Ghoul, was no militant. Born in Gaza and educated in Egypt, he was a lawyer and a judge who worked for the Palestinian Authority. After Hamas took over, he quit and turned to agriculture. Dad's father, Fares, who had been driven out of his home in what is now Israeli Ashkelon in 1948, had bought the land in the 1960s.

During the second intifada and until the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the farm was taken over by Israeli settlers, but after 2005 we went there every holiday. In Gaza, the only escape is the beach or, if you are lucky enough, the farmland. My father hated what Hamas was doing to Gaza's legal system, introducing Islamist justice, and he completely opposed violence. He would have worked hard for a just settlement with Israel and a better future for Palestinians. When the PA gained control over the West Bank, he moved to Ramallah to help establish the courts there.

My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza. What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket? I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father.

Rather than go round the innocent civillians we will just go through them :bitchy:

Why do the UN not send peacekeepers in maybe they can save some lives.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Rather than go round the innocent civillians we will just go through them :bitchy:

Why do the UN not send peacekeepers in maybe they can save some lives.

Lots of reasons, but primarily because the U.S. sits on the Security Council - which requires all members to vote for a resolution before it can be passed.

[Tazio]

as anything been made of the fact that the IDF won't allow independent press into Gaza? I believe there is an international law stating that there must be press coverage of any military operation. Until yesterday anyway the Israelis were denying this opportunity to the press.

[Loobrush]

Wasn't it FalkirkHibee that said he believed it was Israel's god-given right to be on that land. This was in a past thread, some time ago, so I may have the wrong person, but think it was him. Personally I don't see the point in arguing with someone who believes that. Waste of breath. :yawn:

[richard_pitts]

Wasn't it FalkirkHibee that said he believed it was Israel's god-given right to be on that land. This was in a past thread, some time ago, so I may have the wrong person, but think it was him. Personally I don't see the point in arguing with someone who believes that. Waste of breath. :yawn:

Quite. It's even better than that: the current situation is basically a curse because they don't recognise Jesus H as their saviour :blah:

If you are going to argue god-given right to justify or explain the situation in Israel / Palestine don't expect tolerance when you aren't prepared to tolerate others.

Falkirk, I notice you haven't answered any of the theological points I raised. Would you care to? Or am I about to be smited from on high as an unbeliever? :duck::hide:

[The Green Goblin]

Quite. It's even better than that: the current situation is basically a curse because they don't recognise Jesus H as their saviour :blah:

If you are going to argue god-given right to justify or explain the situation in Israel / Palestine don't expect tolerance when you aren't prepared to tolerate others.

Falkirk, I notice you haven't answered any of the theological points I raised. Would you care to? Or am I about to be smited from on high as an unbeliever? :duck::hide:


I also asked questions of this point in an earlier post.

Just wanted to acknowledge your point about corruption in the fractured/divided Palestinian leadership. I agree with what you wrote and it`s a disgrace. It`s also what their opponents want to see continuing though. As long as there is an absence of a credible and accountable figurehead to represent the Palestinian people, things will not change.

GG

[The Green Goblin]

as anything been made of the fact that the IDF won't allow independent press into Gaza? I believe there is an international law stating that there must be press coverage of any military operation. Until yesterday anyway the Israelis were denying this opportunity to the press.

Yes, Robert Fisk in today`s Independent. Take a look:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-keeping-out-the-cameras-and-reporters-simply-doesnt-work-1225800.html

GG

[Betty Boop]

Falkirk, i dont think you've been that harshly treated on this thread, and it looks to me that you've taken refuge in self-pity that no-one agrees with you. I'm not surprised that folk get exasperated when you continue to defend the indefensible; this mornings news about Gazan children being burned alive by phosphorus bombs makes me realise more than ever that Israel just doesnt value Palestinian life. Perhaps the most evil regime since apartheid South Africa.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5447590.ece

[Dashing Bob S]

Funny how all the total nutjobs throughout history have always had that get out clause: we have God on our side, or we are the chosen ones.

They are twisted freaks using man-made rather than god-given scriptures to pursue their own demented ends.

[Sir David Gray]

Falkirk, i dont think you've been that harshly treated on this thread, and it looks to me that you've taken refuge in self-pity that no-one agrees with you. I'm not surprised that folk get exasperated when you continue to defend the indefensible; this mornings news about Gazan children being burned alive by phosphorus bombs makes me realise more than ever that Israel just doesnt value Palestinian life. Perhaps the most evil regime since apartheid South Africa.

Self pity?

All I've done is complain about some of the personal insults that have come my way because i've dared to give my opinions. Last time I checked, such insults were illegal on here, and if I really wanted to stir things, I could have alerted an admin to those posts and the people responsible would have been disciplined in some way. However I happen to be above that kind of infantile behaviour.

I have no self pity at all about people disagreeing with me, I think I've already said that I don't have any issues whatsoever about someone having differing beliefs and opinions to myself. I actually really enjoy debates but I can't be bothered when it degenerates and the childish name calling starts. I give other people the respect their views deserve, all I ask is that the same courtesy is afforded to my views, in return.

It's the sheer intolerance that has been shown towards me, by one or two people, that has annoyed me, nothing else.

[DaveF]

Self pity?

All I've done is complain about some of the personal insults that have come my way because i've dared to give my opinions. Last time I checked, such insults were illegal on here, and if I really wanted to stir things, I could have alerted an admin to those posts and the people responsible would have been disciplined in some way. However I happen to be above that kind of infantile behaviour.

I have no self pity at all about people disagreeing with me, I think I've already said that I don't have any issues whatsoever about someone having differing beliefs and opinions to myself. I actually really enjoy debates but I can't be bothered when it degenerates and the childish name calling starts. I give other people the respect their views deserve, all I ask is that the same courtesy is afforded to my views, in return.

It's the sheer intolerance that has been shown towards me, by one or two people, that has annoyed me, nothing else.

Spot on FH.

I have no time for your views but I'd like to think that each person will get the respect of others in, what is, an extremely emotive discussion.

[hibsbollah]

Self pity?

All I've done is complain about some of the personal insults that have come my way because i've dared to give my opinions. Last time I checked, such insults were illegal on here, and if I really wanted to stir things, I could have alerted an admin to those posts and the people responsible would have been disciplined in some way. However I happen to be above that kind of infantile behaviour.

I have no self pity at all about people disagreeing with me, I think I've already said that I don't have any issues whatsoever about someone having differing beliefs and opinions to myself. I actually really enjoy debates but I can't be bothered when it degenerates and the childish name calling starts. I give other people the respect their views deserve, all I ask is that the same courtesy is afforded to my views, in return.

It's the sheer intolerance that has been shown towards me, by one or two people, that has annoyed me, nothing else.

Do you want to have a shot at answering Green Goblins excellent post?

[Betty Boop]

The Israelis hit a new low bombing a UN school killing 30 including women and children. The school was sheltering Palestinians fleeing from the violence. and the Israelis were given the coordinates for the School from the UN. The UN have demanded an "independent" investigation.:bitchy:

[The Green Goblin]

The Israelis hit a new low bombing a UN school killing 30 including women and children. The school was sheltering Palestinians fleeing from the violence. and the Israelis were given the coordinates for the School from the UN. The UN have demanded an "independent" investigation.:bitchy:

'40 killed at UN school' in Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters

Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Smoke rises over Gaza city. Israeli tank shells reportedly killed at least 40 Palestinians today at a UN school where civilians had taken shelter

Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians today at a UN school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international calls for a halt to Israel's Gaza offensive. An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was looking into information on the incident at al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp.

People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood on the street. Witnesses said two Israeli tanks shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 40 civilians - Palestinians who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings. In a separate attack earlier in the day, three Palestinians were killed in an airstrike on another school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The deaths raised to 75 the number of Palestinian civilians killed on Tuesday alone, according to medical officials. They said four militants also were killed in fighting during the day and put the total Palestinian death toll since Israel began the offensive on 19 December at 629.

More than 2,700 Palestinians have been wounded since Israel began the campaign with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks on its southern towns. Nine Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed in the conflict.

[Betty Boop]

'40 killed at UN school' in Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters

Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Smoke rises over Gaza city. Israeli tank shells reportedly killed at least 40 Palestinians today at a UN school where civilians had taken shelter

Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians today at a UN school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international calls for a halt to Israel's Gaza offensive. An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was looking into information on the incident at al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp.

People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood on the street. Witnesses said two Israeli tanks shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 40 civilians - Palestinians who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings. In a separate attack earlier in the day, three Palestinians were killed in an airstrike on another school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The deaths raised to 75 the number of Palestinian civilians killed on Tuesday alone, according to medical officials. They said four militants also were killed in fighting during the day and put the total Palestinian death toll since Israel began the offensive on 19 December at 629.

More than 2,700 Palestinians have been wounded since Israel began the campaign with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks on its southern towns. Nine Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed in the conflict.The third school to be hit in two days, what is the chance of an independent investigation as requested by the UN? Slim to none I reckon.:grr:

[The Green Goblin]

I think as Spamheid says, it has been an emotive debate and everyone has taken some time to sit down and has aired their views fully, whatever those views may be.

In every debate, the time always comes when you have to take a little step back and ask if there`s anything more to be said, or anything further to be learned from continuing the debate and maybe that time has arrived here on this thread. I don`t know.

As tempted as I am to comment further on the stories I posted above, I am also asking myself if there`s any point in it. We know where everyone stands on the issues raised and where we agree and disagree.

I know I have more or less posted most of what I wanted to say and I think several other people may feel they have done likewise. If anything significant happens, is posted or written, I`ll post my thoughts, otherwise, I`ll be leaving it for a while.

GG

[BroxburnHibee]

I think as Spamheid says, it has been an emotive debate and everyone has taken some time to sit down and has aired their views fully, whatever those views may be.

In every debate, the time always comes when you have to take a little step back and ask if there`s anything more to be said, or anything further to be learned from continuing the debate and maybe that time has arrived here on this thread. I don`t know.

As tempted as I am to comment further on the stories I posted above, I am also asking myself if there`s any point in it. We know where everyone stands on the issues raised and where we agree and disagree.

I know I have more or less posted most of what I wanted to say and I think several other people may feel they have done likewise. If anything significant happens, is posted or written, I`ll post my thoughts, otherwise, I`ll be leaving it for a while.

GG

:top marks

I have read this thread from time to time and I would like to applaud all of you who have contributed.

The discussion has been well conducted (for the most part) and other people's viewpoints have been respected.

I agree with GG about how far can you keep discussing the same subject, personally I feel it is going to take something catastrophic ie.nuclear for the International community to actually do something about this by which time of course it will be too late.

Well done for this discussion anyway.

[Sir David Gray]

Do you want to have a shot at answering Green Goblins excellent post?

If it's the "There`s some pretty chilling stuff being posted on this thread..." post, I've already replied to the vast majority of that post.

One thing I do agree with The Green Goblin about is that there is only so much that you can say on a particular issue before you start going round in circles and debating the same things.

My opinions are never going to change no matter what people from the other side say and i'm sure your opinions aren't going to change, no matter what I say.

Apart from the one or two comments I have already referred to, we have all presented our arguments in an adult manner, which I am very pleased about as it shows that most people are able to hold a civilised debate, despite holding very different views.

I will end by saying that, although I have grave doubts that it will happen, I hope a solution can be found in the near future that will ensure the rocket attacks stop, which will, in turn, allow the cessation of Israeli military action in Gaza. Which will mean the innocent people on both sides can live in peace.

Despite what some people may think, after reading my posts on this thread, I want more than anything for there to be peace in the Middle East. I do not enjoy reading about ANY innocent people dying. It's just that my "pathway to peace" differs somewhat to other people's views.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Forgive me if I do continue this. I think it's important that it's kept in the general consciousness.

A fantastic article from Avi Shlaim in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions


The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza) is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

[LiverpoolHibs]

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

[Betty Boop]

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.The British Government had to negotiate with the "terrorist organisation" Sinn Feinn in order to achieve peace in Northern Ireland. How many UN resolutions has Israel ignored without censure?

[hibsbollah]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/08/gaza-israel-red-cross-children

Israel now attacking the Red Cross, ignoring orphaned children 80metres away from checkpoints... it just gets worse...



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,477745,00.html
Alternatively, if you only watch FoxNews, you would never know it had happened

[Betty Boop]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/08/gaza-israel-red-cross-children

Israel now attacking the Red Cross, ignoring orphaned children 80metres away from checkpoints... it just gets worse...


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,477745,00.html
Alternatively, if you only watch FoxNews, you would never know it had happened The Israelis breaking humanitarian law! :bitchy: Meanwhile the UN have passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, all member countries voted in favour apart from the US, who abstained. What a surprise! :rolleyes:

[LiverpoolHibs]

Freddy Kanoute shows his solidarity with the Palestinian people...

http://english.aljazeera.net/sport/2009/01/200918152344764876.html

Kanoute facing Palestine shirt fine Sevilla striker Frederic Kanoute is facing a fine from the Spanish football federation for revealing a T-shirt expressing support for Palestine during a match. Kanoute lifted his Sevilla shirt over his head after scoring in the team's 2-1 Copa del Rey win over Deportivo La Coruna on Wednesday to display a black T-shirt on which the word "Palestine'' was printed in several languages.
The federation's Competition Committee is expected to study the incident on Friday.
Yellow card
Kanoute, who was born in France but plays internationally for Mali, is a practicing Muslim.
Kanoute's action, which has been interpreted as a response to Israel's recent attacks on Gaza that have killed nearly 700 people, was met with a yellow card from referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz.
Lahoz said in his post-match report that he had cautioned Kanoute for raising his shirt over his head in accordance with federation rules, while also noting the message of the striker's T-shirt.
Raphael Schultz, Israel's ambassador in Madrid, told Spain's Radio Marca on Thursday that Kanoute's gesture "had gone beyond his profession and Fifa rules to this respect.''
"I saw the match and the T-shirt bore nothing more than the name of Palestine.
"It was not an incitement against Israel.
"I don't think it extolled violence," Schultz said.
Public support
Meanwhile, Palestine embassy official Mahmoud Aluanen told the same station that Kanoute "has shown himself to be a very brave person to support our people at a public event."
"Sportsmen are human beings and cannot contain their feelings.
"They have all the right in the world to express their opinion about matters which contravene human rights.
"I'm sure that all Palestinian children, those who love football, will be happy about this gesture," Aluanen added.
The incident came a day before Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas paid a
visit to Madrid for talks with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and King Juan Carlos.

[hibsbollah]

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=551

Send a message to the UK Foreign Secretary via this Amnesty link.

[LiverpoolHibs]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7819492.stm

Israeli forces shelled a house in the Gaza Strip which they had moved around 110 Palestinians into 24 hours earlier, the UN quotes witnesses as saying.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called it "one of the gravest incidents" since the beginning of the offensive.
The shelling at Zeitoun, a south-east suburb of Gaza City, on 5 January killed some 30 people, the report said.
Israel said the allegations were being investigated.
"According to several testimonies, on 4 January Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitoun (half of whom were children) warning them to stay indoors," the OCHA report said.
"Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30."
The UN said those who survived and were able walked 2km to the main north-south road to be transported to hospital in civilian vehicles.
"Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old, died upon arrival at the hospital," the report said.
'No safe haven'
Allegra Pacheco, of OCHA in Jerusalem, said they were not accusing the Israelis of a deliberate act, but said the incident needed to be investigated.
She also said they were concerned at claims by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that ambulances were only allowed access to the neighbourhood on Thursday - four days after the alleged incident.
The ICRC on Thursday accused Israel of failing to fulfil its duty to help wounded civilians in Gaza.
"In Gaza, there is a severe protection of civilians crisis. There is no safe haven, no safe space, for all the civilians, particularly children," Ms Pacheco told the BBC.
"Since the ground operation, the number of children killed has risen by 250%."
An estimated 770 Palestinians and 14 Israelis have died in nearly two weeks of Israel's air and ground offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The UN Security Council has called for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

[--------]

I haven't read the whole thread, so if someone's raised this already, I apologise....

BUT - can anyone tell me what difference there is in principle between the present Palestinian confinement in the Gaza strip and what happened in the ghettoes in Cracow and Lodz and Warsaw and Theresienstadt in the 1940's?

Because what I'm seeing is ghetto-imprisonment preparatory to full ethnic cleansing. Eichmann would be impressed. :cool2:

[Loobrush]

http://www.arbeiterfotografie.com/iran/iran/palaestina-wird-von-der-landkarte-getilgt.jpg

[Ryan91]

I realise what i am saying may be a little off topic, but i feel that the Jewish state of Israel has every right to defend itself from terror attacks by organisations like Hamas, especially considering that the state is surrounded by people who would hapilly see them destroyed. Now i realise that the amount of force that Israel is using against Hamas is disproportionate, but when Hamas are being resupplied with Rockets and other arms by countries like Iran, the Israelis hit Hamas hard in an attempt to stop the group from re-arming and causing any more trouble to the population of Israel's southern towns and cities.

[JimBHibees]

I haven't read the whole thread, so if someone's raised this already, I apologise....

BUT - can anyone tell me what difference there is in principle between the present Palestinian confinement in the Gaza strip and what happened in the ghettoes in Cracow and Lodz and Warsaw and Theresienstadt in the 1940's?

Because what I'm seeing is ghetto-imprisonment preparatory to full ethnic cleansing. Eichmann would be impressed. :cool2:

The ultimate irony.

They are war crimes pure and simple, a disgrace countries like our own and other western nations are so afraid to call it as it is. Shameful.

[--------]

I realise what i am saying may be a little off topic, but i feel that the Jewish state of Israel has every right to defend itself from terror attacks by organisations like Hamas, especially considering that the state is surrounded by people who would hapilly see them destroyed. Now i realise that the amount of force that Israel is using against Hamas is disproportionate, but when Hamas are being resupplied with Rockets and other arms by countries like Iran, the Israelis hit Hamas hard in an attempt to stop the group from re-arming and causing any more trouble to the population of Israel's southern towns and cities.



Might I recommend to you a book called "Whose Promised Land?" by Colin Chapman? I deals with the religious, political and historical argunents surrounding the takeover of Palestine by the Zionists between the World Wars and afterwards.

The land wasn't unpopulated when the Zionists arrived - they did to the Palestinian Arabs (Muslim and Christian, btw) what the Nazis had done to them. And they're still doing it.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I realise what i am saying may be a little off topic, but i feel that the Jewish state of Israel has every right to defend itself from terror attacks by organisations like Hamas, especially considering that the state is surrounded by people who would hapilly see them destroyed. Now i realise that the amount of force that Israel is using against Hamas is disproportionate, but when Hamas are being resupplied with Rockets and other arms by countries like Iran, the Israelis hit Hamas hard in an attempt to stop the group from re-arming and causing any more trouble to the population of Israel's southern towns and cities.

This is the constant argument. And it's one that wholeheartedly accepts the Israeli campaign of disinformation, that somehow the Hamas rocket attacks came out of the blue - that they broke the ceasefire. Which is patently untrue. Israel broke the ceasefire, but of course that wasnt particularly widely documented.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

[--------]

I realise what i am saying may be a little off topic, but i feel that the Jewish state of Israel has every right to defend itself from terror attacks by organisations like Hamas, especially considering that the state is surrounded by people who would hapilly see them destroyed. Now i realise that the amount of force that Israel is using against Hamas is disproportionate, but when Hamas are being resupplied with Rockets and other arms by countries like Iran, the Israelis hit Hamas hard in an attempt to stop the group from re-arming and causing any more trouble to the population of Israel's southern towns and cities.


Quote from The Guardian: "This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with 'an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders'. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so."

Who supplies Israel with the technology of war? The WMDs? Who supports Israel in ignoring and flouting any number of UN resolutions? Who provides the propaganda support for Israel's military aggression against its neighbours?

Answers on a postcard to:

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
United States of America

[LiverpoolHibs]

A bit short notice, but just in case anyone can make it.

Scotland-wide Demonstration

Edinburgh Saturday 10 January 2009

Assemble 12:30pm E. Market Street (behind Edinburgh Waverley Train Station)

Route: East Market Street - US Consulate - Princes Street - King Stables Road - Ross Bandstand, Princes Street Gardens for a rally

Supported by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Pauline McNeil MSP, Sandra White MSP, Muslim Association of Britain, Stop the War, Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Lebanese Community Scotland, Scottish Afghan Society, Scottish Islamic Foundation, Scottish Friends of Palestine, and others to be confirmed.

GLASGOW:

Trains: Meet inside Queen St. Station 11am for £5 return tickets (4 travel for price of 2) to Edinburgh

Bring placards, banners, loudhailers to start the protest inside Queen St Station

(March assembly point is beside Waverley station, Edinburgh) Coaches: Stop the War buses are available departing George Square 10:30am.

0791 2348 366 or [email protected]

[Betty Boop]

A bit short notice, but just in case anyone can make it.

Scotland-wide Demonstration

Edinburgh Saturday 10 January 2009

Assemble 12:30pm E. Market Street (behind Edinburgh Waverley Train Station)

Route: East Market Street - US Consulate - Princes Street - King Stables Road - Ross Bandstand, Princes Street Gardens for a rally

Supported by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Pauline McNeil MSP, Sandra White MSP, Muslim Association of Britain, Stop the War, Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Lebanese Community Scotland, Scottish Afghan Society, Scottish Islamic Foundation, Scottish Friends of Palestine, and others to be confirmed.

GLASGOW:

Trains: Meet inside Queen St. Station 11am for £5 return tickets (4 travel for price of 2) to Edinburgh

Bring placards, banners, loudhailers to start the protest inside Queen St Station

(March assembly point is beside Waverley station, Edinburgh) Coaches: Stop the War buses are available departing George Square 10:30am.

0791 2348 366 or [email protected]
I'll be there with an extra pair of shoes! :wink:

[Nakedmanoncrack]

A bit short notice, but just in case anyone can make it.

Scotland-wide Demonstration

Edinburgh Saturday 10 January 2009

Assemble 12:30pm E. Market Street (behind Edinburgh Waverley Train Station)

Route: East Market Street - US Consulate - Princes Street - King Stables Road - Ross Bandstand, Princes Street Gardens for a rally

Supported by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Pauline McNeil MSP, Sandra White MSP, Muslim Association of Britain, Stop the War, Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Lebanese Community Scotland, Scottish Afghan Society, Scottish Islamic Foundation, Scottish Friends of Palestine, and others to be confirmed.

GLASGOW:

Trains: Meet inside Queen St. Station 11am for £5 return tickets (4 travel for price of 2) to Edinburgh

Bring placards, banners, loudhailers to start the protest inside Queen St Station

(March assembly point is beside Waverley station, Edinburgh) Coaches: Stop the War buses are available departing George Square 10:30am.

0791 2348 366 or [email protected]


Will be there.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I'll be there with an extra pair of shoes! :wink:


Will be there.

:aok:

[LiverpoolHibs]

Not quite as high profile as Freddy Kanoute, but take a bow Cliftonville's Barry Johnstone...

http://www.presseye.com/photolibrary/image_display.asp?cid=3486&im=79674

[Betty Boop]

Not quite as high profile as Freddy Kanoute, but take a bow Cliftonville's Barry Johnstone...

http://www.presseye.com/photolibrary/image_display.asp?cid=3486&im=79674 :agree: Kettering Town also showing support for Palestine. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jan/02/kettering-town-palestine

[LiverpoolHibs]

:agree: Kettering Town also showing support for Palestine. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jan/02/kettering-town-palestine

Yep, seen that.

Great gesture. :agree:

[Dashing Bob S]

What about a statement from a certain football club in Edinburgh who were founded by a bellegered minority community?



(And I don't mean HMFC and Lithuanians.)

[Betty Boop]

United Nations Headquarters in Gaza has been shelled by the Israelis. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/un-headquarters-struck-by-israeli-shells-1367067.html

[Killiehibbie]

What about a statement from a certain football club in Edinburgh who were founded by a bellegered minority community?



(And I don't mean HMFC and Lithuanians.)

Why should football teams get involved in this? Look what happened in the Balkans.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Anyone watching Question Time? Numerous mentions of the breaking of the ceasefire and not one person (including Baroness Tonge, who was one of the few who came across well) questioned that Hamas broke the ceasefire. ****ing enraging.

As for Stephen Pollard, I can only hope bad things befall him. The prick.

[--------]

Anyone watching Question Time? Numerous mentions of the breaking of the ceasefire and not one person (including Baroness Tonge, who was one of the few who came across well) questioned that Hamas broke the ceasefire. ****ing enraging.

As for Stephen Pollard, I can only hope bad things befall him. The prick.


You can't imagine the Israelis would have acted without provocation, can you? :cool2:

(There's no cynical tongue-in-cheek smilie, ed.)

Going by his brief entry in Wiki, Pollard sounds like an nasty wee Anglo-Neo-Con.

"Stephen Pollard is a British author and journalist, currently President of a free-market Brussels-based think tank, the Centre for the New Europe and Chairman of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. He writes columns for several publications including The Times and the Daily Mail and maintains a lively Spectatorblog. He is an alumnus of John Lyon School and Mansfield College, Oxford.

Pollard is an advocate of market-based based public service reforms. He is also a frequent commentator on Israel, and a critic of Jihadist movement among Muslims. He is a biographer of David Blunkett.

Formerly a journalist and leader-writer on the Daily Express, he left that paper in 2001 soon after it was taken over by Richard Desmond, a publisher of pornographic magazines, who began implementing radical cutbacks. His last leader for the paper, on the problems of the British farming industry, turned out to contain the words "**** you Desmond" spelt out with the first letter of each sentence. Sadly modern morals hadn't collapsed quite as far as he believed and the job he had lined up at The Times was withdrawn as they considered this to be unacceptable and insulting.

The fact of his having written for the Fabian Review in 1993 ("More Southern Discomfort"), discussing ways by which the Labour Party could reform itself enough to gain power, suggests that his career has seen a fair degree of political movement from Left to Right. He was one of the signatory founders 2005 of the Henry Jackson Society which advocates a proactive approach to the spread of liberal democracy across the world. By 2006 he held the view that in the 'battle to save western civilisation' the 'the Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy.' "

[Betty Boop]

Anyone watching Question Time? Numerous mentions of the breaking of the ceasefire and not one person (including Baroness Tonge, who was one of the few who came across well) questioned that Hamas broke the ceasefire. ****ing enraging.

As for Stephen Pollard, I can only hope bad things befall him. The prick. Jenny Tongue came across well, despite the baracking from the audience, who were like a baying mob. Stephen Pollard --what a drama queen, "Hamas wants to kill me"! :bye:

[--------]

Jenny Tongue came across well, despite the baracking from the audience, who were like a baying mob. Stephen Pollard --what a drama queen, "Hamas wants to kill me"! :bye:


I'd find it hard to blame them if they do.... :cool2:

[Betty Boop]

Israeli troops are committing War Crimes, when will they be held to account? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7828536.stm

[--------]

Israeli troops are committing War Crimes, when will they be held to account? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7828536.stm


Not ever, I'd guess.

Israel ignores all UN resolutions except the ones in its own favour, so they're hardly going to give any attention to the World Court.

This is ethnic cleansing - what the Nazis did in Warsaw and Cracow and Lodz.

[Betty Boop]

Not ever, I'd guess.

Israel ignores all UN resolutions except the ones in its own favour, so they're hardly going to give any attention to the World Court.
This is ethnic cleansing - what the Nazis did in Warsaw and Cracow and Lodz.
You are right Doddie, this article states that the US and Israel are not signed up to the ICC, what a surprise! :bitchy: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21763.htm

[--------]

You are right Doddie, this article states that the US and Israel are not signed up to the ICC, what a surprise! :bitchy: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21763.htm



It's perfectly possible that British soldiers could be charged with war crimes in front of the ICC, while their Coalition allies from over the pond get off scot-free.

They could arraign Blair (oh please!) but not his buddy Bush.

Like I say - what's happening in Gaza right now is identical to what went on in the ghettos in Poland under the Third Reich.

It's no coincidence it's happening during the last days of Bush's presidency, during the handover to Obama.

Though I don't expect any change in US policy under Obama. :cool2:

[Sir David Gray]

It's perfectly possible that British soldiers could be charged with war crimes in front of the ICC, while their Coalition allies from over the pond get off scot-free.

They could arraign Blair (oh please!) but not his buddy Bush.

Like I say - what's happening in Gaza right now is identical to what went on in the ghettos in Poland under the Third Reich.

It's no coincidence it's happening during the last days of Bush's presidency, during the handover to Obama.

Though I don't expect any change in US policy under Obama. :cool2:

It won't happen right away, it might not even happen in his first term, but I strongly suspect that Obama will eventually have a different outlook on US-Israel relations than George Bush or any of his other predecessors.

I obviously don't have any proof, I guess it's just a case of "watch this space".

[Gerard]

It won't happen right away, it might not even happen in his first term, but I strongly suspect that Obama will eventually have a different outlook on US-Israel relations than George Bush or any of his other predecessors.

I obviously don't have any proof, I guess it's just a case of "watch this space".

I hope that BHO will not do anything that will put in danger the very good relationship that the USA has with Israel. If he does anything to damage this good relationship then I have no doubt that he will find that he is reminded about the value of it to the USA.


Gerard

[hibsbollah]

Though I don't expect any change in US policy under Obama. :cool2:

Totally agree, his decision to appoint Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State confirms fears that there will be no change in US policy on Israel. Judging by her remarks on Iran (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24246275/) and the fact her nomination campaign was bankrolled by the Israeli lobby,(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/clin-j19.shtml ) she could end up being the most pro-Israeli US Secretary of State in history:boo hoo:

[--------]

I hope that BHO will not do anything that will put in jepordy the very good relationship that the USA has with Israel. If he does forget this good relationship then I have no doubt that he will find that he is reminded about it.


Gerard

To what exactly are you referring, Gerard?

The US's role as supplier of arms and arms technology to Israel?

The ongoing co-operation between the CIA and Mossad in the processes of rendition of political prisoners, and their imprisonment and torture?

The way the US has assisted Israel in ignoring and flouting numerous UN resolutions over the years - many of which were for the benefit of the people who are now dying in Gaza? The US use of its veto to block resolutions which curb Israel's expansion into areas the UN has said must remain unsettled?

Maybe the US hard right will do to Obama what they did to Bill Clinton?

Would you approve? :cool2:

[Gerard]

To what exactly are you referring, Gerard?

The US's role as supplier of arms and arms technology to Israel?

The ongoing co-operation between the CIA and Mossad in the processes of rendition of political prisoners, and their imprisonment and torture?

The way the US has assisted Israel in ignoring and flouting numerous UN resolutions over the years - many of which were for the benefit of the people who are now dying in Gaza? The US use of its veto to block resolutions which curb Israel's expansion into areas the UN has said must remain unsettled?

Maybe the US hard right will do to Obama what they did to Bill Clinton?

Would you approve? :cool2:


The moderate countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt do not want to see the state of Israel becoming a miliant Islamic state. I do not want to see militant Islam spreading and I suspect that there are millions of people all over the World who share this concern.

WJC was very stupid to carry on with an intern and no political party made him carry out his romantic adventure with this person.

BHO has a reputation of being a very Liberal politician and if he acts in this manner then I suspect his term will be a single one.

As Isarel is an ally The USA is being prudent to sell military equipment to her ally and good friend.
Gerard

[--------]

The moderate countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt do not want to see the state of Israel becoming a miliant Islamic state. I do not want to see militant Islam spreading and I suspect that there are millions of people all over the World who share this concern.

WJC was very stupid to carry on with an intern and no political party made him carry out his romantic adventure with this person.

BHO has a reputation of being a very Liberal politician and if he acts in this manner then I suspect his term will be a single one.

As Isarel is an ally The USA is being prudent to sell military equipment to her ally and good friend.
Gerard


Thanks. Your position is very clear.

[Betty Boop]

Sir Gerald Kaufmann speaks out on Gaza--Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, told MPs: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town ... a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

The Manchester Gorton MP acknowledged that Hamas was a "deeply nasty organisation" but it was democratically elected and "is the only game in town".

Refusing to hold talks with Hamas was a "culpable error from which dreadful consequences have followed", he said.

Calling for an arms embargo, he said: "It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel."

Sir Gerald added: "It is time for peace - but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is Israel's real goal but which is impossible for them to achieve.

"They are not simply war criminals, they are fools.

[--------]

Sir Gerald Kaufmann speaks out on Gaza--Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, told MPs: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town ... a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

The Manchester Gorton MP acknowledged that Hamas was a "deeply nasty organisation" but it was democratically elected and "is the only game in town".

Refusing to hold talks with Hamas was a "culpable error from which dreadful consequences have followed", he said.

Calling for an arms embargo, he said: "It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel."

Sir Gerald added: "It is time for peace - but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is Israel's real goal but which is impossible for them to achieve.

"They are not simply war criminals, they are fools.



Kaufman goes way up in my estimation. Very courageous. Very true.

:top marks

[LiverpoolHibs]

Sir Gerald Kaufmann speaks out on Gaza--Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, told MPs: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town ... a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

The Manchester Gorton MP acknowledged that Hamas was a "deeply nasty organisation" but it was democratically elected and "is the only game in town".

Refusing to hold talks with Hamas was a "culpable error from which dreadful consequences have followed", he said.

Calling for an arms embargo, he said: "It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel."

Sir Gerald added: "It is time for peace - but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is Israel's real goal but which is impossible for them to achieve.

"They are not simply war criminals, they are fools.


Kaufman goes way up in my estimation. Very courageous. Very true.

:top marks

I've pretty much bottled out of using this quote on here since the debate began. But...

Intoxicated mentally by the messianic dream of a Greater Israel which will finally achieve the expansionist dreams of the most radical Zionism; contaminated by the monstrous and rooted 'certitude' that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God and that, consequently, all the actions of an obsessive, psychological and pathologically exclusivist racism are justified; educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted, or is being inflicted, or will be inflicted on everyone else, especially the Palestinians, will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.' Israel wants all of us to feel guilty, directly or indirectly, for the horrors of the Holocaust; Israel wants us to renounce the most elemental critical judgment and for us to transform ourselves into a docile echo of its will.

Jose Saramago.

I'd have been very nervous (and, admittedly, I still do) about agreeing with this prior to the most recent actions of Israel, but I can't seen anything I disagree with now.

[--------]

I've pretty much bottled out of using this quote on here since the debate began. But...

Intoxicated mentally by the messianic dream of a Greater Israel which will finally achieve the expansionist dreams of the most radical Zionism; contaminated by the monstrous and rooted 'certitude' that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God and that, consequently, all the actions of an obsessive, psychological and pathologically exclusivist racism are justified; educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted, or is being inflicted, or will be inflicted on everyone else, especially the Palestinians, will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.' Israel wants all of us to feel guilty, directly or indirectly, for the horrors of the Holocaust; Israel wants us to renounce the most elemental critical judgment and for us to transform ourselves into a docile echo of its will.

Jose Saramago.

I'd have been very nervous (and, admittedly, I still do) about agreeing with this prior to the most recent actions of Israel, but I can't seen anything I disagree with now.



Wow. That says everything. :agree:

[hibsbollah]

I've pretty much bottled out of using this quote on here since the debate began. But...

Intoxicated mentally by the messianic dream of a Greater Israel which will finally achieve the expansionist dreams of the most radical Zionism; contaminated by the monstrous and rooted 'certitude' that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God and that, consequently, all the actions of an obsessive, psychological and pathologically exclusivist racism are justified; educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted, or is being inflicted, or will be inflicted on everyone else, especially the Palestinians, will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.' Israel wants all of us to feel guilty, directly or indirectly, for the horrors of the Holocaust; Israel wants us to renounce the most elemental critical judgment and for us to transform ourselves into a docile echo of its will.

Jose Saramago.

I'd have been very nervous (and, admittedly, I still do) about agreeing with this prior to the most recent actions of Israel, but I can't seen anything I disagree with now.

To be honest I don't really feel comfortable with that quote or the implication behind it. The holocaust is one event, the Israeli-Palestine confict another. The real issues at work are land, power and strategic control over the Middle East, not religion or Jewish guilt. Israeli's 'Jewishness' and the historical resonance of that is too often held up as being a critical factor in the conflict, whereas I believe its (almost) an irrelevance. State terrorism and ethnic cleansing is what is going on.

[LiverpoolHibs]

To be honest I don't really feel comfortable with that quote or the implication behind it. The holocaust is one event, the Israeli-Palestine confict another. The real issues at work are land, power and strategic control over the Middle East, not religion or Jewish guilt. Israeli's 'Jewishness' and the historical resonance of that is too often held up as being a critical factor in the conflict, whereas I believe its (almost) an irrelevance. State terrorism and ethnic cleansing is what is going on.

Yes, they are certain lines in that that make me feel very uncomfortable, certainly the homogenising of 'Jews' as having one cognizance/reaction but there's more than a grain of truth in it. To suggest that the Holocaust hasn't had a profound influence on the Israeli national consciousness would be imprudent in the extreme; and I agree that religion is a minor factor in the conflict.

[--------]

To be honest I don't really feel comfortable with that quote or the implication behind it. The holocaust is one event, the Israeli-Palestine confict another. The real issues at work are land, power and strategic control over the Middle East, not religion or Jewish guilt. Israeli's 'Jewishness' and the historical resonance of that is too often held up as being a critical factor in the conflict, whereas I believe its (almost) an irrelevance. State terrorism and ethnic cleansing is what is going on.


I disagree. Israel was founded as a homeland for European Jews - a safe haven so that no one could ever again threaten the lives of the Jewish people in the way the Nzis had.

The desire for such a homeland was understandable after the events of the Holocaust (Israelis prefer the term Shoah - destruction). The problem was that the Zionists were determined that that homeland would be what was then known as Palestine - the site of the present state of Israel.

Palestine was already well-populated - with Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. Some of the land was sold into Jewish ownership by Arab landlords, quite legitimately. The rest was stolen from the Arabs who owned it by terrorist gangs like the Stern gang and Irgun - find out what Nobel Peace Prize winner Menachem Begin was doing at Deir Yassin in April 1948, for example.

The existing Arab population was driven out of their homes and off their land by Israeli terrorism. The British civil power running the country under UN mandate was driven out by Israeli terrorism. If you can get a hold of a copy, read Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour. He was an eye-witness.

And read Colin Chapman's book Whose Promised Land? - it's pretty thorough in analysing all the arguments, political, military, and religious.

The State of Israel grew out of the Final Solution. The Final Solution had its roots in historic European anti-Jewish resentments, and in the irrational Nazi ideology of the Aryan master-race. (I'm summarising, I know.)

Abused become in turn abusers, and excuse the abuse they inflict on others by pointing to the abuse they themselves suffered.

Gaza is a ghetto, designed to facilitate genocide.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Madjid Bougherra is apparently going to wear a black armband today, in protest at Israeli actions in Gaza.

:top marks

[--------]

Madjid Bougherra is apparently going to wear a black armband today, in protest at Israeli actions in Gaza.

:top marks


Will he be allowed?

I'm thinking of some of the guys who were yellow-carded for wearing T-shirts with political messages on them.