Palestine

[yosi]

warning: this clips are hard to view

[Ben]

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

[Ben]

The Last and First Temptation of Israel:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/...ion-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.