Israel And The Gaza Strip

[dingledong]

Do not bring any other war into this as on bbc2 yesterday an Israeli speaker just did that 'but what about Syria ' every time a question was asked if we want to talk about Syria it seems different thread
Yes we gave them that country cos they wanted it but they have carved it up for themselves no thought of any one else.
They never listen to any one else
They are the only country in the world that admits to having a hit squad
I believe the first six leaders of Israeli roughly have the blood of English soldiers on their hands and were once terrorists
They can arrest you and hold you in prison without charge for 2years
And yes now they have achieved what they wanted ,and killed 1480civilians and lost 3civilians one not Jewish let's have a cease fire

 

[Rockingit]

Anyone on Facebook is bound to have seen all the various maps, histories and general shrinkage of the geography of Palestine. I think the main problem that underpins this issue is the same one that underpins most US foreign policy - the simple fact that the average Yank does not have the first clue about anything outside their own borders (if even as broad as that), so when some Jewish owned TV franchise starts talking about the 'Hamas Terrorists' (forgetting that the Palestinian people actually voted for Hamas in an open and fair election) then Joe Redneck thinks it's all 'the war on terror' and is easily led. Try and teach him that it's actually about Zionism, grabbing land and oil reserves (anyone heard about the whole Dick Cheney thing?) and he'll stare at you blankly as they didn't teach that in 7th grade. Odd that.

Now, the reason for feeling able to say that is simply because I *AM* well travelled, both in the States (where I have spent much time and have family there) and also the Middle East, so I feel that I at least know a little about it. I will happily put my cards on the table and declare that whilst I am in no way shape or form an anti-Semitic, I am very much an anti-Zionist. There is good reason that Israel has much to fear from their neighbours in the region - they've managed to right royally pee most of them off a treat over the years.

As for the current conflict......it's a bit like this: Anyone remember that scene in one of the Predator films (can't remember which one) where one of the humans ends up inside the spaceships 'museum', and there's some antique blunderbus hanging on the wall?? So it is here; you've got a handful of people doing what little they can to protest against their oppressors when their oppressors have them under siege already and are armed with every latest bit of technical killing wizardry known to humans courtesy of big-brother USA. And so the circle goes around and around.

Sadly, this is simply all about money.

 

[Engineer54]

So my view is Israel needs to be stopped, Hamas although called a terrorist group are just locals getting together and fighting for their diminishing rights but using some very questionable tactics to achieve this

oh i don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that Hamas is an out and out terrorist group, if as you say they are just local fighting for their rights they wouldn't be using there own people as a human shield for their stockpiles of weapons. Hamas gains credence with every civilian killed or wounded, while the leadership are deep down in underground shelters and tunnels, ( all of which has been built with materials sent to the Gaza strip to rebuild its infrastructure) and it's political leader leading the high life in a five star hotel in the Emirates. These people in this organisation are far away from being just local residents, they are out and out terrorists that don't give a damn about human life, (the more the merrier) they are only interested in their own aims/ gains, political/religious interests. In fact they are in exactly the same class as Hezbollah, i don't think any sane person would call these murderous thugs just disgruntled civilians, .....or would they?? lol!!

 

[Guest77]

Feeling left out?

Yes I am really lol

 

[Darkwood]

So my view is Israel needs to be stopped, Hamas although called a terrorist group are just locals getting together and fighting for their diminishing rights but using some very questionable tactics to achieve this

oh i don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that Hamas is an out and out terrorist group, if as you say they are just local fighting for their rights they wouldn't be using there own people as a human shield for their stockpiles of weapons. Hamas gains credence with every civilian killed or wounded, while the leadership are deep down in underground shelters and tunnels, ( all of which has been built with materials sent to the Gaza strip to rebuild its infrastructure) and it's political leader leading the high life in a five star hotel in the Emirates. These people in this organisation are far away from being just local residents, they are out and out terrorists that don't give a damn about human life, (the more the merrier) they are only interested in their own aims/ gains, political/religious interests. In fact they are in exactly the same class as Hezbollah, i don't think any sane person would call these murderous thugs just disgruntled civilians, .....or would they?? lol!!

Yes point taken ...typed when drunk but was trying to say although Hamas is a Terrorist organisation 'no argument there' their existence is purely down to Israels greed to land grab, they have not come in from outside world with any other agenda they are spawned from the Palestine populous trying to get back their rights and free movement but as this conflict has been going on for decades now the methods used to try make their point has diffused into pure terroristic methods where they now have no regard for the lives of the very people they are supposedly defending.

 

[Rockingit]

Ok.......do some maths (as I very, very, roughly did the other night somewhere else).....17 miles x 7 miles, divided by 1.8 million people = how many people per 10m shell crater?

 

[telectrix]

Ok.......do some maths (as I very, very, roughly did the other night somewhere else).....17 miles x 7 miles, divided by 1.8 million people = how many people per 10m shell crater?

give it a week and google will have an app. for that.

 

[Engineer54]

Like rockingit, i have spent many years in and around in and around the Middle East, and one thing that stands out, is that the Arabs can't and don't trust each other, let alone Israel or anyone else... So don't believe a word of any crap coming out about the Arabs being united and supporting each other, that's just purely just for show and much of it for the media's benefit. The Arab world is also has very similar conflicts to the old Christian Catholic/Protestant divides, the Islamic equivalent is the Sunnies and the Shiites.


Any aid or other support that the Arab Gulf Nations provide to Palestine, has as much to do with their own interests has it does for the palestinians, in other words they are paying to keep everything, including refugees, well away from themselves....

 

[D Skelton]

If I threw a snowball at someone and they turned round and broke my jaw, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they may have gone a little OTT. If however I spent all day throwing snowballs at them, then running away and hiding, despite their pleas for me to stop throwing snowballs at them, then I got caught after my day long harrassment spree and had my jaw broken, I'd like to think that most people would think that was justified then.

I'm not exactly in support of Israel's actions, nor am I going to sit here and say that the level of force they are using is justified. It simply isn't up to me to say as I clearly don't have all the facts to hand. One thing I will say however is that if you poke a lion with a stick enough times, it's going to bite your head off eventually!

If Hamas stopped firing those bloody rockets, the Gazan people wouldn't need to be afraid of tanks and airstrikes heading their way!

It seems to me that the blood is on the hands of both the Israelis AND the Palestinians.

The problem is, Hamas are experts at manipulating public opinion and the use of propaganda and tools like Facebook and Twitter. All the videos on social media are from the pro Hamas side. The Israeli attitude is that they don't care what the rest of the world thinks, so they get murdered on social media by morons that know only what they are spoon fed by Hamas and an uber-pc, liberal, apologistic media.

Either way I hope it calms down soon, I'm off to Israel in March!

 

[RogertheBodger]

However Israel got there, they are there, and they have the right to survive and defend themselves. They have had to do this many times in their history and are having to do it again now.
The civilian casualties in Gaza, horrible though they are, are an inevitable consequence of any war ever fought, Hamas had their time of killing civilians when they were sending suicide bombers to blow up Israeli cafes and shops and buses, and they have never stopped firing rockets, this is the reason why they, along with the Palestinians are hemmed into the strip like the prison that it is. Hamas want war in order to further their cause, which is to create a Muslim fundamentalist state along with all their Muslim fanatic brothers around the world, they are a terrorist organisation who couldn’t care less about the Palestinian cause, they have duped the Palestinians into believing they are fighting for a Palestinian state.
It is interesting to see that the more moderate Arab countries that once condemned Israel at every chance, are now not doing so, they are frightened by the rise of Fanatical political Islam, and in terrorist groups like Hamas and Isis in Syria and northern Iraq they see a threat to their own countries.
I support Israel, and a two state solution, but as long as Hamas is in the mix, it isn’t going to happen, they have to be destroyed once and for all and if this is the only way to do it?

 

[Rockingit]

If I threw a snowball at someone and they turned round and broke my jaw, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they may have gone a little OTT. If however I spent all day throwing snowballs at them, then running away and hiding, despite their pleas for me to stop throwing snowballs at them, then I got caught after my day long harrassment spree and had my jaw broken, I'd like to think that most people would think that was justified then.

I'm not exactly in support of Israel's actions, nor am I going to sit here and say that the level of force they are using is justified. It simply isn't up to me to say as I clearly don't have all the facts to hand. One thing I will say however is that if you poke a lion with a stick enough times, it's going to bite your head off eventually!

If Hamas stopped firing those bloody rockets, the Gazan people wouldn't need to be afraid of tanks and airstrikes heading their way!

It seems to me that the blood is on the hands of both the Israelis AND the Palestinians.

The problem is, Hamas are experts at manipulating public opinion and the use of propaganda and tools like Facebook and Twitter. All the videos on social media are from the pro Hamas side. The Israeli attitude is that they don't care what the rest of the world thinks, so they get murdered on social media by morons that know only what they are spoon fed by Hamas and an uber-pc, liberal, apologistic media.

Either way I hope it calms down soon, I'm off to Israel in March!

Which we read the first time you posted it (!). The problem with that analogy is that it overlooks the simple fact that the snowball thrower (Palestine) has been denied their fare share of snow to start with. Plus, Israel has built itself an igloo that is impervious to snowballs anyway (to carry on using the analogy) so arguably doesn't actually need to throw any back anyway. But what's it's done is gone and gotten the biggest snow blower it thinks it can possibly get away with using in public and just aimed it at the Palestinians and hired an army of conscripted polar bears to go hunting.

I am always, always, mindful that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter (in situations like this). When I was in Serbia last month I learnt a very valuable lesson: Our interpreter, a 40 yr old former Yugoslav national who had lost *45* friends in the war there (including her best friend, shot by a sniper in her wedding dress on her way to her wedding), told me that whilst NATO were trying to bomb various targets in Belgrade in 1999, they were reporting that they couldn't as the militia (as they were calling them) were hiding in civilian areas. She said what was actually happening was that ordinary people from the city were lining the streets and the buildings and the bridges to protect them, they didn't care about the military as they all knew the truth that the war crimes were pretty even handed from both sides.

As I sort of said earlier, there's nothing quite so cosy and simple as armchair politics.

 

[trev]

Roger, if someone forcibly displaced the people in Kent backed by 2 very big and powerful armies because of what an old book said would you say 50 years later that they had a right to be there?

If the then occupying people allowed the people of Kent to live on a patch of land which would be bit by bit taken away from them would you say this was acceptable?

If the newcomers decided that the people of Kent could not control their own borders or have the right to decide what they can and cannot do, where they can and cannot go within that land allocated to them, how would you feel?

Suppose the Kentish people felt aggrieved at their treatment and started throwing rocks at the newcomers which resulted in several of them being shot do you think it's expected that the dispute would escalate especially when the newcomers are armed to the teeth by their big brother overseas and are not scared to use the weaponry supplied to them.

I also support a 2 state solution because I don't think the Israelis will voluntarily move but I can't accept the killing of children by nail bombs (how they are supposed to collapse a tunnel I have no idea) or the calls by an Israeli politician for all Palestinian mothers to be killed together with their little snakes.

 

[D Skelton]

Which we read the first time you posted it

On FB, not on here.

 

[Engineer54]

Even if all the troubles are resolved between the Palestinians and the Israelis there will still be some Islamist fundamentalist terror group that won't be satisfied and will continue to stir up trouble until they are wiped out/eradicated, or rendered unable to effectively operate...
This conflict as well as the majority of other conflicts in and around the Middle East will continue well past the foreseeable future and beyond, of that i have no doubt at all.

Trying to bring democratic governments into the Middle East region is another massive Western mistake, just look at what has happened in Libya!! If nothing else Gaddafi was the strong islamist/fundamentalist block along the North African coast, nothing of consequence got past or through Libya. Now like many of the other Arab countries they are failing, or as is the case for Libya are in total political chaos..... I predict that within 10 years all these so-called new democratic governments will be either gone or manipulated and strong armed dictators of one sort or another, will be back in power. I hope i'm wrong, but i don't think i am....

 

[trev]

Sadly you're probably right but there's a large element of resistance to western actions in the middle east. Iraq was carved into being by, once again, us and the US without regard for any local tribal wants/needs/feelings.
No matter what happens in any country there is always one group or another who feels oppressed because their brand of religion/prejudice is not considered mainstream. Look at the Westboro Baptist Church in the US, because they have a problem with homosexuality they are protesting all over the place, anti abortion groups have planted bombs at medical centres where the procedures are carried out and have killed people.
So it's not just "over there" that has problems, somehow we manage to keep a lid on the vast majority of the nut jobs with axes to grind, it's a pity that not everyone can do, or is willing to do, what we can.