Dak
mentat
Well obviously America doesn't have Israel on much of a leash since this hasn't already been stopped.
Israel's assault on Gaza and Hamas
- Thread starter Matt
- Start date
It's quite obvious that America will not stand up to Israel. After these war crimes and the murders Israel has committed all America (and all the other nations of the world) can say is 'We ask for a ceasefire'. Imagine if America declared war on Isreal for this holocaust of Palestinians. It would be a different world wouldn't it.
skeptik
Member
- Feb 7, 2003
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Obviously simply understanding doesn't solve anything, but it's the logical first step in reaching a long term solution, if one is even possible.
challenge_everything
Active Member
The religious aspect of this dispute is to a large extent a red herring. I wouldn't greatly distinguish this conflict from any other post-colonial conflict, ie stateless disempowered people fighting with whatever means are at their disposal to secure their autonomy, just like East Timor, South Africa, India etc etc. History has shown that the only long term solution is to give the people their autonomy.
Ender Rises
Wass sappening?
Actually, it's a combination of the two, Challenge. It's a post-colonial conflict for autonomy, like you said, but on top of that it is a religious conflict. You're talking about the holy land of 3 religions.
Cythraul
Active Member
- Dec 10, 2003
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I've seen this kind of thing said quite frequently since this started (and also during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah a few years back) and I'm always a bit puzzled by it, because I'm not sure what point it's supposed to be making. From one perspective, I do not see how the difference in the respective death tolls is relevant. Said difference is just an artifact of the difference in military capability, not morality. If somebody is lobbing missiles into your country with the intent and very real possibility of endangering civilians, it is not reasonable to expect you to act from a moral motive. If what Israel is doing is the only way of eliminating the threat with no cost to the lives of their own citizens, then they are under no obligation to do otherwise. Of course, I am not fully informed as to the facts of the case. So it might very well be true that what Israel is doing is unnecessary and crossing the line, which is a perfectly reasonable point to make (and it's probably your point; maybe I am just nitpicking).
seedofvengeance
Boosh!
Why the fuck would we declare war on Israel when we agree with them? We ask for a cease fire only because we play ourselves as peacekeeping nation. We're not going to launch out there and say "blow the hell out o'dem fuckers!!!" It's not that we won't stand up to Israel, it's that we support them.
Turn it around... If the US was blowing the hell out of a nation, including it's civilians, after said nation had launched terrorist attacks against America... would Israel declare war on us for our "war crimes?" I'm gonna go with no on that one. It's a pretty dumb argument you presented, tbh.
Dak
mentat
I don't know why you put quotation marks on war crimes when referencing America's war crimes. Our use of depleted uranium for fucking everything these days and it's immediate and future health effects in the nation(s) we have dusted with the stuff is probably one of the worst war crimes in history.
Ender Rises
Wass sappening?
Seed -- the should declare war on us in that case. Civilian casualties are always going to happen, but Israel isn't even trying to keep the collateral damage down. 30% of the people Israel has killed in this response to Hamas have been Hamas terrorists. That's beyond not trying, that's targeting the people who live in that shithole.
seedofvengeance
Boosh!
Look, I'm not getting in to the politics of this, because if Palestine had the force and power to cause as much devastation as Israel has, then they would. Fuck, they're launching rockets into civilian areas in Israel. I feel for all of the people there, including our own Dark Bliss, but this debate is pointless. This is an unresolvable religious war that will continue throughout the rest of time in all likelihood. This is just another upswing in the ebbs and flows of a never-ending war. Neither side is right, and regardless if they are, the next upswing will be the other's fault.
I was only arguing against the notion that Israel is the most powerful nation in the world.
I was only arguing against the notion that Israel is the most powerful nation in the world.
Ender Rises
Wass sappening?
Life Sucks
and then you die
Exactly. The vast majority of modern Jews do not have any ancestors that lived in Israel. Ashkenazi Jews (who make up about 80% of modern Jews) are descended from the Jews of the Khazar empire, who never had a connection to the land that is now Israel. So this conflict is solely based on religion, as the Torah states Jews have a right to the land, and the Jews thus feel that they had the right to create the state of Israel.
Dak
mentat
Right, but my point was the majority of Jews don't actually even have the "bloodline" to stand on for the claim from Torah. Their ancestors were just opportunistic at the time to pick Judiasm as a religion and are trying to parlay their faith into a powerful independent statehood at the expense of they-don't-care-who.
Hamas uses schools, hospitals etc as bases for weapons and shit. Israel would not randomly bomb a school without cause.
Why does that matter? It has no relevance to this discussion
challenge_everything
Active Member
I don't agree. Religion is merely the cloak put on their frustrations. Many post-colonial conflicts end up adopting some sort of unifying mantra, be it religion or something else. Back in the Cold War era it was often communism/socialism used by peoples oppressed by colonial powers. It's easy to see why oppressed people adopt rigid moral codes and overarching ideologies, and unfortunately it also makes it easier for the perpetuators of the conflict to say "oh no, we can't give these people their freedom, they're all crazy communists/terrorists".
This whole Islamist movement is really just the flavour of the era. If you go back 40 years, the same oppressed people in the Middle East (ie in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria) were using the language of Arab nationalism as the ideological cloak for their movements. When the steam went out of that movement, largely as a result of short-lived failures like Nasser in Egypt, religion suddenly became the language of the oppressed. These conflicts are not new and they are not inherently religious.
I really hate it when people, like so many in this thread, say this conflict will go on forever because it's two incompatible religions. This is what the warmongers want you to believe. I already mentioned in an earlier response, which everyone conveniently ignored, how close the situation had come to being resolved and how it was basically the intransigence of Israel which prevented it. All these so-called religious conflicts are readily resolvable if the ruling forces and their vested interests allow it to happen. Ten years ago the Irish situation looked bleak and look at it now after political negotiations and mutual concessions occurred.
challenge_everything
Active Member
Mathiäs;7948716 said:
You are incredibly naive. Two minutes of research or a casual read of the daily papers would prove that wrong. In fact, a list of all of Israel's war crimes would go on for many pages. There have been numerous deliberate attacks on civilians. True, it is often excused by saying "we had intelligence that there were bombs being kept there" or something like that, but many of these excuses can be easily disproved when one looks into the facts of the situation.
I'm not going to post out a list of all the things Israel has done over the last 30 years, because all of this is readily available on the internet. It ranges from the overarchiing "crimes against humanity" such as illegal targetting of civilians to more isolated cases of individual soldiers shooting women and children for sport. But to give you an obvious example of the top of my head, former president Ariel Sharon is considered by most international lawyers as a war criminal after having massacred 2000 Palestinians in a refugee camp back when he was in the military.
DarkBliss
...And okra for all
I'm sure some of what you've said is pretty exaggerated(shooting women and children for sport), although the same and worse had been said about American soldiers during the war on Iraq. But I won't go there. Every armed conflict has its share of war criminals, unfortunately.
Hamas do use schools, hospitals and civilian homes as launching posts for their missiles and they have utilized one of the mosques in the area as a weapons lab for their missiles.
It's easier to view Israel as the "ruthless" aggressor in this conflict since we've got the military edge, and I'm sure the pictures of the destruction in Gaza only support this(obviously, the media coverage will be bigger where the carange is more massive), but how else do you propose we fight Hamas?
A ceasefire will achieve nothing, how can you negotiate with extremists who don't value human lives and put the lives of innocent Palestinians at stake by coercing them to cooperate?
Hamas have been firing missiles on settlements and towns adjacent to the Gaza strip for years meeting little resistance from our forces.
This campaign is a concentrated strike on the terrorists' infrastracture in the region, not a war against innocent civilians. Regerttably, as in any armed conflict, innocent people are caught in the line of fire, and there's little that can be done to prevent this.
The population here in Israel also lives in fear and discomfort: the education system is down in all towns close to the conflict zone; people wake up to a code red every day not knowing where it'll hit next; many are out of work. It's all very unpleasant for both sides.
Hamas do use schools, hospitals and civilian homes as launching posts for their missiles and they have utilized one of the mosques in the area as a weapons lab for their missiles.
It's easier to view Israel as the "ruthless" aggressor in this conflict since we've got the military edge, and I'm sure the pictures of the destruction in Gaza only support this(obviously, the media coverage will be bigger where the carange is more massive), but how else do you propose we fight Hamas?
A ceasefire will achieve nothing, how can you negotiate with extremists who don't value human lives and put the lives of innocent Palestinians at stake by coercing them to cooperate?
Hamas have been firing missiles on settlements and towns adjacent to the Gaza strip for years meeting little resistance from our forces.
This campaign is a concentrated strike on the terrorists' infrastracture in the region, not a war against innocent civilians. Regerttably, as in any armed conflict, innocent people are caught in the line of fire, and there's little that can be done to prevent this.
The population here in Israel also lives in fear and discomfort: the education system is down in all towns close to the conflict zone; people wake up to a code red every day not knowing where it'll hit next; many are out of work. It's all very unpleasant for both sides.
challenge_everything
Active Member
No, I, unlike most people on this site, can actually support my arguments with examples.
Just a couple of the most recent and unarguable ones (ie ones recognised by Israel - we'll leave out all those denied by the state for now):
http://www.btselem.org/English/Firearms/20081224_Soldier_indicted_for_killing_boy_flees_country.asp
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/766034.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1009176.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/789513.html
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
There are always people who will be overcome with power when given the opportunity and will make unfortunate and grievous mistakes like abusing citizens or shooting random innocent people just because they have a gun and are doing a mission.
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