Has Isreal gone too far?

That dates back to the way the country was established 60 years ago. It will be a long time before that is forgotten or forgiven, if it ever happens. I was in favor of the process until this latest event. Their explanations this time just don't hold water for wholesale slaughter of people who are not part of Hamas and just want to be allowed to live. Hitting a U.N. compound is unforgivable.

Can you justify Hiroshima or Nagasaki?



http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/pilger-the-lies-of-hiroshima-live-on/

A lot of people go to a lot of trouble to avoid saying what seems pretty obvious to me.

It sucks to shell schools and hospitals and UN compounds tryin gto help out poor, injured families.

If you want to try to justify that, go ahead. But saying somebody else did it once doesn't nake it right.

And if it's so dangerous for Israeli civilians, why not move them out of rocket range?

They are members of a strong country without travel or resource restrictions and recipients of huge amounts of foeign aid. And they have SPACE. Gaza has 1.5 millioin people in an area about 7 by 25 miles.

There is no justification from killing civilians. Especially when you are the aggressive party, going into their country to kill them.

Looks like if Israel loses all its international support they'll have to dust off that old Ark again. It smited with impunity.

LOL

Or maybe that old Arc parked up on Mt. Ararat.

But seriously, I wonder how much will really happen because of this. There are no journalists allowed in Gaza. Will people really keep giving a damn about this.

I can't imagine what it would take for the U.S. to change its policy on Israel and we're the only one who really matter to them. It's our money they're using to do this stuff, our military protection (despite all the posturing they do)

I think it will just continue to be a problem and eat away at the world.

Getting credible information has and continues to be a problem. The media are becoming more objective in their reporting but that was not always the case. I sat with reporters in Lebanon and listened to them complain about how their stories were edited/changed, distorted or not reported. It was political.
A friend of the family, a PSU graduate and later reporter, spent most of his time reporting in Israel/Palestine. What he saw and wrote is much different from what was reported. A special report he wrote of atrocities committed by Israel forced him to leave the area to save his life.
A Video of atrocities he secretly recorded was shown at the UN as evidence.
We all have our views. Mine are more influenced by what I saw than from what I read. What I believe from what I read depends on the source.

Shelagh - I have always believed that the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified acts of terrorism.
I've heard all the arguments saying it saved American lives and view them as claptrap. My division (the 4th Infantry Division) was scheduled to be part of the force invading Japan so there was somewhat of a personal interest in it, but trained and well-equipped armies fighting each other is one thing, dropping bombs on civilians is something far different.
No one seems to remember another factor in Japan's surrender. The Russians had just entered the war in that theater and were rolling some of Japan's best troops back at a remarkable rate of 25 miles per day. The Japanese preferred being occupied by Americans rather than Russians.
A simple answer to the original question: I believe the terror bombing by Germany, the U.S. and the U.K. were unjustified and failed to achieve their intended purposes. I saw too many results of it and it was sickening. The deliberate killing of women, children, infants and the elderly is always wrong. If there must be wars, let the soldiers do the fighting man-to-man.

I've always had trouble with the bombings as well. Especially with doing TWO of them. It was an issue of some heat between myself and my father, a career military man who served in Burma and the occupation of Japan.
Everybody has heard the same arguments I heard in their favor.

And I certainly wouldn't think of them as justifying anybody else making war on civilians. In fact, the main reason I get more vocal about Israeli terrorism than, say, African tribes massacring and raping each other, is because they are U.S. backed. I feel the same way about dead kids in Iraq, actually.

Another reason I've said as much as I have on this issue (and you should see me on some other forums full of truly nasty apologists) is because there is so much defensiveness about it. You don't run into many people saying it's OK for the Tutsis to eat HotsiTotsi children because... and reel off a bunch of statistitics and history of why it's not their fault.

I think this is something people should speak out about, especially Americans.

An interesthing thing here, for those who would see it, is that you used to hear about how evil Palestinians (and all arabs) were and no excuse made for it. If you brought up Zionist atrocities or the idea that they were people fighting for their own land,you were an anti-semite. Terrorism was condemned with no excuses brooked. And how "both sides are equally involved, so nobody should be called to task": very different rhetoric from what we were hearing about Arab terrorists.

Now Israel is in the eyes of the world for boming hospitals and schools. And you hear this defeaning chorus of excuses.

It's a stacked deck. The Palestinians have been playing against a stacked deck since 1946, really.

AND, it's bringing the WORLD to war. Huge populations of civilians in countries from Europe to Asia are at some degree of risk. And why? It's not our fight. It's not Britain's fight. It's not the fight of tourists in Java or Egypt.

If it were simply a group of people fighting for their own land, then there might be some kind of resolution to the problem. Palestinian terrorists want nothing less than the complete destruction and abolition of the State of Israel. It doesn't matter what peace agreement is arrived at by politicians on both sides, as long as the surrounding Arab countiries are willing to supply the PLO with weapons, there will always be insurgents willing to use them. I know that, you know that, the whole world knows that. Peace will not last but without a steady supply of arms, the only weapon will be suicide bombers and they start training them at a very young age.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-444058/Horrific-video-child-sending-suicide-bomber-mother-death.html

Dick, I agree with you. Fighting should be soldier to soldier. No exceptions.

You say that the whole world knows...

Did you know that the first terrorists were Begin and Shamir. The British had a price on their heads for years. Later they both became Prime ministers of Israel and all that was forgotten. The Palestinian freedom fighters were given the label of terrorists by Israel.

The UN declared that Israel must return the land captured in the war and to this day she has refused. There are 65 UN Resolutions against Israel, from 1955 to 1992, for its illegal activity and flagrant violations of
international law. Further, since 1970, the US had vetoed 32 other resolutions that condemned Israel’s acts or called on Israel to withdraw from the land it occupies. Of the UN Resolutions on the books against Israel, not one of them has ever been enforced. Why is it that UN Resolutions are applied against other countries like Iraq for allegedly having WMD’s, while none of the UN Resolutions against Israel have been enforced? And what about the arsenal of WMD’s that Israel possesses? Why is Israel not required to give up its illegal weapons?

Palestine is being occupied illegally. That is something that should be clear to the whole world. As soon as peace talks begin, Israel starts building more settlements in the occupied territories, in violation of international law, and that further aggravates the situation causing the Palestinians to resist. And on and on it goes.

It certainly does. It isn't for me to tell the UN to enforce its own Resolutions. It isn't for me to tell anyone to do anything and I would be more than happy if they would all stop. That is not going to happen. The way I think is not the way a Palestinian freedom fighter thinks. I can see the reason behind the thinking but I can't see any willingness to change that way of thinking.

I don't know if you are unfamiliar with the history of that area of just don't want to see it.

Before 1948 that land was called Palestine. It BELONGED to the Palestinians. Then the UN gave it away, caving into to terrorism by Zionists. Perhaps you know people who remember Ben Gurion's bunch blowing up a buch of Brit soldier in the King David Hotel? That's nothing compared to the slaughter that was done to Palestinian families, just to take over the country.

What would you think if some foreigners just gave your country away to Muslims or somebody because their prophet said it was theres a few thousand years ago?

They then moved in their own people.

The idea that Palestinians could "fight for their own land" but still respect the presence of Israel is ridiculous. "Israel" WAS their land. They think it still is.

They've been crushed by international force and money, caged up in little reservations without seaports, given on access to trade, bombed so greatly they can have no industry or agriculture.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Meanwhile Israel has lots of options and resources. But they bomb hospitals and schools, seal off these people from the world, don't allow journalists in. THAT doesn't bother you a teeny, tiny bit?

It's really hard to figure out why Israel is all that different from the Nazis. They are trying to exterminate a people so they can peacefully enjoy the land they took from them because THEIR religion said it was OK.

I just have such a hard time believing that otherwise sane, nice people seem to have no problem with that.

The Palestinians have a right to that land. I just don't understand how anybody could say the Israelis have a right to it other than that they took it at gun point and will kill anybody who argues the point.

Or anybody who might grow up to be somebody who will argue the point.

The Nazi's succeeded because they were able to get decent people to accept the idea that certain other kinds of people didn't belong here and should be gotten rid of.

Furthermore... you want to go back to Biblical sources of Isreal;s claim to that land?

Why was Israel there the first time?

Remember Exodus? The real one, not the stupid movie?
The Israelites were told by God that they could have that land so they moved in and killed the Caananites and Philistines so they could have it. Just like that.

Go into that place and put all to the sword. Man, woman, child. Let no two stones of that city stand on another. Sow salt in the ground that it may bear no more.

It's the first recorded Holocaust. A story of religion-driven genocide of a people to take their land over. It's told as it it were heoric. The people of Jericho and many other cities were killed just because they happened to be there and Israelites wanted the land.

Not a pretty picture, but that is the "moral claim" they give for their current take-over,

Now they've done it again. And are continuing to do it. And will continue to do it until all the Palestinieans are either dead or go away somewhere else.

If it were a movie made in a Hollywood not run by Israel sympathizers the Palestinians would be the heroes and the Israelis the evil empire.

It's a disgusting regime, created TWICE in the blood of innocents.

Yet people stand buy them just because... well, I can't figure out why, frankly. It's nothing I'd want on my hands.

Didja ever wonder why the God of the Bible seems to have Multiple
Personality Disorder? In the old testament (approved by the Jews) He is
an angry (yet just) God to be feared. Then He suddenly becomes our
loving Father in Heaven, Hallowed be His Name.

It goes back to the Sumerians, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Anunnaki from the planet Nibiru... over 400,000 years ago.

I had a really interesting harrangue on a pro writing board last year. TV writers. I'd say about 90% of them were Jewish, but I think it's like of like... "don't know much about the faith, just get behind the hot-burron issues"

Anyway there was one guy on there who was a type I've come to recognize solely over the internet: Judaism is actually kind of dying out. But it's become fashionable for people to get way into in a do kabbalah, kind of like "professional Irishmen" in the US who are more into the auld counties and such than their parents ever were.

He was a rompin, stompin, fire-breathing atheist. If you said it really kind of seems like the universe shows signs of intelligence, he'd go ballistic.

But on the subject of the Old Testament God, he would go into this big thing about how this was a God with human emotions, who could be jealous and get pissed off and even... I LOVE this... argued with. Get that Moses or somebody gets into an argument with GOD and talks him into something that he'd overlooked.
Amazing.

But even more odd was the clash between his obvious affection for this ultra-primitive theology and his contemporary atheism.

Most religions are peculiar, but find their adherents. But that always got me.

I wouldn't have considered discussing Israel this way on that board. There were some real haters on there. I've seen them elsewhere on the net: you say Israel is going to far and they're all over you for being a hate-spewing storm-trooper and they take your name and email to everybody in the business saying your anti-semitic.

But anyway, it's of theological interest.

The loving god is pretty much New Testatment. The Old Testament God, and particularly the one of the Pentateuch is nobody's sweetheart, often coming off as a petulant, violent baby.

It's not modern theology. And by modern, I mean about 2000 years ago there was a worldwide wave of "messiahtry" that shook the great world religions away from being tribal rituals and towards being what we think of as theological faiths. Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists are of that "new wave". Hindus and Jews are not.
Oddly the peoples not touched by that theo-remod were Africans. Always struck me as odd. But I'll leave it. I'm probably working my way into too much trouble as it is.

Just kidding about that last line: one thing I like about this board is nobody here is a total psycho or one-issue maniact. You can talk freely without runing into a villagers' torch parade.

I have such tremendous respect for everyone who is posting here, and my knowledge of Middle Eastern history is so limited, I wonder if I should post here at all. This is such a complex situation. there are no easy answers. Arguments can be made for either side. During the First World War, promises ere made to both Arabs and Jews. The Allies needed the Arabs to help end the power of the Ottoman Empire, so promises were made to them. Shortly after, the Balfour Declaration made similar promises to Eretz Israel and the Zionist movements. I am shaky on the details.

There was never, as I understand it, a recognized Palestinian state. The territory had always been occupied by some foreign power. How can anyone say whom the land truly belongs to?

A case could be made that the United States really belongs to the native tribes who were here first. Who was right and who was wrong then?

I am not defending either side. I don't have an answer. To my mind, neither side has a clear-cut case.

We all look at the world with cultural blinders. In the memoir of the Civil War veteran that I quoted earlier, the writer, a confederate, insisted that he had to fight to defend his homeland against slavery: the slavery imposed by the Union Army which was forcing conscription on Missouri residents who supported the southern "cause." If you read back, you will see that "slavery" was the precise word he used. He made no mention of the fact that the south had enslaved a whole race of people. He was fighting because the enemy was imposing "slavery and subjugation, to go at the bidding of others and come at their call" without remembering that the south was doing that very thing.

Any of you here who have known me for very long are probably really sick of having me bring up the story of the six blind wise men arguing over their limited perceptions of an elephant, but isn't that what is happening now? Have the Israelis gone too far? Clearly, yes. Is it any more right for the Palestinians to keep women and children in a war zone? Clearly, no. There are no good guys; there are no bad guys, as the song goes. There is much outdated nationalism on both sides.

I wish there was an easy answer. I certainly don't see one.

Ann

It seems that a lot of the anger in the world is regarding possessions that truly belong to no one. This earth and all its wonders were here long before we came and started to draw lines and take possession of what was abundant and sufficient for all the needs of the human race and deciding it should be owned by the few.

It is the greed of those who had the most resources that allowed them to become powerful versus the poverty of those living in the areas with insufficient resources. So, the battle for resources and the route to economic power justifies murder.

It can be cloaked in tradition, history, religion and/or culture; but it is egocentrism, the belief that there is one right way to live and rule, that violates the very diversity of this world and keeps us in wars and chaos.

I don't know the answer to whether God exists with His flowing white beard; but if so, He's just shaking His head in disbelief at the ruin and destruction we have committed to His creation in His name.

If Mohamed and Buddha and Christ and Joseph Smith and others walked the earth today (and in a spiritual sense, they do for believers), they would weep.

The territory had always been occupied by some foreign power. How can anyone say whom the land truly belongs to?

Think about that a minute. The land had NO natives?

You see this cited a lot. Another is that there were just tribes there, no real central goverment.

Well then, why give it to the scattered tribes of Israel?

There are few issues in the world where you see more con jobs that Israeli/Arab stuff.

It was a bloody landgrab.

The funny thing is, I've run into people who condemn the United States for having stolen North Amerca from the Indians, yet just a steadfastly insist that it was OK to grab Palestine and make it into Israel.


And by the way, where could Gaza children and ciivilants go that is NOT a war zone? Think about what it means to have 1.5 million people backed into 150 square miles. With no exit allowed.

That whole thing is also a smalke screen. It's a war of elimination against Arab civilians and it always has been, even from Biblical times.

These are not nice people. Hamas and them deserve each other. Hamas was created BECAUSE of Israeli conquest.

I just wish the rest of the world would quit giving them money to blow up kids and medicine for the impoverished.

What nobody wants to realize is: it wil never stop as long as Israel exists. Unless Israel manages to kill off all Arabs and Moslems.

It's too late for justice (which would, actually, mean the cessation of the Israel state) but there might be some hope in dividing the country fairly so that the Palestinicans have access to the sea and a fair share of country and city etc.

You pin people in and destroy any hope of livelihood and you doom them to desparate acts. It's no surprise that Gaza voted for Hamas. What other avenue did they have?

People with roofs and clothes and food for their kids, living in stability are less likely to want war.

People with roofs and clothes and food for their kids, living in stability are less likely to want war.

People with roofs and clothes and food for their kids, living in stability are less likely to want war.

That should be the goal of the UN and of the US influence there. Fair shake.

I also firmly believe that Jeruslaem should not belong to either sect. It should be a UN world site under international dominion, with access to holy sites for all religions. Anybody who causes trouble loses their access for a period of time.

NOBODY is suggesting that, that I can see.

No American politician is going to suggest diminishing the current holdings of Israel in the interest of stopping the violence: they would be eaten alive by the media.


It makes Northern Island look like a Sunday picnic, doesn't it?

Lots of information covered here since I went to sleep last night. I think most points were covered and yet there are still questions asked, i.e., why they don’t get their women and children out of harms way. As Lin mentioned, they can’t get out. The tunnels they dug as escape routes and to bring in food and ammunition, appear to have been targeted and most likely destroyed.
In earlier conflicts, the people who were able to flee became refugees in other countries and are not permitted to return to their homes.
The Israeli/Palestinian issue has held the world in bondage. The oil embargo was a weapon used to retaliate and the world suffered.
When the UN does make resolutions, they are unable to enforce them. Why? Ask our government. There is a book called, “They dared to speak out.” These were politicians whose careers took a dive when they openly criticized Israel. Intimidation continues to be a very effective weapon.

lin wrote:

It makes Northern Island look like a Sunday picnic, doesn't it?

The British Isles have been taken over so many times that it would be hard to prove that anyone had a right to live here. From Roman times to present day, we have been attacked and over-run by our neighbouring Europeans. We have a language that is used the world over because of its rich vocabulary based on Latin and influenced by Scandinavian, German and French langauges. We are a nation of mongrels; anything but pure. In many ways, that is our strength. We don't all think the same way and we are open to new ideas and ways of thinking. Something that seems to be absent among groups who live among like-minded people and are only capable of seeing things one way. They are entrenched in their ways and refuse to change and adapt when the world around them changes. We have been adapting for centuries, fighting among ourselves and fighting our foes.

There is peace now in Northern Ireland -- and long may it last!

One thing is certain: regardless of whether the world supports one side or the other, any time a tank fires into a U.N. school and kills two young boys just trying to stay alive, it is more than just wrong, it is criminal. An Israeli tank did it yesterday.
Some Israeli reservists being called up are refusing to serve in Gaza because of the slaughter of civilians. The government is merely sending them home, not sending them to prison or ordering them shot as any army in the world would do if their cause was just.

In Jeremy Bowen's blog (BBC correspondent) he writes:

[Chris Gunness, who is the spokesman for Unrwa, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees] told me: "When you have a situation where you have a direct hit on a UN school where around 1600 people have taken refuge and two people have been killed, there has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed."

Final comment on the blog:

One more thing: when this misery ends both sides will say that they won.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7835098.stm