ot. Palestinian Israeli conflict.

[no_such_reality]

Once upon a time someone did something.

Therefore I will fire a rocket today.

[svelte]

We’ve got two countries/areas/groups of humans firing rockets – Rockets! – at each other for a month in the middle east and the press is like “and in other news, it’s hot and sunny with a chance of shrapnel in the middle east”.

[NotCranky]

[quote=Hobie]HenryPP: Nice read but think about this in respect to the hypocrosity referencing Israel.

Israel purchased the land from Arabs in 1947. Including malaria infested swampland which they drained and constructed homes. Can you fault them for defending it?

Israel certainly believes in the concept of, “opening a can of WhupAss on ya” if you mess with them. Again, can’t say I blame them and actually the US should take a lesson here. ( specifically the nancy boy political environment post WW2 )

And PM Netanyahu sums it up quite well: Silence will be met with silence.[/quote]

Nice words “:silence for silence” , when you are the powerful one.

[FlyerInHi]

Not really a fair game.

Israel wouldn’t so powerful without American money, equipment, diplomatic power.

[joec]

Enjoyed your write up and don’t know much history at all on this topic so I have no real opinion, but maybe the US is going with the which country/government is worst for me so they side with Israel by default?

It doesn’t sound like there’s much government/structure in Gaza other than Hamas which I suppose the US doesn’t like. Makes it hard to take “the other side”.

In terms of civilians, all war is pretty bad and there are a lot of innocent casualties, but does this also have a little to do with possible terrorists hiding in said safe place? If you, as a criminal know that you won’t get bombed in a school, you’ll just surround yourself with kids/schools, etc…all the time and run your operation from there…

Not that I’m saying it’s ok to bomb kids, but if a terrorist is shooting rockets at me from a school, I believe I’d fired right back at the school as well.

Ultimately, it goes back to my belief that 1 life you know (say your child, your wife, etc…) is worth more than a billion in some other country you don’t know or care about.

[Arraya]

The Israeli zionist state and it’s very ironic ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian ‘problem’.

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/31/5955077/israeli-support-for-the-gaza-war-is-basically-unanimous

Quote
The results are staggering. An average of 95 percent of Israeli respondents say they think the operation is “completely” or “moderately” justified. About 80 percent say it is “completely” justified. For some perspective, about 72 percent of Americans supported the 2003 Iraq invasion when it was launched.

That support may have increased in part because Israelis came to believe the IDF had increased its level of force to what they wanted. Just before the ground war, when the campaign was largely air strikes, a majority of Israelis believed the IDF wasn’t using enough force. Afterwards, the majority flipped to saying Israel was using the right amount. That’s despite the fact that IDF casualties went up significantly after the ground phase began.

Only a country in the process of moral collapse can stand over this, sitting on a hill, laughing as civilians are shredded by American ordinance.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/1/5959635/heres-the-full-text-of-the-deleted-time-of-israel-post-backing

Quote
I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?

95 percent of Israelis support the Gaza war
http://www.vox.com
Israelis’ biggest criticism of the Gaza war is that the government isn’t using enough force.
Like

[CA renter]

Great to see you here, Arraya! I’ve missed your posts.

[barnaby33]

How does a democratically elected govt allow another govt to attack it’s citizens and not respond?

I’ll admit my bias, I’m pro Israeli, though that has been slipping over the years. However this latest war hasn’t really hurt my already lowered opinion.

Hamas didn’t have to attack Israel, it just refuses to negotiate in good faith for what it wants, opening of borders and sea access. So if you are an Israeli politician who has to run for re-election, do you wait till the rockets kill a few more people, or do you shoot back? If you shoot back, how hard?

I find that all the anti-Israel pushers out there are strangely silent on all of the other horrible conflicts in the world, but this one gets them going. Congo, South Sudan, Syria. Soft bigotry of low expectations, or just letting the availability of grisly images delivered effortlessly to your tv tug at your heart strings?

Can anyone here propose a solution, maybe a difficult one, where Israel doesn’t cease to exist as a Jewish state and a democracy in a few generations? Because if you can’t you are either anti the existence of Israel or you should be ok with the bloody status quo.

Until an actual two state solution is possible this is as good as it seems to get. The Israelis took land in war, none of which they started.

No state in the middle east has voluntarily offered to give up land it conquered, not the Syrians, not the Jordanians, not the Egyptians. Several of these states by the way took land that was to be the Arab part of Palestine. Why if the Israeli’s are so blood thirsty are they willing to, if they can be guaranteed peace. The problem is none of the Arabs seems to actually want peace. They just want to use Israel for their own domestic deflections.

As I said, the Israelis are and have been losing the moral high ground for a generation. They’ve done some stupid and nasty things. However they are still a democracy and there is no comparison for how nasty they are compared to the Arabs they are squaring off against.
Josh

[Jazzman]

You need to be in the thick of it to become more confused before you get a handle on the complexity that then bamboozles you into picking sides that will undoubtedly confirm you are still wrong. A condition as part of a peace process, however, should include Sean Hannity reporting for six months from within Gaza.

[Arraya]

[quote=barnaby33]
I find that all the anti-Israel pushers out there are strangely silent on all of the other horrible conflicts in the world, but this one gets them going. Congo, South Sudan, Syria. Soft bigotry of low expectations, or just letting the availability of grisly images delivered effortlessly to your tv tug at your heart strings?

[/quote]

I, for one, don’t think what goes on in the congo is relevant to the ongoing 60 year ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Do you think what goes on in the Congo justifies Palestinian ethnic cleansing?

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is no different, in essence, from the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous peoples who inhabited North America who were also dehumanized by the European settlers which, as with the Zionists, was a prerequisite for the massive crimes they were about to commit.

One may argue that at the time the North American continent was being settled, our species had not come to realize the inhumanity inherent in such actions but those zionists who dispossessed the Palestinians in 1948, destroyed 500 of their villages, and forced over 750,000 of them to flee, have no such excuses. They had established their intent to do those very things years before the Nazi holocaust and thus neither they nor the state they worship have a moral leg to stand on.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/oct/23/israel-the-alternative/
The problem with Israel, in short, is not—as is sometimes suggested—that it is a European “enclave” in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a “Jewish state”—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

[Arraya]

Excerpt”The case for Israel is made of four propositions that should always be presented in the correct escalating order.

We rock
They suck
You suck
Everything sucks

That’s it. Now you know everything that it took me a lifetime to learn. The rest is details; filling in the dotted lines.

You begin by saying how great Israel is. Israel want peace; Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East; the desert blooms; kibutz; Israelis invented antibiotics, the wheel, the E minor scale; thanks to the occupation Palestinians no longer live in caves; Israel liberates Arab women; Israel has the most moral army in the world, etc.

This will win over 50% of your listeners immediately. Don’t worry about the factual content. This is about brand identity, not writing a PhD. Do you really think BP is ‘beyond petroleum’?

Then you go into the second point: They suck. Here you talk about the legal system of Saudi Arabia, gay rights in Iran, slave trade in the Sudan, Mohammad Atta, the burqa, Palestinians dancing after 9/11, Arafat’s facial hair, etc.

There is only one additional principle you need to understand here. It will separate you from the amateurs. You need to know your audience. If you’ve got a crowd already disposed to racist logic, go for it with everything you have. But if you get a liberal crowd, you need to sugar coat the racism a bit. Focus on women rights, human rights, religious tolerance, “clash of civilizations”, terrorism, they teach their children to hate, etc. Deep down your audience WANTS to enjoy racism and feel superior. They just need the proper encouragement so they can keep their sophisticated self-image. Give them what they crave and they’ll adore you! But be careful not to ‘mix n match,’ because it will cost you credibility.

When you’re done, there will always be dead-enders insisting that abuse of gays in Iran does not justify ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Take a deep breath, and pull the doomsday weapon: You suck!

You’re a Jew-hater, Arab-lover, anti-Semite, you’re a pinko, a commie, a dreamer, a naive, a self-hater, you have issues, your mother worked for the Nazis, Prince Bandar buys you cookies, you forgot you were responsible for the holocaust, etc. The more the merrier. By the time you end this barrage, only a handful would be left standing. For mopping them up, you use the ultimate postmodern wisdom: Everything sucks.

War, genocide, racism, oppression are everywhere. From the Roma in Italy to the Native-Americans in the U.S., the weak are victimized. Why pick on Israel? It’s the way of the world. Look! Right is only in question between equals in power; the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Ethics, schmethics. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Eat, drink! Carpe diem! The Palestinians would throw us into the sea if they could. Ha ha!

Trust me, that’s as far as words can go. If you followed this method faithfully, you’ve done your work. You should leave the few who are still unconvinced to the forces of order.”

[Arraya]

Or how about some spoken word to make a little more clear

A little to hippy-progressive-ism for your taste, perhaps a short speech by an old Jewish academic will resonate a little better

[all]

[quote=Arraya] It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law.[/quote]

This reminds me of a pre-WWI article about separatist movements in Austro-Hungarian territories as 19th century anachronism. The same argument is used whenever a group of people favors the current circumstances. Fourth century Romans argued the same.

I actually do agree with point #4 from your other post – everything does suck. Just look at the list of countries that never ratified the Rome Statue of ICC.

[UCGal]

It’s not anti-Semitic to be pro-Palestinian. Palestinians are also Semitic people.

[scaredyclassic]

What about the anti-semantics?

[Author]

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