Dozens of 12th graders tell Netanyahu: We refuse to serve in
fuck
Posts: 4,069
fuck
Posts: 4,069
fuck
Posts: 4,069
Comments
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=114485
i had an argument today over this, i was told they should just shut up, stop their whining and do their duty to their country but if you think something is wrong don't you have a moral obligation to not take part?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
who told you that??? did you call bullshit on that steaming pile??? cause i certainly would have.(but im a tad exciteable when it comes to such crap and probably wouldnt have been quite so polite) i cant stand blind allegiance and expected duty. it makes no sense. and yes if you disagree it is your moral obligation to stand up and say so. otherwise people will just walk all over you. and nothing will change.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
+1
and who is the enemy?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
them.
heres my question:
for those who do, why do you see the jews as the ones in 'the right'?
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
"The Jews?" Hmmm ... Anyhow, I feel that both sides are in the wrong. The Isrealis are wrong for bombing civilian areas in recent wars, continued expansion of settlements into Arab territory (since we are using ethnic descriptors), failure to properly investigate alledged instances of war crimes, and for refusing to work constructively towards a 2-state solution, which I believe is the only tenable arrangement. The Palestinians are wrong for using terrorism as a means of winning statehood (or for "driving the Jews into the sea", depending on whose ideology you buy), for choosing extremist ideologies rather than making more reasoned appeals for people to understand their plight, for commiting the very war crimes that they accuse the Isrealis of commiting (targeting civilian areas), and for giving the Isrealis a reason to hide behind walls. The hawks in Israel gain power with every bombing and every kidnapping, and the possibility of a peaceful solution gets weaker as groups like Hamas get stronger. Its not a one-sided problem anymore, assuming it ever really was.
problem???
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
It comes down to a burden of responsibility. Let's take just the latest example - Operation Cast Lead. 1600 Palestinians killed, including an estimated 800 civilians and 400 policemen. 13 Israelis were killed, including four soldiers in two separate friendly fire incidents and three civilians.
Israel has been engaged in a 40 year brutal occupation, and is also currently imposing a criminal blockade against the population of Gaza which has been described by numerous human rights organizations and the U.N as a crime against humanity.
But you see this as a level playing field due to the sporadic firing of homemade rockets into 'Israel' by Hamas? (Though actually, most of the rockets were fired into Sderot, which is actually Palestinian land under the U.N partition plan and stolen by Israel in 1948).
Palestinian faith in Obama 'evaporates'
Leaked memo from President Mahmoud Abbas accuses White House of buckling under pressure from Israel
Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009
'Palestinian political leaders have expressed acute disappointment in the Obama administration, saying their hopes that it could bring peace to the Middle East have "evaporated" and accusing the White House of giving in to Israeli pressure.
The unusually frank comments come in an internal memo from the Fatah party, led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, but reflect a broader frustration among Palestinian politicians that Washington's very public push for peace in the Middle East has yet to produce even a restarting of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated," said the document, which was leaked to the Associated Press news agency.
It said Barack Obama "couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace".
The document, dated Monday, came from an office led by Mohammed Ghneim, a Fatah hardliner and the party's number two, who returned to the West Bank only this year after many years in exile. He was long a critic of the Oslo accords of the mid-1990s, arguing they gave too much to the Israelis.
Other Palestinian figures share the frustrations. Mohammad Dahlan was reported as saying this week that he felt "very disappointed and worried by the US administration retreat".
For many months now, the Palestinians have kept to their position that talks cannot restart without an end to construction in Israeli settlements and a guarantee that a full agreement is on the table, based on the borders before the 1967 war, in which Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
"The Israelis need to acknowledge that the 1967 borders are the borders between the two states, and this is the foundation of any negotiations," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aide to Abbas.
George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, was in Jerusalem again at the weekend for another round of apparently fruitless talks between the two sides.
After Obama met with Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in New York last month he said he wanted negotiations to restart soon. But even with the president's newly awarded Noble peace prize, that still seems harder than first expected.
Washington has notably toned down its language on Israeli settlement-building, and no longer calls for a full freeze to construction, talking instead of "restraint."
But this Palestinian disenchantment also comes at a time when Abbas has seen his personal credibility badly damaged among his own people, and it may be partly an effort to deflect criticism. There was disquiet when he agreed at the last minute to go to New York last month for the Netanyahu meeting, even though the Israelis had not agreed to the full halt to settlement building that Abbas had demanded.
The criticism worsened dramatically when 10 days ago he decided against supporting a vote at the UN human rights council to endorse a critical UN report on the Gaza war, written by the South African judge Richard Goldstone.
The report, hailed by human rights groups, accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and recommended that international prosecutions be considered.
Although it appeared that the Palestinians had enough support at the council to endorse the report, Abbas backed away at the last minute, apparently under intense US diplomatic pressure. He faced bitter criticism from his political rival, Hamas. It said he was unfit to lead and pulled out of a crucial reconciliation agreement due to have been signed later this month.
Abbas has since reversed his decision. Now the report will once again be considered at the human rights council in Geneva at a special session starting on Thursday. In New York tomorrow the UN security council will hold a debate on the Middle East, brought forward after Libya, a current council member, said the Goldstone report should be discussed.
It is not only the Palestinians who see little chance of peace: last week, Israel's often outspoken foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said there was no chance of a full peace deal with the Palestinians until a "much later stage."
"There are many conflicts in the world that haven't reached a comprehensive solution, and people learned to live with it," he said.
and 10 of the 13 Israeli's killed were soldiers....
let's also not forget 16 WHO health personnel, 14 medics, 5 UN personnel, 4 journalists and 1 World Food Programme contractor were also killed
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
This just sounds like excuses to me. It's no different from saying that the Jewish partisan groups and French resistance in WWII were partly responsible for the crimes of the Nazis and the occupation of Europe.
As for provocation, Israel needs no provocation. The Israeli leadership had planned the attack on Gaza about one year before the IDF broke the ceasefire on November 5th 2008 by carrying out an incursion deep inside Gaza and murdering 6 Palestinians.
It also needs no provocation in continuing to build illegal Jewish-only settlements.
2 things:
reborn, the town that takes the most rocket attacks is sderot but ask yourself how sderot was founded. it used to be called najd, Palestinians lived there....until the Israeli's drove them out, bulldozed down their homes and built sderot there. in fact
so, while rocket attacks is bad you can't say it's directed at innocent people when those 'innocent' people are living on stolen land
also, not sure about the numbers for all the settlements but during the Oslo years just in the West Bank Israeli settlements doubled adding 250,000 new homes.
and it wasn't just that Sharon visited that set it off, it was the fact that he 'visited' with a 100 or so heavily armed IDF and if i recall correctly, wasn't it during some holy day for muslims?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
i never said they had a moral right to attack civilians, in fact i said i thought they were bad, not sure how saying something is bad equates to 'they have a moral right to do it'. however, i think the rocket attacks is a REACTION. they have suffered through this for decades and probably feel desperate and like it's either fight back anyway they can or be trampled on. maybe they feel since the Israeli's are moving onto land that is not there's and were told to give back they don't find that elderly man that innocent?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Well, I think you're right, in that many Palestinians probably do not view non-combantant Isrealis as civilians at all. There are Isrealis with similar views of Palestinians. Extremist views on both sides polarize, demonize, and encourage black-and-white definitions of "enemy", which is why the conflict continues to percolate. I also think you're right to use the term reaction ... Only thing is, there is not a linear cause-and-effect relationship here anymore. Its now a cycle of action and reaction. I have long wondered what would happen to the U.S. position on this issue if extremism within the Palestinian community were to grow weaker. I don't mean the Palestinians ceasing to defend themselves against incursions onto their territory, I mean groups like Hamas folding and being replaced by moderates. People who are willing to work with the West instead of casting themselves in an adversarial role. While I do think Obama has been dragging his feet, how easy is it to do so when he can point to people like Hamas and say "See? Why should we push the Isrealis on this issue?".
Jewish resistance was effective because it had the support of the west and everyone knew the nazi's were wrong. they also knew that the enemy they faced was it... if they beat the nazis, the only response was going to come from the nazis. nobody is helping the palestinians and they fight back under the constant threat that even if they land a good blow on israel, the us will come to israel's aid. they're all alone going up against a tyranny backed by a superpower. the jewish resistance was one of many underground groups fighting a clearly evil regime that all the world's superpowers were also united against. it's not really a surprise that the palestinians aren't have the same success as jewish resistance fighters in ww2.
the flipside to this is what would happen on this issue if the us refused to support israel anymore... no more military aid, no more blocking un votes to hold israel accountable... why should palestine have to roll over and play nice and just hope the US comes to its senses and helps them out? that's kind of a gamble on their part, we've never been too kind to the muslim world before. seems the better solution is for us to change our position and stop meddling in the affairs of the middle easy and let palestine and israel settle their own differences.
Well, what do you think will happen if they continue along this particular path? Less death overall, or more? Fewer dead Palestinian civilians the next time Isreal gets an excuse to launch a military foray, or more? Less sympathy from people outside of the Middle East, or more? What's more important here, "being right" and continuing the violence, or trying a different tactic that might be more effective? I won't dispute your point around the West changing its policies and taking a more hands-off approach, although the U.S. is in a unique position to maybe do some good (i.e., push Israel harder on a 2-state resolution, if you want to call it that).
Also, whoever said that Hamas hurts the Palestinian cause more than it helps it clearly does not know much about the issue other than what they see in the media. I am no Hamas supporter, but I do know that the overwhelming majority of their money goes to social programs. I do know that it is the international community who has chosen to isolate Hamas and thereby the Palestinian people who democratically elected Hamas in the election that was at the insistence of the Western powers. Also reborn, this is not a cycle of action and reaction. I know it sounds smarter saying that, but it's not. Israel has the sole power to end this conflict when they stop being greedy but they choose not to. If Israel were to simply abide by international law then this issue would be solved (for the most part, after that it's just logistical stuff but people with causes that involves violence will lose support). You act as if all Palestinians are just finding an excuse to go after Jews. We all know that the Palestinians are simply just trying to fight with whatever they had. The Palestinians have been terrorized for over 60 years, and you want them to stop fighting back now? The Americans, and people in the international community in general have had over 60 years to see the Israelis terrorize the Palestinians, and yet we have done nothing about it. 60+ years, that's a long fucking time. So tell me, why should the Palestinians just NOW all of a sudden, find hope? And say, "ok, clearly we don't have to retaliate, we just have to show that we are the oppressed people. I mean, of course after 60 years they've been unable to see that, but maybe...." it makes no sense for the Palestinians to simply sit back and be forced to take all of this from the Israelis--the inhumane blockade that limits basic food, medicine, and living supplies, the settlements that take Jewish extremists and put them near Palestinians' homes where they are treated horribly by them and are given their own resources, such as water, etc, and of course the fact that they have been massacring them, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or wherever, thousands upon thousands are getting massacred, and yet somehow our media and politicians and even our people can't seem to get it into their head that MAYBE, just maybe, it is Israel that has been oppressing these people with their military might, not the Palestinians oppressing them with some homemade fertilizer bottle rockets.
Probably more at first, but less overall. If the US withdrew its support, Israel would have to temper their responses. They know they have a blank check to do as they please right now and no one is going to do anything about it. But if they went into overdrive and the US wasn't willing to protect them, they know they'd be in trouble. They'd face the wrath of the Muslim world and even Europe. The US is the only country standing up for them and shielding them.
And if the playing field was levelled and Palestine was able to really put a hurt on Israel, they might start thinking about what it costs them in lives, violence, and international condemnation to continue their current policies. But right now, they have no reason to change. We protect them from any sort of international sanction against them, we keep our western allies from being too loud about their abuses, and we guarantee that the fight is so one-sided that Palestine is never going to be able to cause that much damage... just enough to give them excuses to respond.
I don't think Palestine has anything to gain from a cessation of hostilities. Israel could just start moving them further out and nobody will lift a finger to help them because the US won't allow any move to censure Israel and has already classified Palestine as a terrorist threat. I truly believe Palestine could never toss another bomb and we would not change this approach, and if I can believe that, you can guarantee the Palestinians do. Why would they ever think the US would take sides with an Islamic nation or people over their precious ally Israel?