Gaza Thread Discussion Part IV

Israel isn't illegal land. They want to destroy Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv isn't a settlement. And yes, the leaders of both the Palestinians as well as the Arab league have been calling for the extermination of Jews in the region since before the creation of Israel.

 

okay I see your point, but then why is it that when Jews were a minority before Israel was formed, there wasn't a serious effort then to kick them off of the land ? It would have been much easier back then , than now.

 

Depends on your defenition of illegal, if by legal you mean land given to Jews through shady dealings with third parties deciding the outcomes then sure it is legal.
Secondly I am sorry but I do not buy into the whole " exterminate the Jews propoganda " If this were true, then why did the early Palestinian terroists hijack planes and take perfect care of Jewish hostages and release them after demands were met. If their goal was to just wipe Jews off the face of the earth, I don't think these are the steps the early PLO movement would have taken. If this were true, then why were a minority of Jews living in the area for such a long time ? Perhaps an even more important question, Why would Jews who have just suffered a holocaust want to move to where another group of people want to slaughter them ? Does that make any sense to you ? Don't always believe the hype.

 

If anybody had any doubts about the overall strategic objective of Isarel in terms of its offensive in Gaza, those doubts should be dispelled by now reading carefully the comments made by the Israelis and the issue that is highlighted in various reports. Specifically, what the Israelis are interested in is seeing whether the Palestinian people in Gaza have suffered enough to change their mind about Hamas? They are not focusing on whether Hamas has been "punished enough"?

This strategic objective of the Israeli offensive should tell you why the real casualties in this war, the Palestinian civilians, were not collateral damage, but the main targets. Not that Israel is alone in pursuing these kind of tactics in war; they have been pursued by many other armies since time imemorial. The examples from Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki from WWII are merely some of the most notable; in none of these was the military objective to target the enemy's military forces. It was instead to kill enough civilians, and to destroy enough of their lives, to make the other side accepts defeat even if its military forces were not yet defeated.

I am not suggesting that there is no moral distinction between terrorism of the kind practiced by some, such as Al Queda, and the terrorism practiced by regular armies. But the distinctions are not the ones made in western polemics. The distinction is not found in whether you kill women, children and other civilians through bombs dropped from above, or whether you do so by a suicide bomber.

The real distinction, ultimately, is by whose authority is an army, a militia, or some other force, acting? The smaller the authority they represent, the more isolated they are in the objectives they are pursuing and the less justifiable their tactics. If a single individual, all on his own, decides that to "declare war" on another country (e.g., US, Iran etc), without any support in that decision or his subsequent action to bring harm to his intended target, that individual is a mere criminal. If a small group does the same, without being recognized as representing the majority of the population on whose behalf it claims to be pursuing its political objective, they might referred to as "terrorists". But when the action is taken by a group that has the support and is indeed the real representative of the people on whose behalf it is acting, that is merely an act of war. No more, no less, the polemics aside.

What we, in the largest sense of the word, as human beings, condone in war and the rules we envisage for it, might add another layer to the equation. International law has that potential, especially when its rules are derived without intending to serve one side of a conflict as opposed to another, and when its rules are applied consistently. When that happens, even an act of war by an authority representing a large enough body of people can still be a criminal act, condemned by a larger body of people still.

The war being fought in the Middle East is, even in its largest conception, a war to liberate the region from western neo-colonial rule. A war that asks the US to leave the region to its own devises; to stop propping various rulers in the region; stop building military bases here; and to remove the colonial outpost created here without its consent. It is a defensive war. It seeks no empires nor advances any claims to lands which do not welcome it.

For that latter reason, even in that portion of a land that was forcibly and recently taken from the Middle East with a new population implanted on it, the legitimate aspiration of the people in this region ultimately is not about about taking over that land by force. But merely to disarm it from inflicting more pain and suffering on the region. And the way to disarm it is to deny legitimacy to the idea that allowed it to establish itself in the Middle East in the first place; and to cut out its sources of support and funding from outside. When that is done, the Jewish people who live here can continue to live here in the Middle East. As part of the region and not as a force imposed on it from outside. Until then, we have a war against colonialism no matter how well that fact is masked for some.

 

I stopped reading after this paragraph, the arguments being made in this thread recently have been discussing Hamas and their motives. I have no idea what you're talking about, but it doesn't square with what's being written in this thread.

 

Please get acquainted with Arab revolts, the great mufta of Jerusalem and Hitler, etc. There were many instances of just that and the only reason for their failures was the British presence as well as groups like Irgun, Stern Gang, Etzel, Lechi who counterd the Arab violence with their own.

P.S. Hamas' goal is not to to just erase Israel from ME geopolitically speaking, they mean harm to every Jew, just like Hezbollah (Argentinian bombing as one example). It's in their charter, it's in their teachings, in their books, schools, mosques, cafes, etc.
Make no mistake about it.

 

I'm talking about land which was either bought by Zionists, or was a part of the partition plan which was rejected by the Arab league, precipitating their attempted (in their words) "war of annihilation."[/QUOTE]

You can deny the states words and actions of Hamas as much as you like. Both in their telvision shows, political speaches and their charter. Just as you can deny the words and actions of the Grand Mufti Muhammed Al-Husaini, who was the palestinian leader pre 1948. You can also say that The Arab league never promised a war of extermination. But you will be wrong in all of those cases.

The PLO was not out to exterminate all Jews in the region, they were out to destroy Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, have explicitly and repeatedly stated their desire to do so.

 

excellent post. A country with power and wealth can do as it pleases and make any pathetic excuse to condone the behavior. The biggest terrorist act in history perhaps were the two atomic bombings of Japan, yet that was spun as an act to save even more lives. How idiotic. This however was okay since those in power were the terrorists. When a bunch of towel heads living in caves do something similar, yet not even a tiny fraction of the damage or destruction, it is a dispicable act. They are both dispicable, or both a necessity, the hypocrisy is clear as day.

 

You can deny the states words and actions of Hamas as much as you like. Both in their telvision shows, political speaches and their charter. Just as you can deny the words and actions of the Grand Mufti Muhammed Al-Husaini, who was the palestinian leader pre 1948. You can also say that The Arab league never promised a war of extermination. But you will be wrong in all of those cases.

The PLO was not out to exterminate all Jews in the region, they were out to destroy Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, have explicitly and repeatedly stated their desire to do so.[/QUOTE]


Hamas was born later in the conflict after PLO was not able to achieve its goals, it was an even more radical group which obviously had evolved in brutality due to the amount of blood spilled on the Palestinian side, it never would have come about if a solution was made before.
In regards to extermination I just find it hard to believe that after suffering the holocaust, Jews would want to move to a land where the majority of the people living there also want to exterminate them. Call me crazy but something smells very fishy about that one.

 

So, Japan was not a country of power and wealth?

And maybe you should ask the koreans, chinese, filipinos, vietnamese, and the rest of southeast asia what they thought of the japanese in WWII.

 

I am not condoning anything the Japanese did, I saw a program on the history network stating that they actually slaughtered more Chinese than the Nazi's did Jews. Dispicable acts, however this does not justify the dropping of atomic weapons on massive and dense population centres. Then after this dispicable act they somehow have the moral authority to tell others not to develop nuclear weapons.

 

You can call yourself crazy if you like, that's up to you. If you deny what people say in their own words because it doesn't suit your rigid political conceptions than there is no use having a discussion with you.

Jews moved and continue to move to Israel because it is our historic and eternal homeland. After every country in the world either perpetrated, aided and abetted, or stood by and watched unwilling to intervene, the slaughter of 1/3 of the worlds Jews, and 80% of European Jewry, Jews realized they could no longer afford to assume that the leaders of the countries in which they lived had any long term interest in protecting them, and that self determination was the only means of survival.

Before and upon the creation of Israel we were met by more calls for annihilation and extermination against us, and this time, we triumphed over them. The Arab League refuses Palestinians citizenship, saying they will not allow the Palestinians to become "dilluted". Yet they keep them in squalid refugee camps, and send them weapon after weapon, as productive greenhouses in Gaza are broken down to build pipe bombs.

Right now we see several hundred thousand civilians dead in Iraq, along with concurrent genocides, and the world doesn't bat an eye, yet this current responsive action in Gaza, incredibly miniscule in comparison to the simultaneous violent actions occuring around the world, has drawn ire and violent protests.

"In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”

​

In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

​

In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”


In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”

​

In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.

​

In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports “fears” that “Islamic extremists” are drawing up a “hit list” of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse’s record producer, and the late Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic non-extremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable “moderate” groups have warned the government that the Israelis’ “disproportionate force” in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, “reviving extremist groups,” and provoking “UK terrorist attacks” — not against Amy Winehouse’s record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest."​

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjkwNjVlNmE5MWUyOTVhMWIyODkzNWNlZGM1YjU2Zjc=

And we still see the same preposterous questions asked, questions whose ludicrousness would be plainly visible if they were asked of any other country, yet are typical in response to the Jewish state. "Does it have a right to exist?", "Does it have a right to defend itself?"

 

Where were the calls to destroy Jews from the muslim world before the Balfour Declaration, which sought to give the Jews an independent state within a Palestine which still had not recieved independence from the British ? As far as I am aware any significant anti-semetic sentiment came after this, and understandably so.
You have to understand that these people had been under Turkish control, helped the British fight them off in WWI with the promise of independence, only to be tricked, and then suddenly the British let a bunch of foreigners create a state within their land. Obviously they would be pissed off. Who wouldn't be ?
It is pure selfishness to think that there is nothing wrong with what took place to create the state of Israel. I do not expect any of the extreme partisans in this matter to ever admit this.

Also in response to dripping milk with the criticism of Israel , and comparing Gaza to Iraq. The world doesn't blink ? Where the hell were you when there were outcries against the war in Iraq. Are you serious ? Why do you think Bush is so popular around the world ? Why do you think the US is so popular ? It is not only Israel that is critisized. Ironically though according to some authors I've read who had knowledge of US foreign policy, Israel had its hands in the Iraq invasion as well.

 

So let me get this straight, you are saying that the creation(or even potential creation) of Israel may justify genocide of Jews?

You are talking about genocide

I was in America, and while there were outcries, they were very muted. During the actual aerial assault "shock and awe" there was no non stop news coverage, either in America, or I believe in the western world, centering on the civilian toll. It was unfortunately swept under the rug throughout most of the world, as are the far more numerous casualties of almost every conflict.

And which authors would those be?

 

I read it somewhere, don't quite remember.

 

I see you are still interested in hearing the quotes of various selected figures regarding this issue. Here are a few i have read:

We can go back and forth with quotes from various people, but it is better to discuss the issues leading to such feelings.

 

When did the Stern Gang "counter" Arab violence ...when did bombing a hotel killing cleaning people,Bell hops,cooks was that when they "countered" Arab violance..sure they were all terrorist..or the Jaffa train killing 49 civilians sure they were all terrorist? and how about the offer to the Nazi party?

 

mentioned this in this in the last thread, but the High Court of Israel have reinstated the Arab political parties into the parliament

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057643.html

 

You said Arabs did not try to get rid of Jews prior to 48 and I gave you points of that they did.

 

I see you are still interested in hearing the quotes of various selected figures regarding this issue. Here are a few i have read:




I am paraphrasing here, but what about the quote from the terrorist Ben Gurion that went something like this " If I had the choice to save all of our brothers killed by Germany and resettle in England, or save half of them and settle in Israel, I would chose the latter. "

These are definately the words of a man who loves his people.

 

The bold part might be the dumbest thing ever written on BigSoccer. And that's saying something.

Dropping the bombs in 1945 saved Japanese, Chinese, and American lives, probably in that order of magnitude.

 

So its ok to kill a few hundred thousand innocent people to potentially (in your opinion) save a few hundred thousand others? There were other ways of showing the Japanese the futility of their efforts, apart from bombing and obliterating densely populated civilian centres. The bombs could have been dropped on targets less densely populated by civilians, for one.

The atomic bomb attacks were terrorism by any accepted definition.

 

"hosestreporting.com"

I am glad they don't call themselves dishonestreporting.com! That would have made it really hard to classify them as honest or dishonest...

Honestly, why bother posting from an obscure, stauchly pro-Israeli, outlet whose proclaimed mission is to combat "anti-Israeli bias" in the media? Anyone convinced by anything they have to say, would have already taken your word for it!