Thank Christ these people seek "martyrdom" near Israel, in Syria and Iraq and not in Australia.

I much prefer the essay by Noura Erakat titled Five Israeli Talking (propagands) Points on Gaza Debunked.
Plus Johann Hari's interview with Gideon Levy The Punishment of Gaza featured on The Independent (26th July) - an interview which provides some necessary insights as to how the zionists have in one way or another, and even deliberately, created a situation which systematically dehumanizes the Palestinians, and traps them like traumatized rats in a cage, from which there is no escape.

I have NO sympathy for the Palestinians, they could stop the violence overnight, by simply stopping their rockets. The "innocent" civilians choose not to, they allow their people to keep launching them from schools and hospitals etc, and then choose to stay in areas they know will be bombed, therefore they are de-facto combatants, and any suffering is purely voluntary.

This sums it up succinctly, and inarguabley...

"If Palestine were to lay down their guns tomorrow, there would be no war. If Israel were to lay down theirs, there would be no Israel" - Benjamin Netanyahu

If the Israelis announced a midnight truce, every night, how soon do you think Hamas rockets might be flying into Israel, every night ?

But at least Gaza Palestinians might get a bit more sleep, until Israel responded, every night, as it would have the right to do.

Stop the rockets, and let's see what happens.

Joe

Here are quotes from the Wikipedia page dealing with the investigation into the last time the Israeli government massacred and brutalised the Gazan population United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict;

Quote

The report disputes Israel's claim that the Gaza war would have been conducted as a response to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, saying that at least in part the war was targeted against the "people of Gaza as a whole". Intimidation against the population was seen as an aim of the war. The report also says that Israel's military assault on Gaza was designed to "humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability".

The report focused on 36 cases that it said constituted a representative sample. In 11 of these episodes, it said the Israeli military carried out direct attacks against civilians, including some in which civilians were shot "while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags". Talking to Bill Moyers Journal, Goldstone said that the committee chose 36 incidents that represented the highest death toll, where there seemed to be little or no military justification for what happened. According to the report, another alleged war crime committed by IDF include "wanton" destruction of food production, water and sewerage facilities; the report also asserts that some attacks, which were supposedly aimed to kill small number of combatants amidst significant numbers of civilians, were disproportionate.

The report concluded that Israel violated the Fourth Geneva Convention by targeting civilians, which it labeled "a grave breach". It also claimed that the violations were "systematic and deliberate", which placed the blame in the first place on those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations. The report recommended, inter alia, that Israel pay reparations to Palestinians living in Gaza for property damage caused during the conflict.

End quote.

Nothing has changed.

Hi Steele,

I hope that if Israel announced a cease-fire, that would be it - Hamas would stop firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel. In other words, if Israel stopped, Hamas would stop. 'Peace'. Sleep. Rebuilding.

Do you really think that will ever happen ?

Joe