Palestine

[Tapatio]

Anyone have thoughts in what's going on in Gaza?

I feel like the world is giving (has been giving) Israel a free pass on this.

I find Israel's policy toward Palestine to be genocidal.

Et vous?

[broncofan]

I don't understand what wouldn't qualify as a free pass. There are protests all over Europe and the Middle East. There are protests in the United States as well. In France protests have gotten so heavy that synagogues are being attacked, not only an inappropriate response but a wholly inhumane one.

Now don't get me wrong, I disagree strongly with Israel's policies in the West Bank and the current Gaza incursion. But let me ask you. Are you aware that over 100,000 people were recently killed in Syria? I think the death toll in Gaza is less than 1% of that...this is not to trivialize that death toll, but why does that immediately raise comparisons among so many with Nazis and talk of genocide?

Isn't it possible to be concerned about the conflict, to condemn Israel, and not to immediately raise the stakes to talk of genocide or some non-existent conspiracy of silence?

[my my my!]

I think he means free pass , as in , other than protests and disapproval by some leaders...

the world is pretty much allowing Israel's operation to go on without any threats of military action/sanctions from a global collective.

to the OP , genocidal? No. more like overreaction and misplaced attacks.

Israel gets away with it, because what is the alternative? Invade them?

Israel, knows they have backing from the USa and most western nations (for you "semantics" people, the classic backers of the Israeli State, not specifically any and every nation in the "west".)

And at this point no one wants to risk going into a major conflict over some "incidents".

such is the nature of trying to avoid "world war 3".

[broncofan]

I tend to agree with you My My My. But keep in mind one could say that Syria had a great deal of diplomatic insulation as well. I don't see it as being unique as the phrase free pass tends to imply...frustrating if the objective is to see the violence end.

[Odelay]

I think the Israelis have pissed away any right to good will or the benefit of the doubt from anyone, anymore. The collective society is acting in bad faith and no one is aggressively acting within the country to stop it. All news articles talk about the political right or center. There is no left to counter the worst ideas and actions. The last nominally leftist leader of Israel was assassinated. By all appearances, there won't be another. The idea of a two state solution was a sham perpetuated by Israel onto the rest of the world. It is now apparent that Israel never seriously considered carving out independent autonomous state(s) for palestinians.

Broncofan, I usually appreciate and often agree with your opinions, but your comparison to the violence in Syria is awful. Syria has been ruled by violent despots for decades, and who don't even pretend to be democratic, much less peaceful. And you watch, you'll have to start moving the goalposts as Israeli inflicted violence starts ramping up in the coming months, years, etc.

EDIT: I just realized how ludicrous the comparison to Syria is. You're basically saying, "Hey look at us, we're better than Assad!"

[broncofan]

Broncofan, I usually appreciate and often agree with your opinions, but your comparison to the violence in Syria is awful. Syria has been ruled by violent despots for decades, and who don't even pretend to be democratic, much less peaceful. And you watch, you'll have to start moving the goalposts as Israeli inflicted violence starts ramping up in the coming months, years, etc.

EDIT: I just realized how ludicrous the comparison to Syria is. You're basically saying, "Hey look at us, we're better than Assad!"
I was only using Syria as an example to rebut the claim that Israel got an unusual amount of diplomatic immunity. You have to look at why I brought Syria up...it wasn't to say Israel's attacks are not heinous, only that the international response to it was not as muted as I thought the original post indicated.

Who's to say I will move the goalposts and find other comparisons. Were we just evaluating Israel's actions, I would have stayed on the topic and discussed the consequences of their incursion into Gaza. But the first post necessarily brought us into the discussion first of the scope of the violence (which required a comparison) and then the magnitude of the international response to it (which also made a comparator relevant).

Had the first post given a list of reasons why he disagreed with Israel's actions I would not have attempted to mitigate. That's not to attack the original poster, but just to say that the way any debate is framed will dictate the direction it takes.

[fred41]

So because Israel has a defense missile set up...they should just sit pat?

[Tapatio]

No judgement (from me) on any response so far-

But I find it interesting that broncofan immediately discounted a "conspiracy of silence. "

There was a large rally in support of Palestine in England that (according to a source who is hypervigilant) BBC News didn't cover. Silence

The US diplomatic response doesn't seem to acknowledge Palestine as legitimate. Silence.

US (and British, Russian, etc.) diplomatic efforts after WWII actually drew the lines that created Israel. Does Palestine not merit something similar?


Slightly related: does anyone know of a genocide in recorded history that predates the massacre of the Philistines at the hands of the Hebrews?

[broncofan]

Slightly related: does anyone know of a genocide in recorded history that predates the massacre of the Philistines at the hands of the Hebrews?
It is a shame that instead of having a sensible discussion about the conflict, we are saddled with such obnoxious pseudo-intellectual drivel.

[Tapatio]

Ha! Did you just try to "other" me?

[broncofan]

Ha! Did you just try to "other" me?
I'm afraid you "other'd" yourself.:)

[Tapatio]

I'm afraid you "other'd" yourself.:)

Only at home, and twice a week max.

I do find your thing about Syria weak at best, but my intention is not to assess your logic skills

This is more of a visceral question, unless we have the power to make changes (which none of us do, I'm willing to bet. )

I could rationalize the conflict from either side and convincingly, I promise. But this isn't rational. None of it is rational.

This is visceral. And my gut tells me that Israel is a warmongering bully.

Your insults don't bother me.

[broncofan]

So you find my thing about Syria weak at best? You know if you reasoned from your head instead of your gut you might be able to think of a better figure of speech than thing.

I think we were about to discuss something useful with that last post about the historiography of the Old Testament, the first recorded genocide, and that Zionist front known as the bbc. But by all means don't be upset by this latest series of things I wrote.

[Tapatio]

Avoidance.

Back it up one or two posts more and I might engage- or more likely I'll just read what people say and let it inform my understanding of what others think of this issue (as was my intent.)

Again, no judgement.

And I promise, my brain is fine. I just occupy it with different questions than the classic "academic" might. It makes me feel practical.

A question, though, since you seem to have a strong opinion:

What do we do with Palestine, and Palestinians? They obviously can't live like this, what with the bombs and the murder and so on.

[Ben]

Anyone have thoughts in what's going on in Gaza?

I feel like the world is giving (has been giving) Israel a free pass on this.

I find Israel's policy toward Palestine to be genocidal.

Et vous?

What can one say.
In this vid Abby Martin explicates the unfolding tragedy:

Why are Americans Flocking to Fight for Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q3S87zGPoY

[broncofan]

Avoidance.

A question, though, since you seem to have a strong opinion:

What do we do with Palestine, and Palestinians? They obviously can't live like this, what with the bombs and the murder an so on.
As the chief executive? I only have the power of one individual. One answer would be to threaten to reduce aid to Israel. Of course, a president who said that while campaigning would have difficulty getting elected with that policy. Those are the electoral politics in this country and no political leader has seen an advantage vote-wise departing from it. But it's a viable strategy for someone who wants to take a more balanced approach to the conflict.

Do you think we should intervene whenever there's a humanitarian crisis and without fail because I think there have been a lot of missed opportunities?

Do I think the Palestinians should live under air raids? Of course not. I support a two state solution, which means that they would be able to establish their own state. It's a matter of getting to that point. More pressure needs to be brought to bear on Israel. I don't want to fall back on cliches but if you are going to have an agreement, both sides will have to yield on their most sacred demands.

[buttslinger]

Imperial History of the Middle East


lets get some perspective.

Imperial History of the Middle East - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4U0SXz2DJs)

[Prospero]

Zionist Front known as the BBC! Well that is a new one since most Jews in the UK would see the BBC as biased in another direction.

I suspect that this thread could become very incendary indeed with a lot of emotion over reason....


Meanwhile ...the free expression of dissent is dangerous under every many systems.

Young American Jew Stands up For Palestine - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWyGlTDkT5A)

[Prospero]

And Mussolini would have been proud of this character....

Well-known Italian philosopher:'I’d like to shoot those bastard Zionists'

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.606698

[Stavros]

In the immediate context of current military activity, there is one simple, inescapable fact. HAMAS knew, as it has always known, that if it firess a missile into Israel, Israel will retaliate. In one of the most densely populated areas of the world, and where HAMAS, let's face it, is not going to park its rocket launchers on the beach, the invitation to strike at heavily populated urban areas, with or without its residents, is a no-brainer, from a military point of view, and for Israel, it is invitation accepted. In this precise instance, HAMAS is to blame, and has no more right to represent Palestinians than a worm crawling out of the ground.

So why did HAMAS launch this escapade, and what does it want?
HAMAS in the last year has lost a crucial source of support, and resource (ie finances and materiel), in Egypt where its main ally, the Muslim Brotherhood has been strangulated by the military (there are theories that Qatar may be or offering to fill the gap, can't verify this). Having refused to back Bashar al-Asad in Syria, HAMAS also lost the support of Iran again -having gone through a period of nearly 3 years when they were not talking, over Syria, there were signs earlier this year that Iran and HAMAS might be patching things up, but not much came of it. The attempt to forge an alliance with Fateh a few months ago was a further sign of desperation for an outfit which some years ago actually won an election.

The current madness is thus an attempt by HAMAS to provoke Israel into doing what it does so well, use asymmetric violence to obliterate Palestinian property, and if people get killed, well that is the fault of HAMAS which relies on Israel to go berserk and use ten times as much force as it needs to make its point. Through the shocking images that are then broadcast around the world, HAMAS hopes to revive its support to struggle on. Venal people, practising venal politics.

The broader context is one in which Israel controls land, sea and air access to Gaza, refuses to allow people free travel in or out to the West Bank, monitors materials entering Gaza, for example forbidding the import of building materials; it also makes the export of produce more or less impossible, thereby creating prison camp or siege conditions which makes life intolerable, in the hope that people will just emigrate.

In other words, neither Israel nor HAMAS has a clue how to progress. Israel uses the HAMAS charter to point out that the movement seeks the 'destruction of Israel' even though Khaled Mashal has said these are just words and that he would be prepared to enter into negotiations with Israel. Netanyahu has an aversion to negotiations because this implies Israel will give up something, and other than releasing prisoners from gaol, Netanyahu's career is based on a rejection of the 1993 Treaty with the PLO and a 'no surrender' attitude.

By one of those bizarre charades that only the Middle East can produce, Gaza is under siege, Israel thinks it is under siege, and neither side can relieve itself of its siege mentality, real or imagined.

And here is the final irony -when HAMAS was formed during the first Intifada in 1988, it was supported by Israel who supported any Palestinian group that challenged the authority of Arafat and his Fateh movement (with the exception for obvious reasons of the PFLP and the other old-style Palestinian guerilla movements). Indeed, Israel had even before the formal creation of HAMAS recognised its precursor, Mujama al-Islamiya as a charity. And who else recognised HAMAS at this time? Hafez al-Asad, because he too hated Arafat and was delighted to see a new movement on the block.

So much violence, and for what? In a week or so Israel will withdraw, the Palestinians will lick their wounds, slowly re-build their homes from the rubble of the old ones, or try to emigrate to Germany, Canada or Australia. There will be reports for the UN, UNHCR, and the Israeli military all of which will gather dust in a library somewhere. The weary will pick up the 'road map' -presumably someone has created a 'road app' for those with smart phones- and the 'Quartet' might even send its envoy, Tony Blair to conduct 'talks' with people who don't want to talk. Blair has been to Gaza twice since being appointed Special Envoy 7 years ago, both visits in 2009. In the same period he has been to Jerusalem 119 times.

It is easy to despair, it is easy to take sides, and it is easy to wish the whole thing away. At some point, one can only hope that Israel will produce a politician with the courage to make courageous decisions, and a Palestinian with the brain to respond. The danger is that it is the Palestinians who will despair, and either commit ever more desperate acts, or give up. As yet, the wider conflict in Syria and Iraq has not percolated into the Occupied Territories -a surprising number of Arabs are indifferent to the Palestinian cause these days, most have no illusions about Israel, the fifth largest and most lethal armed state in the world, and don't wish to provoke them.

Tonight I am haunted by the image I saw on tv last night, of a baby girl barely six months old, dead in her father's arms. She is the future.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123275572295011847

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/hamas-iran-rebuild-ties-falling-out-syria

http://blogs.channel4.com/michael-crick-on-politics/gaza-tricky-middle-east-envoy-tony-blair/4236

[Tapatio]

Meanwhile, the US is fairly alone on this issue.

We must be smarter than everyone else. We understand better, I think.

[fred41]

Guess the world isn't giving them a free pass after all eh?

[broncofan]

Guess the world isn't giving them a free pass after all eh?
No. When they are condemned, it's proof that the condemnation is justified. When they are not, it's proof that they should be condemned but people are refusing to do it.

[Prospero]

I have just re-read Stavros's post and find it a wise summary of a desperate situation. Hamas are playing the politics of desperation and inviting the death of Palestinian civilians in a bid to achieve a propaganda success globally. It seems to be doing the trick with demonstrations across Europe, including violently anti--semitic attacks on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in France and the world's media publishing constant images of dead children.

The blood of these innocents is on the hands of Israel directly but even more so on the cynical politicians of Hamas.

[Odelay]

At some point, one can only hope that Israel will produce a politician with the courage to make courageous decisions, and a Palestinian with the brain to respond.

I have no such hope. I am prepared for the worst, which would be extreme violence beyond anything we've ever seen in this conflict, to date.

[Prospero]

Odeley. Sadly i agree.

[Stavros]

I have no such hope. I am prepared for the worst, which would be extreme violence beyond anything we've ever seen in this conflict, to date.

Desperate acts, perhaps, but I don't think there will be a return to the violence that plagued Israel and the Occupued Territories some years ago; it isn't on the agenda of either Fateh or HAMAS. The HAMAS leadership is currently safe in underground bunkers while its 'supporters' watch their businesses and homes destroyed -and let's not forget that the location of the tunnels so far destroyed has, in some cases been revealed to the IDF by the Palestinian informers who have been passing information to Israel for years (apart from those discovered and treated to gruesome executions).

The one errant factor is the maverick 'Caliphate' that was declared last month. In case anyone thinks this is a sideshow, I offer this assessment from a trade paper from July 9th. It remains to be seen if ISIS or IS decides it is in a position to 'Liberate' Jerusalem, they are certainly building up the funds, though one wonders if they have thought it through strategically, given that they are losing the war in Syria. It may just be time before they lose their resources in the North-East but one never can tell with these people. They might just be mad enough to try.

This is from the OIL & GAS IQ of July 9th 2014.:

According to the mayor of Tuz Khurmatu, an ethnic Turkmen settlement located some 90 kilometres south of Kirkuk, operatives of the Islamic State (IS) began independently selling oil late last week. IS militants raised approximately $1.3 million from the sale of 100 tanker loads of refined petroleum from the captured Ajeel oil fields, overrun at the end of June. In addition to Ajeel, IS forces control Syria’s largest oil fields in the eastern Deir-az-Zor province, giving the Caliphate an output of some 35,000 barrels per day (bpd).

At today’s prices, that is $3.9 million rolling into the IS kitty every 24 hours - roughly $2700 every minute. By the end of 2014, the Islamic State could have raked in $686 million from oil profits – and that isn’t accounting for further inroads into the Iraqi oil sector. That’s a lot of guns and ammo for the jihadist cause.

Of course, every sale depends on a buyer. Allegedly, the Islamic State’s pay-day passed in convoy through Kurdish territory and disappeared across the Iranian border into the night. In a region where gasoline prices, as well as the fundamentals of daily life have skyrocketed due to years of sanction and strife, Sunni Salafists, apparently, have no qualms about selling their wares to Shi’ites.

As of 2011, the global black market was estimated at $10 trillion a year. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has projected that more than 2/3 of the world’s workers will be engaged in the “shadow economy” by 2020.

To be sure, this clandestine bazaar is indeed an enabler, but often for the wrong ends.In the general scheme of things, war is war, business is business and the black market trades in the dark for a reason…
(http://skyiqpciq.com/ctd/lu?RID=1-314DWH3&CON=1-2AO60BX&PRO=&AID=&OID=1-312WUS5&CID=1-312WURZ&COID=&T=http%3a%2f%2fwww.oilandgasiq.com%2fstrategy-management-and-information%2fcolumns%2firaq-isis-oil-gas-civil-war-black-market%2f%3futm_source%3d1-5827904214%26utm_medium%3demail%26utm_campaign%3d1 4%2B07%2B08%2BOGIQ%2BNL%26utm_term%3dFOF%26utm_con tent%3dFOF%26mac%3dOGIQ1-314DWH3%26disc%3d&Z=47633430b86037a261ef935dfd2015&TN=oilandgasiq.com%2fstrategy-management-and-information%2fcolumns%2firaq-isis-oil-gas-civil-war-black-market%2f&RT=Clicked+On+URL)

[Odelay]

I was only using Syria as an example to rebut the claim that Israel got an unusual amount of diplomatic immunity. You have to look at why I brought Syria up...it wasn't to say Israel's attacks are not heinous, only that the international response to it was not as muted as I thought the original post indicated.

Point taken and conceded. Just received a tweet from someone pointing out the violence in Egypt being far greater than what is happening currently in Gaza, and just like the violence in Syria, it is under-reported on an international scale.

I would hazard a guess that intra-tribal conflict in the Middle East just doesn't sell very well as news, to the broader world.

[Ben]

Gaza: Why a ‘Cease-Fire’ Is Not Enough:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/27/gaza-why-cease-fire-not-enough

[yosi]

Gaza: Why a ‘Cease-Fire’ Is Not Enough:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/27/gaza-why-cease-fire-not-enough




Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling diehard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.
And there was no blockade. On the contrary. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce. The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. Simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s desire to leave the West Bank, too.
And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them — an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.
Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders who can be found in a 5 star hotel in Doha. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Why? Any rocket that seems on course to hit anything of value is almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”
It makes no sense. Unless you understand that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire. This produces dead Palestinians for international television, which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.
To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the UN’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fuelled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defence.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the UN ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.

In syria , the death toll is over 170,000 poeple , many of them killed by chemical weapons , but who cares?

[Stavros]

Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling diehard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.
And there was no blockade. On the contrary. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce. The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. Simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s desire to leave the West Bank, too.
And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them — an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.
Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders who can be found in a 5 star hotel in Doha. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Why? Any rocket that seems on course to hit anything of value is almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”
It makes no sense. Unless you understand that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire. This produces dead Palestinians for international television, which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.
To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the UN’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fuelled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defence.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the UN ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.

In syria , the death toll is over 170,000 poeple , many of them killed by chemical weapons , but who cares?

In a previous post I blamed Hamas for sparking this most recent round of carnage. You may recall that the situation deteriorated with the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, followed by the equally needless and gruesome murder of a Palestinian boy. When Hamas launched rockets into Israel, Israel retaliated as Hamas knew it would. Hamas also knew that the violence inflicted on Gaza would be disproportionate to the violence inflicted by Hamas on Israel, because that is what Israel does, just as Israel always bombs an UNRWA building, just as Hamas always locates is rocket launchers in built up areas, though it would be tactically daft to launch them from the beach. That it would be tactically and strategically better not to fire rockets at all has yet to occur to them. But I suspect they don't care.

So we can agree that Hamas having lost the supporters I also referred to in that post, has a lot to answer for.
However, your defence of Israel is not only wide of the mark, it doesn't relate to the view taken by the Quartet (the UN, the EU, the USA and Russia) and its Special Envoy, Tony Blair.

If you look at their website, you will find it states og Gaza that:
Around one-third of the population lives under the poverty line and less than 10 percent of the drinking water meets the required standards of the World Health Organization (WHO). There is also a chronic shortage of electricity in Gaza ranging from 30-50 percent less than actual demand.

In addition, there is what the OQR calls an economic closure regime which is the means whereby Israel, with the full agreement of the Quartet (which claims to be negotiating the details of these controls to secure advantages for Gaza), controls what can go into an out of Gaza, from capital to concrete. Everyone else calls it by its real name: a siege.

You might want to re-adjust your spectacles to see what the impact on Gaza of the siege has been. It is true that Hamas has not provided Gaza with good governance -good governance is in short supply in the Middle East, including Israel- but how can Hamas govern effectively when there is no free movement of goods, capital, people or services into and out of the district? The land, sea and air routes into and out of Gaza are controlled by Israel -and yet critics complain about Hamas being funded from Iran, from Qatar-how else is capital to get into the place, and if it cannot be generated from 'normal' economic relations, Hamas will gladly accept funds from outsiders.

Hard though it might be to believe, nearly 100 years after Britain was 'awarded' the Mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations, justifying Palestine's 'A' class rating because it was 'not ready to stand alone under the strenuous conditions of the modern world', the Office of the Quartet Representative states that its objective in Gaza and the Palestinian territories is to promote economic development and institution building in preparation for eventual statehood; as if nothing had happened in the last 100 years.

The Special Envoy to Gaza, Tony Blair, has achieved nothing since being appointed in 2007. He has in effect handed control of Gaza over to Israel, just as he himself is reluctant to visit the District, and neither he, nor John Kerry has met with representatives of Hamas. Israel -Netanyahu in particular- regards Obama as a jerk, and Ha'aretz (the voice of Israel's 'liberal left'!) today or yesterday referred to John Kerry as an 'alien'. If Israel wants to be taken seriously, it needs to make serious decisions that involve the Palestinians, instead of trying to ignore them altogether.

You might want to come up with some solutions, given that Hamas is being treated to the same refusal to engage with reality which meant that from the 1970s to the 1990s Israel, the Americans and the British 'refused to talk to terrorists' -which meant Yasser Arafat, the same man who signed the 1993 Peace Treaty recognising Israel and agreeing to the break up of the West Bank into three zones. Does this mean we wait another 30 years before someone will talk to Khaled Mashal or any other Hamas official, even if they have been elected in a democratic election?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the disitnguished American geographer Saul Cohen proposed an enlargement scheme for Gaza on the simple basis that the territory was too small to be manageable in terms of population growth, jobs, and resources. He proposed an agreement with Egypt that would see the latter concede territory that would expand the geography of Gaza and offer the Palestinians more options in terms of resources, as well as relieving the pressure on Israel's security borders. He also proposed other land swaps but I fear this creative proposition will not look good to Israel these days, given that Netanyahu has always opposed the 1993 Treaty and done everything he can to derail it.

Another proposition looms which I daresay will get nowhere as it is my idea although someone else must have thought of it. The Eastern Mediterranean is emerging as a potentially lucrative oil and gas (but mostly gas) province with reservoirs that straddle the boundaries of Egypt, Gaza/Palestinian territories, Israel and Syria (probably not Lebanon at this stage). Why not create a consortium of companies which bring together the Egyptians, the Palestinians, Israel and Syria to exploit their offshore resources for the common good and, indeed, the common wealth? This is also my solution to the conflict over the Falkland Islands basin between Argentina and the Falkland Islands/Malvinas.

I am not a genius, but there are solutions out there. And I would rather be sitting around a table talking about solutions than defend the pathetic rockets of Hamas, or the inhuman carnage-on-demand of Israel. Israelis and Palestinians deserve something better.

Office of the Quartet Representaive link to Gaza programme:
http://www.quartetrep.org/quartet/pages/the-gaza-strip/

One version of Saul Cohen's Gaza project from 1993:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ibru/publications/full/bsb1-3_cohen.pdf

An overview of the oil and gas potential of the Eastern Mediterranean:
http://www.eia.gov/countries/analysisbriefs/Eastern_Mediterranean/eastern-mediterranean.pdf

[Odelay]

Somewhere an Israeli contractor is receiving an expensive lap dance via credit card knowing that new money to pay it off is practically in the bank when he is chosen to build a new fence around Gaza.

[buttslinger]

This really is a sickening situation, I guess I sympathize with Israel more, only because they are the more Western nation like the US. But I know if I grew up there on either side I'd be caught up in all the hate and get swept away with it. They've got generations of allegations, against each other, probably both justified, that's the nature of this mother of all family feuds, and on that level the ugliness and hate is a cradle to grave type situation. If it ever ends you can bet it will be a bad ending, probably worse than what's going on now. At least that's my understanding.

[Ben]

Terrorism in the Israeli Attack on Gaza:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/29/terrorism-israeli-attack-gaza

[fred41]

Terrorism in the Israeli Attack on Gaza:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/29/terrorism-israeli-attack-gaza

Greenwald writes some great articles sometimes...but this is pretty biased to me. I guess it's important body counts need to be equal....I know - Israel should cease fighting, maybe let Hamas catch up again by killing some more soldiers (which seems acceptable to Greenwald), and then resume...but let's not get carried away...hell it's only such few Israelis

[broncofan]

I was going to say something similar. Not to detract from the difference in the size of the forces or the casualty numbers which have real meaning, his analysis is a bit weak on at least one point.

Terrorism involves the use of force against civilians to achieve a political objective. There is a difference between trying to kill a militant in a densely populated civilian area and trying to kill civilians. Not for the civilian obviously, who could care less about intent if it kills him. But it is relevant in determining whether a party is availing themselves of the tactic of terrorism, as tactics are all about intent.

The party that acts with the intent to kill a militant but a willingness to kill civilians is still culpable of a serious wrong. They proceeded with the knowledge that they would kill civilians. The other possibility is that they act with the knowledge they will kill civilians and this knowledge makes them more eager to act rather than encourages restraint. This would come much closer to terrorism as the killing of civilians would accrue to their strategic benefit rather than detriment.

Even if Israel has killed an outrageous number of civilians, I think it is cynical to say they are not at least trying to kill militants. I have no doubt that if Hamas could kill more Israeli civilians it would. Afterall, that is what they are aiming for every time they launch a rocket.

Greenwald should have just said that the word terrorist is being used as a pejorative and doesn't determine the equities of a conflict where such a disproportionate number of Gazans have been killed....rather than the skin deep pie chart analysis.

[Ben]

Stocks rise for Israeli drone-maker as Gaza slaughter continues

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/stocks-rise-israeli-drone-maker-gaza-slaughter-continues

[fred41]

I was going to say something similar. Not to detract from the difference in the size of the forces or the casualty numbers which have real meaning, his analysis is a bit weak on at least one point.

Terrorism involves the use of force against civilians to achieve a political objective. There is a difference between trying to kill a militant in a densely populated civilian area and trying to kill civilians. Not for the civilian obviously, who could care less about intent if it kills him. But it is relevant in determining whether a party is availing themselves of the tactic of terrorism, as tactics are all about intent.

The party that acts with the intent to kill a militant but a willingness to kill civilians is still culpable of a serious wrong. They proceeded with the knowledge that they would kill civilians. The other possibility is that they act with the knowledge they will kill civilians and this knowledge makes them more eager to act rather than encourages restraint. This would come much closer to terrorism as the killing of civilians would accrue to their strategic benefit rather than detriment.

Even if Israel has killed an outrageous number of civilians, I think it is cynical to say they are not at least trying to kill militants. I have no doubt that if Hamas could kill more Israeli civilians it would. Afterall, that is what they are aiming for every time they launch a rocket.


very well put Bronco...you have a better way with words.


Greenwald should have just said that the word terrorist is being used as a pejorative and doesn't determine the equities of a conflict where such a disproportionate number of Gazans have been killed....rather than the skin deep pie chart analysis.

He new what he was writing...he was getting his smarmy, (un)biased, pulitzer prize winning thoughts out there.

[Stavros]

I was going to say something similar. Not to detract from the difference in the size of the forces or the casualty numbers which have real meaning, his analysis is a bit weak on at least one point.

Terrorism involves the use of force against civilians to achieve a political objective. There is a difference between trying to kill a militant in a densely populated civilian area and trying to kill civilians. Not for the civilian obviously, who could care less about intent if it kills him. But it is relevant in determining whether a party is availing themselves of the tactic of terrorism, as tactics are all about intent.

The party that acts with the intent to kill a militant but a willingness to kill civilians is still culpable of a serious wrong. They proceeded with the knowledge that they would kill civilians. The other possibility is that they act with the knowledge they will kill civilians and this knowledge makes them more eager to act rather than encourages restraint. This would come much closer to terrorism as the killing of civilians would accrue to their strategic benefit rather than detriment.

Even if Israel has killed an outrageous number of civilians, I think it is cynical to say they are not at least trying to kill militants. I have no doubt that if Hamas could kill more Israeli civilians it would. Afterall, that is what they are aiming for every time they launch a rocket.

Greenwald should have just said that the word terrorist is being used as a pejorative and doesn't determine the equities of a conflict where such a disproportionate number of Gazans have been killed....rather than the skin deep pie chart analysis.

If there is a flaw in this argument, it is that the PLO used to describe its actions against Israel as 'armed struggle', as was also the case with the various IRA formations that vowed to carry on the fight for a United Ireland after the 1921 Treaty until today. In this context, 'terrorist' is a pejorative label used to de-legitimise the enemy and suggest their cause is llegally, morally and politically wrong. IRA 'terrorists' were usually called 'Volunteers' and given a soldier's burial.

Al-Qaeda declared war on the USA in 1998 -does this mean its 'operatives' were 'soldiers' and that the USA is right to try Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and others in a Military Tribunal for crimes committed against the USA?

To broaden this concept to include 'militants' is even less secure, although it does mean that anyone behaving in a militant fashion becomes an enemy of the state -Africa Now in Philadelphia, Black Panthers in the USA are two groups that come to mind. The Symbionese Liberation Army probably signed their own death warrant by describing themselves as an 'army'. If military action were take to eliminate those participating in the 'Occupy Wall St' of a year or so ago, could they have been described as 'militants' and therefore legitimate targets for assassination?

We have been here before with this anyway, from the Battle of Karameh in 1968 through the PLO hijackings of civilian airliners in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from the gruesome assassination of Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972 (all actions which undermined and eroded any support the Palestinians sought in the west), through Israel's first incursions into Lebanon a few years later, to the determined aim to destroy the PLO in Lebanon in 1982, and the subsequent military actions there and in Gaza since 1993.

Every time the same cause, the same effect. You hit us, we hit you.

Violence creates more problems than it solves; I could say it is time to think of alternatives, and come up with new solutions, but it takes the courage of a Daniel Barenboim to prove supposed 'enemies' can live and work together, and it is no surprise that some in Israel consider him a traitor.

The alternative is despair.

Only man thinning out his kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life...

[Prospero]

Another day - more casualties. A horrific terrible loss of lives. Who can challenge that. We must all mourn when innocent children, innocence is destroyed.

We awake to see TV news, the Internet and the Press carry pictures of slaughtered children, of grieving mothers, of shattered neighbourhoods. We hear the radio newscasters intone details of the latest diabolical carnage.

These are Israeli bombs, missiles and shells.

And so. the propaganda win goes to Hamas. In my view they are the ones on whose hands the blood of innocence rests.

These cynical men who use their own dead civilians to win the sympathy of shocked people around the globe. This organisation whose ongoing commitment is the total destruction of the state of Israel and who, were they better armed, would see as many dead in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as they allow in their own crowded, huddled homeland. And more. Who might unleash a holocaust.

Hamas are Isis by another name - wholly unswerving in their commitment to the wholesale destruction of the enemy.

Let us all hope for some pause - some way out of this vortex.

Stavros said it well above... and these are the final lines of the poem he quoted.

"Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war – until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime."

[Stavros]

It is a pity that you quoted the last lines of Waking Early Sunday Morning. For all Lowell's eloquent depiction of the US in Vietnam, he was a manic depressive and ended his poem in precisely the despair which I have cautioned against. For while the dance of death that characterises Hamas and Israel takes place today, as it did years ago, and may well do again in years to come; this, as ever, is the time to change the paradigm and consider the positive alternatives.

Because it is precisely this despair that drives Hamas to proclaim in opposition to historical fact that 'Islam is the solution'; and enables Israel to refuse to engage with Hamas in order to bring this relentless campaign of violence to an end. In the past, Hamas has offered to recognise Israel and open negotiations, offers rejected by Israel without a second thought, much as they rejected the PLO's overtures prior to the Oslo talks which led, eventually, to the 1993 Peace Treaty, a treaty to which Netanyahu is opposed. And, had there been serious moves forward on the basis of that Treaty, brokered in part by the Clinton administration which then privileged Israel in every subsequent attempt to move forward (one dreads to think of Hillary Clinton as President in this regard), we might not be here today.

Yes Hamas occasioned this bout of slaughter, but its cause has been the Siege of Gaza, and the abject failure of any responsible party, particularly the Special Envoy of the Quartet, to bring this unacceptable violation of human rights to an end. It is the siege that has driven people to support Hamas, give that some thought.

Politics is about compromise, and Hamas has in spite of its inflammatory rhetoric by offering to negotiate with Israel conceded that the 'destruction of Israel' is just that -rhetoric, about as valid as the IRA's commitment to a United Ireland. It is not clear how Hamas would in fact destroy Israel, just as since its victorious election it is not clear now how many Palestinians in Gaza would vote for it again, and why indeed Hamas is assumed to have so much clout when it is not the only political movement in Gaza and it is Mahmoud Abbas and Fateh on behalf of the PLO which negotiates with Israel.

And if you want to privilege the 'destruction of Israel' as the calling card of Hamas, why not include Avigdor Lieberman's view that the Arabs should be thrown out of Israel and the West Bank altogether -alive or dead-?

To correlate Hamas with ISIS is to avoid the subtle differences between an organisation which emerged through the Muslim Brotherhood, and an organisation (ISIS) which regards the MB as pansies who are not serious about creating an Islamic caliphate. And has Hamas acknowledged that Ibrahim is now their Caliph?

Beyond this rhetorical madness and the carnage of war, there are practical solutions which require the people who live in the Middle East to engage. Hard as it might seem right now, history does show that small steps to the future can begin with that single step recommended by the Buddha. But it will require men in positions of responsibilty to show that they are willing to change. Right now, I can't see it, but I cannot give in to despair either.

[Prospero]

http://nyti.ms/1o50Rfr

Arab nations back Israel against Hamas

[Stavros]

Correction: mostly unelected leaders of Arab states, not 'nations' -who do you think the average man and woman in the street supports in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Abu Dhabi?

[Prospero]

Frankly in Abu Dhabi i don't think they give a shit. While the west wrings its hands the rest o the Arab world has long been good at lip service.

And I suspect that many are more afraid of the sort of ideology Hamas and other Islamist groups represent that any military threat from Israel.

[yosi]

In the past, Hamas has offered to recognise Israel and open negotiations,

sorry my friend , but Hamas NEVER offered to recognise Israel.


Hamas moto is the destruction of the state of Israel.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KakxXN5Z-XI


Mosab Hassan Yousef (Son of Hamas Founder) tells the truth about Hamas. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KakxXN5Z-XI)

[Stavros]

sorry my friend , but Hamas NEVER offered to recognise Israel.


Hamas moto is the destruction of the state of Israel.



Hamas as a political organisation is as open to negotiation and compromise as any other, and it has offered recognition of Israel as one of its components of a deal, most recently earlier this year -

Hamas would consider recognition of Israel, a spokesperson for the terror group said Saturday, as peace efforts teetered over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent reconciliation with the organization.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-open-to-considering-recognition-of-israel-official/

And this from 2006-
The Hamas movement is ready to recognize agreements signed with Israel, and in fact recognize Israel, but only within the '67 borders, senior Hamas member Khaled Suleiman said Wednesday.
According to Suleiman, the movement will be ready to accept a Palestinian state inside the '67 borders and will not operate to thwart diplomatic negotiations held by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3249568,00.html

The rhetoric that refers to the 'destruction of Israel' -what in fact does it mean? And how would Hamas or anyone else do it? If you think about it, quite apart from being around the 5th most armed state in the world with one of the most effective military machines, Israel is both a place as well as an idea. In the end, 'we will destroy you' is part and parcel of the rhetoric of politics, which doesn't mean a lot of people could be killed -it has been happening for the last two weeks on both sides- but it does mean that the 'existential' issue takes precedence over practical solutions to practical, rather than ideological solutions, and that suits Israel as well as Hamas. Perhaps the fact is that neither side wants to negotiate if negotiation means 'surrender' of any kind. That is why Netanyahu spoke at demonstrations in which Yitzhak Rabin was depicted as an SS Officer, and has opposed the 'peace process' since it began.

As I have said before, we need a new paradigm. Talk of, and actual destruction is a one-way street to nowhere.

[buttslinger]

..The rhetoric that refers to the 'destruction of Israel' -what in fact does it mean? And how would Hamas or anyone else do it?...


Hey Palestine is shaping it's own defeat no matter what it does, Israel is not going to surrender or move to New York City, the worst think the Palestinians could do is actually harm Israel in a big way, because that would signal a total counter-attack without any concern of fairness or humanity or appearances of any kind. The Israelis have a chip on their shoulder like nobody else could even imagine.

[Stavros]

Hey Palestine is shaping it's own defeat no matter what it does, Israel is not going to surrender or move to New York City, the worst think the Palestinians could do is actually harm Israel in a big way, because that would signal a total counter-attack without any concern of fairness or humanity or appearances of any kind. The Israelis have a chip on their shoulder like nobody else could even imagine.

From 'the destruction of Israel' by people who don't have the means to do it without outside help, to Palestine 'shaping its own defeat' by a state armed by the USA. There have been many own goals in this conflict, the Palestinians are not unique in this.
Why talk of destruction and defeat instead of construction and success -it seems you have given up, and the only people who benefit from that are the same people knocking seven bells out of each other right now. There has to be an alternative.

[notdrunk]

Hamas as a political organisation is as open to negotiation and compromise as any other, and it has offered recognition of Israel as one of its components of a deal, most recently earlier this year -

Hamas would consider recognition of Israel, a spokesperson for the terror group said Saturday, as peace efforts teetered over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent reconciliation with the organization.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-open-to-considering-recognition-of-israel-official/

And this from 2006-
The Hamas movement is ready to recognize agreements signed with Israel, and in fact recognize Israel, but only within the '67 borders, senior Hamas member Khaled Suleiman said Wednesday.
According to Suleiman, the movement will be ready to accept a Palestinian state inside the '67 borders and will not operate to thwart diplomatic negotiations held by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3249568,00.html

The rhetoric that refers to the 'destruction of Israel' -what in fact does it mean? And how would Hamas or anyone else do it? If you think about it, quite apart from being around the 5th most armed state in the world with one of the most effective military machines, Israel is both a place as well as an idea. In the end, 'we will destroy you' is part and parcel of the rhetoric of politics, which doesn't mean a lot of people could be killed -it has been happening for the last two weeks on both sides- but it does mean that the 'existential' issue takes precedence over practical solutions to practical, rather than ideological solutions, and that suits Israel as well as Hamas. Perhaps the fact is that neither side wants to negotiate if negotiation means 'surrender' of any kind. That is why Netanyahu spoke at demonstrations in which Yitzhak Rabin was depicted as an SS Officer, and has opposed the 'peace process' since it began.

As I have said before, we need a new paradigm. Talk of, and actual destruction is a one-way street to nowhere.


Actually, the Washington Post corrected their article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/palestinians-signal-willingness-to-continue-peace-talks/2014/04/26/40473dca-cd4a-11e3-93eb-6c0037dde2ad_story.html




Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported a statement by Taher al-Nunu, a media adviser for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, on the possibility of the recognition of Israel by Hamas. Nunu did not directly comment on recognition and said any discussion about recognition would happen in the future as part of Hamas’s efforts to join the PLO and form a government. Nunu said Sunday that Hamas would not in fact recognize Israel. This version has been corrected.


Hamas has been pushing for a ten year truce under certain conditions that are mostly impossible without compromising Israel's security. What happens after ten years? Hamas has clearly stated that they wouldn't recognize Israel even if they went back to the 1967 lines. The conditions are in the following link with analysis:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/how-realistic-are-hamas-cease-fire-terms-n157516

The following quote is from the leader of Hamas stating their view on Israel if they went back to the 1967 lines:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24235665/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/hamas-offers-truce-return-borders/#.U9xlQvldWSo



Mashaal said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state limited to the lands Israel seized in 1967 — that is, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. But he said the group would never outright formally recognize Israel.


One of the main goals of Hamas is to combine Israel with the West Bank and Gaza Strip forming an Islamic country. Hamas isn't a viable partner for peace.

[TSBootyLondon]

When it comes to politics I lack intelligence or the ability to use big words. I fail in all discussions because I am out of my debt however THIS situation is I will say barbaric.

I have been following on the news this week…

There was an interview on BBC News where a Jewish woman/mother as interviewed. She mentioned that she was frightened because a bomb went off a few miles from her home, she went on to say that she gets to see some images via the news and the internet of what is going on the other side.

When asked did she feel sorrow or sadness for the mothers war torn burying their children who have been killed in a direct explosion on their house and do you know what she scared around the answer! she didn't say 'my heart bleeds with sorrow for that grieving mother!'
I was disgusted! There have been a number of interviews and accounts like this that have horrified me!
Now as I said previously I know nothing about political arguments and wars BUT what I do know is these acts of violence and cruelty are continuing by the day yet we stand back and do nothing! Why aren't we helping!?

And why is nobody saying what most people are thinking and that is that in this case the Jews are bang out of order!! or do I speak what I know nothing about?

Is it acceptable to blow up children, mothers, old people, the innocent!? has Hitler come again!?

Im just so appalled that this being allowed to continue!

x Bella

[Stavros]

Actually, the Washington Post corrected their article:
Hamas has been pushing for a ten year truce under certain conditions that are mostly impossible without compromising Israel's security. What happens after ten years? Hamas has clearly stated that they wouldn't recognize Israel even if they went back to the 1967 lines. The conditions are in the following link with analysis:

The following quote is from the leader of Hamas stating their view on Israel if they went back to the 1967 lines:

One of the main goals of Hamas is to combine Israel with the West Bank and Gaza Strip forming an Islamic country. Hamas isn't a viable partner for peace.

Quotes and counter-quotes reinforce ideological positions, Hamas has not always stuck to its stated goals, but neither has Israel. Hamas was prepared to negotiate some years ago, I just don't have the reference handy, but as to sincerity, there is a lack of it on both sides. In the current climate neither side is willing to change.

And yet, in reality, politics is about compromise, of the kind that both Israel and the PLO accepted in 1993. There is no reason to suppose Hamas would not be amenable to compromise if it was presented with alternative political arrangements to the fixed positions that it and Israel is currently obsessed with. Israel's current leadership has locked itself into the same one-dimensional view that Hamas takes, both sides believing that any compromise is in effect a step towards disintegration and therefore a threat to their very existence. If there was a more vocal and coherent political alternative to the military options adopted by both Israel and Hamas, we might be moving towards a practical arrangement that suits both sides, but it does require change.

Similarly, there has been no serious alternative proposed by the Special Envoy of the Quartet. Tony Blair should have admitted years ago either that he could not proceed because neither side wanted to talk; or that he had no idea how to end the siege of Gaza, and resign to enable someone else with new ideas to come forward.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank since 1967 has been a disaster, it is that simple; it has undermined the humanitarian concept of Israel that its Zionist founders believed in, and has distorted the debate on Israel so that debate is filtered through 1967 and the illegal occupation rather than 1948 even though the majority of Israelis don't live on the West Bank and have little to do with it. But it has also distorted Palestinian political economic and social development, while the failure of politically moderate force in both Israel and Palestine to take 1993 forward has created extreme fringes -fanatical settlers in the West Bank, political Islamists in Gaza- who believe that violence has been the primary force that has shaped politics in that region -precisely that violence that the 1993 Peace Treaty sought to end. Neither Hamas nor Israel's current leadership believe in that Treaty, even though there is now no alternative but to revive that process. And until that happens, the killing will go on.

[broncofan]

When it comes to politics I lack intelligence or the ability to use big words. I fail in all discussions because I am out of my debt however THIS situation is I will say barbaric.

I have been following on the news this week…

There was an interview on BBC News where a Jewish woman/mother as interviewed. She mentioned that she was frightened because a bomb went off a few miles from her home, she went on to say that she gets to see some images via the news and the internet of what is going on the other side.

When asked did she feel sorrow or sadness for the mothers war torn burying their children who have been killed in a direct explosion on their house and do you know what she scared around the answer! she didn't say 'my heart bleeds with sorrow for that grieving mother!'
I was disgusted! There have been a number of interviews and accounts like this that have horrified me!
Now as I said previously I know nothing about political arguments and wars BUT what I do know is these acts of violence and cruelty are continuing by the day yet we stand back and do nothing! Why aren't we helping!?

And why is nobody saying what most people are thinking and that is that in this case the Jews are bang out of order!! or do I speak what I know nothing about?

Is it acceptable to blow up children, mothers, old people, the innocent!? has Hitler come again!?

Im just so appalled that this being allowed to continue!

x Bella
Big words aren't required, but consistency and thoughtfulness would be helpful. You are right to be appalled by the carnage, but the Jewish woman who was interviewed is only one person. If she does not care for the children of other people that does not mean other Jews are impervious to the feelings, well-being, or humanity of non-Jews. You cannot condemn a nation, much less a people by one person's (or even several people's) responses.

The second thing is that while there may be some Israelis and Jewish people who are callous when it comes to Palestinians, there are also many people in the Middle East who not only do not care if and when harm comes to Jewish people but call out for it. And when it comes to pass, though less frequent, will celebrate it and continue to carry on a campaign of demonization against Jewish people. The capabilities for carrying out such atrocities may be less, but the desire to carry them out is just as strong.

Finally, I have been very critical of Israel's conduct during the war even though there is a lot to be said for Hamas, but I think the comments about Hitler are out of order. This type of comment shouldn't even be dignified with a response but here goes: The final solution was an attempt to spare not a single Jewish person in all of occupied Europe. They were rounded up, sent to gas chambers and then incinerated. The ones who were not were nearly and often successfully starved to death. Others on the Eastern front in the Soviet Union were executed by the einsatzgruppen and buried in mass graves.

By contrast, the operation in Gaza is not a systematic attempt to wipe out an entire group based on ethnicity or religion. Thousands of rockets have been fired into Israel and the response has unfortunately been to bomb civilian areas from which the rockets are fired. This has led to an unconscionable number of civilian dead, but is in no way an attempt at extermination or the systematic murder of an entire population.

Finally, with all of the other conflicts in the world, including what seems like something much closer to systematic murder taking place under the command of ISIS, it strikes me as odd that the comparison to Hitler would be reserved for Israel. It also strikes me as strange that while ISIS is literally pulling people out of cars, questioning them about whether they are shi'ites or not, and executing them, there is no demand that the world NOT remain silent. Take a good look at the picture in the article below. This is a mass execution in Iraq....there can be no argument of intent or the identity of who is killed.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/iraqi-christians-fleeing-persecution-isis-3947382

And no I am not saying that the fact that ISIS is executing people in mass graves makes Israel's actions less objectionable. However, it does make the selective outrage all the more puzzling.

[broncofan]

When asked did she feel sorrow or sadness for the mothers war torn burying their children who have been killed in a direct explosion on their house and do you know what she scared around the answer!

x Bella
I also want to note that this is a question that is almost designed to make the person answering it appear callous. You go to a zone of conflict and ask someone how they feel about the innocent loss of life on the other side and you are rarely going to get the proper response, which is "it is horrible. Nobody should have to bury their child. Any loss of innocent life is tragic. I deplore and condemn the killing of civilians."

I guarantee if you put the question to Palestinian individuals what they think of the Israeli kidnapping victims, you would be more likely to get a defensive response than a humanistic one. This is not proof that Palestinians dislike Israelis or Jewish people but rather that if you ask someone who is absorbed with their own position during a conflict about the loss of life on the other side, you will not get an objective and even-handed response.

[broncofan]

And just in case anyone thinks I am being sensitive about the genocide comparisons and Hitler commentary, I want to point one thing out. In a 35 page thread about Syria, a conflict where over 100,000 people have been killed, including some by a toxic gas that causes convulsions and painful death, the word genocide was used one time. The person who used the word genocide, used it to say a genocide was NOT taking place, and that we should not intervene.

In this thread, on the other hand, the first post posits that Israel is a genocidal nation. We have questions about the first recorded genocide, whether one predated the one described in the Old Testament perpetrated by the Jews, and now a comment about the possible resurrection of Hitler. Again, I think terrible atrocities are taking place in Gaza, but it is amazing how this always seems to come up.

[iluvtscock]

http://i.imgur.com/CPnOx96.jpg

[Charly Spoons]

I just stumbled upon this...

This Land Is Mine on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/50531435)

[broncofan]

http://i.imgur.com/CPnOx96.jpg
Perhaps Israel says these things because they come up in conversation. Bombs are often stored in civilian areas and fired from civilian areas. Anti-semitism is frequently a problem, as I can link to dozens of outrageous examples of it since the fighting began, often done in the name of protesting Israel in countries thousands of miles from the conflict zone.

I have said other countries are worse but only when Israel is compared to Nazi Germany or accused of genocide. And yes, point seven on your list frequently comes to mind here. If you don't think it's relevant I can point you to the comments sections of the Guardian or the Daily Mail. And yes, obviously a Jewish person is going to think you have an axe to grind if you talk about this subject but say nothing when any other issue in Middle Eastern politics comes up.

If you're going to serve up propaganda like this, what do you think about gratuitous comparisons to Hitler and genocide? Are those alright for you?

[iluvtscock]

I'm sorry to say, but, our views differ so much on this issue there is probably no common ground.

Personaly, I don't blame any particular naion for the extermination of the palestinians, it's just human nature.

Anyway, back to what we both love.. ha :)

[fred41]

broncofan...many of your comments are spot on. The reality is that anti-Semitism is alive and thriving, but the words are couched differently. This is the only conclusion I can come to when people hold a country such as Israel to a much higher standard than almost any other country and their people in the region.
A country would be insane, not to use the weapons at their disposal, to defend themselves. It is easy to sit back,safely in our western homes, and criticize a country and it's people for defending themselves.
YES,we can be horrified by the deaths and human suffering and wish an end to this tragedy...but this is NOT an extermination.
I would be willing to bet my life savings, that many who criticize Israel for what they are doing now, would hope their own governments do the same if rockets were to start falling in their own neighborhoods...unless they had a ridiculous suicidal bent.

[buttslinger]

They have these courses in Kollidge called POLITICAL SCIENCE...(a.k.a. Polysci) and basically they teach you to bend the truth to suit your own needs. Everybody does it. I would love to kill those yapping little dogs next door, but that would make ME look like the bad guy.
Israel and and Palestine DESPISE each other. The Contempt is familiar, and close to 100% on both sides, I would guess. One side builds walls, the other side digs tunnels. And with Israel having Nuclear weapons, ugliness might be the good news, ending the entire Middle East Conflict might be the unbelievably terrifying bad news.

[fred41]

Everybody does it. I would love to kill those yapping little dogs next door, but that would make ME look like the bad guy.


lol...I can sympathize...one of my neighbors has one of those now. People don't realize, when they get them, that lapdogs are needy - you have to be there for them. You can't leave them alone all the time. That's when they bark.

[TSBootyLondon]

I was not condemning any nation. I am merely stating that as a westerner I have no comprehension of this behaviour on either side of the fence.

My heart is broken to see News bulletins of children with arms and legs blown off, faces cut to shreds from shrapnel.
Screaming mothers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters lining the streets and hospital hallways with nowhere else to turn or run!

I watch in utter disgust and dismay that this is going on and we are all helpless in the defines of either side!

Its barbaric regardless of why it is happening

As I stated previously I know nothing of politics, all that I know is in my opinion its genocide!

I generally hand on heart want to open my front door and offer shelter to every single one of those affected!

Its barbaric, we can scoot around it but that is the bottom line.

What ever happened to settling scores with a game of conquers hey!

Serious note, may peace find its way and offer light to all concerned

[notdrunk]

Quotes and counter-quotes reinforce ideological positions, Hamas has not always stuck to its stated goals, but neither has Israel. Hamas was prepared to negotiate some years ago, I just don't have the reference handy, but as to sincerity, there is a lack of it on both sides. In the current climate neither side is willing to change.

And yet, in reality, politics is about compromise, of the kind that both Israel and the PLO accepted in 1993. There is no reason to suppose Hamas would not be amenable to compromise if it was presented with alternative political arrangements to the fixed positions that it and Israel is currently obsessed with. Israel's current leadership has locked itself into the same one-dimensional view that Hamas takes, both sides believing that any compromise is in effect a step towards disintegration and therefore a threat to their very existence. If there was a more vocal and coherent political alternative to the military options adopted by both Israel and Hamas, we might be moving towards a practical arrangement that suits both sides, but it does require change.

Similarly, there has been no serious alternative proposed by the Special Envoy of the Quartet. Tony Blair should have admitted years ago either that he could not proceed because neither side wanted to talk; or that he had no idea how to end the siege of Gaza, and resign to enable someone else with new ideas to come forward.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank since 1967 has been a disaster, it is that simple; it has undermined the humanitarian concept of Israel that its Zionist founders believed in, and has distorted the debate on Israel so that debate is filtered through 1967 and the illegal occupation rather than 1948 even though the majority of Israelis don't live on the West Bank and have little to do with it. But it has also distorted Palestinian political economic and social development, while the failure of politically moderate force in both Israel and Palestine to take 1993 forward has created extreme fringes -fanatical settlers in the West Bank, political Islamists in Gaza- who believe that violence has been the primary force that has shaped politics in that region -precisely that violence that the 1993 Peace Treaty sought to end. Neither Hamas nor Israel's current leadership believe in that Treaty, even though there is now no alternative but to revive that process. And until that happens, the killing will go on.


I will make my opinion short and sweet: Compromise how? The compromise is the ten year truce laid out by Hamas. Additionally, Hamas doesn't support the Oslo Accords. You can't truly compromise with Islamists. The PLO actually made compromises. Hamas has only made demands for a "truce". Hamas has repeatedly stated their end goal and the formation of Hamas was for that end goal: The creation of an Islamic state that encompasses the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Israel. Hamas wouldn't exist if they didn't hold that point of view. You can't compromise with nutty people. You have to marginalize those people until they don't exist or they lose influence. Or, make them turn their backs from more their nutty views (e.g., what the PLO did). I am being a broken record but it must be repeated. I would like to see the so-called negotiations offered by Hamas that you have mentioned too.

Or, we can just blame the British for making this mess and call it a day...:p

[Bark]

I been pondering long on this, its a two way unyielding street. Hamus isn't organized so they cant really be called the true army of the Gaza strip because they're work outside the government yet the government doesn't do anything about or against Hamus and they're stupid brainless angry actions. Basically this does fall under Terrorism because the government isn't in control in Palestine.

Israel is a government and they do address terror with reaction and if allowed takes a few yards more action to completely disable they're enemy. They are a dog sleeping in a nest of serpents that constant snap and bite at it, so they retaliate like a dog in pain and will bite and kill as meany biting serpents as he can before he tires out. Sure they have all the advantages but its because they worked for it, they never asked for handout like other terrorists do, they saved and worked and even developed they're own defense.

Stop saying its an unfair, uneven battle. They're enemy hides among the innocent, stash they're weapons among children and put everyone in danger. But the Palestinians are just as bad too. They will condemn Israel for defending themselves yet enjoy seeing the simpleton idiots that is Hamus antagonize danger and retaliation upon themselves letting these assholes speak in they're behalf with unreasonable demands of all out slaughter of Israel.

Palestine needs to push Hamus out or control them, They need a government. Someone held completely accountable for they're actions and have complete control of they're defense, not random imbeciles launching rockets at anyone sneeze. Keep going as they are something will give and who pays for it, the innocent children of both Palestine and of Israel.

[Stavros]

I will make my opinion short and sweet: Compromise how? The compromise is the ten year truce laid out by Hamas. Additionally, Hamas doesn't support the Oslo Accords. You can't truly compromise with Islamists. The PLO actually made compromises. Hamas has only made demands for a "truce". Hamas has repeatedly stated their end goal and the formation of Hamas was for that end goal: The creation of an Islamic state that encompasses the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Israel. Hamas wouldn't exist if they didn't hold that point of view. You can't compromise with nutty people. You have to marginalize those people until they don't exist or they lose influence. Or, make them turn their backs from more their nutty views (e.g., what the PLO did). I am being a broken record but it must be repeated. I would like to see the so-called negotiations offered by Hamas that you have mentioned too.

Or, we can just blame the British for making this mess and call it a day...:p

I understand your hostility to Hamas, but I would ask you to consider the view that it is the weakness of their current position that has been a prime motivation in the rocket launches that began this latest military non-solution. It was this weakness which led them in April this year to mend their quarrel with Fateh and lead to the formation of a 'Unity Government'. Hamas in effect 'went solo' in 2007 after their 2006 election victory and an inability to work with Fateh, but as I say, since then Hamas has lost its main backers. Moreover, Hamas would have known that Mahmoud Abbas supports the 1993 Peace Treaty and wants to 'move it forward' so you have the apparent dilemma of a Unity Government containing an important faction that claims it doesn't believe in the peace process. My spin on this, which you are free to dismiss, is that Hamas would in fact be prepared to be part of a negotiating team. If that team then goes too far, Hamas can then withdraw and accuse Fateh of selling out the Palestinians, but I don't know that this is a trick. At some point, Hamas leaders must be asking themselves how much longer they can carry on without any significant lifting of the siege by Israel, it is the key issue that the population wants dealt with, and as I said in an earlier post, nobody is tackling this issue, and it is the underlying cause of the conflict with Gaza.

If you then look at Israel's reaction to the Unity Government, Netanyahu denounced the Unity Government, prevented three of the designated Ministers from Hamas from travelling to Ramallah to be sworn in, and announced the approval of 3,320 new settler homes on the West Bank. Moreover, he also claimed that if Hamas in Gaza attacked Israel this would justify an Israeli attack on Fateh in the West Bank, which has yet to happen. Compromise is not a word in Netanyahu's lexicon, or so we are led to believe. He has called on Abbas to de-militarise Gaza, which on paper is a reasonable demand, but it would be just as reasonable for Abbas to demand the de-militarisation of the West Bank where Settlers walk around with guns on their hips and regularly shoot at Arabs.

As I have said before, as long as the Netanyahu-led government is opposed to the 1993 Peace Process, and as long as it lays siege to Gaza, there can be no real advance. Abbas is clearly prepared to open meaningful talks on the Peace Process, Hamas will tag along reluctantly, but this now is the only option left because the military option is literally dead. The most apparently inflexible groups have shown they will compromise when the situation demands it. The Taliban offered open talks with the government of Hamid Karzai and the USA in 2012, talks that were said to have the blessing of Mullah Omar.

So I think it is wrong to dismiss a call for compromise and negotiations, even when it seems so futile, because that only cements the positions of those who don't want to talk, and think guns can do their talking instead.

[Odelay]

The reality is that anti-Semitism is alive and thriving

Yes, but so is racism associated with skin color. So is misogyny based on gender. So is homophobia based on sexual orientation. So are many other forms of discrimination.

You ask any Armenian of their culture's history of being oppressed by Greeks and they'll give you an earful. But how much of the world knows about it? Probably less than 5%.

Compare that to how much of the world knows about anti-Semitism.

And broncofan, no, none of the Israeli military actions of the last 65 years equate to genocide. But you have to admit that's a pretty low bar to clear in avoiding evil.

What boggles my mind is how Jews can have such a huge legacy in intellectualism and downright genius, and then turn around and not collectively understand the devastatingly stupid idea of announcing yet thousands of new settlement homes in the West Bank. I simply don't understand how Jews around the World, including in Israel, don't condemn these policies and actions. Human mistakes were made, post-1967, allowing mass settlement of the West Bank. But we're 47 years past that and Israel is still doing the same thing. It can no longer be characterized as a mistake. It's a willful, antagonistic act.

I'm your average ex-Catholic atheist white American, but I have traveled quite a bit and have Muslim friends from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. These are professional, family oriented people, not radicals. The one view I hear from all of them is that Israel is out of control which continues to fuel regional sentiment against Israel and the US.

I think Stavros is correct. Somehow Israel has to accept some group of representative Palestinians to the negotiating table, in addition to ending stupid, antagonistic policies. Otherwise it's stalemate or worse, now and forever.

[buttslinger]

In the sense that seeing is believing, then I understand completely the hatred between Israel and Hamas, and Syria, and Iran, Iraq, etc,
In the sense of being able to explain it, I have no clue. As an American, we killed Indians, Redcoats, each other in the civil war, in WWII we incinerated Tokyo in one night. Attacked Iraq for no reason other than oil. The history books are full of conflicts.
I'm glad Homeboy Obama is not getting sucked into this. Send Kerry over there, go through the motions. American Presidents have looked stupid trying to attain peace in the middle east since 1967. A piece of paper means nothing, we've got Mexican drug runners tunneling into our country, and those murdering bastards are as bad as Hamas. If we want a problem with no solution, let's concentrate on our border with Mexico.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=buttslinger;1516653]

Attacked Iraq for no reason other than oil.
--Regime change in 2003 was intended to launch Iraq into the world of democracy, a utopian vision that has, last time I looked, not turned out as George Bush and Tony Blair expected it to.

I'm glad Homeboy Obama is not getting sucked into this. Send Kerry over there, go through the motions.
--Who authorised the latest shipment of arms to Israel from the USA if it was not President Obama?

American Presidents have looked stupid trying to attain peace in the middle east since 1967.
--President Carter, and the Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979?
--President Clinton, and the Peace Treaty between Israel and the PLO in 1993?

[broncofan]

What boggles my mind is how Jews can have such a huge legacy in intellectualism and downright genius, and then turn around and not collectively understand the devastatingly stupid idea of announcing yet thousands of new settlement homes in the West Bank. I simply don't understand how Jews around the World, including in Israel, don't condemn these policies and actions. Human mistakes were made, post-1967, allowing mass settlement of the West Bank. But we're 47 years past that and Israel is still doing the same thing. It can no longer be characterized as a mistake. It's a willful, antagonistic act.
.
I mildly disagree with other parts of the post but don't want to hijack the thread too far. But I think a lot of Jewish people think developing in the West Bank is stupid and has no upside. I have no idea why anyone rational would support that policy. I also think the siege has been ineffective, has crippled the Palestinian economy and anyone with common sense would realize that imposed poverty promotes radicalism.

I suppose I always end up torn. I think Israel's policies have been stupid, but then I look around them and see other countries behaving worse and being condemned less. And I think the rhetoric and vitriol from many in the Middle East towards Israel is selective and based on tribalism.

So, given that I established in the first paragraph I am not devastatingly stupid I would like to prove it further. The guy who posted the newspaper article said he thinks he can find no common ground with me. That's amazing:

I support a two state solution
I think firing rockets at civilians is a war crime
I think dropping bombs in civilian areas knowing you will kill non-combatants is also.

So is he saying he thinks he can find no common ground with me because he doesn't agree with any of these things or because I don't like Hitler references?

What I find is that supporters of the Palestinians feel they need to ratchet up the noise level to prove they are not soft on Israel or they have not been pushed around by the Jews. I can see eye to eye on every issue with them but when I say you know you are falsely accusing Israel of genocide, they will scream "ZIONIST!!". Or you know, perhaps the swastika next to the star of David is too much. "Fucking Zio-NAZI!!!"

And when Israel is accused of genocide, the relevant bar is whether they have committed it. That's how honest discourse works. You don't say, "well I think they're in the wrong, so any condemnation is acceptable, whether descriptively accurate or not".

[broncofan]

Compare that to how much of the world knows about anti-Semitism.

It depends what you mean by "know". They have heard of it and heard about the Holocaust (perhaps feeling certain they have been inundated with talk of it and can hear no more). There are quite a lot of people who don't believe the Holocaust took place, or that it was exaggerated, was a ploy to extract money or who simply respond to comments about anti-semitism with a collective eye roll.

I do know about the Armenian genocide, and used to subscribe to the Armenian weekly and was interested in reading about the Armenian people's quest to get recognition for the previously ignored atrocities committed by the Turks.

What is disappointing is that people routinely underestimate the amount of anti-semitism there is. They will insist that it is less pervasive than other types of prejudice but then when confronted with hate crime numbers will then feel certain Jewish people over-report (ask them what compels them to feel this way). I think by know most people mean hear about it and feel generally nauseated by having to. Just my view on it.

[buttslinger]

Who authorized the latest shipment of arms to Israel from the USA if it was not President Obama?
I'm talkin outta my ass, Stavros, I have not read one book on the Middle East, the whole thing makes me want to vomit. Obama doesn't decide arms shipments to Israel, there are lots of contracts and deals left over from old administrations that have to die a natural death before they can be changed. Bush not only stole everything he could lay his hands on, he borrowed every cent he could, stole it, and left Obama to pay the bill.

What was it, Paul Newman and Sal Mineo started the State of Israel in 1946? I don't know. Clinton tells a story of having to physically maneuver the two guys to shake hands at some summit. For the cameras. It's all for show.
In fact, most of what goes on in the World has nothing to do with World Leaders. But the ILLUSION of control keeps things calm, in a way.
Not in the Middle East of course.

[Odelay]

Broncofan, as I stated before, I appreciate the thoughtfulness and intelligence you bring to any debate on this forum, so that's the reason I continue to engage.


But I think a lot of Jewish people think developing in the West Bank is stupid and has no upside.Yes, but where are these people? They don't seem to vote in Israel in any significant numbers, and they don't seem to sucessfully run and win office.


I have no idea why anyone rational would support that policy. The policy of either maintaining all existing settlements or increasing them seems to be supported by moderate, conservative and ultra-conservative Israeli parties. Together, these 3 factions represent a huge supermajority of the voting population. Now granted, we might not be able to characterize all of these voters as irrational as, 1) they might be voting the least of several evils, and 2) they probably aren't all one issue voters. However, it should be noted that this is a pretty damn big issue for Israelis. That's a lot of smaller issues that seem to collectively outweigh this one big irrational policy issue.



What I find is that supporters of the Palestinians feel they need to ratchet up the noise level to prove they are not soft on Israel or they have not been pushed around by the Jews. I can see eye to eye on every issue with them but when I say you know you are falsely accusing Israel of genocide, they will scream "ZIONIST!!". Or you know, perhaps the swastika next to the star of David is too much. "Fucking Zio-NAZI!!!" Fair enough. But I think an argument can be made that the racheting up of pro-Palestinian noise is met by a racheting up of noise by the friends of Israel. I believe friends of Israel too often take the bait instead of trying to argue the rational course. Man I've read some stupid pieces these last few weeks, and god help you if you are a Jew arguing for peace because you will be labeled a self loathing Jew.


There are quite a lot of people who don't believe the Holocaust took place, or that it was exaggerated No argument here that these people exist, but you can't eliminate radical, paranoic, conspiracy oriented groups from a democratic, pro-free-speech society. The fringe will always exist where laws allow them to exist. It would be dangerous for Jews to completely ignore the fringe. But it's equally counterproductive to overreact and meet every wild accusation with a counter accusation of anti-semitism because by doing so, you give them more credit than they deserve.

Nationalism is a real thing and I believe it's driving a lot of what's going on right now in Gaza and greater Israel. We saw the same thing here in the US after 9/11, or even today at the US-Mexico border. Somehow the sane voices need to be heard to avoid catastrophe or stop it in its tracks. I'm losing hope not only for Israel, but also the US, that these sane voices will somehow prevail.

EDIT: I deleted the quotes around self-loathing Jew. It is not broncofan who is labeling his fellow Jews, but others who have prominent voices in national and international publications.

[yosi]

Hamas as a political organisation



Hamas is a TERROR organisation .


"The destruction of the state of Israel is not Hamas' final destination. Hamas' final destination is building an Islamic caliphate - an Islamic state on the rubble of every other civilization."

http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/barbara-boland/son-hamas-founder-they-consider-dying-their-ideology-way-worship

Why They Fight: Hamas’ Too-Little-Known Fascist Charter

http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/01/why-they-fight-hamas-too-little-known-fascist-charter/

“Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah.”

http://blog.godreports.com/2014/08/hamas-sermons-muslims-will-exterminate-the-jews/

6,000 were killed in Syria since the Hamas/Israel war began , but who cares?

[Stavros]

Hamas is a TERROR organisation .
"The destruction of the state of Israel is not Hamas' final destination. Hamas' final destination is building an Islamic caliphate - an Islamic state on the rubble of every other civilization."

“Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah.”


Hamas is a political organization -that doesn't mean I agree with it, but it is the reality and it did win an election in 2006. Arafat's Fateh movement was dismissed as a 'terrorist' movement, yet became the principal organ through which the PLO negotiated a Peace Treaty with Israel, the same Israel that said it would never talk to terrorists. The ANC was 'terrorist' at one time, as was the Provisional IRA, not to mention, in Palestine under the British Mandate the Stern Gang and the Irgun, organisations which not only carried out terrorist attacks on British soldiers and officials and buildings in Palestine, but also planned to fly an aeroplane loaded with bombs into the Houses of Parliament in London in 1946.

Yes, the Charter of Hamas is a chilling document; but how can politics deal with such a grandiose utopian vision? My argument is that the leadership of Hamas cannot go on for years pursuing an empty vision, that the realities of politics will -as I believe they have in the past- induce them to be pragmatic and negotiate some means of living with Israel -after all, before 2006 many Gazan's worked in Israel, it didn't seem to be such a problem at the time.

Moreover, if you consider the constitution of the Likud, the party represented by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, you will find that it states (Article 2.1)

The Likud is a national-liberal party which advocates the ingathering of the exiles, the integrity of the Jewish homeland, human freedom and social justice, and it strives to achieve these goals:

a. Bringing together the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, ingathering its dispersed people, cultivating love of the country in the hearts of the people, and recognizing the shared destiny of all of the Jewish people.

b. Safeguarding the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel as an eternal, inalienable right, working diligently to settle and develop all parts of the land of Israel, and extending national sovereignty to them.

But where is this 'Land of Israel'? For Netanyahu it is all of the land that was controlled by the British Mandate for Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan; and for some 'Eretz Israel' also includes parts of present-day Jordan that were known in Biblical times as Gilead, Moab and Ammon; others would also include parts of present day Iraq.

You may say that this is just rhetoric, yet the reality is that Netanyahu himself at a speech in Bar-Ilan University in 1989 called for the expulsion of Arabs from the West Bank -he says he was only referring to militants as if militants by definition had no rights; and he may have 'mellowed' since 1989, but the whole position of Likud begs the question -what is to happen to the non-Jewish communities in this 'Land of Israel'?

So you see, we are dealing with people with extreme views on both sides.

If you can't bear to compare Netanyahu with Yitzhak Rabin, try Moshe Sharett, Prime Minister of Israel in the mid-1950s. In 1953, after an attack on two Jews in Yahud, Ariel Sharon led a commando raid on the Arab village of Qibya (in Jordanian controlled territory) which had nothing to do with the killings. At Qibya 45 houses were blown up and 69 killed, most of them women and children. Sharett was foreign minister of Israel at the time, and opposed to retaliatory action, as he put it (pages 82-82 in the link below):
It has never been proven that retaliatory action helps in curbing terroristic infiltration in the final balance.
When he was told of what happened at Qibya, he remarked
Indeed, it should be stressed that when I opposed the retaliatory action I did not imagine there would be such bloodshed. I was thinking of a retaliatory action of the earlier variety, which had become routine, and even to that I objected. If I had had any reason to fear such a slaughter, I would have raised hell...
http://www.palestine-studies.org/files/pdf/jps/4337.pdf

Netanyahu has rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty in favour of 'facts on the ground' where those facts do not include Palestinians -be they Muslim, Christian or Atheist. Hamas has rejected the 1993 Peace treaty in favour of their own 'facts on the ground' where those facts do not include Jews or Christians or Atheists. Both are pursing a Utopian dream.

Time for reality to bite both hands.

[Odelay]

Hamas is a political organization -that doesn't mean I agree with it, but it is the reality and it did win an election in 2006. Arafat's Fateh movement was dismissed as a 'terrorist' movement, yet became the principal organ through which the PLO negotiated a Peace Treaty with Israel, the same Israel that said it would never talk to terrorists. The ANC was 'terrorist' at one time, as was the Provisional IRA, not to mention, in Palestine under the British Mandate the Stern Gang and the Irgun, organisations which not only carried out terrorist attacks on British soldiers and officials and buildings in Palestine, but also planned to fly an aeroplane loaded with bombs into the Houses of Parliament in London in 1946.

Yeah, but Guy Fawkes and his gang never made it to political party status.

[Stavros]

Yeah, but Guy Fawkes and his gang never made it to political party status.

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot by asking a number of elementary questions. Were the plotters terrorists in any meaningful sense? Were they religious fanatics, as the Jacobean state understandably chose to portray them after the event? Was their plan built on a misguided fantasy of widespread support for a Catholic insurrection, or does the Plot perhaps have a practical coherence that lies obscured by the drama of the projected strike against Westminster? How does evidence for coherent planning square with the strong desire for revenge, running through so much of the surviving testimony? Through answers to these questions, we begin to see the Gunpowder plotters as men engaged in a calculated and demonstrably pragmatic attempt to engineer a change in regime. Their planning was robust, and to the point, while the emotional power of revenge was channelled creatively by the ringleaders. The article concludes that the odds against success were long, but not impossible.

-Mark Nicholls, Strategy and Motivation in the Gunpowder Plot.
The Historical Journal, Volume 50 / Issue 04 / December 2007, pp 787-807.

[yosi]

So I think it is wrong to dismiss a call for compromise and negotiations, even when it seems so futile, because that only cements the positions of those who don't want to talk, and think guns can do their talking instead.

I agree with you , poeple should talk instead of using guns.

BUT

In reality , if Hamas after being elected in 2006 in democratic (???) elections , would have spend the billions of $ on the welfare of the poeple of Gaza instead of spending them on missiles , tunnels etc. the condition of the Gaza poeple would be much better , 40,000 workers for the Hamas government didn't get their salaries for few months because the money went for guns and building underground tunnels.........

their prime minister is sitting in 5 stars hotel in Doha Qatar.........

Israel is not the true tragedy of the poeple of Gaza , Hamas is.

[Stavros]

I am not a supporter of Hamas, so I can't defend the way in which it (mis)-managed Gaza, but corruption is probably the most common feature of government across the world, so it is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves that for all our criticisms of central and local government in the USA and the UK, even in Europe people don't get their salaries paid on time -a chronic problem in Greece and Italy, for example.

The odd thing about Palestinians, and this is something I once talked about with some Arab friends, is that Palestinians have excelled in medicine, engineering, farming and the arts, but when it comes to politics, they seem unable to find a politician to represent them who isn't a crook. If you think Hamas is bent, do some research on Yasser Arafat (eg the biography by Said Aburish) and ask where did all that money go? There used to be, probably still is, a queue every morning outside the PLO office in Shmeisani (in Amman) where 'refugees' would beg for help to pay this bill and that and be sent away with a wad of cash, but it was piffle compared to what Arafat salted away. I think in the 1970s to 1980s the PLO was getting something between $25-30 million a year from their brother Arabs.

Corruption is Israel is as legendary, wikipedia even has a page on it, and Netanyahu himself just managed to avoid being prosecuted for bribery in 1997.
List of Israeli public officials convicted of crimes or misdemeanors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_public_officials_convicted_of_crim es_or_misdemeanors)

It's the Middle East, Yosi, where day is night and night is day, where you can't import a western car without paying a wastah to get you a form that has to be signed by 10 officials before they agree to something that isn't going to happen for three months anyway. Where you can visit Israel and never have to change dollars to shekels because they love the green, where homosexuality is forbidden and shameful and parks after dark a fury of gay sex, be it in Israel, Amman, Beirut or, once, Damascus, a city so famous for its brothels young men used to drive up from Riyadh for the weekend.

But you have not referred to the 'siege' or Israel's 'economic control measures' which have denied Gazans the opportunity to work in Israel or the West Bank, which they did before 2006; measures which have meant that exports of fruit and vegetables if they take place have to conform to the absurd standards Israel imposes precisely so that it can deny most of the produce entry. It is the virtual imprisonment of Gaza by Israel that is a fundamental cause of the conflict, even as Hamas rockets sparked the latest, futile military retaliation.

Had Tony Blair been an effective envoy, he would after seven years -I will repeat that, seven years- have come up with solutions to rival the 'solutions' that were agreed in Northern Ireland. Should Gaza be de-militarized? Yes. Should the West Bank be de-militarised? Yes. Should Gazans be free to travel to the West Bank? Yes.

Confidence building measures are required on both sides, because the anger and the bitterness will not lead immediately to that first step back onto the road to peace that must happen if these cycles of death and destruction are to end. All we need now, is confidence!

[buttslinger]

Back in High School I talked to a girl who had visited Israel, the first thing she did when she got there was buy a big ball of hash. She said she never even touched it, because with bombs exploding unexpectedly down the street, there is a heightened consciousness that goes along with walking on pins and needles at all time. High on Life. I have been in street demonstrations where the crowd gets amped up, then when the cops start busting heads and pushing the crowd back, your fight or flight responses kick in, I was almost crushed to death pinned against a car with my bicycle, and I admit I really panic-ed. It really sets off your emotional glands.

Rational thinking says killing each other is never a smart idea, but once blood is spilled, things change. When they come up with a pill that cures HATRED, we can concentrate on the thousands of children that die from starvation in Africa.

[Odelay]

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot by asking a number of elementary questions.
About 15 yrs ago, or so, I read a full book length account of the Gunpowder plot. I agree that this gang was committed to some serious mayhem and they weren't far from pulling it off. It was a pretty modern action for its time, and looks remarkably similar to later actions by the John Wilkes Booth gang, the IRA, or even the Boers in South Africa - as guerilla actions against an established and powerful state.


Were the plotters terrorists in any meaningful sense? Were they religious fanatics, as the Jacobean state understandably chose to portray them after the event? Was their plan built on a misguided fantasy of widespread support for a Catholic insurrection, or does the Plot perhaps have a practical coherence that lies obscured by the drama of the projected strike against Westminster? Probably all of the above.

[Stavros]

Odelay, if you are not already familiar with it, I recommend John W. Dower's book Cultures of War -Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq (published in 2010). It is a fascinating study in the way American administrations have dealt with these events and how the language and imagery common in one merges into another, just as all are also characterised by what Dower refers to as:
"...surprise attack, a colossal failure of US intelligence, terror involving the targeting of noncombatants, the specter of weapons of mass destruction and 'mushroom clouds', rhetoric of holy war on all sides."

Amazon.com: Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq (9780393340686): John W. Dower: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wxk7y-XGL.@@AMEPARAM@@51wxk7y-XGL (http://www.amazon.com/Cultures-War-Pearl-Harbor-Hiroshima/dp/0393340686)

[Prospero]

The smoking gun....
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.609125

[Prospero]

and Amos Oz sums up my own feelings...

http://www.dw.de/oz-lose-lose-situation-for-israel/a-17822511

[Ben]

Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/04/cash-weapons-surveillance

[yosi]

and Amos Oz sums up my own feelings...

http://www.dw.de/oz-lose-lose-situation-for-israel/a-17822511



Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusal way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?
Deutsche Welle:Go ahead!
Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?
Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?

[Stavros]

The smoking gun....
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.609125

a) we know that Hamas has been firing rockets from residential areas, Hamas (or its supporters) has posted its own videos so there is no need to rely on the Indians -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFroK_1KYg

b) I can only re-iterate that Hamas knew from the start what it was doing and what the Israeli response would be.

c) It is a pity that the focus on the actions of Hamas, or for that matter the Israeli response, does not focus on the underlying cause, which is the siege of Gaza.

[Stavros]

Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusal way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?
Deutsche Welle:Go ahead!
Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?
Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?

Yosi, why do you only quote one section of the interview with Amoz Oz?

Why didn't you quote this remark -?
My suggestion is to approach Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - the ed.] and to accept the terms - which the whole world knows - for a two-state-solution and coexistence between Israel and the West Bank: Two capitals in Jerusalem, a mutually agreed territorial modification, removal of most of the Jewish settlements from the West Bank.

Amos Oz might be right when he says humour is the best way to derail fanaticism (How to Cure a Fanatic, 2004), but when he says he believes in violence, he undermines his moral arguments for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because until the resort to violence ends, there can never be true peace.

[yosi]

c) It is a pity that the focus on the actions of Hamas, or for that matter the Israeli response, does not focus on the underlying cause, which is the siege of Gaza.

And what is the reason of the siege of Gaza? the endless import of missiles and rockets and arms by Hamas........

A big part of this siege was done by Egypt , who destroyed hundreds if not thousends of tunnels in the Egyptian/gaza border as a results of Hamas attacking and killing Egyptian soldiers in Egyptian territory.

this is the reason why Egypt "love" Hamas so much.

I agree that a solution must be found , for both sides , the Palestinians and Israelis , but as long as the fanatic terrorist Hamas in there , there is no chance for a solution , can you talk with a fanatic religious organisation with logic and reason? their latest actions prove otherwise.

[yosi]

GazaUnderAttack images accurate?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28198163

[Stavros]

And what is the reason of the siege of Gaza? the endless import of missiles and rockets and arms by Hamas........

A big part of this siege was done by Egypt , who destroyed hundreds if not thousends of tunnels in the Egyptian/gaza border as a results of Hamas attacking and killing Egyptian soldiers in Egyptian territory.

this is the reason why Egypt "love" Hamas so much.

I agree that a solution must be found , for both sides , the Palestinians and Israelis , but as long as the fanatic terrorist Hamas in there , there is no chance for a solution , can you talk with a fanatic religious organisation with logic and reason? their latest actions prove otherwise.

It is more complicated than that -Hamas had links to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which is why the Egyptian government acted against Hamas; the siege of Gaza was imposed by Israel as collective punishment for Hamas winning an election, before that plenty of Gazans worked in Israel without being a threat, just as Israel, having decided it cannot and will not talk with Hamas decided to punish both Hamas and Fateh for forming a unity government in April. As I have said before, Hamas may have the profile of an extremist oganisation, as is the case with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Provisional IRA prior to the Good Friday Agreement, but unless pragmatic moves are made to reduce the confrontational policies of both sides, and make those small but vital gestures of confidence which work toward peace, Hamas in its isolation will continue to develop the non-pragmatic, utopian ideology that in practical terms has delivered absolutely nothing since it was created in 1987. I detest Hamas just as much as you do, but they do represent enough Palestinians to merit a place at the table; as was the case with Fateh, that is the reality. Netanyahu wants to control every aspect of the peace process to guarantee Israel gets what it wants, whereas the reality is that Israel must make concessions. By turning every moment into a life or death struggle, Netanyahu is making it impossible to hold meaningful talks since every attempt to move the peace process forward will be depicted as a threat to the existence of Israel. The Palestinians are in a weak position, they don't have many powerful friends, and the friends they do have are often insincere, yet instead of exploiting this situation to deal with the Palestinians, whose leadership has always accepted arrangements that benefit Israel more than the Palestinians, Netanyahu is trying to destroy Palestinian political institutions -as if the obliteration of Hamas would remove an Islamist threat from Gaza, which it would not. There are plenty of people who think the details of the Good Friday Agreement gave the Provisional IRA more than it deserved, but there has been a kind of peace there, power sharing does exist, and however distasteful it might be, it shows that sometimes a party has to sit down with its worst enemy to talk before any progress can be made.

[yosi]

warning: this clips are hard to view


Hamas terrorists kill innocent Palestinian in Gaza (Rare Video) (Must See).FLV - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRmFx0KRmSk)


Hamas terrorists kill innocent Palestinian|About Hamas part2 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpFaa80FpIQ)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PILiMkc8mXE

[Ben]

Noam Chomsky on Israel's Assault on Gaza & U.S. Support for the Occupation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BX0MOmDM8I

[Ben]

The Last and First Temptation of Israel:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/05/the-last-and-first-temptation-of-israel/

[Prospero]

Look beyond the Israel-Gaza dispute. Consider what is happening in Iraq. Consider the real ethnic cleansing being carried out by ISIS (or the islamic State as they now style themselves). I applaud the overnight decision by the US President to intervene with airstrikes on humanitarian grunds. But we need to do more to eradicate this evil. We have a moral respnsibility to sort this out after the illegal US-UK invasion of Iraq under Bush and Blair.

[Stavros]

Look beyond the Israel-Gaza dispute. Consider what is happening in Iraq. Consider the real ethnic cleansing being carried out by ISIS (or the islamic State as they now style themselves). I applaud the overnight decision by the US President to intervene with airstrikes on humanitarian grunds. But we need to do more to eradicate this evil. We have a moral respnsibility to sort this out after the illegal US-UK invasion of Iraq under Bush and Blair.

Setting aside your addiction to violence, the thread is about Palestine, not Iraq.

[Stavros]

warning: this clips are hard to view


Yosi, you are free to choose which videos support whatever it is that you think ranks as an argument; I am offended because I am offended by video violence wherever it comes from and whoever it is that is inflicting suffering on others, just as I am offended at the thought that you don't think I and many others don't know what Hamas has been doing in Gaza for the last 24 years -it is well documented.

Your selective approach could of course be countered by Israeli atrocities; or I could cite Avigdor Lieberman calling for democratically elected -but Arab- members of the Knesset to be executed if they meet and talk to anyone from Hamas; or democratically elected Member of the Knesset Ayelet Shaked's call for the extermination of Palestinians; or I could cite democratically elected Members of the Knesset Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Aharonovich calling for hardline settlers in the West Bank to be re-classified as terrorists for their attacks on Palestinians as well as Israeli soldiers; or Amoz Oz describing the same people as 'neo-Nazis' -its out there on the web, do your own research.

Instead I will quote from David Goldberg's latest book, This is Not the Way -Jews, Judaism and Israel (Faber & Faber 2012):
"For the first fifty years of the state's history it was taken for granted that Israel occupied the moral high ground, the one democratic country in the Middle East -as its spokespeople unfailingly reiterated- governed by the rule of law and therefore never stooping to the behaviour of neighbouring Arab regimes or the terrorist tactic of deliberately targeting civilians. Perhaps unreasonably, higher standards were expected of Israel. I know that I and most other Jews in the Diaspora did look to Israel to set a better example and uphold civilised norms. And now it has come to this; that we are supposed to be proud when Israel scores higher than Hamas in a moral evaluation test" (page 226).

The occupation of the West Bank since 1967 has been a catastrophe for Israel, for the Palestinians, for humanity; it has distorted the history of Israel and the Palestinians so that now everything is seen through the prism of occupation and violence, and now it doesn't even seem to matter who is inflicting violence on whom. Where is the Israel of Judah Magnes and Martin Buber? Would they say let's talk to Hamas? Yes, of course -but had Israel followed their example, Hamas would never have existed.

[yosi]

BEN

I'm gonna move to your neighborhood with my muslim friends , I'm gonna terrorise you , shoot you every single day , hiding behind the neighborhood children , your choices are :become a muslim or die.

there is nothing you can do about it , if you shoot back , you will probably hit some of the kids who I force to protect me , and than the newspaper will write that a murderer you are. shame on you you heartless murderer of innocent children.

don't mess with me , I am a freedom fighter , a holy man , a shaheed , I will dig a tunnel to your house , kidnap and kill your family , because I do it in the name of god , I'm always right.........

[yosi]

Stavros my friend

put your self in the shoes of those who for the last 13 years , have to run for shelters because of some rocket(s) being shot to KILL them on an almost daily basis , think about their life , THEIR children .

I'm not saying all Israelis are saints , far from it , but many of them think from their guts instead of their brains , after 13 years of living under the threat of dayly missiles shot to kill you , I think you will also think from your guts.......

over 70,000 children were killed in Syria , why do you think nobody cares about it? is there anything done to stop it?

because of Hamas shooting missiles from populated areas , do you know how any palestinian children were killed because of missiles exploded instead of being launched? why does no one bother to give you these facts?

[Prospero]

Stavros. I do not have "an addiction to violence" and I do not see what grounds you are claiming that to be the case. Show me the basis for that claim or apologise please.

[Prospero]

And the point I was making here - in this thread about Israel and Palestine - is that the media and the great public have been worked up about the situation in Gaza to to a degree that the quite deliberately murderous onslaught by Isis - of Christians, of other Muslims who do not measure up to their view of true believers, of the Yazidi and others is being ignored. Hence my comments here.

[Odelay]

For what it's worth, I believe the debate we're having on Palestine/Israel in this thread is actually more civilised than what occurs in other forums. I've seen some pretty awful comments on this topic in other places.

[yosi]

And the point I was making here - in this thread about Israel and Palestine - is that the media and the great public have been worked up about the situation in Gaza to to a degree that the quite deliberately murderous onslaught by Isis - of Christians, of other Muslims who do not measure up to their view of true believers, of the Yazidi and others is being ignored. Hence my comments here.

for the same reasons 170,000 ( one hundred and seventy thousands ) dead poeple in Syria , many of them killed by chemical weapons - are ignored.

[Prospero]

I agree Odeley. But Stavros's unfounded attack on me is unnaceptable.

[fred41]

Look beyond the Israel-Gaza dispute. Consider what is happening in Iraq. Consider the real ethnic cleansing being carried out by ISIS (or the Islamic State as they now style themselves). I applaud the overnight decision by the US President to intervene with airstrikes on humanitarian grounds. But we need to do more to eradicate this evil. We have a moral responsibility to sort this out after the illegal US-UK invasion of Iraq under Bush and Blair.

I also agree with what the President is doing so far.




I agree Odeley. But Stavros's unfounded attack on me is unnacceptable.

Prospero, as I do with most people - sometimes I agree with you, sometimes I don't...either way, I've learned things from your comments in the political thread...as well as from others (Stavros, Trish (love her), etc...)...but regardless, I must say - I don't recall you ever advocating violence...ever...(I frequently do...but that's by nature....I'm learning though...lol...or getting old).

I'm gonna assume Stavros was kidding (?)...or..I dunno.

My view is that sometimes violence - especially extreme violence - can only be met with, at least some sort of violence...even if only in a very limited sense.

[Ben]

Netanyahu Urges US Lawmakers to Defend Israel Against ICC "War Crimes" Prosecution:

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/07/netanyahu-urges-us-lawmakers-defend-israel-against-icc-war-crimes-prosecution

[broncofan]

I'm enjoying everyone's posts except for Ben's. For the love of jehovah write some prose. An editorial every now and again can be useful, and hard news is almost always useful. But the wholesale appropriation of other people's ideas via link could easily turn a discussion into a debate by proxy. Who can find the authors who express something useful to their very generalized stance? Who can post the most videos of Noam Chomsky doing naughty stuff on webcam (that is what he's doing right?). It's not didactic Ben. You know what I've learned. You agree with Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald.

With all due respect, if Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald got into an argument whose side would you take.

P.S I know this sounds very harsh. You're a heck of a nice guy, but you do realize all you're doing is posting links don't you:)?

[Stavros]

Stavros. I do not have "an addiction to violence" and I do not see what grounds you are claiming that to be the case. Show me the basis for that claim or apologise please.

The problem is that you posted a link to an interview with Amos Oz with which you said you are in agreement, though I don't know if this includes the section in which he says Unlike European pacifists I never believed the ultimate evil in the world is war. In my view the ultimate evil in the world is aggression, and the only way to repel aggression is unfortunately by force; and in the last post applauded what you call US 'airstrikes on humanitarian grounds'.

Oz is clearly confused, and I don't know how an airstrike can be 'humanitarian' at all. Look at this way: IS kills people; airstrikes kill people, and tell me how you can make a moral, rather a political distinction between the two?

I apologise for the use of the word, it was a challenge too far, but I do suspect that like Oz you believe there are situations in which violence is the only solution, and in that I cannot agree.

[Stavros]

Stavros my friend

put your self in the shoes of those who for the last 13 years , have to run for shelters because of some rocket(s) being shot to KILL them on an almost daily basis , think about their life , THEIR children .

I'm not saying all Israelis are saints , far from it , but many of them think from their guts instead of their brains , after 13 years of living under the threat of dayly missiles shot to kill you , I think you will also think from your guts.......

over 70,000 children were killed in Syria , why do you think nobody cares about it? is there anything done to stop it?

because of Hamas shooting missiles from populated areas , do you know how any palestinian children were killed because of missiles exploded instead of being launched? why does no one bother to give you these facts?

Many years ago I was walking through the market in the Citadel in Jerusalem when a young man stopped my mother and begged her to try his plums; we assumed it was just another good natured hustle that took place in the market in those days, but she tried one, and bought a kilo on the spot, and we went home and ate most of them, because they were divine and I have never tasted plums like it since. Where, I wonder, is that orchard now-buried under the Berlin Wall that Israel built on land stolen from the Palestinians? Or maybe it is now a car park in a settlement, or one of those melancholy patches of land that was farmed for centuries until Israel ripped up every tree and bush, and bulldozed the earth into dust, because 'terrorists' were taking cover behind the Olive tree, the Plum tree? Palestinians live with violence on a daily basis, do you want to count heads, to what purpose?

Yosi, take sides, and justify your own, if you must, with head counts, rocket counts, iron walls, and plum trees, but remember what the Rabbi said:
And now it has come to this; that we are supposed to be proud when Israel scores higher than Hamas in a moral evaluation test

[yosi]

Stavros my friend

lets leave the Gaza vs. Israel conflict for a short while , we will get back to this conflict later.

please give me your educated and inteligent answer to this question : why the slaughter of 170,000 poeple , many of them innocent children in Syria , many of them by chemical weapons , or the slaughtering of thousands in Iraq by the ISIS are totally ignored by the media?

[Odelay]

I agree Odeley. But Stavros's unfounded attack on me is unnaceptable.
Stavros tempered his attack and apologized above, but I have to say you sort of set yourself up for the attack by unequivocally agreeing with pretty much everything Oz was saying. And he said some pretty ridiculous things in that interview.

This is just one example, but a foreign policy of keeping a people besieged for many, many years while hoping the masses one day rise up against those viciously in power, ala Ceausescu in Romania, is not a foreign policy at all but pure fantasy role playing. This is the same policy the US has had toward Iran for 35 years to no good effect. Why sit on your hands for decades fantasizing about an extremely remote possibility when other options exist to ameliorate the situation?

When I read Oz' piece, before you posted the link, by the way, I didn't see someone who "sums up my feelings." Instead it seemed to me a rambling piece by a 75 year old man who is well past his intellectual prime. Just my opinion.

[broncofan]

This is just one example, but a foreign policy of keeping a people besieged for many, many years while hoping the masses one day rise up against those viciously in power, ala Ceausescu in Romania, is not a foreign policy at all but pure fantasy role playing. This is the same policy the US has had toward Iran for 35 years to no good effect. Why sit on your hands for decades fantasizing about an extremely remote possibility when other options exist to ameliorate the situation?

Below I have quoted what he actually said. He basically said that the Israeli government should deal willingly with Abbas, and that this is a good way to make the Gazans realize by comparison that Hamas is not effective at governance. He also said he thinks the blockade should be lifted as part of the terms of an eventual ceasefire. So not only is he saying that he does not think Gaza should be besieged but he is also saying that the Palestinians should be dealt with more fairly in the West Bank and their national aspirations recognized. He did not say the Gazans should be mistreated in order to get them to reject Hamas.


My suggestion is to approach Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - the ed.] and to accept the terms - which the whole world knows - for a two-state-solution and coexistence between Israel and the West Bank: Two capitals in Jerusalem, a mutually agreed territorial modification, removal of most of the Jewish settlements from the West Bank.
When Ramallah and Nablus on the West Bank live on in prosperity and freedom, I believe that the people in Gaza will sooner or later do to Hamas what the people of Romania did to Ceausescu. I do not know how long it will take, but it is destined to happen - simply because the people in Gaza will be very jealous of the freedom and prosperity enjoyed by their brothers and sisters on the West Bank in the state of Palestine. This in my view is the solution, although this solution cannot be implemented in 24 hours or 48 hours.

[broncofan]

Stavros tempered his attack and apologized above, but I have to say you sort of set yourself up for the attack by unequivocally agreeing with pretty much everything Oz was saying.

Agreeing with Oz is so objectionable that you set yourself up for attack? I'm not taking sides, but I don't really see the logic in that. I doubt that whatever the disagreement between Stavros and Prospero is, it had to do with the premises of the article Prospero linked.

Here is what he said about the blockade. He thinks removal of the blockade should be negotiated, and that Israel should be more charitable to Abbas who is a willing peace partner. Perhaps he didn't use strong enough language for some people's liking, but he did not say that the misery in Gaza should be maintained in order to get people to reject Hamas. He said Israel should deal willingly with Abbas.


Hamas is presently demanding that the blockade of the Gaza Strip be lifted…
I am absolutely for it. I think that the blockade should be removed. I think plenty of international, Arab and Israeli resources should be pumped into the Gaza strip in return for effective demilitarization. This is a proposal that Israel ought to make immediately.

[Ben]

I'm enjoying everyone's posts except for Ben's. For the love of jehovah write some prose. An editorial every now and again can be useful, and hard news is almost always useful. But the wholesale appropriation of other people's ideas via link could easily turn a discussion into a debate by proxy. Who can find the authors who express something useful to their very generalized stance? Who can post the most videos of Noam Chomsky doing naughty stuff on webcam (that is what he's doing right?). It's not didactic Ben. You know what I've learned. You agree with Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald.

With all due respect, if Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald got into an argument whose side would you take.

P.S I know this sounds very harsh. You're a heck of a nice guy, but you do realize all you're doing is posting links don't you:)?


"... if Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald got into an argument whose side would you take."

Um, it'd hinge on who has the bigger penis -- ha ha ha! ;) :)

[Odelay]

Agreeing with Oz is so objectionable that you set yourself up for attack? I'm not taking sides, but I don't really see the logic in that. I doubt that whatever the disagreement between Stavros and Prospero is, it had to do with the premises of the article Prospero linked.

Oz's interview had some interesting ideas and some positive, in my opinion, policy prescriptions, mostly the ones you quote such as lifting the blockade and the negotiated two state solution. Although it should be pointed out that these aren't new ideas. The interview would have been very brief had he stuck to those. Some of the other things he said were ridiculous. And the way he started the interview was bombastic. He fails to mention that the balcony that the Israeli is sitting on was once the rightful property of the machine gunning Palestinian who is sitting across from him. It was inflammatory, not clever. Furthermore, compare this to his point about the Czech and Slovakia split. Long time rivals who were forced to live and govern together retreated to their original boundaries and called a truce. Tell me what original boundaries Israel is supposed to retreat to for the Palestinians to feel somewhat satisfied, like the Slovaks?

Back to Prospero... his quote was that Oz's interview "sums up his feelings." I'm guessing now he regrets the sloppiness of such shorthand. If not, perhaps he'll come back onto this thread and defend everything (the sum of what) Oz said. It's Prospero's call, on that.

It's interesting that you criticize Ben for posting links, and presumably buying into everything that Chomsky (another old man) and Greenwald believe. Very shorthand of Ben. And I agree with your critique. Isn't that the same that is occurring here with Prospero? (Although, admittedly on a much smaller scale.)

Arguing politics ain't beanbag. I'm guessing both Ben and Prospero can take it as they've both displayed intelligence and a sense of humor on this board.

[broncofan]

It's interesting that you criticize Ben for posting links, and presumably buying into everything that Chomsky (another old man) and Greenwald believe. Very shorthand of Ben. And I agree with your critique. Isn't that the same that is occurring here with Prospero? (Although, admittedly on a much smaller scale.)

.
But I don't know that the reason you gave is the reason Stavros got angry at Prospero. I thought he was accusing him of changing the subject by talking about other instances of violence (I understand both argument and counter-argument and am not taking sides).

I feel like I'm talking about two people in the third person who are actually in the room. The reason YOU were angry at him was for the Oz article:);). My critique of Ben was selective in the sense that if I agreed with his articles I would have not have said it here. But what I said, I've wanted to say for a while. But I think Prospero mixes articles with comments fairly well. I would like to hear more from Ben personally.

I agree with you about the start of the interview. I think he doesn't realize that many people understand the situation and don't need that kind of analogy to make it more visceral. I do remember now when I read first read the article, I could tell that beginning wouldn't fly.

[broncofan]

Long time rivals who were forced to live and govern together retreated to their original boundaries and called a truce.Tell me what original boundaries Israel is supposed to retreat to for the Palestinians to feel somewhat satisfied, like the Slovaks?

I'd have to go back to the article. I agree that's not a useful analogy. Edit: the concept of two nations governing together and having an equitable "divorce" as he put it does not sum up the situation in Israel and Palestine. Fair point.

[Prospero]

Yes I do believe that in some situations then defensive violence is necessary. I believe that opposing Hitler violently was necessary. I believe that taking violent action to halt a genocide such as that presently posed to the Yazidi people is necessary. Generally I prefer jaw jaw to war war.

I don't accept that not taking a totally Gandhian position on violence makes one an addict.

[Stavros]

Stavros my friend

lets leave the Gaza vs. Israel conflict for a short while , we will get back to this conflict later.

please give me your educated and inteligent answer to this question : why the slaughter of 170,000 poeple , many of them innocent children in Syria , many of them by chemical weapons , or the slaughtering of thousands in Iraq by the ISIS are totally ignored by the media?

The continuing war in Syria has been pushed off the front pages because of other events, in Ukraine, in Iraq -that is an editorial decision made by press and broadcasters, not by me.
I think it is a pity that you want to divert the attention away from the original intention of this thread, but I do also understand how weary people are of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I am also disappointed that you have not confronted what to me has been the radical change in Israeli politics, because to some extent it is both a reflection of a growth in extremism in Israel and Palestine and a cause of it.
As I see it, the Zionism which created the Israel of Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, of Felicia Langer and even of Daniel Barenboim, has been eclipsed by a crude nationalism that casts everything in Israel in terms of 'life or death' thereby making negotiations on long term structural changes such as an end to West Bank settlements almost impossible. If every position that Israel takes is based on the claim that the long term aim of the Palestinians is to destroy Israel, it might help of Israel did not invite such murderous intentions by appearing to seek its own eradication of the Palestinians. Zionism always had a problem with the Arabs, the first Aliyot of committed Zionists in 1880 had to confront the reality that Palestine was not empty but that there were Arabs there, farming land, engaged in small-scale industry, and trade. Over time, some Zionists realised they had to reach an accommodation with the Arabs, others did not, and the same was true on the other side, but that is now over a hundred years of history and however weary people are of it, one has to live in hope that the next generation of politicians will think in more practical rather than ideological terms, not least because so far, the ideology has failed.

[Stavros]

As a more general reply to posts above by Prospero, Odelay and Broncofan, let me first wonder what the reaction would have been if Vladimir Putin had decided to bomb IS in Iraq -how many would 'applaud' the Russian 'humanitarian' effort, even as they seem reluctant to endorse Russia's campaign of support for the Ba'ath government of Syria?

As for Amos Oz, I should say that my own position as a pacifist is open to all sorts of ridicule and concern, I am aware of that, and I probably ought not to define other people's views in terms of my own or use inflammatory language, but it happens, many of us do not spend hours editing our posts. But look again at the Amos Oz interview and the paragraph that I partially quoted from, because I think it is important, and this passage in particular:

The only alternative to continuing the Israeli military operation is simply to follow Jesus Christ and turn the other cheek. I never agreed with Jesus Christ about the need to turn the other cheek to an enemy. Unlike European pacifists I never believed the ultimate evil in the world is war. In my view the ultimate evil in the world is aggression, and the only way to repel aggression is unfortunately by force. That is where the difference lies between a European pacifist and an Israeli peacenik like myself. And if I may add a little anecdote: A relative of mine who survived the Nazi Holocaust in Theresienstadt always reminded her children and her grandchildren that her life was saved in 1945 not by peace demonstrators with placards and flowers but by Soviet soldiers and submachine guns.

My first reaction is to be disappointed with Oz's lack of knowledge of history -the armed forces of the USSR were focused on destroying the Third Reich, the liberation of the camps was incidental to the larger campaign. Moreover, and more pertinent still, Oz either doesn't know or chooses not to mention the fact that far from being ineffective, it was indeed German Christian pacifists across the Ruhr who saved thousands of Jews from being sent to the camps. They did not wave placards or throw roses at the SS, but they did put their lives in danger so it is very wrong of Oz to depict Christian pacifists as deluded when their record is superior to his (cf Martin Roseman, The Past in Hiding, 2000). He is also in a contradictory position by claiming to be a 'peacenik' whilst reserving the right -I assume he believes it is a right- to kill people.

If Oz is demonstrably wrong about Christian pacifism in Nazi Germany, and that was an extreme example, does it justify the recourse to violence in every case?

Look at this way -twice in fifty years a global war was fought to prevent Germany from dominating the international system, be it a system of Empires or states. Where is Germany now? Even more worrying is the thought that the ideology of national socialism, albeit in an edited form, has survived the war, and if there aren't enough Jews left in Europe to be worried about, the language some people use to vilify and abuse Muslims in Europe today is not so different from that which the Nazis used to demonise the Jews in the 1930s.

Japan failed in its attempt to create an Asian Empire in the 1930s and 1940s, it was destroyed by the USA in 1945 -which then invested substantial sums of money to re-build Japan which is now of the largest economies in the world and with China the strongest power in Asia. What was most effective? War, or peace?

Was it not because successive wars between Israel and the Arabs had failed, that Anwar el-Sadat went to Jerusalem in 1977 to talk peace with the Israelis?

In November 2001, Tony Blair told the House of Commons It is clear that support for the Taliban is evaporating. Although there may be pockets of resistance, the idea that this has been some kind of tactical retreat is just the latest Taliban lie. They are in total collapse; yet al-Qaeda still exists; the Taliban still exist as a crucial component of any peace that might come to Afganistan, 13 years after Blair's triumphalism.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq was demolished by the Surge in 2006-07, yet many of the Sunni factions who contributed to that 'victory' have now joined forces with IS.

The position that a pacifist takes is quite clear -and not just because at the end of wars the parties agree to negotiate the issues that were there before the war started, and because the campaign of death has failed. These conflicts have political causes, in recent times, the crisis of the Arab state has been fundamental because for decades the Arab states have been dictatorships which did not offer the people representative and accountable government, economic growth and social mobility. The discourse of politics in the Arab states has been so distorted over the years that the battle cry Islam is the Solution seems irresistible, even though in practice it appears few know what that means, or they look at Iran and wonder if that is the solution then maybe there isn't one at all, but every young person with a utopia to look forward to believes theirs will be different.

There is no law which says that every time politics fails, the must military step in. If anything, we are fighting fewer wars now than in the whole of recorded history. But what we do need are political leaders who deal with political problems without recourse to violence, it has not worked in Israel or Palestine, and it will not work in Iraq no matter how many Islamic eruptions and surges there are.

[yosi]

Stavros my friend

what is YOUR solution to this conflict?

before you answer please listen again someone who knows he truth about Hamas more than anyone else

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KakxXN5Z-XI

[buttslinger]

If you think Hamas and Isis are crazy, Israel is bat-shit Dangerous type crazy, because before they lose a war with an Arab Nation, or all the Arab Nations, They will MELT the Arab Nations.

Everything else is a Power-Grab. Just like the money in your wallet. More money, more power. Palestine seems to be parading their dead kids past the CNN cameras so the World will sympathize with them and cut off aid to Israel.

I doubt Jesus agreed with the Romans when they crucified him, Rome is the greatest Nation the world has ever seen, and they murdered more people than Hitler. If Germany had won WWII, we'd probably all be vacationing there and admiring the food and efficient railway system. No bums on the streets either.

Sometimes in Court there can be a case where both sides can make a very compelling case, and it's up to the Judge to rule based on the LAW. Because of our Economy and Nuclear Arsenal, the USA will always be the elephant in the room. Palestine will never attack Israel, Hamas attacks Israel. If Palestine attacked Israel that would give them every right to invade Palestine and start building seaside hotels.

Israel is about CONTROL and Palestine is about CHAOS because those are the best cards they have to play. There is no question Israel will triumph, just like it always has.

[Ben]

US Leaders Aid and Abet Israeli War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against Humanity:

http://jurist.org/forum/2014/08/marjorie-cohn-israel-crimes.php

[yosi]

US Leaders Aid and Abet Israeli War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against Humanity:

http://jurist.org/forum/2014/08/marjorie-cohn-israel-crimes.php


if killing 2,000 palestinians ( about half of them were Hamas troops... ) is genocide , how would you call the killing of 170,000 poeple in Syria?

[admires69]

I think you have to say what would you do?

If someone built a wall around the UK, starved our economy, families and children I would fire rockets at my oppressors.

You would have thought after being persecuted for 2000 years the jews may learn to treat others as they would like to be treated. Not keep their foot on a starving peoples throats trying to grind them into submission.

It is not right.

Personally I think that Western governments have an obligation to support the reopening of the border with Egypt. Offering Egypt assistance against the inevitable Israeli reprisals.

What is happening in Syria is appalling but it is an internal affair and so can not be considered in the same context (civil war - as was Iraq - finally a lesson learned perhaps??).

Israel and Palestine are supposedly two sovereign states. It is high time the Jewish Lobby in New York stopped supporting the spoiled brat of the Middle East and start to consider a permanent solution that does not revolve around hotels and new towns for Israelis on the Med.

I'm bored of all the airport security and "terror threat" updates. It's time to live and let live.

Jews, Muslims and Christians, all come from the same religion tree with tiny differences belief. Prophets and Messiahs. Its time to accept that and move past it, to come to the understanding that it is a few people after money and power manipulating the poor and uneducated for their own ends.

The list of examples from history is unending, the fact that people still cant see it is disappointing.

Salah ah din (saladin) knew that in the 1100s.

[Stavros]

Stavros my friend

what is YOUR solution to this conflict?

before you answer please listen again someone who knows he truth about Hamas more than anyone else


Yosi we have done this before, and it makes no difference who you trot out for public viewing -we know about Hamas and have known since the beginning, we know where they come from and what they believe but we cannot wish them away any more than we can transform the Israeli government overnight. Hamas exists, they are part of the equation, and if Israel wants to make peace it must make it with its enemies, which is also true of Hamas, and as I have said before, there have been indications in the past that Hamas is prepared to be pragmatic. Until they are given the chance to be pragmatic they will respond with ideology.
The solution right now is to stop the rockets and stop the military engagement; in the medium term there has to be a re-negotiation of the border controls that have strangled Gaza -with both Israel and Egypt- and confidence-building measures on both sides to establish a meaningful dialogue. Just as there was a huge debate in Northern Ireland over the de-commissioning of weapons by both the Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries, so there must be serious discussions about the de-militarisation of Gaza, and the revocation of the right of (illegal) settlers in the West Bank to carry arms. There are as I have suggested before numerous measures that can improve life there, but at some point Israel has to make a major structural move on illegal settlements; it must also abolish the zoning of the West Bank which is an insult to everyone who lives there,and is in practical terms an obstacle to the economic and social life of the Palestinians.
Perhaps for once you will comment on Israel rather than Hamas; most people it seems are nervous, if not terrified of debating Israel, but it is important.

[yosi]

If someone built a wall around the UK, starved our economy, families and children I would fire rockets at my oppressors.

.

if some poeple will fire missiles and rockets on London on a daily basis , you will do anything to opress these poeple.



What is happening in Syria is appalling but it is an internal affair and so can not be considered in the same context .

the context is the same : innocent poeple are being killed.

you call the killing 170,000 poeple , many of them by chemical weapons just as an internal affair?

[yosi]

The solution right now is to stop the rockets and stop the military engagement; in the medium term there has to be a re-negotiation of the border controls that have strangled Gaza -with both Israel and Egypt- and confidence-building measures on both sides to establish a meaningful dialogue. Just as there was a huge debate in Northern Ireland over the de-commissioning of weapons by both the Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries, so there must be serious discussions about the de-militarisation of Gaza, and the revocation of the right of (illegal) settlers in the West Bank to carry arms. There are as I have suggested before numerous measures that can improve life there, but at some point Israel has to make a major structural move on illegal settlements; it must also abolish the zoning of the West Bank which is an insult to everyone who lives there,and is in practical terms an obstacle to the economic and social life of the Palestinians.
Perhaps for once you will comment on Israel rather than Hamas; most people it seems are nervous, if not terrified of debating Israel, but it is important.

I also hope that The solution right now will be to stop the rockets and to stop the military engagement; in the medium term there has to be a re-negotiation of the border controls that have strangled Gaza -with both Israel and Egypt.

I wish both sides could end this conflict like this :cheers:

on the other hand , if both of us have a conflict , the basic thing to get an agreement between us is to aknowledge the fact that both of us have the right to be here..........

[broncofan]

you call the killing 170,000 poeple , many of them by chemical weapons just as an internal affair?
I was puzzled by that myself. It's a distinction without a difference. What is the significance of it being an internal affair? A dictator slaughters 170,000 people and if they live within the same internationally recognized boundaries it's less of a crime? The international community should be less interested because the gassing of civilians was completely domestic in scope?

I will point out that the killing in Iraq is sectarian in nature. People are being killed for no reason other than sectarian and religious differences. So, it's not as though identity of the victim plays more of a role in the Israel-Palestine conflict when in Iraq people are chosen for slaughter purely based on their religious background.

[broncofan]

It is high time the Jewish Lobby in New York stopped supporting the spoiled brat of the Middle East

:D
Is that where it is? Surely there must be offices in London, LA, and Paris. With real estate prices what they are in New York, it was a foolish decision to locate there.

[broncofan]

:D
Is that where it is? Surely there must be offices in London, LA, and Paris. With real estate prices what they are in New York, it was a foolish decision to locate there.
Alright I realize this isn't funny but snarky. I apologize. I have just heard a bunch of different definitions of the Israeli/Jewish lobby. Some say it is a looser alliance, some define it as specific organizations etc. I had never heard any commitment to a location so I thought I could make a joke on that subject.

[broncofan]

As a more general reply to posts above by Prospero, Odelay and Broncofan, let me first wonder what the reaction would have been if Vladimir Putin had decided to bomb IS in Iraq -how many would 'applaud' the Russian 'humanitarian' effort, even as they seem reluctant to endorse Russia's campaign of support for the Ba'ath government of Syria?

As for Amos Oz, I should say that my own position as a pacifist is open to all sorts of ridicule and concern, I am aware of that, and I probably ought not to define other people's views in terms of my own or use inflammatory language, but it happens, many of us do not spend hours editing our posts. But look again at the Amos Oz interview and the paragraph that I partially quoted from, because I think it is important, and this passage in particular:

The only alternative to continuing the Israeli military operation is simply to follow Jesus Christ and turn the other cheek. I never agreed with Jesus Christ about the need to turn the other cheek to an enemy. Unlike European pacifists I never believed the ultimate evil in the world is war. In my view the ultimate evil in the world is aggression, and the only way to repel aggression is unfortunately by force. That is where the difference lies between a European pacifist and an Israeli peacenik like myself. And if I may add a little anecdote: A relative of mine who survived the Nazi Holocaust in Theresienstadt always reminded her children and her grandchildren that her life was saved in 1945 not by peace demonstrators with placards and flowers but by Soviet soldiers and submachine guns.

My first reaction is to be disappointed with Oz's lack of knowledge of history -the armed forces of the USSR were focused on destroying the Third Reich, the liberation of the camps was incidental to the larger campaign. Moreover, and more pertinent still, Oz either doesn't know or chooses not to mention the fact that far from being ineffective, it was indeed German Christian pacifists across the Ruhr who saved thousands of Jews from being sent to the camps. They did not wave placards or throw roses at the SS, but they did put their lives in danger so it is very wrong of Oz to depict Christian pacifists as deluded when their record is superior to his (cf Martin Roseman, The Past in Hiding, 2000). He is also in a contradictory position by claiming to be a 'peacenik' whilst reserving the right -I assume he believes it is a right- to kill people.

If Oz is demonstrably wrong about Christian pacifism in Nazi Germany, and that was an extreme example, does it justify the recourse to violence in every case?

Look at this way -twice in fifty years a global war was fought to prevent Germany from dominating the international system, be it a system of Empires or states. Where is Germany now? Even more worrying is the thought that the ideology of national socialism, albeit in an edited form, has survived the war, and if there aren't enough Jews left in Europe to be worried about, the language some people use to vilify and abuse Muslims in Europe today is not so different from that which the Nazis used to demonise the Jews in the 1930s.
.
I meant to respond to this because I don't understand the reasoning. First, even if Christian pacifists have some noteworthy achievements, that does not mean that pacifism would have been sufficient to stave off the Third Reich. Even if the USSR did not have the best intentions, it does not mean that their violence was not a necessary component of the allied effort. Surely if every country other than Germany and Japan were comprised of ardent pacifists during WWII, the outcome could not have been good. Would the death toll have been greater or less?

I think the problem when both Israelis and others invoke the Holocaust and other instances of genocide is that their narrative promotes violence. If Israel believes Iran wants to commit genocide, then even someone who will resort to violence only when it is necessary will be wont to believe it's necessary. If people believe that Israel is committing a genocide they justify the use of violence when it should only be a last resort. This is why people who talk about Hitler returning or use the word genocide promiscuously are not friends of any party.

But I don't see how one's pacifism can ever be absolute (you might say you don't see how anyone can truly be a pacifist unless it's absolute). I think the problem is that people are too willing to believe violence is necessary when it isn't.

[broncofan]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28688179

Re-evaluation of Gaza Statistics

This is an important article about the relative proportion of militants killed versus civilians. Among the civilian reported dead, men between the age of 20-29 were more than three times represented in proportion to the population. Women and children civilian casualties were underrepresented by more than 50%.

Again, that doesn't mean Israel's attacks have been targeted, but it does help to rebut the most extreme charges made against it. Further, it also substantiates charges against Hamas; that they want to maximize civilian casualties both before and after the damage has been done.

[Stavros]

I meant to respond to this because I don't understand the reasoning. First, even if Christian pacifists have some noteworthy achievements, that does not mean that pacifism would have been sufficient to stave off the Third Reich. Even if the USSR did not have the best intentions, it does not mean that their violence was not a necessary component of the allied effort. Surely if every country other than Germany and Japan were comprised of ardent pacifists during WWII, the outcome could not have been good. Would the death toll have been greater or less?

I think the problem when both Israelis and others invoke the Holocaust and other instances of genocide is that their narrative promotes violence. If Israel believes Iran wants to commit genocide, then even someone who will resort to violence only when it is necessary will be wont to believe it's necessary. If people believe that Israel is committing a genocide they justify the use of violence when it should only be a last resort. This is why people who talk about Hitler returning or use the word genocide promiscuously are not friends of any party.

But I don't see how one's pacifism can ever be absolute (you might say you don't see how anyone can truly be a pacifist unless it's absolute). I think the problem is that people are too willing to believe violence is necessary when it isn't.

"I think the problem is that people are too willing to believe violence is necessary when it isn't"
This is the key point, but it does not often translate into foreign policy and I am not going to end the belief that violence is a solution, that killing someone is an achievement, no matter how it is done or who is doing the killing.
Pacifism has to be an individual choice, and the point I was making was to contradict the claim Amoz Oz made that pacifism did not make a difference in the Third Reich because it did for some Jews.

The problem is that people do believe that violence or the 'use of the military' is sometimes necessary, but it then it turns out that is because they have taken sides in a dispute and most of all because they have abandoned the politics that created the crisis, in despair, and foolishly believe the military will solve the problem. It means they are willing to see hundreds, thousands or even millions killed because 'there is no alternative'. People who are supporting the attacks on IS are doing it out of despair because they cannot see past the violence to ask what the politics of it is, and whether or not it can be dealt with politically. The urgency of the moment leads people to jump up and down and say 'Somebody do something!' but in the end this sickening hypocrisy becomes just a beauty competition in which those making the judgement insist a military strike on IS is justified but not on Israel, not on the warring factions in the Central African Republic (choose your favourite side), not on the Russians, the Ukrainians, and so on. Thousands of people rounded up and thrown into prison without trial in Egypt? Tough -but 'we' support the new government so it must be right.

Here, for example is what the Israeli historian Benny Morris said in an interview in Ha'aretz in December 2004 (I cannot find the whole interview on the Ha'aretz web site), justifying the argument that it was right for the nascent Israeli to expel 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 and that if anything every Palestinian should have been thrown out of the new country -
Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history

'the final good', sounds like....So you see, anyone can justify mass murder-when they are choosing the victims.

[yosi]

The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.
The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.
In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media.
We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a "vetting" procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA


http://www.fpa.org.il/index.php?categoryId=73840

[yosi]

"I think the problem is that people are too willing to believe violence is necessary when it isn't"
This is the key point



The key point is that you never had to run for your life because a missile was shot at you to KILL YOU.

you NEVER had to do it on an almost daily basis for the last 13 years.

not even once...........

it's easy to sit far away from it and be a pacifict , it's different when you and your children have 15 seconds to find shelter and SAVE YOUR LIFE constantly for 13 years.

trust me , it's impossible to live normal life like that , the normal life which you have.

[admires69]

BUT WHY do those missiles need to be shot?

It is not possible to live a normal life in the worlds largest prison living on handouts given to you by others either Yosi, you are too partisan. What happened to the Israelis since their expulsion from "israel" by the Romans has been awful. but they have gone from the bullied to the bully.

I do not think the Palestinians are blameless. But the means to end this conflict lie with the Israeli's starting to respect the Sovereign interests of another nation and the human rights of its people.

As i said. stuck in the same position. we would all do the same thing - take up arms so that the people we love may live in a better world.

To borrow an old saying. It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

[admires69]

Broncofan and Yosi - "I was puzzled by that myself. It's a distinction without a difference. What is the significance of it being an internal affair? A dictator slaughters 170,000 people and if they live within the same internationally recognized boundaries it's less of a crime? The international community should be less interested because the gassing of civilians was completely domestic in scope?

I will point out that the killing in Iraq is sectarian in nature. People are being killed for no reason other than sectarian and religious differences. So, it's not as though identity of the victim plays more of a role in the Israel-Palestine conflict when in Iraq people are chosen for slaughter purely based on their religious background."


and what about chemical Ali killing kurds in Iraq after the first Gulf war when George Bush senior promised assistance and then let them get slaughtered as the US troops affectively stood on the border and watched?

the fact is-
first Iraq war - justifiable - they invaded Kuwait.
Second War- Not at all - just a shameless grab for oil - never sanctioned by the UN.
Syrian Civil War - it is a civil war - which other countries have they attacked? Im not saying its not genocide, it is. But so is what the Israeli's are doing in Gaza. Both sides have reportedly used chemical weapons in Syria. Who's telling the truth? No doubt a war crimes tribunal will be set up afterwards to determine the guilt or otherwise of the parties.

BUT UN policy mandates that we will not get directly involved in the internal affairs of another nation and this is the difference.

Israel and Palestine are 2 states. Syria is 1. You can not makes plans for new Kibbutz's and cities on another nations soil whilst despriving them of their basic human rights.

[buttslinger]

Listen, GHANDI couldn't broker a peace when two peoples consider the others are desecrating their holy land. JESUS would be flipping tables at these peace talks.
It's not like with Egypt and Jordan, they didn't actually lose any real estate, but Palestine had to watch Europe steal it's land to send it's problem children to their turf.

[Stavros]

The key point is that you never had to run for your life because a missile was shot at you to KILL YOU.

you NEVER had to do it on an almost daily basis for the last 13 years.

not even once...........

it's easy to sit far away from it and be a pacifict , it's different when you and your children have 15 seconds to find shelter and SAVE YOUR LIFE constantly for 13 years.

trust me , it's impossible to live normal life like that , the normal life which you have.

You write as if Palestinians did not live every day with the same level of threat as Israelis which is why each side in this conflict should be talking rather than shooting. I have not, and do not defend the actions of Hamas, and I have said it enough times for you to know that, and yet you persistently refuse to criticise Israel's current government, even though you may know that Netanyahu once addressed a public meeting in Israel at which Yitzhak Rabin was depicted on a poster dressed as an SS Officer (there is even a youtube record of it)- and who was it who murdered Rabin, and why did he kill him?

As for my normal life, well, you don't have a clue how my parents and their generation survived genocide, war, poverty, and displacement -as did millions of others in those years- nor it seems can you understand how it was possible for them to raise me without a trace of bitterness or thirst for violent revenge, but to believe that it is always better to love than to hate. I can't force anyone to be a pacifist, it has to be a personal decision, but it works for me and I recommend it to you as a challenge, because anger and violence have done no good to the Middle East, or anywhere else, and we need people like you to join us in promoting peace in the middle of another futile war, and to keep calling for peace until war ends.

[broncofan]

As i said. stuck in the same position. we would all do the same thing - take up arms so that the people we love may live in a better world.

To borrow an old saying. It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
I thought about this one. If I knew that firing rockets would lead to a worsening of the situation and probable retaliation in the civilian area from which I launched them; I would not launch them.

If there were a cease fire and it was the first period of calm in a protracted conflict, I would not begin launching rockets immediately after it expired knowing what the blowback would be. To do that would be masochistic, and also sadistic to the people who would suffer the consequences from the probable (and perhaps now predictable) retaliation. We cannot hold one party up to scrutiny and moral blame and completely absolve the other without even acting like we possess higher order thinking skills.

As for the claim of genocide, I have thought about that too. There are a broad range of definitions for genocide. However, the primary definition seems to be the mass murder of individuals based on (read: because of; for that reason alone or primarily) their ethnic or religious background. This does not mean that in the course of a conflict there is a disproportionate number of lives lost on one side or a lot of civilian deaths. It means that a military is trying to maximize the number of civilian casualties in order to eliminate as many individuals of a particular religious or ethnic background as possible.

You can plausibly say that is taking place in regions where people are killed not because they are in a zone of conflict from which rockets are being fired but upon being asked how they pray or to whom they pray. You can say that where victims are chosen scrupulously for their ethnic or religious practices. If you include what Israel is doing as genocide, then you include in the same category several things which are of very different character. Choosing a category that subsumes several other categories is imprecise.

Now one cannot say I am gratuitously responding to the frivolous charge of genocide when it is so routinely raised.

[buttslinger]

There's always a few different realities going on. If we were in Vegas and the toteboard had 100 to 1 odds AGAINST a real peace in the middle east by Dec 31st, would ANYONE sober bet a buck on peace?

The more real reality might be the self portraits being written here.

There's no misunderstanding or mistake going on in the middle east, it's real life in real time. Business as usual on planet earth. No one wants bloodshed, and yet there is bloodshed. If God had foretold all this to you decades ago, it wouldn't change a thing. These people have every reason to hate!!

[admires69]

I know what your saying bronco... but at the same time if my children were dying of disease and poverty and my next door neighbour was the cause?

I would try and make the idea of continuing on the path they had chosen so awful that they would be forced to reconsider their course of action, understanding that it gets worse before it gets better.

In regards to rockets being fired on london as yoshi suggested. that in affect has happened. busses have been blown up at rush hour killing lots of innocents. there was outrage in the UK, but some people here also feel that we are reaping what we have sown.

Good point re genocide. I do not personally feel that it comes to religion more the indiscriminate killing, but that is a problem with my own definition.

But I do struggle for another definition between Israel and Palestine (specifically Gaza)?

and Buttslinger... definitely not. the way its going i wouldn't put a buck on a permanent peace by 12/31/2050 either :/ for me its not a personal portrait but 12 years of historical study plus a little bit of annoyance at the blatant propaganda and just wishing the other side of the coin to be considered too.

Of course we could say that genocide gets used as a word routinely because it occurs so routinely....

[Stavros]

Genocide, like the word racism is used too often by political groups whose motives are usually to respond to public outrage -or indeed to encourage it- and to then use that as a campaigning issue to win converts to their cause, it is a tried and tested tactic but it does threaten to devalue a word that does have precise meaning and should be used sparingly. It cannot really apply to the Palestinians as for the most part they are Arabs and I don't believe Israel has a policy to exterminate the Arabs. It also diverts attention away from real political issues such as housing, water and jobs which ought to be the meat of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, not to mention the housing crisis in Israel itself where the cost of an apartment in Tel-Aviv is becoming as absurd as a renting a shed in London or Manhattan.

I know it is off-thread, but Genocide does not even apply exactly to the Yazidi in Iraq, for while the large concentration of them in Iraq are under threat, there are communities of Yazidi living in Turkey, Syria, Armenia and Georgia. It is not surprising to some that Turkey, our NATO ally has not lifted a finger to help the Yazidi as it sees them as a 'fifth column' related too closely to the Kurds -it has also been claimed that Turkey gave safe passage to Islamic militants infiltrating Syria from Turkey, has treated the wounded of the Salafi groups such as the Nusra front in clinics in Turkey, and allowed them and IS to open offices in the border towns -having used them to crush a nascent attempt by Kurds in Rojavan in Syria last year to declare autonomy. In addition to threatening to 'liberate Istanbul', IS has repaid Turkey by taking hostage the staff of the Turkish Consulate in Mosul -the largest illegal seizure of diplomats from an embassy building since the siege of the US Embassy in Tehran- suggesting that Turkey is not going to contribute to the humanitarian effort to save the Yazidi on the Sinjar mountains; and it has imposed a news blackout in Turkey on the hostages seized by the IS militants it once supported....but Turkey has got into a lather over Israel's attacks on Gaza, and Erdogan has just swapped the Prime Ministerial post to become President (through an election it must be said).

So here we are, Turkey and Iran could both have made a significant effort to deal with the humanitarian in Jabal Sinjar, though I wonder what the reaction would have been had Iran entered Iraq to do this. No, 'we' have to do it, ie the USA, Britain, France...so much for NATO -and these people think Turkey should be part of the EU!

[Prospero]

By your definition Hitlers attempts to rid Europe of the Jews was not genocide either because there were Jews in America and other nations?

[broncofan]

It's difficult to define and many tests I've seen are multi-factorial. Maybe going across borders is one relevant factor since it shows a heightened intent. I think if the effort to pursue a people is contrary to the immediate economic or perceived national security interest of a country that weighs in favor of genocide because one does not go to such lengths to pursue a people unless they believe there is something intrinsically malign about them regardless of locality.

I think like terrorist it is a word that is used not because it has unique descriptive powers but because it tends to loosen people's ability to analyze the situation. If you are able to describe a situation in detail, that is indictment enough, because the details draw a picture of what is happening and capture the moral implications as well. A broad term like terrorist or genocide is used for its associative power rather than its ability to encapsulate what is going on.

[Stavros]

By your definition Hitlers attempts to rid Europe of the Jews was not genocide either because there were Jews in America and other nations?

Is this not an inherent weakness in the concept of genocide? The concept may assume a universality which did not exist even in the 1930s, but there was a genocide of Jews -in Europe. The Nazis did not have access to Jews in America, IS can attack Yazidi in Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq -and Armenia and Georgia if they are so inclined. IS also does not make a distinction between Iraq and Syria or the neighbouring states but I may have been hasty in this regard as IS is clearly not finished yet with its killings. It would not surprise me if IS was planning to obliterate everyone who disagrees with them, in which case the Yazidi may be in for more punishment. My remark was not intended to diminish the attacks on Yazidi who have been the targets of mass killings before but an example of the complexity inherent in the word.

[martin48]

Genocide is usually taken to mean the partial or complete obliteration of a specific race. As for Nazi Germany - the legalized discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi's came to power in 1933. In July 1941 Goring gave written instructions to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the exterminations would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who was Jewish and thus determine the scope of the exterminations. Exactly when Hitler agreed with this "solution" is still a matter of debate.


Is this not an inherent weakness in the concept of genocide? The concept may assume a universality which did not exist even in the 1930s, but there was a genocide of Jews -in Europe. The Nazis did not have access to Jews in America, IS can attack Yazidi in Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq -and Armenia and Georgia if they are so inclined. IS also does not make a distinction between Iraq and Syria or the neighbouring states but I may have been hasty in this regard as IS is clearly not finished yet with its killings. It would not surprise me if IS was planning to obliterate everyone who disagrees with them, in which case the Yazidi may be in for more punishment. My remark was not intended to diminish the attacks on Yazidi who have been the targets of mass killings before but an example of the complexity inherent in the word.

[Stavros]

Genocide is usually taken to mean the partial or complete obliteration of a specific race. As for Nazi Germany - the legalized discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi's came to power in 1933. In July 1941 Goring gave written instructions to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the exterminations would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who was Jewish and thus determine the scope of the exterminations. Exactly when Hitler agreed with this "solution" is still a matter of debate.

I cannot disagree, and would only add that the definition of genocide, insofar as it has been satisfactorily defined, was made after the war. At the moment the problem is that IS is not finished yet and may continue to subject the Yazidi, and anyone else they don't approve of to their punishment.

[Ben]

Gaza zoo ravaged by Israeli shelling:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/gaza-zoo-israel-bombing-animals-201481413322679925.html?utm_content=bufferb9428&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.U-5qoAUDVRY.twitter

[broncofan]

You ask any Armenian of their culture's history of being oppressed by Greeks and they'll give you an earful. But how much of the world knows about it? Probably less than 5%.
.
I just want to point out the Armenian genocide was not carried out by the Greeks if that's what we're talking about. The Greeks were also victims of the massacres carried out by the Ottoman authorities. Or are we talking about something more ancient? I am not much of a historian (that's an understatement) but this is not just a pedantic point.

I don't want to be obstinate when it comes to this point. But maybe the reason anti-semitism has gotten such a hearing is because it has been such a persistent prejudice. Entire books have been dedicated not just to the study of anti-semitism but also to its promotion (from the protocols of the elders of zion to the international jew to mein kampf). It has also taken on very many forms and embraced many different charges (some impossible to defend against because they are mutually exclusive; such as the claim that Jews are behind the forces of communism and capitalism; that Jewish people are liberals and at the same time racial chauvinists).

It is not as though anti-semitism began and ended with the Holocaust. Additionally, if you actually look into the hate crime numbers, it also is consistently pretty well represented per capita, even in places where the anti-semitism is thought to be pretty mild. So, I think that whatever people know about it is justified, and they'd be justified in knowing about all forms of prejudice as well, including the persecution of the Armenians.

[Stavros]

There are structural similarities between the massacres of Armenians and Jews, as Michael Mann has shown in his richly textured book The Dark Side of Democracy. Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (2005), where he also looks at the massacres in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and other examples (and massacres with different structures and causes). The emergence of Turkish nationalism by definition was incompatible with the multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-national identies in the Ottoman Empire, just as the collapse of the German Empire in 1918 meant that a subsequent re-definition of what it meant to be German resulted, in the case of the Nazis with a definition so narrow it not only excluded every Jew but threatened to de-legitimise many Germans, owing to the peril/folly of attempting to define a German in law, and then to apply that law (attempts to define a Jew in law in Israel have met with any number of contradictions).

At root, there is I think the challenge of modernization and globalization, in which capitalism erases differences between people by tying them to economic transactions; in which the sense of 'the nation' is disrupted by the capitalism which promotes human mobility and changes the character of urban life as immigrants seek the opportunities offered by the new economic order wherever they arise. Challenges to capitalism can thus embrace the dissolution of nationality and religion and enhance the claims of workers everywhere regardless of their origin -Marx in his pure form- or attempt an assertion or re-assertion of an idea of the 'nation' before it succumbs to the pollution and inevitable decline associated with the appearance en masse of the other. The Jews, in this regard, have often been seen in economic rather than military terms -the Jew who has an uncanny abillity to swindle you out of everything you own, and because this process takes place often without you seeing it, the Jew becomes part of that mysterious conspiracy in which unseen forces are controlling everything but you just don't realise the truth.

The whole point of Turkey as its founders saw it, was to erase separate identities and subsume everyone under one identity. This version of nationalism is integral to the concept of fascism that was being developed across Europe at the time, which sought as much to create something new, as it appealed to some nostalgic idea of the past, much as there are some people in this country who insist they are of 'Anglo-Saxon' stock, whatever that means. The crucial component is 'the Turk' who belongs to Turkey where the non-Turk no longer belongs, that other who may be cast as the villain who has prevented the full realisation of the aspirations of the X People (insert your national identity). In Turkey the men behind the Committee of Union and Progress in 1908 knew very well that the assertion of Turkish nationalism would be rejected by the Arab nationalism that had emerged in the 19th century around the same time and that the Ottoman Empire was not sustainable for that reason. The Armenians thus became caught in an Anatolian trap which they could not escape -they were not going to re-define themselves as Turks any more than the Kurds, the Jews or the Greeks, and the majority did not want to go and live in 'Soviet Armenia' knowing full well that it was not an independent state -the Independent State of Armenia lasted barely a year from 1919-20 and, crucially, there was not much on offer there, other than the emotional attachment to Mount Ararat (symbolic heart) and Etchmiadzin (religious heart).
But what is perhaps crucial, is that the people who welcomed this concept of Turkey were not just people who had lived in Anatolia for generations, but included those Muslims or Ottoman loyals from places like Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and 'Macedonia' who had decided to leave when the Ottomans lost control of those colonies in the 19th century and they became Christian states, although not always independent as the struggle to control the Balkans by the Austro-Hungarian Empire reminds us today. In other words, the winners for Turkey were those people who were happy to pledge themselves to this new identity, even if it meant becoming part of a secular state; the losers were those for whom it was simply unacceptable, just as that decision meant they they no longer belonged, regardless of the fact that Armenians had lived in that land for two thousand years or more. The Armenians suffered the most, but also because in an era of land hunger, they were targeted because of their extensive farms and estates.

A similar process took place with the creation of Israel, because in 1948 the option to become citizens of Israel was as unacceptable to non-Jews who were living in Palestine, whether it was the Arabs -Christian and Muslim- or the small population of Armenians and Greeks who had lived there since the formation of their Orthodox churches in the early Christian era. Indeed, there were some Jews who disputed the right to create a 'Jewish homeland' in 'Palestine' which raises questions about the authority of Theodor Herzl and later Chaim Weizmann to speak for 'all Jews'. But again, the beneficiaries of Israel were those Jews who were happy to re-define themselves as Israeli where before they might have been British, American and so on, and the mass migration of Jews out of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and the Yemen often in situations of aggressive harassment and violence is yet another example of the curse of nationalism insisting that only certain people can live here, and you aint one of them. As it happens, some Jews -possibly many- lived to regret being forced out of Baghdad and the other mostly Arab places because they had lived well there, whereas when they arrived in Israel and became equal citizens in law with pale skinned European Jews, the latter regarded them as schwarzers and treated them accordingly with all the prejudice that implies. This resentment, plus demographics was behind Menachem Begin's victory against Labour in 1977.

Again and again, one comes back to the curse of nationalism, an attempt to create a pure identity which, by definition must destroy, just as the futile search for a pure Islamic state by definition must destroy before it can create, but is condemned to destroy itself in the process.

Or one can just go and live in the USA or Canada where you can be who you want to be and where national identity by definition accepts diversity as a welcome reality...