MichaelK,

I doubt very much if any writers here are pro-Hamas. The Arab League has told Hamas to recognise Israel - a very decisive request.

It surprises me not at all, what Hamas are saying about Jews... and ad nauseum. But look what they say about Fatah and Palestinians on the West Bank. They mutually detest each other. Don't forget that Hamas as readily kill their own people who disagree with them, as they would Israelis. Palestinians in Gaza were desperately trying to get out. Hamas have sworn to bring Sharia law to every home.

No one denies that the Palestinian have a right to security and well-being - and especially a state of their own. But peace will not come to them whilst they are under the fist of thugs. You must have heard of Wallid Shoebat an extremely brave man, who is also an ex-terrorist. Here are pictures of “Palestinian” justice; and also a youtube message by him. What do you think would happen if he went back to Palestine?

http://www.shoebat.com/palestinian_justice.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJS4XYJ5w5Q

Hi Danielle,

You missed the point about genocide, it does not have to be the mass extermination of a people. Israel is not going to put out a white paper outlining how it is going to illegally annex the West Bank, ridiculous. They are doing it by making the lives of native Palestinians so difficult, they will choose to transfer themselves to another country. During the second Intifada, Israel routinely broke into schools and cultural centres and destroyed everything, computers, academic records, attempting to wipe out Palestinian nationalism. How can Palestinian children go to exams, when the Separation Wall, fixed and random roadblocks prevent students from reaching exams? And these same obstacles makes Palestinian economic recovery impossible, not including the forced starvation of the whole of Gaza. Everyone except the apologists knows Israel intends to keep the West Bank, your insinuation that they are not is insulting.

The idea that Israel has improved the health of Palestinians, accounting for their rise in birthrates, would be laughable, if it wasn't so tragically wrong. All over the world, high birthrates are linked to poverty, which is the state Israel keeps the Palestinian people in. It is a testament to the strengths and resilience of the Palestinian people that they can still bring children into the world, raise them under the worst conditions and still grow their population. This alone is the death of Zionism, unlike the American Indian, or the Australian Aborigine, they outnumber their oppressors. Here is the basis of the growing anti-apartheid movement that will bring Zionism to its overdue end.

All Palestine lacks is a Mandella/Gandhi. Who knows how many the Israelis have murdered? The thing Israel fears the most is peace.

Earthrise

The far-left are having a real field day at the moment with the term ‘genocide’. I wonder what you call the real genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia/Kosovo. Or do you commit the appalling disservice to the peoples of those countries by not making any distinction.

“The death toll, both military and civilian, of the entire conflict in 2000-2007 is estimated to be over 4200 Palestinians and over 1000 Israelis. Between September 2000 and January 2005, 69 percent of Israeli fatalities were male, while over 95 percent of the Palestinian fatalities were male. To date 63 foreign citizens have been killed (53 by Palestinians, and 10 by Israeli security forces).”

You said “Everyone except the apologists knows Israel intends to keep the West Bank, your insinuation that they are not is insulting.”
And someone presciently replied that up until 2005 you would have argued that Israel intended to keep the Gaza Strip as well. Israel has a history of giving back the land it has won. When Egypt finally accepted Israel’s right to exist and made peace the Israelis handed back the Sinai. And after the relative success of the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip. At Camp David in 2000 Barak offered 91% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip plus a capital in Eastern Jerusalem. All that he asked in return was that the Palestinians first dismantle their terror organisations.

So Israel is stopping all children from going to exams? They are smashing all the schools? And ‘cultural centres’ Do you actually have a clue what a Palestinians cultural centre is? Because if you think that a community centre is the place where culture resides you really are grasping at straws. Cultural centres are almost invariably recruiting and operations centres for local militants. This is typical, insurgent type, tactics and was a favourite of the IRA and UVF etc.

Your complete unwillingness to accept that Palestinian hardships are exacerbated by the extremist policies of their leaders shows how biased you really are.

Paul.l,

You are using the Gaza withdrawal exactly as Israel intended, to cover the annexation of the West Bank. Israel never intended to keep Gaza, it is not part of what Israel sees as its historical homeland. They only held onto it as a bargaining chip in future negotiations. Negotiations which never took place, as Hamas made the place impossible to suppress. Sharon was forced to abandon it, like South Lebanon, and all he got was the flimsy cover story you are peddling now. And of course you are not saying Gaza is now a free, sovereign entity. It is an open air prison, where Israel has closed the borders, sea and airspace and is staving the people into submission. The real danger of Gaza was the high birthrate, which threatened to expose the undemocratic nature of the Zionist racist State.

Of course all Palestinian civilians are militants and terrorists, after you kill them. They don't have dance companies, artist communities, music halls and theatres, do they?. People under oppression tend to be more artistic, they have more pain to write from. Just think of the African Americans; Blues, Rock and Roll and Rap. Israel cannot have Palestinan art perpetuating their 'non-existent' culture, and risk it leaking to the world to garner support for their cause.

Your complete unwillingness to accept that Palestinian hardships are caused by the extremist policies of the Israeli State shows how morally bankrupt you really are.

"IDF: 3 children killed in Gaza Tuesday were just playing tag"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899414.html

Shame on you for defending this.

This discussion delights me definitely.

If one was supportive to independent state for the Arabs of Palestine, this person should definitely comprehend data provided on these pages and think of Palestinian autonomies under Jordanian/Egyptian protectorate as it already existed prior to establishing FATAH in 1964 and going on a war-67 to annihilate the Jewish State.

Paul.L, c'mon now stop with the silver bullets. The interpretation of genocide doesn't simply equate to "the mass production of corpses" your referencing the term out of context. Ultimately it’s a political means to an ideological end, where under the Geneva Convention it’s stated in article II;

“…genocide in the means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, such as:
a) killing members of the group;
b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part;
d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Now note that this definition implies three things:
- Genocide is not necessarily total destruction of the group but can indeed be in part;
- Four of the five criteria do not entail killing per se but instead emphasise more often than not forms of physical/cultural disruption; and
- Violation of any of the criteria stipulated is demonstrably genocide

Think about it for a second mate, in 1958, 45% of all settlements in Palestine disappeared after the creation of the Israeli state, 433 out of the 807 of the villages were left standing, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since occupation. This was carried out through either Israeli terror (massacres, the dynamiting of whole villages, etc), or through a system of Laws established to expropriate Arab lands (The Defense Emergency Regulations, Emergency Security Zone Regulations, Emergency Regulations (cultivation of Waste Lands) ordinance, & the Absentee Property Law), go on look them up!.

It's easy to hemorrhage figures Paul but you fail to make the connection to any historical consequence. Machiavelli on drugs! I’m not repudiating the existence of a Jewish state but what’s occurring is simply a product of their own actions. The biggest irony is that the specific article in the Geneva Convention arose out of the tragic experience of the Jews in Germany