Topic: Israel: Operation Protective Edge - page 31. (Read 14702 times)

I would suggest most people in first world countries have a problem with the concept of collective punishment. I certainly do. Israel has no blame here. They have a right to exist, and be where they are at. The Palestinians choose war over peace.

Sure it's possible. Everything is. Country in which I was born has passed through horrible civil war, total UN blockade and NATO bombing campaign. Ultimately, it ceased to exist. All this events learned me that there is no such thing as international justice and that the brute force is only rule which everyone respect. And what is that dream lala land you're coming from to be such an idealist?

I agree that it's counter productive and promotes further escalations, but I know that there's 1 side that instigates the aggression and 1 side that doesn't.
You might argue that Israel doesn't want peace with the Palestinians, but I'm sure they want at the very least, quiet.

You know that yesterday alone 400 (give or take, but who cares, they weren't killed by Israelis) people were killed in Syria, right? a few donzen from them were kids and thousands were injured.
Are you collecting donations for them? are you bleeding for them? Losing sleep? (or w/e nonsense you were typing in the other thread) I think not.

Where were you when the islamic jihad kidnapped and murdered 3 Israeli teenagers? Or when hamas fired a rocket a school bus (and proudly published it everywhere) and killed a few kids? Oh, I know where you were  

So go back to your little propaganda thread, but remember, over 95% of all muslims killed this year were killed by muslims.

And what is your problem with our opinion?

It's your people fault for not coming to an agreement.
Do you have a clue how many have died in Europe in the last millennium ?
Yet with al that blood spilled we have come to this:

Indeed. I am not saying that everything Israelis are/were doing is right, but they are using only a tiny fraction of their military might. I mean if they wanted to they could completely wipe out Palestinians in few days. It's quite hard to imagine USA, Russia or (why not) China being placed there instead of Israel without the consequent picture of total destruction and permanent takeover of Gaza.

I am guessing all you poster and people who replied live in a VERY VERY SAFE country ??

Where do you guys come off giving such suggestions with knowing very well that in the real world this is not possible.

Zolace,Starscream,a lot of people think that. That's why its part of the Geneva Conventions. Our own society doesn't legally support it either. I, and generally speaking much of the Israeli army would assert that such responses to violence tend to be counter productive and instead promote further escalations and cycles of violence.

Certainly no one really thinks that collective punishment in and of itself is bad. it matters what the alternatives are, and what the effects and side-effects of those alternatives are. If it is the case (I don't know if it is or not) that Israel can't make the punishment for shooting rockets into Israel less collective without putting themselves in MUCH greater risk, than what is there to say? There's another alternative of doing nothing, but seems unrealistic for a number of reasons.

Israel is the main obstacle? Did you read hamas party covenant?
Let me quote:
"'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.'"
You simply cannot deal with a party who put in its front banner the destruction of your country. Fatah, on the other hand, could lead to something, and as evident, the situation of the palestinians who lives there is far superior to those who live in the gaza strip, and both are bordered with Israel. Furthermore, the Fatah territory is surrounded by Israel, the gaza strip on the other hand has a border with Egypt who decided to close the border to gaza as well.

Trying to reason with an unreasonable person (or party) is futile.

As far as your comment about the overzealous attack on hamas, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? They are the ruling party there, they automatically assume all responsibility for whatever that is fired from their autonomy.
If a group of American soldiers go rogue and murder Russian people in Russia than USA is responsible for their actions. If USA won't execute a punishment I am pretty sure the Russian will push towards one, in what ways they see fit.
Imagine if those soldiers wouldn't get punished by the American government, what repercussions their actions would have.
Same goes for hamas the the islamic jihad.
By not doing anything to prevent or punish the jihad after the action, hamas essentially gave its consent to the actions.

The fact that you over-complicated it by saying "its a group who opposes hamas" (which btw isn't true, they don't oppose hamas, they wish to take their ideology to the extreme), shows that in fact, you support terrorism.

And Zolace is correct, it is a restrained response all things considered. We all know that if hamas would have done the same to the US or the Russians, than the gaza strip would have been flattened long time ago.

It is largely Jihadi Salafi groups firing the rockets, groups that are actually opposed to Hamas, which is why it is easier to recognize the overzealous targeting of Hamas in the campaign. the same was true of their search for and accusations surrounding the missing students which third party groups claimed responsibility for, but which Netanyahu took the opportunity to blame on Hamas instead and used it as a justification to illegally harass and target Hamas affiliates. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its persistence is simply proof that your ideologies are pretty poor tactics when it comes to ending cycles of violence. So in other words, you are a supporter of terrorism. Not surprised.

Seems like a fairly restrained response considering Hamas's penchant for firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Even if they respond with home demolitions, I'd call it totally reasonable and justified since Hamas's tactics are essentially collective punishment to begin with. Really, all terrorism is just collective punishment committed by a weak force against a stronger one and can only be deterred by the stronger party being willing to escalate to a much more extreme level of violence.

You can start calling the Israeli response disproportionate when Gaza looks like Grozny.

In a conflict so long blaming any one party would be naive, as far as current politics go, Israel is the main obstacle to peace. Hamas doesn't help of course, but Israel could easily marginalize them through dealings with Fatah if they had wanted to cede to a two state solution. The conflict has continued over the past several years because there hasn't been the political will for a settlement in Israel under Olmert or Netanyahu.

Even now the Netanyahu administration is largely using this incident as an excuse to throw a tantrum over the unity government construction and target Hamas like they have in the past in hopes that they can break up the new government. It has been a fairly standard (and unfortunately effective) tactic. Most of the rockets coming into Israel haven't even been fired by Hamas, yet it has been primarily Hamas' infrastructure and activists that have thus far been bombed in the operation and it was primarily Hamas sympathizers that were arbitrarily detained without charge in the West Bank during the search.

Civilian deaths among Palestinians are terrible, however I don't know what country would tolerate rockets being shot at it by neighbors. Imagine rockets fired from New Jersey to New York and all people in NewYork have to sit in shelters. I am reading that IAF is dropping liflets, making phone calls, doing what they can to avoid civilian lives. What else would you do?

I don't see a solution either until Israel's population becomes liberal enough to form a government that doesn't depend on smaller highly conservative kingmaker parties. They came close with Livni, but that's how we ended up with Netanyahu and since then the conservative bloc has only gotten stronger.

I certainly hope that it doesn't come to what you described and I honestly don't see that happening, the sides are too uneven for Israel to be ravaged enough to come to terms.

Though I don't think it is cynical to suggest that sometimes that is how conflicts need to (unfortunately) end. That's what happened with Liberia, that's what it took in Chad, that's what it took in the DRC, etc. I'm worried that is how Syria will have to end up and potentially Iraq as well.

I support a two-state solution because I believe it would be naive to take one side or another as being right in this conflict. I think both sides have their share of blame.

When I was your age, I also thought wonderful thoughts about world peace and shit.Now i see this things with different eyes.

When it comes to your first paragraph, I support a two state solution. You said the older you get. Well, the older I get, about a month away from my 30th birthday, the more I see that compromise is necessary to get the violence to stop. And I have experience because I have been to Israel twice, I have a Bachelor's in Political Science, and I have served in Kuwait in the U.S. Army. So I have been to and studied the Middle East quite a lot. And once again, I say a two state solution is the best solution.

I do agree that both sides are mutually guilty of causing escalation of violence. That is why they should do more talking and less fighting. And then back up their negotiating words with actions. I personally think Prime Minister Netanyahu should pull settlers out of the West Bank and Mahmoud Abbas should cut ties with Hamas completely.

I do not see Israel as a theocracy. While they do observe the Sabbath, they still are fairly secular. I saw people with tattoos in Israel almost everywhere I went, except in the ultra-orthodox areas, and tattoos are against Jewish law. So I think Israel is more secular than religious.

I find it amazing that people say these things without bothering to fact check any of it.

Perhaps you missed current events, but the Palestinians have been occupied for the last half century by Israel; I don't know about you, but I consider that to be a form of aggression, especially considering the sub-human conditions Israel is intentionally imposing on them - you know, the whole "keep them almost at a level consistent with an humanitarian crisis", as we know from Wikileaks. That isn't consistent with someone who is claiming to be "defending" themselves from an aggressor, and wanting to reach peace.

And how exactly is Israel trying to spare civilians while keeping them under fire from artillery, naval warships, and air strikes, which have left 80% of all casualties being civilian? Also, even if Hamas is using their own population as human shields, what gives Israel the right to murder them anyway?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to add - Israel also has a tendency to hit vital infrastructure each time it attacks the occupied territories. I haven't seen this confirmed elsewhere yet, but this time it seems to have affected the water supply, which may end up leaving up to a third of the population in Gaza without access to water.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-following-the-israel-palestine-situation-693357

Catch up !!!