Recent Isareli military action in Gaza

[Walsingham]

I'm kind of done with arguing this point, but i think it's not argumentative to highlight the tiny size of Israel. It's about 50 miles across. It's not like there's much room to work with.

[Gorgon]

Hamas is a terrorist organization. If an organization uses terrorist tactics, like Hamas does, it is a terrorist organization. Suicide bombings is a tactic Hamas uses and it is a terrorist tactic. I can't believe you can say Hamas is not a terrorist organization with a straight face. They are terrorists. I don't care about Hamas' history, its politics, or its psychology.

 

THEY USE TERROR AS A WEAPON! THEY USE SUICIDE BOMBERS! THEY ARE TERRORISTS!

 

 

9 times. Were you going for a record...

 

 

Yes an organization that sponsors suicide bombings is first and foremost a terrorist organization, and it's important to insist on that label, but obviously it's a lot more as well. They may be the ones Israel will have to negotiate with in future. I'm not so sure anyone believes it's possible to eradicate the state of Israel, Hamas included.

[Killian Kalthorne]

You don't negotiate with terrorists, Gorgon. You put a bullet in their brain.

[Gorgon]

They started negotiating with Shin Fein, that turned out pretty well.

 

Yes, you do negotiate with organizations that have a terrorist militant wing, with the carrot and the stick.

[Rostere]

My biggest beef is with folks who act as if anyone who doesn't castigate Israel revels in the bloodshed of all arabs. This is simply not true. Imagine for a moment that you're safe and happy there in, I dunno, Stockholm, when a group of people avow that their one unifying wish is the destruction of your community. They hate you with an unreasoning passion. Lacking the military strength to attack you directly, they undertake a variety of terrorist acts such as blowing up civilians with car bombs and, when you have taken measures to protect yourselves against such methods, lob missiles at civilians in your city. So ardent is their loathing that they find willing recruits to sacrifice their lives in order to kill your fellow citizens. There is no negotiation and it is quickly and abundantly clear that they will gladly kill as many of you or all of you given the chance. You and some of your fellow citizens, feeling the depths of your hearts, advocate negotiation and concession. That approach actually holds some sway with a portion of the people, but as these attempts repeatedly fail to achieve any results and the attacks continue, you and likeminded people find your position undermined. Unfortunately, people outside of Sweden, seeing that the Swedes are better organized, better armed, and have a distinct advantage militarily heap scorn on you and your fellow citizens. The terrorists hide themselves amongst "civilians." Sadly, many of these civilians have actively and overtly supported the terrorist organization that currently targets your people. As time progresses, you fight back as best you can and try to carve out some normalcy. It's distressing to you that folks who have never faced such recalcitrant foes can so easily condemn you. It's as if you are held responsible for being the victim of unmitigated hatred and violence. Because no gesture of peace suffices to cool the unwavering insistance on the destruction of your people, the folks who advocate a military response gain power in your community. When you respond, because your self avowed and sworn enemy hides themselves in and amongst civilians, you cannot help but cause civilian casualties. You are embittered because of this outrageous double standard by which you are judged evil for harming civilians whereas your self identified enemy targets civilians as a matter of preference. However, no matter how many people pass judgement on you, you cannot fail in your resolve because, unlike those people in far away places, you know that your resolve is the only bulwark that stands between you and the complete destruction of your community.

 

I note with interest which parts of the actual conflict you leaved out of your analogy. For example: Why are these people fighting?

 

I don't have any personal animosity for you, Rostere. I mean that sincerely. However, I despise your position. Poverty and despair do not exculpate Hamas from responsibility for the current military conflict. It's hard for me to condemn Israel for their heavy handed response, and I believe their response can sometimes be heavy handed, when the enemies of Israel actively, overtly, and unapologetically desire nothing less than the complete destruction of the state.

 

I have no delusions that if Hamas swapped arms with Israel there wouldn't also be substantial bloodshed. In fact, I think that at least initially more people would die that way than with the current balance of power. However with power comes responsibility, and that is why I mainly criticize Israel (and also because there are no Hamas supporters on this forum...).

 

You see, this is really a deeper problem. The Palestinians have suffered a lot of atrocities which incites them to fight. Israel also has a similar amount, although they lie further back in time. And just as firing rockets on Israel will not create peace, bombing Gaza will also not serve to make peace. This invasion is executed with complete disregard of why there is a fight at all. I do not say that Hamas should take no blame, only that the current Israeli startegy will only prolong the conflict. And in the end it's Israel that gets to choose wich game they want to play. I wonder how they could even think they are solving anything. Remove Hamas today, and another extremist organisation will take power tomorrow as long as the underlying problems aren't solved.

 

Would it help the Palestinians if they inflicted casualties on the Jewish population similar to the ones they have suffered themselves? I think not.

[taks]

Yes, you do negotiate with organizations that have a terrorist militant wing, with the carrot and the stick.

ah, i see... so you give them a last meal before the bullet in the brain?

 

taks

[Morgoth]

I wonder why the US is so quite about this whole conflict?

[Walsingham]

You don't negotiate with terrorists, Gorgon. You put a bullet in their brain.

 

You mean like Nelson Mandela? If he's a sort of terrorist can we shoot him with a sort of bullet?

[Gfted1]

Gaza conflict spreads to Europe with Jews attacked

 

Jan 6, 9:50 AM (ET)

 

By JOHN LEICESTER

 

PARIS (AP) - Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe's towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.

 

Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.

 

Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including "murderers ... You broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm.

 

In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.

 

 

France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence flaring when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, some 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.

 

President Nicolas Sarkozy warned in a statement Tuesday that France would not tolerate violence linked to the Gaza crisis. A day earlier, his interior minister said she was concerned about the prospect of contagion and met with the heads of the two main Muslim and Jewish groups and police officials to stress the need to "preserve national unity."

 

Damage to the synagogue in Toulouse was limited to a blackened gate, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi was giving a course to adults inside, authorities said. They said unlighted gasoline bombs were also found in a car nearby and in the synagogue's yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue, but fled when the building's alarm went off.

 

"It could have been very, very serious," Partouche said in a telephone interview. "There were people inside; there could have been deaths."

 

He said Jewish leaders are asking Toulouse authorities for reinforced security for the city's synagogues.

 

"We really fear that anti-Semitism will spring up again and that the current conflict will be transposed to our beautiful French republic," he said.

 

In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza. The group said it had recorded 20-25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.

 

London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.

 

Community Security Trust spokesman Mark Gardner said that in another incident last week a gang of 15-20 youths walked along the main street in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighborhood in north London, shouting "Jew" and "Free Palestine" at passers-by.

 

"It could get worse," Gardner said. "We tend to see these things happen in waves."

 

The government in Belgium on Tuesday ordered police in Antwerp and Brussels to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. Police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.

 

In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees have been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.

 

"They kept cursing and shouting at us," Ruvio told The Associated Press. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.

 

Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted "slaughter all the Jews."

 

"I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else. If people ask you where you are from, never say you're from Israel," he said.

 

So much for the theory of "only the disenfranchised" want to attack jews.

[Walsingham]

So much for the theory that terrorists are heroes.

 

Wait, hang on...

[Wrath of Dagon]

Why don't you ask then why did almost all the suicide bombers come from West Bank and not Gaza?

 

I'd like to make that came, keeping in mind the current rate of suicide bombers from the West Bank. Most of the suicide bombers in the West Bank targetted Jewish settlements, settlements which by the way are illegal under international law. The reason not as many suicide bombers come from Gaza is that Gaza has never had as many Israeli settlers, and those few who had occupied land there were forcibly removed by the Israeli government. So in short, since Palestinians and Israelis have not been living side to side in Gaza, and that is the reason there were fewer suicide bombs there.

Again, you seem to be ignorant of history. The settlements are better protected than Israeli cities, most suicide bombings took place inside Israel itself.

 

 

You might want to ask why did Egypt never move Palestinians out of their squalid refuge camps back when it had control of Gaza. And as I said, any efforts by Israel to improve economic conditions were met by terrorism, and allowing Palestinians to earn money in Israel was rewarded by suicide bombings.

 

Back to where? If you've not yet realized that fact, Gaza is basically a large squalid refugee camp. You know, Israeli refugees of Arab descent are not allowed to come back again (not that their old houses aren't bulldozed to the ground anyway).

They could resettle them in Egypt, in better conditions than they were living in. Back in 1948, the population of Gaza was far smaller than it is currently.

I've honestly not heard of any attempts by Israel to improve economic conditions in Gaza. Care to elaborate?

I already said they tried to build industrial zones in Gaza, but they all had to be abandoned when the attacks started. Also Palestinians used to be allowed to earn money in Israel, until that was used as an opportunity to carry out suicide attacks. I already said that twice, try to pay attention. The way Israelis envision eventual peace with Palestinians is to have them closely integrated with the Israeli economy, thus improving their standard of living. It's the Palestinians who want as little to do with Israel as possible, even those who claim to support reconciliation. You really need to try to educate yourself on the issues, instead of reading one-sided propaganda.

 

Look, Sweden recieves a lot of refugees (immigration is about three times as high as the US, if you compare it to the total population), and I'm certainly not ceasing to exist. On the other hand, I get new friends, kebab and Albanian folk music. Last time someone tried to create a country where the inhabitants' rights were judged by their race, things went bad. But I guess to some people, crazy ideas like that will never cease to exist. And yes lol, I'd prefer a heart that is bleeding over none at all.

It's a fact that if all the Palestinian refugees returned (not the original refugees, their descendants), Israel would become a Palestinian state, not a Jewish state. At best all Jews would be exiled, at worst massacred to a person. Jews aren't voluntarily going to gas chambers again, no matter how admirable some would find that. And all Israeli citizens are treated the same under the law, the issue is only who's allowed to become a citizen.

Anyway, once again you change subjects as part of your argument, this time away from genocide. There is no nation that goes farther than Israel to avoid civilian casualties, this against an enemy that purposefully tries to kill as many civilians as it possibly can.

I was showing actions and attitudes which were close to genocide (Different races have different rights + one is looked upon as a "threat").

 

The emphasized sentence makes me sick to even read... You obviously have no concern for other people's right to live at all. You should read the different news reports where Israeli military are reported firing on ambulances who try to get to injured (or dead?) civilians. Don't you have a family yourself? Can't you relate in ANY way to what's happening?

How the hell do you know they're intentionally firing at ambulances? Those ambulances are going right into the thick of combat, not that that's wrong, but do you find it so hard to believe they could simply get caught in the crossfire? Besides that, it's documented that Hamas often uses ambulances to ferry troops and ammunition, not that I'm claiming it in this case, since I have no idea, but it's certainly a possibility.

[Wrath of Dagon]

They started negotiating with Shin Fein, that turned out pretty well.

 

Yes, you do negotiate with organizations that have a terrorist militant wing, with the carrot and the stick.

Shin Fein is not committed to wiping out Great Britain. Israel does negotiate with Fatah, they even negotiate indirectly with Hamas, although so far it's done a lot more harm than good. If Hamas wants to stop the Israeli response, all they have to do is stop firing rockets. If Hamas wants to lift the economic embargo on Gaza (imposed by all Western nations, not just Israel), all they have to do is renounce the goal of destroying Israel, renounce terrorism, and agree to abide by all prior agreements negotiated between Israel and Palestinians. There's nothing Israel can do to stop Hamas from attacking them except to surrender and turn all their territory over to Hamas. Thus the fault for what's happening in Gaza is entirely on Hamas.

Edited January 6, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[Gorgon]

And again, it doesn't matter who's fault it is to the civilians trapped there. Hamas is not a likely partner for peace, but peace means negotiating with your enemy, not your friends. Hamas' stated goal of the destruction of the state of Israel does not make talking pointless, Hamas hardly believes it can achieve that anyway.

 

Israel has shown very little will to change anything when they had Abbas, or even Arafat, to negotiate with. What is needed is a victory for Palestinian moderates, not to make another generation of suicide bombers out of the civilians on the receiving end of Israel's retaliation.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Hello, Ehud Barak offered Palestinians almost everything they ever asked for, they still rejected it. And what you're saying about negotiating with Abbas is simply not true, I don't know where you get that. The problem is no one represents all the Palestinians right now, so negotiations really can't reach any kind of final agreement. And negotiating with Hamas is completely useless, they simply stall for time and arm themselves more and more heavily, same as negotiating with Iran. It's the height of naivete to believe otherwise. In fact, this last time they refused to negotiate at all, which is why the ceasefire wasn't renewed in the first place, they simply announced they wouldn't abide by it anymore.

Edited January 6, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[Aristes]

I actually agree that negotiation is necessary. In fact, even with the current climate, negotiations might yet yield results. Yes, it's difficult to negotiate with an enemy that touts every concession as proof of your cowardice and a sign of your impending defeat, but Israel must find ways to bolster Palestinian moderates without emboldening radicals. It's not important to me personally that Israel win as there is peace. However, I refuse to accept that Israel should be driven into the sea. Moreover, the Palestinians had as good a deal as they had ever seen at the end of the Clinton Administration and they backed out of it. Arafat, in particular, should be vilified for his role in sinking the agreement. Still, when the Palestinians can produce a moderate leader who is honestly looking to hammer out a deal, then I'm confident there will be one. As it stands, the mistakes Israel has made notwithstanding, I don't see what they can do until there's a change in government or a dramatic change in Hamas' stance towards the Jewsish state.

[Gorgon]

Yes, it's true about the talks Clinton moderated between Barak and Arafat, I forgot about that.

[Volourn]

"So much for the theory of "only the disenfranchised" want to attack jews."

 

All this proves is that many's hatred for Isreal or Jews runs deeper than just the conflict bewteen Isreal and Palestine. It simply has to do with bigotry. Not all are like this but Hamas certainly fits into that hateful group which is why I negotitaing with them at this time is fruitless. As mentioned by otehrs, there *was* a ceasefire going on but it was Hamas who completely refusted to even negotiate an extension. Want to know why? The last ceasefire lasted long enough so that were able to strengtrhen themselbves for another round of killin' Jews. Again, Hamas doesn't care about Palestine.

Edited January 6, 2009 by Volourn

[Meshugger]

Those attacks in Europe are most likely done by two kinds of people:

 

1) Neonazis who hate anything jewish

2) Immigrants or their indoctrinated children who hate anything jewish

 

If it was done by anyone else, i would be suprised.

[Volourn]

Yup.

[Killian Kalthorne]

Can we just blow up the planet and be done with it already. Sheesh.

[Volourn]

No.

[Hiro Protagonist]

ISRAELI women are required to do national service - and are being called up for operations in Gaza. Here are some of the girls in action.

 

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/gall...5010140,00.html

[Aponez]

In Spain we have a say "Quien siembra vientos recoge tempestades"

 

And now that is what Hamas and the people of Gaza have now, they said nothing while Hamas launched his rockets against the israel

[Volourn]

H0T!

[Yuusha]

Allow me to debunk some of the 'misconceptions' about Hamas and Israel.

 

Israel broke the ceasefire.

 

Hamas no longer vies for Israel's destruction. In an effort to win international support, Hamas have to re-state publicly this message it gave last April to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and more recently to Yves Aubin de La Messuzi