The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Israel and Palestine > Comments

Israel and Palestine : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 1/8/2014

I do not have much sympathy for people who place rocket bases in housing areas, though I recognise that Hamas sees its own cause as just.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 12
  7. 13
  8. 14
  9. All
I find it passing strange why these genetic cousins (Sons and Daughter of Jacob) couldn't settle their differences and just learn to adapt to what is, and learn to live or cohabit in peace!
Given that is never ever going to happen?
Israel should be relocated, along with all its considerable inherent wealth and entire military ordinance.
We could do worse than to invite them to do just that, in a largely depopulated mid/north western WA?
I not sure how big Israel is, but we have cattle stations that take much longer to traverse!
One of those would likely be big enough to contain a New Israel, and have enough water resources etc, for the extremely innovative Israelis, to use as their principle source of endlessly recyclable water, and an arid area, converted to another veritable garden!
There really are only just two choices, when it comes to those who just cannot live in peace.
Eliminate the lot of them; or separate them and relocate one of them?
For mine, I would welcome a new democracy, and in a new state in our northwest; near huge Lake Argyle, and, with all the inherent wealth and knowledge, that would be relocated with them!
Otherwise, we just have to walk away, and just let them get on with the murderous business, of trying to eliminate each other; and indeed, what that then might lead to, with powerful nations taking/picking sides?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 1 August 2014 11:24:00 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The Israelis have achieved so much because they have an eye for the future - to make this life a better one. Unfortunately it seems that the Arab approach is to dwell in the past, to right perceived wrongs; and that can never happen. I suggest that if the Palestinians and their leaders can change their mindset to look to making a better future, then a peace will be possible.
Posted by Malcolmpb, Friday, 1 August 2014 11:28:15 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Rhrosty,
Things will sort themselves out.
The way things are going there's not going to be much of a Jewish diaspora outside the U.S.A, young Jews are marrying out at a rate of about 50-70% and given that 45% of Israelis say they'd leave the country if a major war took place,in 20 years there may not even be a viable Jewish state.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Friday, 1 August 2014 12:35:14 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Rhrosty,

<<We could do worse than to invite them to do just that, in a largely depopulated mid/north western WA?>>

I'm afraid you may be in breach of copyright as this idea is nothing but new. The latest offer was rejected by Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

There were many other suggestions as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state

It seems like now you are desperate to find the best mercenaries to fight off a possible Islamic invasion from Malaysia and/or Indonesia.

Interestingly, you wouldn't take in the Palestinians instead, though fewer in number... wonder why...
Posted by Yuyutsu, Friday, 1 August 2014 1:18:21 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
You
We in Australia do not fear the religion of our neighbours. We all live in peace and will continue to do so.
It is you blokes who live in the vengeful philosophy of your history who don't do that.
We don't want that attitude here in Australia. It is foreign to us. Nor do we want your racist bigotry.
Posted by imajulianutter, Friday, 1 August 2014 3:29:54 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
And yu we have invited all racial and religious groups here.

Explain to me why only one group is dominating our media with their idealogical and religious driven hate.

And mate I have yet to see any Arabs or Palestinians or Muslims spout the racist or bigoted hate in any of the articles or comments in online opinion.
I have seen leaders of the Jewish community spouting intolerance and hate in the wider media.

I saw Graham Richardson today show great courage and raise interesting questions in the mainstream media today.

Australians are not following him. He is following Australians.

You blokes need change your behaviours and question the effectiveness of your philosophical and religious beliefs and practices before we force you, through our inherent common decency, to do that.
Posted by imajulianutter, Friday, 1 August 2014 3:40:58 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
to imajulianutter. You write "And mate I have yet to see any Arabs or Palestinians or Muslims spout the racist or bigoted hate in any of the articles or comments in online opinion". You obviously do not listen to the radio, watch television or look at the extreme views and comments that follow any pro-Israel article or interview.
Posted by jet, Friday, 1 August 2014 3:55:24 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
imajulianutter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ORAM-usqhQ

as keeps being repeated that if Hamas and Arabs love children more than they hate Jews there could be peace.
Posted by runner, Friday, 1 August 2014 4:09:07 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Imajulianutter,

<<We in Australia do not fear the religion of our neighbours.>>

I also live in Australia, but apparently several members of this forum do fear what they believe to be the religion of our neighbours.

<<It is you blokes who live in the vengeful philosophy of your history>>

"you blokes"? Who? whose history? Apparently you responded to my post, isn't it?

Do you consider my philosophy vengeful?
Is this what a vengeful person would write: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16523#289121 (last two paragraphs)?

<<Nor do we want your racist bigotry.>>

Such as....?

<<Explain to me why only one group is dominating our media...>>

Why do you ask me? I don't read or watch the Australian media.

<<I have seen leaders of the Jewish community spouting intolerance and hate in the wider media.>>

Perhaps so, but what do you want from me?

<<I saw Graham Richardson>>

Look, I only know one Graham - that's Graham Young, so go knock on other doors.

<<You blokes need change your behaviours>>

Such as....?

<<and question the effectiveness of your philosophical and religious beliefs and practices before we force you,>>

Oh, you just spoke of Australian tolerance, inviting all racial and religious groups and now you wish to persecute me for my Hindu religion?

I should have reported your threatening post to the one Graham I know, but let it stay here so others know your true intentions.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Friday, 1 August 2014 5:08:33 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
imajulianutter, exactly what news do you read? Are you aware of the increasing number of attacks on Jews and Synagogues in Europe? Are you even aware of why is happening in Syria and Iraq where Christian communities over 1400 years old are being told to leave or die?
Posted by Jon R, Saturday, 2 August 2014 10:37:52 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
A copyright on good Ideas Yutustu?
What an interesting new novel approach!
As for relocating Israel/resettling around 12 million peace loving, enough already, Jews in our northwest?
I think it is a great idea!
Perhaps we could call it Jewtopia, or is there a copyright on that as well?
And if they were to intermarry with the locals, what would we call that?
Assimilation?
Well, they are said to be very fond of gold!
We must ensure however, they don't sail here in boats, as that form of relocation is currently illegal, albeit, how would we ever know, if we were never ever told?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Saturday, 2 August 2014 10:45:57 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"Criticising Israel is not anti-Semitic,
and saying so is vile.
But singling out Israel for opprobrium and
international sanction - out of all proportion
to any other party in the Middle East - is
anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest."
(Thomas Friedman).
Posted by Foxy, Saturday, 2 August 2014 11:26:30 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
imajulianutter,

I know not if you are a Julian but I'll agree with you on the last part.
Posted by Is Mise, Saturday, 2 August 2014 2:36:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
'I do not have much sympathy for people who put rocket bases in housing areas'

Is this kindergarten time?

Israel uses fighters, tanks, warships and heavily artillery to pound one of the most densly populated ghettos in the world and you talk about the firecrackers Hamas sends over in return.

Honestly, what has happened to our sense of morality?

At this point Hamas has killed about 98% soliders and 2% civilians while Israel has killed about 98% civilians (many of them children).

To me it looks like Hamas are the more honourable fighters by far.

This is war isn't it? So when Hamas captures a prisioner it's called kidnapping and Israel claims over 100 lives in repraisals. That is honestly in the league of nazi retribution.
Posted by dane, Saturday, 2 August 2014 8:47:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"Honestly, what has happened to our sense of morality?"

Pop over to twitter guys, and you'll see what's really happening - not the sanitised version provided by MSM.

You'll see broken Palestinian babies and blood spattered walls. You'll see little Palestinain tots sitting in the gutter, silent but alive beside the bodies of their dead parents, staring into space in utter hopelessness.

I never thought, in what I thought were enlightened times, I'd see so many slaughtered children - and so many Western govt's ignoring the hideous actions of Israel.

Somehow herding a people into a ghetto and depriving them of basics and freedom, with all the frustrations inherent in a people dispossessed so brutally - and then targeting UN designated safe areas, hospitals and schools for bombing is sickening.

Our Western "sense of morality" is selective, dane.
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 2 August 2014 11:09:56 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Of course anyone who expresses any sort of preference to peace, forgiveness and love and who expresses a desire foe decency would be seen by cowards like yourself as being nuts.

That is the history of your belief system Issy.
Posted by imajulianutter, Sunday, 3 August 2014 6:20:13 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Then you wonder why you have suffered so much in you history. Without change or a western style enlightenment that is going to continue.
Posted by imajulianutter, Sunday, 3 August 2014 6:22:34 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yes, Don Aitken, almost every people consider their military attacks on others "just."

Hitler thought that his cause was just. Hitler did not say to himself "I am an evil man who wants to make war to conquer all of Europe for Germany", he really did believe that he was saving Europe from Jewish controlled Communism. Saddam Hussein, Al Capone, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, The Italian Red Brigades, the German Red Army Faction, the Japanese nationalists in 1939, the IRA, George Bush, even OLO's own Poirot, believe that they were moral people and that their actions were justified.

If you believe that Islam is the hope and light of the world, and that anyone who fights against the spread of Islam is unutterably evil, then the cause of Hama, ISIS, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and HAMAS makes a lot of sense. But as a member of a culture which is responsible for spreading the world's self evidently most advanced civilisation around the world, I think that such an idea is absolutely potty.

Muslims as a group are an exceptionally moral group of people who's concept of morality is completely contrary to my own. Non leftist fringe group western people as a whole, see Israel as an amazing tiny state surrounded by enemies who's own Islamic civilisation is afailure, who have this neurotic compulsion to destroy Israel at any cost. We know that the Israelis are a western democracy who's people think very much like we do. We understand why Israel is bombarding Gaza because put in exactly the same position, we would do exactly the same thing.

This is different to the Arabs, who most definitely do not think like we do. We consider this Arab obsession to destroy Israel to be absolutely idiotic. It is the thinking of a people so obsessed with religion that nothing else matters. No wonder the whole Arab world is a basket case full of savages, it is populated with extremely moral idiots who really do think that they are on a mission to save the whole world for God.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 3 August 2014 6:39:55 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
lego

Israel might be a democracy but it is not at all in any way the same as the Christian based western liberal democracies.

Western liberal democracies are based in Christian beliefs. Can't say the same for Israel and the barbarism that is the culture and practise that we see from the Israelis in their perpetual occupations, blockades, land stealing, repressions and military incursions of over 50 years. Why haven't they succeeded in ridding the region of it's violence?

What was it that Einstein said about madness?

That's right, if you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome ... mate 50 years and continuing violence ... really wouldn't anyone with half a brain have worked it out?
Posted by imajulianutter, Sunday, 3 August 2014 4:02:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
And you to Leggo should have the guts to expose yourself as your last paragraph is also in breech of our Australian anti discrimination laws.
We have rejected such stupidity. Why haven't you?
Posted by imajulianutter, Sunday, 3 August 2014 4:05:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
@Ima...

<<And you to Leggo should have the guts to expose yourself as your last paragraph is also in breech of our Australian anti discrimination laws>>

And this comment of yours wasn't?
<< Can't say the same for Israel and the barbarism that is the culture and practise that we see from the Israelis...>>

Interesting perspective--you're beginning to think (I use that term very loosely) like those you champion!
________________________________________________________

LEGO,

<< even OLO's own Poirot, believe that they were moral people and that their actions were justified>>
ROFLMAO --GOOD ONE!
Posted by SPQR, Sunday, 3 August 2014 4:19:33 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
imajulianutter For your information, Western liberal democracies and Christian beliefs are based on Judaic law.
Posted by jet, Sunday, 3 August 2014 5:32:52 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Careful, Jet, can't have people like you pushing logical thinking; poor Julian.
Posted by Is Mise, Sunday, 3 August 2014 6:36:48 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Julianutter.

Because I am a liberal who supports free political speech, that's why. Freedom of political discussion on critical social issues is one of the foundations of western democracy. If you support 18C, then you are not a liberal, you are either a conservative or a reactionary.

And I will make one prediction, Julianutter, right here, and right now. If you support 18C, then sooner or later, you are going to fall foul of it yourself. Oops, looks like you already have, thank you SPQR.

EVERYBODY identifies groups of people that they do not like. They may not like them for because of their beliefs, their attitudes, or their behaviours. They think up derogatory names for them. They avoid them. They constantly criticise them. It is a cultural universal.

Some idiot has told you that sneering at other racial, national, or ethnic groups of people is just awful, and in your naivety and need to think you are superior, you fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. But you never bothered to think about it. And as SPQR has pointed out, you even do it yourself. But it never occurred to you that you were committing hypocrisy, because you are so convinced of your own moral superiority that it never crosses your mind that you should be held to the same standard as that which you so passionately endorse.

Sure as God made little green apples, Julianutter, I (and SPQR) are going to catch you out again. I know that I am gouging to do it, because this is a game I have played before with other finger wagging socialist evangelists, and I have never failed to catch them doing themselves, what they so vehemently claim is something their opponents do which is utterly wrong

So think twice before you go sneering at the Israelis or the Americans, or you may be hoist on your own petard.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 3 August 2014 7:13:14 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Lego here a a couple of differences between you and I.

You incite hatred.
You villify individuals and their ethnicity.
You demonize and stereotype people.

I villify behavior.
I villify a country's behavior
I do not stereotype or demonize anyone.

You cowardly hide behind a non de plume.

I am Keith Kennelly.
Posted by imajulianutter, Monday, 4 August 2014 12:21:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Jet

I know you blokes like to think you can rewrite history by leaving out large chunks.
But really why do you think we should ignore the existence of Christ and his sermon on the mount?

Why do you think we should ignore the influence of the Greeks?

Why do you think we should ignore the influence of the Catholic Church?

Why do you think we should ignore the influence of our reformation?

Why do you think we should ignore the influence of our Romantics and our Enlightenment?

Why do you think we should ignore our great liberal movement?

When all these histories have one unifying thread, a rejection of most of the teachings of the ancient Hebrew book, why do you think the Hebrew book trumps the vast traditions and evolving of our western Liberal Democracy.

Your book is in the dark ages along with the books of the other backward eastern religions.

Now that last statement is anti - semitic. It is aimed fairly and squarely in opposition to all backward mid eastern semitic religions.

God you are so shallow and silly I doubt you could even understand this post. I don't think you will try to enter into a debate. You haven't the intellect. I expect you will abuse me and cite easily contradicted verses from your book.

Here's a couple
'Do not do unto others...'
and
'An eye for an eye...'
and
'You reap what you sow...'

You choose? Lol a book for all atrocities.
Posted by imajulianutter, Monday, 4 August 2014 12:43:33 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dane,

My point is that Hamas locates its rockets in densely populated areas, near schools and hospitals. Why? Perhaps you could explain the logic. What would you do, wearing your military cap, if you were in the Israeli situation?
Posted by Don Aitkin, Monday, 4 August 2014 4:43:22 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
SPQR

I think you've just proved it is possible to exist using less than half a brain.

lol
Posted by imajulianutter, Monday, 4 August 2014 5:52:15 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
WPQR

just to again highlight your deceit and your ongoing cowardly behaviour. Here is the whole quote not just part of it.

'Western liberal democracies are based in Christian beliefs. Can't say the same for Israel and the barbarism that is the culture and practise that we see from the Israelis in their perpetual occupations, blockades, land stealing, repressions and military incursions of over 50 years. Why haven't they succeeded in ridding the region of it's violence?'
In context and complete there is not the truncated interpretation you put up nor is there any indication any of Israel's victims think as I do.
Neither is there any indication I support any violence as you impute.

Now show some guts and reveal yourself or forever bear the label, lying coward.
Posted by imajulianutter, Monday, 4 August 2014 6:08:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don,

"My point is that Hamas locates its rockets in densely populated areas, near schools and hospitals. Why? Perhaps you could explain the logic."

That's true. But where else can Hamas place them? Short of walking out into the few open spaces left to the Palestinians and sitting on a big red target with a sigh saying, 'send million dollar US made high explosives here', there's not really much else they can do.

The rockets only serve a propaganda purpose for Hamas. They spread some fear in Israel. Imagine being a Palestinian and knowing many people killed, seeing the death and destruction wreaked by Israel and then seeing the rockets going up. Surely it must make people feel like at lease Hamas is doing something in return to a merciless enemy.

Unfortunately, it also provides the Israeli propaganda machine an opportunity to blame the rockets. They even count them! I would love to see a count of Israeli shells, missiles, artillery and other ordnance dumped on Palestinians. Maybe someone is clever enough to research what re-supplies the US provides Israel with to give some idea

"What would you do, wearing your military cap, if you were in the Israeli situation?"

Religious jews (Hasidim) see Israel and Zionism as a disaster. I would make peace like Peres and Rabin were willing to. So as I'm not a maniac following a 19th century nationalist ideology, I would never be in the Israeli situation.

Israelis think they are too clever manipulating the West. But the West is in decline. The US is heavily indebted and politically gridlocked. It is declining rapidly. One day they won't be there to protect Israel. It might be 50 or 100 year away but Arabs have a long memory and one day they will take horrible revenge. -who could blame them?

btw. I'm not in any way pro-Arab. I would stop all muslim immigration to Australia tomorrow. However, I am human. I can't believe the people who defend a bloodbath and call it 'defence'. What is wrong with people?
Posted by dane, Monday, 4 August 2014 10:35:41 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"What would you do, wearing your military cap, if you were in the Israeli situation?"

Good question, Don.

Those rockets have killed 28 Israelis between 2001 and 2014...injured many more...and caused much psychological trauma.

The question is what does a people do - and how does the frustration manifest itself after decades of being forced off one's land and cornered in what is for all intents and purposes a massive refugee camp.

That's Gaza.

What I wouldn't do is commit indiscriminate massacre.

The stories coming out of Gaza are hideous.

In some instances the damage being done in an hour of bombardment would take years in any other theatre not the victim of advanced weaponry of the likes deployed by Israel.

Slaughtering children huddling in schools and hospitals - chasing unarmed defenceless civilians up and down the roads of their confected prison with first world weaponry - is up there with the worst of war crimes.

The zealousness of this carnage - and the sheer conscienceless brutality against defenceless civilians as the world watches the slaughter is truly disturbing.
Posted by Poirot, Monday, 4 August 2014 11:28:31 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
To Julainutter.

Time for a psychology lessen, Julian. Everybody stereotypes because stereotyping is part of the act of thinking. People create concepts in their own minds by forming stereotypes. If I was to say to you that "there is a bird sitting on a car outside" you would form two stereotypes in your mind, one for a bird, and one for a car. Some fool has told you that stereotyping is wrong and you fell for that without ever thinking about it. That is the difference between me and you. I can think.

As for your claim that I incite hatred and vilify people, here is the score on that. I was once a trendy lefty like yourself. But I lived through a time when the French were testing hydrogen bombs at Muroroa Atoll. I noted that all of the people whom I identified with as part of the intelligent class, and who normally went around with pious faces declaring how wrong it was to be racist and call people "wogs", were now running around saying obviously racist things about the French and calling them "frogs."

In addition, it did not take me long to realise that those who claimed to be anti racist were very obviously racist towards white people. Even here in OLO, people have called me by the racist term "redneck" and claimed that my opinions were those of "Southern US whites". Which just in case you are not smart enough to figure it out, is a racist stereotype of white people who live in the south of the USA.

With the entire "anti racist" viewpoint just pure hypocrisy, I started thinking straight. I did what any intelligent person does. I stopped thinking subjectively and started thinking objectively. I began to see that racism is everywhere. Everybody does it, even you. You don't like yanks and Israelis. That is racism. Don't give me any crap about "Americans" not being a race. The Anti Discrimination Boards in every Australian state claim that discrimination is illegal if directed at any persons, race, ethnicity, religion, lack of religion, or nationality.
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 3:09:32 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Lego,

Your claim that Israel is a liberal democracy is laughable. Laws like the Citizenship and Entry into Israel law make Arab Israelis second class citizens. Any Jew has the right of return to Israel even if there is absolutely no connection to Israel yet Arabs who have been progressively dispossessed of their land from 1948 right up until the present day have no right of return whatsoever.

Haven't we seen these types of laws before? Weren't the Nuremberg Laws about restricting marriage and the rights of German-Jews?
Posted by dane, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 3:35:59 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don and others,

An article by a Jewish Rabbi:

"Israel has broken my heart: I’m a rabbi in mourning for a Judaism being murdered by Israel"

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/04/israel_has_broken_my_heart_i%E2%80%99m_a_rabbi_in_mourning_for_a_judaism_being_murdered_by_israel/

"....I always told myself that the dominant humanity of the Jewish people and the compassionate strain within Torah would reassert itself once Israel felt secure.

That belief began to wane in the past eight years when Israel, faced with a Palestinian Authority that promoted nonviolence and sought reconciliation and peace, ignored the Saudi Arabian-led peace initiative that would have granted Israel the recognition that it had long sought, an end to hostilities, and a recognized place in the Middle East, refused to stop its expansion of settlements in the West Bank and imposed an economically crushing blockade on Gaza. Even Hamas, whose hateful charter called for Israel’s destruction, had decided to accept the reality of Israel’s existence, and while unable to embrace its “right” to exist, nevertheless agreed to reconcile with the Palestinian Authority and in that context live within the terms that the PA would negotiate with Israel."

Whole article worth a read.
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 9:04:43 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
imajulianutter

My rather mild comment "for your information, Western liberal democracies and Christian beliefs are based on Judaic law" drew such vitriol and ignorance from you that I do not care to enter into further discussion with you.
Posted by jet, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 9:18:26 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don,

You asked;

“My point is that Hamas locates its rockets in densely populated areas, near schools and hospitals. Why? Perhaps you could explain the logic. What would you do, wearing your military cap, if you were in the Israeli situation?”

May I respectfully put the same question to you but in a slightly different form.

If you were in the military wing of Hamas and after the killings of three teenagers hitch hiking in the occupied territories, which your organisation it appears had nothing to do with, scores of your fellow Hamas members are being shot in the West Bank, hundreds more were being arrested (many of those had been released in the Shalit exchange but only after a heavy cost in lives), hundreds of homes being destroyed, charities stripped and trashed, businesses destroyed and individuals targeted within Gaza? Keeping in mind the severe and extended blockade plus the Israeli reaction to moves by Hamas to strengthen ties with Fatah. Do you really think you would have sat there and not reacted?
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 12:32:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Steele,

You answer my question with a question — which I'm told is a technique taught to Jewish boys and girls! And your question comes with an assumption which I question.

You understand that Hamas had nothing to do with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. How good is your understanding, given that Hamas is the ruler of the Gaza enclave?

You mention charities being 'stripped and trashed' — I know nothing of this. How good is your information?

Why is it necessary for Hamas to amass hundreds of rockets to fire into Israel? Since Hamas has as one of its chief aspirations the destruction of the Israeli state, would you not expect Israel to do its best to keep such missiles out of Gaza through a naval blockade?

I repeat that I do not have a 'side' in this conflict, and I do accept that Hamas thinks that its cause is just. But as another commenter said, everyone does in such a conflict.

Israel has show just what you can do in a desert if you act with intelligence and resolve — yet none of this example seems to be followed by its neighbours. I am one of many who would like peace in this area, which has only occasionally occurred over the past several thousand years. But that requires, at a minimum, that Hamas abandons its total objection to the very existence of Israel.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 2:50:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
To Dane.

Of course Arabs are second class citizens in Israel. You can hardly make an enemy population that wants to exterminate you your equal, can you? Western nations may be stupid enough to do that. But the Wests Muslim problem is not as bad as Israel's yet so the westerners haven't started thinking straight. Although, there are a few encouraging signs that even the limp wristed Euros are beginning to grow a brain and realise that they rather stupidy invited their enemies into their own countries.

Funnily enough, it is the homosexuals in super tolerant Holland who are leading the way. Homosexuals are usually the leaders of the anti everything brigade that reflexively opposes everything the straight majority support. So the pooftas were initially very supportive of the Muslims because they considered them a fellow "oppressed" minority. But then the Muslim leaders started demanding Dutch Homosexuals should be put to death, just like Muslim apostates, and any western cartoonists, editors, authors, and film makers who insult Islam should be put to death. The pooftas suddenly grew a brain. They realisedt that whereas normal people will not let them marry, at least their straight enemies do not want to stone them to death. You see, the Muslims thimnk that homosexuals are not just second class citizens, they should be exterminated like the Jews, and anybody else who crosses them.

If Arabs in Israel are only second class citizens then they should count themselves lucky. They are a lot more fortunate than the Jewish inhabitants of every Muslim land who fled long ago to Israel because they did not want their throats cut by the Muslims. My premise has always been, that what we want here is equality.

You know Equality, don't you Dane? You trendies are obsessed with it. And I think that the Jews in Israel have an equal right to ethnically cleanse Muslims from Jewish lands, as Muslims have to ethnically cleanse Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs and their own rival factions from their Muslim lands.

Fairs fair.
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 5:27:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don,

Thank you for your reply.

You ask;

“You understand that Hamas had nothing to do with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. How good is your understanding, given that Hamas is the ruler of the Gaza enclave?”

You hopefully realise the kidnappings occurred in occupied West Bank not Gaza. This is a quote from the Jewish publication Forward;

“It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren’t acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas’ Hebron branch — more a crime family than a clandestine organization — had a history of acting without the leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests. Yet Netanyahu repeatedly insisted Hamas was responsible for the crime and would pay for it.
http://forward.com/articles/201764/how-politics-and-lies-triggered-an-unintended-war/?p=all#ixzz39V4n3ClP

You also asked;

“You mention charities being 'stripped and trashed' — I know nothing of this. How good is your information?”

“Over the last couple of days, the army’s operations have extended into Bethlehem and Nablus – the heart of Area A (where the Palestinian Authority is in charge of both security and civil matters). The army arrested members of Hamas’ charity organization, as well as journalists affiliated with Hamas and the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who is a member of the party. A total of 200 people. Computers and weapons were also confiscated. And all this while the search after the teenagers is focused on the Hebron area, which is under closure. There is no doubt that many of these operations are unrelated to the teens, and that no one in the army thinks that charity workers, journalists or parliamentarians know where they are.”
http://972mag.com/west-bank-kidnapping-israels-crackdown-moves-beyond-hamas-militants/92162/

Of course the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teens was tragic but here are just three preceding incidents where Palestinian teenagers were slaughtered.

Cont...
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 6:26:26 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Cont...

March 9 - Yousef al-Shawamrah, 14, was shot in the back and hip with live ammunition near his village of Deir al-Asal al-Fawqa

April 4 - Israeli soldiers shoot dead two Palestinian teenagers protesting in the Occupied West Bank.

May 15 - Muhammad Abu Thahr, 16, and Nadim Nuwara, 17, were shot dead by Israeli troops as they protested the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands prompting Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa Director for Human Rights Watch to state the obvious; “The wilful killing of civilians by Israeli security forces as part of the occupation is a war crime”.

You make much of the mantra “Hamas has as one of its chief aspirations the destruction of the Israeli state” but that doesn't reflect the reality.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/hamas-softens-israel-stance-in-calls-for-palestinian-state-431624.html

You also asked;

“Why is it necessary for Hamas to amass hundreds of rockets to fire into Israel?”

Because without the means to hit back at Israel then the types of punitive land grabs, settler violence, teenage deaths, abductions and destruction of property that occurs so routinely in the West Bank would happen in Gaza. It has only through determined manufacturing of a crisis has Israel been able to strike at the Gazan people.

Just as the IDF sell themselves as being prepared to stand up for the rights of Israelis to live free from oppression so Hamas claims that position in Gaza which is why the last time the people of Gaza voted they so strongly endorsed Hamas.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 6:27:36 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
For Don Aitken,

You are a 'contributor' to an "opinion" web site.

Perhaps, in this article - not unlike many of your other 'OLO contributions' that I've perused - you are wrong.

Just saying.
Posted by DavidK, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 8:21:55 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Steele,

Your reference to Hamas's position on Israel is dated 2007. Wikipedia's current summary makes clear that there are many who talk as though they can speak for Hamas, and a prevailing theme is that Israel is not to be tolerated.

I was writing about Gaza, not the West Bank, where there were no rockets, and Hamas is not the effective ruler. I see no evidence of Hamas charities being 'trashed' in what you provided as a link.

But in any case, I do not know the ins and outs off the current imbroglio, and accept that you see things differently. My feeling is that neither side will give up. For Hamas to place its rockets where people live, near schools and hospitals, knowing that retaliation will occur, is simply to countenance the death of its own people. I can't support that. I am sure that it provides sympathy — nothing is more telling than the sight of injured and dead children.

But to what end?
Posted by Don Aitkin, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 8:26:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don,

“During an aggressive search operation condemned by human rights groups, Israeli forces have arrested 335 persons affiliated with Hamas, according to data reported in the Times. They have also ransacked offices of charitable organizations and other groups , often confiscating and trashing their contents.”
http://timeswarp.org/2014/07/03/so-maybe-it-wasnt-hamas-after-all/

And here is a link to a letter titled 'Harm to the Palestinian population and collective punishment in Operation Brother's Keeper' written on behalf of the organizations Amnesty, B’Tselem, Gisha, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel, HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, Yesh Din, Adalah, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence.
http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/HR-organizations-letter-220614.pdf

They emphatically state “that these steps raise serious concerns about collective punishment, which is absolutely forbidden by international humanitarian law, and of disproportionate and unnecessary violations of basic rights under international law. It must be emphasized that actions intended to pressure and intimidate the population are utterly unacceptable.”

You say you are writing about Gaza not the West Bank and that you “do not know the ins and outs off the current imbroglio”. I'm hoping it is becoming clearer to you that the escalation of severe actions of the IDF and the PA against Hamas in the West Bank inevitably lead to the tragedy of 1500 souls being lost in Gaza. Attempting to disconnect the two is to exactly what Israel has striven to do from the beginning.

You postulate; “For Hamas to place its rockets where people live, near schools and hospitals, knowing that retaliation will occur, is simply to countenance the death of its own people. I can't support that. I am sure that it provides sympathy — nothing is more telling than the sight of injured and dead children.”

Cont..
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 11:14:36 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
cont..

It could just as easily be written; 'For Israeli to conduct such a brutal crackdown on Hamas including the kidnapping of its parliamentary representatives, knowing that retaliation will occur in the form of rockets fired from Gaza, is simply to countenance the death of its own people. I can't support that. I am sure that it provides sympathy — nothing is more telling than the sight of injured and dead children.'

Here is a link to a video I posted earlier showing the sustained bombing of a row of apartment buildings in Gaza over the period of an hour.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/israel-intensifies-gaza-assault-as-egyptian-mediators-revise-truce-plan-1.1881609#

Notice the tanks and other vehicles in the foreground. They are parked in open ground in plain sight without fear of being threatened by the weaponry of the resistance fighters. What do you think they would do if within less than a minute they could be identified by a drone and struck soon after by 500lb high explosive bomb? They certainly would not be in the open and as there is little in the way of forested areas then as a military commander I would have them retreat to a built up area. To do otherwise would be to see them all destroyed. Should this option only be open to Israeli commanders and not Hamas?

You say you “accept that you see things differently” but do you stop and think why? If this was any other situation where an oppressed, brutalised, blockaded people were being slaughtered in these numbers by those who had vastly superior weaponry and little desire for peace then we would be standing shoulder to shoulder condemning the killing, the kidnapping, the torture and the maiming together. The facts on the ground are not in dispute so you tell me why a seemingly reasonable and I suspect decent person like yourself would have such a diametrically different position on this conflict to myself and dare I say it most of the Western world?
Posted by SteeleRedux, Wednesday, 6 August 2014 2:15:38 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Steele,

I guess that, as a historian and political scientist, I find it difficult to choose sides with respect to conflicts, especially here, where I don't have to. I gave my account of the history in the essay, I don't have a solution, and I don't think that one side is more 'right' than the other. Fighting and killing are what human beings do. They have done it, in form or another, ever since there were tribes. These contestants will have to sort it out for themselves.

But there are alternatives: a Palestine that is an accepted and respected state, which accepts that Israel is also a respected state; a Gaza that is not about sending rockets into Israel, which it has been doing for several years (what is the virtuous point?); an Israel that would not be spending 25 per cent of its GDP on defence if its neighbours accepted it as a proper neighbour; an Arab world that concentrated on improving the lives of its people rather than on inter-sect bloody conflicts and hostility to Israel; and so on.

They are my alternatives, and not all of them. But I am old enough to know that in domains like this one it is eventually pointless to try and persuade others. Each of us has to come to terms with the conflict in terms of our own history, philosophy of life, experience of the world and so on.

I see where you come from, and while it is not my view of things, I accept that it is right for you.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Wednesday, 6 August 2014 7:49:22 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don,

We saw bloodlust of a people stirred by a conniving government that resulted in 1500 lives another people being lost under a rain of high tech weaponry before it was considered sated. Yet you cling to some sort of equivalence that is in complete denial of the facts.

You say you can't split them. I really am at a loss to contemplate what thought processes allow you to believe that.

Some here have a deep connection to Israel, some have a deep hatred of Muslims, others who are fundamentalist Christians who are firmly on the side of those who slaughtered so many men, women and children in the name of weakening Hamas. Others are ignorant of the facts and they struggle to understand the conflict therefore see both sides as mad as cut snakes. But you sir have the time, the skills, and the intellect to appreciate the rights and wrongs of the latest conflict yet you say there is not one more blame worthy than the other?

There is nothing nuanced or complicated about what has happened over the last few weeks. 1500 mostly civilians were blown apart in the most terrifying manner, thousands more were wounded and disfigured for life. Hamas had made moves to become closer to a unity government with Fatah. The tragic deaths of the three settler teenagers gave Israel an excuse to exert intolerable pressure on Hamas. In provoking Hamas Israel has gotten exactly what it wanted. The actions of the PA in working with the Israelis now means that any alliance between these two Palestinian groups is dust. The Israelis now have a reason not to ease the blockade of Gaza, to keep supporting settler expansions into the West Bank, and to stall indefinitely moves by the international community to prosecute for a two state solution.

If you sir manage to produce a different narrative that says there was not one side more culpable than the other in this latest conflict then may I respectfully advise you examine what you have had to ignore to produce it.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Wednesday, 6 August 2014 9:58:52 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don,

You may think one side is not 'more right than the other', but there is one side that is a whole lot more dead than the other.

And that's really about as complicated as it needs to be.
Posted by dane, Thursday, 7 August 2014 6:22:09 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dane and Steele,

If only it were so simple. Where do you start? A long time ago I taught a cause at university that examined the conflict in Northern Ireland. We quickly saw that there had been three hundred years of conflict, which extended from parents to children, each generation seeing a cause for more bloodshed in return for what had happened to it. At the end the class argued about solutions. There were none that seemed likely. In the Middle East the conflicts go back thousands of years.

Via email I am being accused of ignoring the facts, of being shallow, and of having pitifully inadequate knowledge, but there the anger comes from a pro-Israeli perspective. I try to be an analyst. It's not easy.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Thursday, 7 August 2014 7:40:31 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don,

If only the people who replied to your latest post could see past their prejudices and locked in views and applaud you instead of denigrating you for the considered alternatives you put forward, this would be a much more helpful debate.
Posted by jet, Thursday, 7 August 2014 8:44:02 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don, the problems don't go back hundreds or thousands of years. The problems go back to the founding of Israel. Israel was created according to international law but Palestine not.

There are exceptions of couse but in the ME and North Africa Muslims, Jews and Christians co-existed for thousands of years. Jews were forced to leave those countries after the creation of Israel when the mood turned decisively against them. The mood is now turning against Christians too.

One of the Israel lobby's greatest strategies is to complicate and obsfuscate. As if it's just too hard for normal people to understand.

It's not. Normal people can see very cleary that whats happening in Gaza is an atrocity. Next time you pass your local primary school and see the kids out on the playgrounds imagine over 300 children killed in Gaza. Would that be the enitre school?

When the schools re-open in Gaza imagine the first day back as children discover who survived and which of their friends were killed.

That is not complicated. That is inexcusable suffering.
Posted by dane, Thursday, 7 August 2014 7:20:30 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don;

You have made this point twice;

“But in any case, I do not know the ins and outs off the current imbroglio, and accept that you see things differently.”

And

“I see where you come from, and while it is not my view of things, I accept that it is right for you.”

Normally I would view such sentiments as gracious and respectful of a difference in opinion. My apologies but in this situation I can not because in good conscience it would be impossible to return them.

Saying 'while it is not my view of things, I accept that it is right for you' is not in any manner acceptable. It can't be. What has happened to 1800 Palestinians, the vast number who were civilians, does not allow it.

You make an effort at expressing a degree equivalence between the parties in the latest conflict, attempting to back it with a history lesson, but then you only really condemn Hamas. The death and misery wrought on this beleaguered people was so out of proportion to any perceived wrongdoing on their behalf as to be an affront to any even half empathetic human being. In that light I call on the historian in you to put down the books and let the human in you to judge this latest conflict for what it is, a completely unjust tragedy inflicted on an oppressed people.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 8 August 2014 12:11:21 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The historian in me points out that more than 11,000 rockets have been fired into Israel since 2001, that the naval blockade is there to try to prevent the stock being added to, that the main victims of the rocket attacks have been children, and that the threat of a rocket attack has caused great stress and terror to children. No equivalent action occurs from the West Bank, where people have lived comparatively normal lives.

The human in me wonders at the morality of the men who launch their rockets from the neighbourhoods of schools and hospitals. The outcome in time must be death and destruction to one's own people. Hamas believes that 'the Zionist entity' (one doesn't refer to the name of the state because that gives it respectability) must be destroyed.

The human in me says that such people have a twisted morality.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Friday, 8 August 2014 8:06:49 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don Aitkin,

"The historian in me points out that more than 11,000 rockets have been fired into Israel since 2001..."

Killing 28 people in that time.

Which points more to the desperation of people dispossessed and cornered, relying on crude technology for their retaliatory aggression.

And what about the points made by SteeleRedux, the Rabbi and others, such as:

"That belief began to wane in the past eight years when Israel, faced with a Palestinian Authority that promoted nonviolence and sought reconciliation and peace, ignored the Saudi Arabian-led peace initiative that would have granted Israel the recognition that it had long sought, an end to hostilities, and a recognized place in the Middle East, refused to stop its expansion of settlements in the West Bank and imposed an economically crushing blockade on Gaza. Even Hamas, whose hateful charter called for Israel’s destruction, had decided to accept the reality of Israel’s existence, and while unable to embrace its “right” to exist, nevertheless agreed to reconcile with the Palestinian Authority and in that context live within the terms that the PA would negotiate with Israel."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gaza-and-israel-the-road-to-war-paved-by-the-west.html?_r=0

"Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation agreement by preventing Hamas leaders and Gaza residents from obtaining the two most essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000 civil servants who worked for the Hamas government and continue to administer Gaza under the new one, and the easing of the suffocating border closures imposed by Israel and Egypt that bar most Gazans’ passage to the outside world."

We shouldn't dismiss the force of Israeli provocation in creating an entity like Hamas.

Nor should we accept the wanton brutality and barbarity of a modern, technologically superior country cornering civilians and slaughtering them for "retaliation".
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 8 August 2014 8:41:53 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Those who see Israel only as the aggressor should take a clearer look at what really has been happening. You have been sucked in by Hamas's propaganda. Their clear and stated aim is to eradicate Israel in whatever way they can. They use their own people as shields; they use material which was destined for homes and schools and hospitals for tunnel fortresses from which they intended to send hundreds of people in to murder Israelis, any Israelis. Read something other than the propaganda that you obviously have been reading/
Posted by jet, Friday, 8 August 2014 8:50:39 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
This image indicative of Israel's usurping of Palestinian land since 1948.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Israeli-theft-of-Palestine-maps.jpg

"...No equivalent action occurs from the West Bank, where people have lived comparatively normal lives."

Not much left of "The West bank" these days...so it seems
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 8 August 2014 8:54:41 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don;

You wrote;

“The historian in me points out that more than 11,000 rockets have been fired into Israel since 2001, that the naval blockade is there to try to prevent the stock being added to, that the main victims of the rocket attacks have been children, and that the threat of a rocket attack has caused great stress and terror to children.”

With the greatest respect my friend that was the human Don speaking not the historian.

If it had been the historian you would have pointed out how many round of high explosive weaponry Israel pumped into Gaza over the same period. For instance; “Between 2005 and 2007, Palestinian groups in Gaza fired about 2,700 locally made Qassam rockets into Israel, killing four Israeli civilians and injuring 75 others. During the same period, Israel fired more than 14,600 155 mm artillery shells into the Gaza Strip, killing 59 Palestinians and injuring 270.”

But you didn't.

The analyst/historian in you may well have gone to the effort of finding out the blast range of a 155mm artillery shell and noted that a human sized target 50 meters away from the impact had a 50:50 chance of being killed or sustaining a disabling injury. The radius for a Qassam is less than 10.

But you didn't.

The historian/analyst in you might have checked the facts before claiming “ that the main victims of the rocket attacks have been children” and found that just three of the 42 fatalities caused by rockets and mortars fired into Israel since 2004 were children.

But you didn't.

But at least the human in you is wondering about morality. Then are you able to answer what morality lies in bombing schools, hospitals, UN refuges, vast swathes of civilian homes and businesses, of police stations, of Hamas leaders homes?

Or do you believe as this man does?

“Retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland wrote ... there is no such thing as an innocent civilian in Gaza. … arguing that the citizens of Gaza were as responsible for the recent violence as Hamas.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/08/04/israeli-general-no-civilians-in-gaza.html
Posted by SteeleRedux, Saturday, 9 August 2014 12:42:21 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
This is really funny.

Unable to reply effectively to the logic and reasoned analysis of their opponents, Don Aitkin, Srteelredux and Dane are conducting a Mutual Admiration Society.

When you get through scratching each others backs, boys, just remember that SPQR, Shocky and me are still waiting in the Arena for you three to show your heads.
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 9 August 2014 5:07:14 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"When you get through scratching each others backs, boys, just remember that SPQR, Shocky and me are still waiting in the Arena for you three to show your heads."

Lol!...I'm sure SteeleRedux and dane are trembling in their boots at the prospect of bumping into "SPQR, Shocky and me"..

Where's that then?

Out the back of the shed behind the bike racks at playtime?
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 9 August 2014 8:35:46 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
SPQR, Shocky and Poirot
Out the back of the shed behind the bike racks at playtime? You sound like ignorant children.
Posted by jet, Saturday, 9 August 2014 9:49:02 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Steele,

I showed you my reasoning, and you showed me yours. We each take greater notice of some things than others. We disagree about morality — at least, I think we do. I am not sitting as a judge, but I think you may be.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Saturday, 9 August 2014 10:07:10 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don,

"... I am not sitting as a judge, but I think you may be."

Er....

"The human in me wonders at the morality of the men who launch their rockets from the neighbourhoods of schools and hospitals. The outcome in time must be death and destruction to one's own people. Hamas believes that 'the Zionist entity' (one doesn't refer to the name of the state because that gives it respectability) must be destroyed.

The human in me says that such people have a twisted morality."

That "is" a judgement.
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 9 August 2014 10:16:23 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Jet,

"... You sound like ignorant children."

Well, der....

That was precisely the point I was trying to make regarding LEGO's former post.
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 9 August 2014 10:19:19 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Poirot,

I would agree with you that it is hard not to judge when analysing, and that was the point of my distinguishing between the 'human' and the 'historian'.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Saturday, 9 August 2014 10:24:46 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Don,

Again with respect I'm having a little difficulty distinguishing your reasoning from the mantra, 'Hamas bad', 'Hamas immoral', 'Hamas to blame', 'Israel has little choice', 'Israel made the desert bloom'.

To starkly state that “11,000 rockets have been fired into Israel since 2001” is part of that mantra. It paints a picture of Israel suffering thousands of rockets before occasionally striking back with ground assaults.

But the conflict has always been far more tit for tat. As illustrated in the two years before Operation Cast Lead Israel fired nearly six times as many artillery rounds into Gaza than were returned in rocket fire. This is leaving aside the missile strikes from aircraft and helicopters plus the direct incursions across the border by the IDF.

I would excuse your mantra coming from some bloke I met at the pub whose exposure to the narrative of the conflict was limited to mainstream media. It is hard to expect him to have the time nor the inclination to appraise himself more fully of the facts. But you sir have no such excuse. As a university lecturer surely an inquiring mind is part of the job description.

Cont...
Posted by SteeleRedux, Saturday, 9 August 2014 12:54:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Cont...

As to my morality being different to yours perhaps it is.

For instance why shouldn't we consider the tunnels dug by Hamas to be as legitimate as Israel using Gazan airspace to deliver high explosives. Both give access to the other's territory. In fact I will go further, the attack through tunnels by Hamas of an Israeli military post shown below must have required enormous bravery. To crawl though a narrow hole for hundreds of meters, knowing full well these tunnels were being systematically destroyed so the risk of suffocating alive was very real, then emerge an make your way in the open to a walled military post and attack it knowing how quickly and effectively the IDF can respond would have taken nerves of steel.
http://youtu.be/TktroI1S9s8

Compare that to the Israeli pilots who invade the airpace over Gaza to drop high explosive bombs on the homes and families of Hamas officials with the comforting knowledge that there is nothing in the Hamas arsenal capable of harming them in any way.

Putting aside the risk to the fighters is one method of warfare more or less moral than the other? I would be keen to hear your view.

Finally here the latest footage of the IDF striking 'terror' missile sites. You tell me how many you see next to 'neighbourhoods of schools and hospitals'. I am not saying it never happens but it is hardly the default location you make it out to be.
http://youtu.be/BLMynOHtzlY
Posted by SteeleRedux, Saturday, 9 August 2014 12:55:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Here's one that Steeleredux missed

This is Hamas' version:

" 'Hamas' declares the death of the former name of the spokesman Ayman Taha in Israeli shelling AUG 7, 2014
Gaza / Mustafa Haboush / Alonadol announced that the Islamic Resistance Movement 'Hamas' in the death of the former name of the spokesman Ayman Taha, of wounds sustained a few days ago, a result of Israeli shelling targeted an apartment which was located where the city of Gaza"
http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=133214

ANOTHER NOBLE MARTYR?

But this is what really happened as told by Alquds.com (another Palestian source BASED OUT OF JERUSALEM rather than GAZA --which is why it is able to challenge the official Hamas line)

"RAMALLAH special Jerusalemdot com confirmed private sources, it was the execution of the former leader of Hamas, Ayman Taha, 3 days ago, where his body now resides in the compound of Shifa Hospital.

The sources said, that Taha was executed by several bullets in the head and chest, where his body was dumped in the yard of "healing" and stayed for an hour without approaching one of them, before the return of other gunmen and pulled without knowing why.

Hamas has banned the publication of the news of the arrival of the corpse on Tuesday, but allowed that day after the body was re-Taha for 'healing' at three in the afternoon.

Months before the oldest Hamas security on the arrest of the former leader, 'Taha' and detained an unknown location, where he was under investigation.

Ayman Taha, accused of having ties with Arab intelligence services, as well as for the establishment of investment projects of its own under the name of the movement Hmas. and exploited position in addition to financial embezzlement led to inflated his wealth without justification.

Hamas accuses him and also to hold contacts with Palestinian figures on the runner with great movement."

http://www.alquds.com/news/article/view/id/518166

NO. ANOTHER VICTIM OF A HAMAS DEATH SQUAD!

Google will translate it to English if it pops-up in an Arabic
Posted by SPQR, Saturday, 9 August 2014 2:36:00 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
SteeleRedux

Had it entered your mind that these "narrow" tunnels were actually fortresses large enough for vehicles built with concrete that was provided to the Palestinians to build infrastructure and that 180 children died while being forced to work on building these fortresses? You think that is "moral" and "legitimate"? Hamas is a recognised terrorist organisation which is committed to destroying Israel, no matter what it takes, even cynically putting the Palestinian lives at risk.
Posted by jet, Saturday, 9 August 2014 2:38:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
No Poirot, I don't wonder about the morality of "men who fire rockets out of schools and hospitals" at all. I know exactly where they are coming from.

Unable to create viable countries or a decent standard of living for their people, the leaders of the Muslim religion promise them pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die in exchange for returning "Palestine" to Islam. The Muslims need someone to hate or they might start thinking about how their culture has failed them.

If they were smart Germans or Japanese they would know when they were beat and start thinking about reforming their culture. But the muslims are so immersed in their war mongering religion that they can't see any other way to find happiness other than attaining a better life when they are dead.

If you ever wondered why General Haig could shrug of 20,000 dead British soldiers in three days of fighting on the Somme, it was because he thought like a Muslim. He really did believe that the dead British soldiers were going to a better life in heaven, so why worry about it?

All that matters to the Muslims is to die a Jihadi and spend eternity screwing little girls. To obtain that pleasant dream, no blow is low enough. Allah will understand
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 9 August 2014 4:25:44 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Jet, the article never mentioned "children being forced", nice bit of emotive fiction on your part. Solution, Israel stops occupying the Palestinian territory (Gaza and the West Bank) and lifts the illegal blockade (siege). Yes Gaza is 'occupied' as the terrorist organisation, the Israeli government, controls it. If I were a Palestinian in Gaza I too would be fighting off the invaders.
Posted by markjohnconley, Saturday, 9 August 2014 4:46:36 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Lego, at least you don't try to hide your racist attitude.
Posted by markjohnconley, Saturday, 9 August 2014 4:47:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
markjohnconley
Not "emotive fiction". You should read more widely than one article.
Posted by jet, Saturday, 9 August 2014 6:08:17 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Jet, I read 'the' article, all others are the same or distortions, most likely your source
Posted by markjohnconley, Saturday, 9 August 2014 6:56:29 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Who does,markjohnconnelly?

The reason why I stopped being a trendy lefty and started thinking straight was because I realised that so many 'anti racists" were extremely racist towards white people. My people. The funny thing is, they consider anti white racism to be so justified and normal that they make racist statements about whites all the time and it goes right over their heads.

I am constantly called a "redneck" which is just as racist a term as "niigger", and my opponents on OLO have even claimed that my attitudes are similar to "Southern whites in the USA", which is another racist stereotype.

It is a cultural universal that all human groups identify other human groups that they don't like because they consider their group values, attitudes and behaviours to be unacceptable. They identify these people by their skin colour, the clothes they wear, the declared moral convictions of the group, or the group behaviours routinely exhibited by these groups which conforms to their declared ideology. Once you grasp that simple fact, you might be able to put aside your culturally conditioned reflex to think that you are morally and intellectually superior to "racists" and start thinking straight.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 10 August 2014 7:48:55 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
If you are such a committed anti racist who can spot racism everywhere, markjohnconnolly, how come you missed this?

"Note that the Zionists need the Nazis as the source of their self-image. After all, they had the Bible for reference, with the grand plan already laid out for example at Deuteronomy 20 – read it at http://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/20-17.htm to get the drift."

Emperor Julian.

This had to mean taking sides with sundry Communists, enemies of the people, NKVD butchers, etc. etc. But between the Resistance and the Krauts it was a no-brainer – resist to get the occupiers’ pig snouts out of their country.

Emperor Julian.

Different times, but exactly the same principles apply in parallel circumstances today. And exactly the same kind of people advancing exactly the same advice.

Emperor Julian.

Israel does not want peace. They want all palestinians dead or exiled. They want all the land west of the Jordan river and they are committing genocide, ethnic cleansing and murder to get it.

mikk
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 10 August 2014 8:25:11 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
markjohnconley

So are you saying that it is moral for Palestinian children to have died while working on the terror tunnel fortresses (even as, you insist on saying, that they were not forced)?
Posted by jet, Sunday, 10 August 2014 4:47:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Lego, so 'lefty' is 'racist' also; so we are all 'racists', I get it.
I had missed those comments, but Mikk is not far off the mark, mark
Posted by markjohnconley, Sunday, 10 August 2014 9:01:46 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
jet, it always gets me when the western media repeat the Zionists "fight ing for survival" mantra, when as I comprehend it's the Palestinians who are fighting for survival against the terrorist state, Israel.
Children are having their heads exploded by the terrorist actions of the Zionist Israeli organisation so they are part of the fight aren't they.
Posted by markjohnconley, Sunday, 10 August 2014 9:07:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear markjohnconey,

It is often useful to look at the user history of those with whom you engage.

LEGO, a narcissistic character who often manages to steer the topic to himself or areas he feels he has some knowledge or advantage, is at least authentic.

Jet is not. The discussion when he first entered OLO it was titled “Palestinian Israeli conflict is about much more than settlements”
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15087#260847

Author Avi-Guy is “a policy analyst for the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council”. Three new posters registered to place pro-Israeli comments accompanying that article.

The first, ludicrously named 'Arab', claimed to be an Arab telling fellow Arabs that “Israel never attacked or threatened to attack anyone.” I bet the boys at the JAC had a chuckle. Lasted 2 posts.

The next was our 'jet' who made 3 posts back then only firing up his account again for this particular thread.

The third was 'Kondrakr' who lasted just 3 posts.

Whether they are just sock puppets or an Australian version of this;
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/14/israel-pay-students-propaganda_n_3755782.html
doesn't really matter but it is a phenomena that repeats itself with Israel-Palestinian discussions all the time.

All duplicitous and conniving as the Israel lobby is well known for.

So to the topic of tunnels. The paper that the Jerusalem Post referred to when saying 160 children died digging tunnels was;
http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/42605

Really worth a read, a snippet;

“Once in control of the commercial tunnels, the Hamas government set about formalizing the smuggling economy through regulation. In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, the Interior Ministry established the Tunnel Affairs Commission (TAC) to act as the regulatory authority for commercial activities. Among its first acts was to issue a list of blacklisted imports, including weapons, alcohol, and tramadol, a painkiller much used in Gaza. In response to public concern at a rising toll of tunnel casualties, particularly of child workers, the TAC issued guidelines intended to ensure safe working conditions. Over time, it fenced off the site and stationed some three hundred black-clad internal-security personnel at entry points to spot-check the documentation of persons entering and leaving the zone.”
Posted by SteeleRedux, Monday, 11 August 2014 12:00:05 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Since you seem to be having a hard time grasping a simple concept, markjohnconnelly, so I will explain it to you in simpler terms.

"Mikk" just condemned an entire national group by negatively stereotyping their behaviour and insisting that their collective motive is insidious. But when I do the same thing and criticise Muslims or aborigines, I am routinely accused of "racism."

Got it now?

Lefties routinely violate their own declared opposition to racism, because they are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause, that it never occurs to them that they themselves are doing what they so forcefully condemn in others. If it is racism to stereotype and condemn the values, attitudes, behaviours and motives of aborigines, homosexuals, Muslims, asylum seekers, Chinese, and any other minority group favoured by the left, then the same must apply to Jews, Israelis, bogans, and Americans.

To do otherwise is hypocrisy. It is a double standard. It is (shudder) DISCRIMINATION.
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 11 August 2014 6:22:58 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
thanks again leggo,
Mikk is racist (Israelis), you are racist (Muslims, lefties), I am racist (righties, rednecks), easy
Posted by markjohnconley, Monday, 11 August 2014 9:51:51 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
SR, hadn't seen that 'paid student' link before, thanks, makes sense;
the Institute of Palestine Studies article is the one i had read and was referring to in my earlier post, all the best, mark
Posted by markjohnconley, Monday, 11 August 2014 10:09:42 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear markjohnconey,

You might not have caught this little documentary but it is worth a look as it really brings the Institute's report to life. Called 'Gaza's Property Ladder' (2013) it includes some quite relevant material about the tunnels and is a fascinating look at the factors that influence the real estate decisions of Gazans. If you haven't seen it I hope you enjoy it.
http://vimeo.com/101819495

My information from the film maker is that as of yesterday Asam the agent and the policeman and his family have thus far survived the Israeli bombing and invasion.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Monday, 11 August 2014 10:52:49 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I knew you would get it in the end, markjohnconnelly. Some people just require a lot more patience and coaching than others.

Well done.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 14 August 2014 8:40:06 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 12
  7. 13
  8. 14
  9. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy