Scene After IDF Attack In Gaza 1/1/09

[smart]

How many Japanese did we kill in World War 2 compared to Americans killed? How many Arabs got killed in Iraq and Afghanistan compared to Americans in the Trade Centers? If some one punches me in the face I am only suppose to hit them once back???

War is nasty business, civilians always get hurt and killed. These countries declared war on Israel not the other way around. Should they wait until Hamas gets some better weapons from Iran like a dirty bomb before they hit back hard.

Just remember they are fighting over the Promise Land that was given to them by God in the Bible. This is more humane then what the Americans did to the native people here or any other Europeans did to any area they went to. I know its disturbing see this on Utube. Imagine watching everything that happened in the past on Utube and not just reading about it. Or imagining it through movies and books.

Americans need to grow up and understand that we are a country at War with people we do not know to much about. If Iran was are neighbor think of the fun we would be having.

[Niccolo]

Al Quaida of Bin Laden is also a terorist organization , not an army...... the goal of these terorist Islamic groups is "Jihad" - holy war , to make the whole world muslim , doing it by killing innocent poeple like the 9/11 in America , or like the latest attack in Mumbay India. - yosi

Is it? How do you know that? Have you talked to them? To me, "making whole world muslim" is a pretty optimistic goal to achieve from a sieged little shit hole called Gaza. Sounds like an eutopia to me. - Hannibal

I submit to you that yosi holds that view because he has done a little reading on the subject. It is not at all hard nowadays to study the views of Islamic terrorists. They're not shy about telling you exactly what they think. Or one can go straight to the source and study the Koran, and the life of the Islamic prophet (the "ideal man").

I visited Malta recently, and saw with my own eyes where the Knights of St. John and the Maltese people fought off the Islamic forces of Sulieman the Magnificent in 1565. I was there for a holiday, but when those bastards sailed for Malta, they were trying to bring Europe under the rule of Islam. As Ernle Bradford, author of "The Great Siege" notes, their aim was to do what we did in WWII - from Malta, take Sicily, and from Sicily, invade Italy and the rest of mainland Europe.

If you're at all interested in the way Islam has driven its followers to conquer other nations throughout history, then I can recommend Bradford's book, as well as "Empires of the Sea" by Roger Crowley - a thumping good read, if ever there was one. If you want a decent background to Al Qaeda, then Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower" is probably your best bet. (Wright talks about writers like Sayyid Qutb as well, who could be said to have paved the way for what was to follow.) If you are interested in the way in which Islamic rulers (and pirates!) have treated non-Muslims, then I would have to point you towards "White Gold" by Giles Milton. Another excellent read. Well, that's enough of me talking about books; I'll happily do so all day and all night. The point I was making was simply that there is a lot of material out there on Islam: what it's like, and what it's always been like. It seems to me that yosi has read some of it, that's all. (kittyKaiti has probably done so too btw.)

[phobun]

Goshhh I wasnt able to finish the video I cant take it anymore

I think this thread should be locked or should be in the pit

Salaam/Shalom to all!

I agree. You're sharp.

[Niccolo]

Goshhh I wasnt able to finish the video I cant take it anymore

I think this thread should be locked or should be in the pit

Salaam/Shalom to all!

I agree. You're sharp.

Nah, it's just getting interesting. Let's see what people are really made of, & what they really think. It could be quite revealing .. to paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks, we can look at cock photos later ...

[SugaSweet]

Obama will not give a damn about what Israel is doing.He will kiss the ass of Israel and the most powerful lobbying group in the US,the Israeli lobby.Strange how so few of those peace loving Hollywood yentas do not open their mouths when Palestinians are being killed and mained.However,I do not blame Israel.After all,they could wait for the UN to resolve everything to the favor of the Palestinian rats.Thinking back to 9/11 when the Palestinians were cheering in the streets,I can only open a cold Samuel Adams and say "Hope you like the fireworks,ragheads"!

[tsmandy]

Hamas, once a religiously inspired terrorist organization, is now also an elected political party. Palestinian elections are coming up again soon. Could it be that Hamas’s renewed provocation of Israel’s wrath is a political ploy to stir up hatred for Israel and votes for the party?

This morning NPR aired a brief discussion touching on the military definition of the phrase “acceptable civilian losses.” It seems the losses are acceptable if their sum doesn’t outweigh the benefits of military action. Which accountants are to be hired to make the assessment wasn’t mentioned. I’m sure military and political minds can easily weigh civilian deaths against troop advancements and other sorts of strategic or political gains. Hamas, for example, fires their mortars from within Palestinian schools and hospitals gambling that the children and patients will function as a kind of repellant against retaliation. Not only is this odious practice itself repellant, it’s paradoxical. By Hamas’s own reckoning, a school full of Palestinian children is worth only the one or two Israeli’s their entire mortar barrage is likely to injure. Of course Israel is inclined to agree with such an assessment and take out the school. Big tit for little tat has been Israel’s modus operandi for decades. It’s predicable.

Personally, I don’t think Israel has a right to exist and neither does Palestine nor Iran nor any other religious form of government. Israeli’s and Palestinians living together with equal citizenship under a secular government would be another story. If Israel could transform itself into a modern, 21st century, secular government and grant equal citizenship and uniform rights to Israeli’s and Palestinians alike, then it might be able to establish its right to exist in the Middle East.

Not like anyone is going to respond to your post Trish, because its inconvenient to adress any relavent points. Israel is defined as a Jewish state. One that any jew in the world (or person claiming Jewish heritage be they Russian, Ethiopian or Argentine) can move to and instantly be granted more rights (such as the right to build a home once its been demolished, vote, etc...) than non Jewish residents who were born in Jerusalem, whose parents and grandparents, and great-grandparents have consistently lived in the same city for the last 150 years. 1 million russian Jews emigrated to Israel after the collapse of the soviet Union and took up residence as settlers in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. When Settlers shoot Palestinian children who are trying to harvest olives nobody takes notice, when Islamic Militants fire rockets and kill no one, it is seen as justification for full scale assaults on civilian populations.

Obviously the propaganda system in the United States has been extraordinarily successful at convincing the American public that all Arabs are Muslim, and all Arabs are terrorists. It's a shameful thing to read such vituperative racism, makes me sick to my stomach. Not all Palestinians are Muslims, not all Palestinians hate Americans.

After the outbreak of the Second intifada I had a friend who was volunteering (an white guy from New York) for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (the Palestinian Red Cross) driving an ambulance. The idea was that Americans were less likely to get blown up driving pregnant women to the hospital than Arabs were. It was a terrifying time when we stopped hearing from him: he had been kidnapped by the IDF and they proceeded to use him as a human shield brutally beating him and denying him food, water, or access to the Red Cross or the UN. So those were the good guys, kidnapping Medics, running over peace activists with bulldozers, running over children and the elderly in wheelchairs with Caterpillars....etc.. Or as of yesterday bombing a UN shelter full of civilians and United Nations volunteers.

It is easy to ignore the reality of the Israeli occupation one that has been repeatedly condemned by the entire international community (save for the US and Israel), likened by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Apartheid South Africa. It is also easy enough for the media to equate Zionism with Israel and ignore the many Jews within the United States, around the world, and in Israel who are absolutely disgusted by the brutality and racism of the Israeli state.

Appalling. Not surprising. Appalling nonetheless.

Everyone knows Hamas sucks, Palestinians know Hamas sucks. But Hamas was the only alternative to the worthless institutions created by Arafat (worthless because the state of Israel made sure Arafat never left his compound, and made sure that there would never be an effective Secular Palestinian state). The whole point all along was to drive the Palestinian population further into the arms of a radicalized Islamic state, and thus provide a pretext to extend military control and illegal settlements. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, just a smidgen of intelligence and a reasonable understanding of history.

I've said my piece, and I'll go back to making porn. Continue on with the next 100 posts calling Arabs ragheads, and equating Islam with terrorism....Fucking imbeciles.

[JamesHunt]

Well at least Hamas don't need a recruitment agency, the Israelis do it for em

[ef9hatchman]

how the fuck did Osama Laden get put into this?
Hes Yemenian.
And for those who dont know asking why I didnt put BIN in there. Bin in arabic just mean "Son of"

[Niccolo]

I've said my piece, and I'll go back to making porn. Continue on with the next 100 posts calling Arabs ragheads, and equating Islam with terrorism....Fucking imbeciles. - Mandy

You seem quite well read Mandy, and reasonably up to speed on history and so forth, so I wonder if you have read any of the books I mentioned in my previous post? As for "equating Islam with terrorism", that's something of a straw man, surely? I wouldn't argue that they are one and the same, equal to one another, inside and out. It's more complex than that. However one could certainly argue that throughout history Islam has tried to bring the House of War under Islamic rule, I mean the facts speak for themselves there. And if one considers the principle of abrogation (later passages in the Koran override any contradictory passages that were written earlier), then one can see how Ayaan Hirsi Ali reached her conclusion, post 9/11, that when the bin Ladens and Mohammad Attas of the world say they are acting in accordance with Islamic teachings, they are telling the truth. Because the Islamic prophet certainly became more of a warlord, and committed some rather nasty acts, later on in his career. And there's always the quaint little story of his marrying a six year old girl ... (Have you ever read Bukowski's "The Fiend"?)

Can I just add that I certainly do not consider myself to be an imbecile; I just don't see where you get that from. The issue of Islamic terrorism is a deeply troubling one, and yes, like many people I have cracked open the books, and done a little research on the subject - does this signify an abnormally low intelligence? I think not. I may draw different conclusions from you sometimes, but that's just the way of the world. And that's a good thing. I'm thinking here of one of John Stuart Mill's arguments for freedom of speech, the "partially true" argument put forward in "On Liberty" which claims that "since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied." (Mill, On Liberty, Penguin Classics p. 116.)

I enjoy participating in this kind of thread not because I think I'm right and I know more than anyone else (hardly!) but because I know that other people will bring their own knowledge of the subject to the table, and I might find out something that I didn't know before. John Stuart Mill was a very clever fellow!

Finally I will bring up "The Great Siege" again and say that when I was travelling to Malta last year I read up on the island's history before I went. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie "The Malta Story" but that is pretty accurate. "Operation Pedestal" was a last ditch effort by the Allied forces to re-supply Malta, and although the sailors on that convoy knew that the Germans would try to sink them, still they set sail (from the West coast of my own country). Hardly any of them made it through, but enough of them did to save Malta from starvation. Having endured one "great siege" already, there was no way the Maltese (or the Brits!) were going to give in to the Nazis. The island of Malta was actually awarded the George Cross for bravery in the face of the enemy. During the first "great siege" in 1565 they showed similar pluck in the face of an overwhelming military force - the Islamic forces assembled by Sulieman the Magnificent. Slavery, torture, the desecration of corpses - these were to be expected if any of the Knights fell into Islamic hands - alive or dead. Again I would have to recommend "Empires of the Sea" by Roger Crowley, if you like reading popular/accessible history books. It's a fantastic read - and something of an eye-opener too.

[Angel17TS]

Im biting my tongue for now. Ill go back and read all the posts, haven't done that yet. Then I'll comment.

For now I just say one this: What you have seen on Youtube is one video. The western media will not show the things I see everyday. This morning I saw a man, holding a baby who has clearly been dead for over a week. He wont let it go because his wife and other kids are dead.

Two aid workers go to help a man laying in the street dieing. A sniper, hits the dieing man and the aid worker. The workers run for a van, and take off leaving the dead man.

Another man sits next to his 2 kids, both dead, one about 8, the other maybe 4. Both have what are obvious to be bullet wounds maybe from a sniper, bullseye shots in the forehead, the other in the heart.