The entire Middle East is a tapestry of many, many ethnic and religious groups, with histories going back many thousands of years. There is nothing out of the ordinary about Jewish people living there, as they have done alongside many other groups.

While I don't support the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank - that seems quite provocative - I also most certainly don't support the extermination of any group, which is what Hamas (and their Iranian supporters: Sunni-Shia, go figure) quite explicitly aim for. Hence the inability of Hamas to ever contemplate a permanent cease-fire.

But what do they expect ? If they keep firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, then Israel has, as it were, a double right to defend themselves, from the aim of extermination in the long-term AND from rocket attacks in the short-term.

So it goes: Israel announces a cease-fire, Hamas breaks it, Israel resumes bombardment. Israel announces a cease-fire, Hamas breaks it, Israel resumes bombardment. What's wrong with this picture ?

Sooner or later, the representatives of the Palestinians have to recognise the right of Israel to exist. That will require the neutralisation and marginalisation of groups which seek the physical extermination of Jews, and of Israel,, such as Hamas.

Joe

'SteeleRedux

I take extreme care to ensure there are no factual errors in my articles and interestingly note yours is the first ever claim
that I have ever received.'

that is a lie David Singer.

You know full well I have challenged your veracity on more than one occasion.

It is the reason you claim when use when you respond to my posts telling us all you refuse to respond to my posts because I call you a liar.

David you as airy fairy in your beliefs as the openly conflicted Vic.

This is an essay by Canadian Jewish writer Gabor Mate. There have been many exemplary Jewish voices condemning the slaughter in Gaza but none so closely aligned to what I have been trying to say on the various threads and with far more eloquence that I could ever hope to muster. It is worthy of being reproduced here in its entirety.

Quote;

As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such force that sometimes my head would spin: “How was it possible? How could the world have let such horrors happen?”

It was a naïve question, that of a child. I know better now: such is reality. Whether in Vietnam or Rwanda or Syria, humanity stands by either complicitly or unconsciously or helplessly, as it always does. In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach.

In Israel-Palestine the powerful party has succeeded in painting itself as the victim, while the ones being killed and maimed become the perpetrators. “They don’t care about life,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, abetted by the Obamas and Harpers of this world, “we do.” Netanyahu, you who with surgical precision slaughter innocents, the young and the old, you who have cruelly blockaded Gaza for years, starving it of necessities, you who deprive Palestinians of more and more of their land, their water, their crops, their trees — you care about life?

There is no understanding Gaza out of context — Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians — and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.

Cont...

Cont...

The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability.

Israel wants peace? Perhaps, but as the veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has pointed out, it does not want a just peace. Occupation and creeping annexation, an inhumane blockade, the destruction of olive groves, the arbitrary imprisonment of thousands, torture, daily humiliation of civilians, house demolitions: these are not policies compatible with any desire for a just peace. In Tel Aviv Gideon Levy now moves around with a bodyguard, the price of speaking the truth.

I have visited Gaza and the West Bank. I saw multi-generational Palestinian families weeping in hospitals around the bedsides of their wounded, at the graves of their dead. These are not people who do not care about life. They are like us — Canadians, Jews, like anyone: they celebrate life, family, work, education, food, peace, joy. And they are capable of hatred, they can harbour vengeance in the hearts, just like we can.

One could debate details, historical and current, back and forth. Since my days as a young Zionist and, later, as a member of Jews for a Just Peace, I have often done so. I used to believe that if people knew the facts, they would open to the truth. That, too, was naïve. This issue is far too charged with emotion. As the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has pointed out, the accumulated mutual pain in the Middle East is so acute, “a significant part of the population finds itself forced to act it out in an endless cycle of perpetration and retribution.”

“People’s leaders have been misleaders, so they that are led have been confused,” in the words of the prophet Jeremiah. The voices of justice and sanity are not heeded. Netanyahu has his reasons. Harper and Obama have theirs.

Cont...

Cont...

And what shall we do, we ordinary people? I pray we can listen to our hearts. My heart tells me that “never again” is not a tribal slogan, that the murder of my grandparents in Auschwitz does not justify the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, that justice, truth, peace are not tribal prerogatives. That Israel’s “right to defend itself,” unarguable in principle, does not validate mass killing.

A few days ago I met with one of my dearest friends, a comrade from Zionist days and now professor emeritus at an Israeli university. We spoke of everything but the daily savagery depicted on our TV screens. We both feared the rancour that would arise.

But, I want to say to my friend, can we not be sad together at what that beautiful old dream of Jewish redemption has come to? Can we not grieve the death of innocents? I am sad these days. Can we not at least mourn together?

End quote.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/07/22/beautiful_dream_of_israel_has_become_a_nightmare.html

May your God bless your pen my friend and may it shame those who would celebrate the sword, the missile, the lazer guided bomb, the tank shell, the artillery round, and the phosphorous bomb.

#SteeleRedux

Having concluded your Jew hating rant over three posts - will you now respond to the following:

"Propagating IDF lies" is now your mantra .

Is the entry shaft to a tunnel from the basement of the mosque shown in this video a lie?

http://youtu.be/aWkjwfkh-qM

Are the weapons shown stored in the mosque on the video a lie?

Is the admission by UN officials of the concealment of weapons in three UN schools a lie?

Are the tunnel exits leading into Israel from which a number of entries into Israel in the past two weeks took place a lie?

Are these videos of tunnels and booby trapped buildings being destroyed a lie?

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/idf-destroys-tunnels-all-over-gaza?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+IDF+to+continue+in+Gaza+%27For+as+Long+as+Necessary%27&utm_campaign=20140802_m121582404_8%2F2+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+IDF+to+continue+in+Gaza+%27For+as+Long+as+Necessary%27&utm_term=IDFtunnels_png_3F1407006068

Is the detonation of a booby trapped UN health clinic by explosives concealed within its walls a lie?

Those who play with fire are sure to get their fingers badly burnt - if not amputated.

Hamas is an evil organisation. It is your perfect choice to support it.

Hamas's name as an acronym = Hides Among Mosques And Schools - which aptly sums up its cowardly approach to the way it chooses to wage war and put Gaza's civilian population in extreme danger of being killed or wounded

What Netanyahu - and the Defence and Intelligence establishment - knew or did not know will be no doubt the subject of a far ranging Commission in Israel. Those making highly damaging claims like Goldberg and Barnea will have ample opportunity to present their evidence.

I doubt a similar Commission will be held in Gaza to find out why tunnels were built to enable terrorists to wage war against Israel but no air raid shelters were built to protect Gazans when it was known that Israel would inevitably retaliate - or what punitive threats were placed on the population to allow their houses to be used conceal entry and exit points from the tunnels.

Continue to be judge jury and prosecutor if you wish.

The lynch mob is truly well alive and kicking on OLO.?"