The International hue and cry against the Israeli state's murderous assault on Gaza is growing. Meanwhile, the great Obama works on his abs.
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5 comments:
It would be nice if you also condemned the firing of qassam rockets into Israel too.
If you recall, Hamas shot first and has not apologized or agreed to stop shooting. In view of those facts I'm not sure why Israel would feel strongly motivated to stop shooting back.
I agree that it is a one-sided battle and it's a shame the Palestinians in Gaza are suffering, but there are some hard truths that need to be acknowledged.
The hard truth of it is that Hamas was democratically elected on a platform of fighting Israel non-stop, forever. This was the decision of the people of Gaza, and if they are suffering for it now, well perhaps they will think twice in the future about attacking one of the most powerful militaries in the world with overgrown bottle rockets.
Elections have consequences. Attacking Israel has consequences. I think you need to address what those consequences ought to be before unilaterlly demanding that Israel stop defending itself.
I don't think you have noticed the other posts I made, such as the three by the Rabbis, which criticized both Hamas and Israel, and I myself have had some criticisms of Hamas. Then there is the video, "Sderot residents live on the edge 30 Dec 08" I posted, so I am not just kicking over Israel's garbage can.
But really, Hamas did not win the elections because they ran on a platform pledging to fight Israel to the end of time, they won largely because they have always been an efficient social services organization that helped the community, they won because Fatah had become sleazy and corrupt, and they won because they pledged they would stand up to Israeli injustice.
It's ironic that they are criticized for being hardcore by Israel and America, because aren't the hardcore Israelis who attacked the British and Palestinians in the 1940s lionized as liberators and heroes in Israeli history books? The same goes for American revolutionaries who fought the British Empire. What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander though it seems.
If it were that simple, this would have stopped a long time ago when Arafat was still around. I don't think you quite understand the nature of the beast that is driving the Israeli government. In the West Bank, where there is no Hamas and no rockets being fired, the conditions are equally deplorable, settlers steal Palestinians land constantly, shoot them, beat them up, etc., while the IDF or Mossad still assasinates or arrests at will. The relationship is one of conqueror and conquered with the conquests still going on. The not so secret agenda for the Right-wing, at least, is to completely take over the West Bank and Gaza. This is not surprising. This is their version of Manifest Destiny.
Ummm, yeah actually--I am completely aware of what you describe. So why did the Palestinians fire rockets into Israel if they knew that Israel would use it as an excuse to take more Palestinian land?
The Palestinians are committing suicide by proxy. I am beginning to think that it is pointless to even attempt to negotiate. The Palestinians have played right into Israeli hands for since 1948. I don't think there's enough of a Palestinian nation or culture left to be saved.
When the last big "reform" your democratically elected government passed was to legalize crucifixion as a form of execution, then maybe it isn't such a bad thing if your civilization is headed for the trash heap.
In the end all your arguments amount to is that somehow the Palestinians should be saved from their own vicious behavior because they happen to be situated next to a people that are relatively less vicious, but far better armed.
The Palestinians have been trying to destroy Israel for sixty years and in a bit of bitter irony that struggle has destroyed the Palestinian people.
I have to dispute your synopsis of the Palestinian movement for the past 60 years as only wanting to destroy Israel, but to really get into that would be quite a lengthy comment reply, which I just don't have time for right now. I would say that the Palestinians have mainly just been trying to survive Israel for 60 years. If you look at the progress of maps showing Israeli vs. Palestine territory you will see the steady shrinking of the latter (down to mere splotches of territory now), decade after decade. Would this have occurred if Palestinians were all Christ-like figures? I don't really know, but guess what, when the Isrealis expelled the Palestinians from their own lands in 1947-1948, tens of thousands of these Palestinians were Christians not Moslems. Here is an excerpt from a very good history of this at http://www.jerusalemites.org/articles/english/2006/August/08.htm. You might want to read the whole thing.
From Palestinian Christians and Al Nakba... exile from the Holy Land:
"Epilogue: Refugees.
Palestinians remember 1948 as the year of the catastrophe. And they have the right to think this way. During that year, Palestine was destroyed, occupied by foreign armies and sixty percent of their people were exiled.
In Ramleh, Palestinian Muslims went to Christian convents and were protected by Christian priests. However, they were not an authority for the soldiers that were led by Yitshak Rabin and after an order of David Ben Gurion, gave 3 hours for the inhabitants of Lydda and Ramleh to take their things and leave their cities[39]. A Palestinian Christian mother took her children’s and “went to the Catholic Convent to hide. There we met a lot of people, both Christians and Muslims. The children were afraid and cried because of the sounds they heard. There was no food and water anymore, so we were obliged to bring what we had in our houses. The Israeli soldiers told the boys and the men to visit a specific place if they wanted to get permission to walk in the streets. But the Israelis were lying; when the men came, they were all taken to prison. The Israeli airplanes shelled most of the houses. The snipers killed many boys, men, women and children, even dogs and cats in the streets”[40].
In 1968, his Beautitude Maximos Hakim, patriarch of Antioch and all the East, made a declaration in New York about the situation of Christianity in Palestine after 1948, where he expressed: “The Melchite (Greek Catholic) church has suffered many losses at the hands of the Israelis. We lost churches in Damound, Sohmata, Kafr- Bur'om and Ikret, a village which the Israeli army destroyed on Christmas Day 1952. Many churches were damaged in the 1967 war, and many churches were desecrated by soldiers and men and women entering these Holy Places indecently dressed and with their dogs. My encounters with the Israeli government officials, particularly since the last war, have been completely disheartening...”[41].
About 10% (60.000) of those Palestinian refugees in 1948, were Christians. Around 29.000 moved to Jordan Controlled Areas, including 7.000 to East Jerusalem, 4.500 to Bethlehem, 5.500 to Ramallah, and 9.000 to Amman, Madaba and all the East Side of the Jordan River[42]."
I am also curious about your unequivocal statement that Hamas now supports crucifixion. That statement immediately made my spidey-propaganda sense tingle. So I did a little research on this. This story emanated from a London-based Al-Hayat article, apparently. However, the Jerusalem Post, a pretty respectable newspaper, ran the story but said they could not confirm it. Hamas denies it. However CBNNews.com, Pat Robertson's network, issued a report that they claim Hamas is making contradictory statements. Meanwhile I did multiple searches on Al-Hayat and have found no such article there, so assuming there was such an article, it has been scrubbed. It is mentioned mainly on vocally anti-Moslem or anti-Hamas sites, who look for negativities about Hamas and Islam, but this is not definitive proof either, since they are all dependent on the A-Hayat report.
Bottom line: this cannot be confirmed, but it is being kept alive for agitprop purposes.
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