Supporting Hamas in this conflict is destructive, pure and simple. They're not interested in legitimate statehood for Palestine. They just fit neatly into "heroes of resistance" narratives for people watching from across the world.
It's ironic that on one hand you seem to hint that people "across the world" should not play a role by supporting resistance (nevermind that you equate Hamas with resistance in general), but on the other hand you seem to consider yourself important enough to the point where "if people were more willing to support Fatah and condemn Hamas," you would be "more inclined to give them some credit". Oh dancinacrossthewater, how I beg you for your support! Please, tell me, what else should Palestinians do to win your inclinations? Shall we renounce any right to resist an illegal occupation, even though this right is inshrined in international law, such as in the fourth geneva convention? Shall we continue to be massacred by the thousands, by the tax dollars and support of Western governments, without doing anything in return, so that we can have your all important support? Shall we stand up and say, "You know, it's fairly obvious that none of you know much about Hamas, except what you get from western media sources (such as the false claim that they use human shields), but we condemn them because you don't like them! Please come to our rescue, O dancinacrossthewater!"
How about people in the West do the Palestinians a favor, if you truly sympathize with their struggle: 1) acknowledge that the root of this conflict is the illegal Israeli occupation, and that any resistance to it, including from Hamas is simply a by-product of this illegal occupation that only exists due to the support of your governments; 2) stay the fuck out of the business of Palestinians and their methods of resistance. International law grants Palestinians the right to resist the illegal and brutal occupation. Quit telling the oppressed how to resist. As this article rightly points out, the alternative to resistance is ANTI-resistance (the article also talks a good deal about your beloved Fatah: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/18666/the-palestinian-resistance-and-its-enemies). Instead, once you acknowledge number 1 and 2, then you can focus your efforts on 3) demand an end to the illegal Israeli occupation, which is all Palestinian resistance movements have called for. They have not called for killing the Jews, they have not called for Israelis to leave the land. They have simply called for the 3 rights that I mentioned before. If violence against Israelis continues after Israel grants Palestinians equal rights, ends the occupation, and allows Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes, then I will be the first to condemn it. Until then, let's stick to the facts on the ground, the historical record, and how to address the root problem, rather than equivocate between oppressor and oppressed.
I have to share this story. Someone, NOT on this board called me anti-Semite. What was his logic? He said because, and here's where I almost shit my pants from laughing so hard, MLK made a comment about,"if you don't support Zionism, then that makes you an anti-Semite." That is what I was told. So I guess all the people who dnt support Zionism are anti-Semites even tho Arabs are Semites to. Awesome
I said more Palestinians died in the Syrian civil war than in Gaza over the last year. That's not deflection, that's a fact. It doesn't excuse what Israel's doing, but if you only get worked up about Palestinians when something happens in Gaza, you're full of shit
So no response to my posts responding to your bullshit article? Other than the lies in that article and the outrageous lie about 133.000 Palestinians dead in the Syrian civil war (which would mean more Palestinians died than Syrians), you've contributed nothing substantive to this discussion.
I said more Palestinians died in the Syrian civil war than in Gaza over the last year. That's not deflection, that's a fact. It doesn't excuse what Israel's doing, but if you only get worked up about Palestinians when something happens in Gaza, you're full of shit
I know you did, and they haven't, as I've already demonstrated.
At some point even the worst things have to be let go of. Otherwise there's no hope for going forward
Fair enough - I get a bit prickly when "get over it" is applied to such heaviness. Of course one should try to learn, heal and evolve from it but looking back at history isn't tantamount to living in the past. I'll never lose sight of what my family went through and lost, and know I'm here today because of that horrific time.
Continue to speak out!
(and I rarely look at or care about the number of one's posts)
i just look at the number of posts by the poster, yes im profiling
Can't do that,some peeps been members a real long time and don't post a lot.Others post all the time but are new.Cant really work with the post numbers
At some point even the worst things have to be let go of. Otherwise there's no hope for going forward
Fair enough - I get a bit prickly when "get over it" is applied to such heaviness. Of course one should try to learn, heal and evolve from it but looking back at history isn't tantamount to living in the past. I'll never lose sight of what my family went through and lost, and know I'm here today because of that horrific time.
Continue to speak out!
(and I rarely look at or care about the number of one's posts)
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
I said more Palestinians died in the Syrian civil war than in Gaza over the last year. That's not deflection, that's a fact. It doesn't excuse what Israel's doing, but if you only get worked up about Palestinians when something happens in Gaza, you're full of shit
So no response to my posts responding to your bullshit article? Other than the lies in that article and the outrageous lie about 133.000 Palestinians dead in the Syrian civil war (which would mean more Palestinians died than Syrians), you've contributed nothing substantive to this discussion.
If you can't see from even the last two or three pages of this thread that ethnicities on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict contain really traumatic histories and the only way forward is to attempt to find some common ground EVEN THOUGH Israel is currently the oppressor, I don't know what to tell you man. Your single-minded attack on Israel just isn't productive and won't lead to anything positive...it seems like you're not interested in any kind of resolution.
There's a good starting point actually - what would a resolution to the conflict look like for you - in Israel/Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, to start with 3 areas in the region where civilian rights are being violated. Please address all 3 areas and not just Israel/Palestine.
As far as this business of telling each other "You're full of shit"... Take it, Adrian:
Cronauer: "Now, we got a special situation right now. Okay, there's a Puerto Rican waitress. She brings you a little thing of red soup. She got some tomato soup. Oh, she slips, she spills it on your brand new gaberdine pants that you paid more than a color TV for. You're a little angry, so you say to her... Minh?" Vietnamese Student Minh: "Uh, look what you did and bleepdamn it and stupid and crap." Vietnamese Student: "That's stupid. You don't call someone crap." Tuan: "No, you step on crap. You don't call it to a person." Vietnamese Student: "You can step on crap. I know you can." Vietnamese Student: "They can be full of bleep. He said." Cronauer: "No, no. You see, you step in bleep, you can be full of crap." Vietnamese Student: "I'm pretty sure you can step in crap. I once saw it in a French movie." Vietnamese Student: "How can some person look like a bleep? It's impossible." Cronauer: "I think... okay, we can stop with the debate on the great ca-ca right now. "
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
I said more Palestinians died in the Syrian civil war than in Gaza over the last year. That's not deflection, that's a fact. It doesn't excuse what Israel's doing, but if you only get worked up about Palestinians when something happens in Gaza, you're full of shit
So no response to my posts responding to your bullshit article? Other than the lies in that article and the outrageous lie about 133.000 Palestinians dead in the Syrian civil war (which would mean more Palestinians died than Syrians), you've contributed nothing substantive to this discussion.
If you can't see from even the last two or three pages of this thread that ethnicities on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict contain really traumatic histories and the only way forward is to attempt to find some common ground EVEN THOUGH Israel is currently the oppressor, I don't know what to tell you man. Your single-minded attack on Israel just isn't productive and won't lead to anything positive...it seems like you're not interested in any kind of resolution.
There's a good starting point actually - what would a resolution to the conflict look like for you - in Israel/Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, to start with 3 areas in the region where civilian rights are being violated. Please address all 3 areas and not just Israel/Palestine.
Who do you think you are? You think you can keep demanding other people to spend their time addressing your questions and lies, while you disregard them and come back with bullshit responses devoid of any relevance to the discussion at hand? No, we are done here unless you actually want to respond to what I wrote to you.
Here's another distressing article published today about ISIS in Iraq and what they're doing to the Kurds there. The whole article is important, but, please note the following quote:
There’s barely any public awareness of the unfolding disaster in northwestern Iraq, let alone a campaign of international support for the Yazidis—or for the Christians who have been driven out of Mosul or the Sunni Arabs who don’t want to live under the tyranny of ISIS. The front-page news continues to be the war in Gaza, a particular Western obsession whether one’s views are pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace, or pro-plague-on-both-houses. Nothing that either side has done in that terrible conflict comes close to the routine brutality of ISIS.
Karim couldn’t help expressing bitterness about this. “I don’t see any attention from the rest of the world,” he said. “In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, ‘Save Gaza, save Gaza.’ ”
A humanitarian crisis that could turn into a genocide is taking place right now in the mountains of northwestern Iraq. It hasn’t made the front page, because the place and the people are obscure, and there’s a lot of other horrible news to compete with. I’ve learned about it mainly because the crisis has upended the life of someone I wrote about in the magazine several weeks ago.
Last Sunday, Karim woke up around 7:30 A.M., after coming home late the night before. He was about to have breakfast when his phone rang—a friend was calling to see how he was doing. Karim is a Yazidi, a member of an ancient religious minority in Iraq. Ethnically, he’s Kurdish. An engineer and a father of three young children, Karim spent years working for the U.S. Army in his area, then for an American medical charity. He’s been waiting for months to find out whether the U.S. government will grant him a Special Immigrant Visa because of his service, and because of the danger he currently faces.
Karim is from a small town north of the district center, Sinjar, between Mosul and the Syrian border. Sinjar is a historic Yazidi area with an Arab minority. Depending on who’s drawing the map, Sinjar belongs to either the northernmost part of Iraq or the westernmost part of Kurdistan. Since June, when extremist fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham captured Mosul, they’ve been on the outskirts of Sinjar, facing off against a small number of Kurdish peshmerga militiamen. ISIS regards Yazidis as devil worshippers, and its fighters have been executing Yazidi men who won’t convert to Islam on the spot, taking away the women as jihadi brides. So there were many reasons why a friend might worry about Karim.
“I don’t know,” Karim said. “My situation is O.K.” “No, it’s not O.K.!” his friend said. “Sinjar is under the control of ISIS.”
Karim had not yet heard this calamitous news. “I’ll call some friends and get back to you,” he said.
But the cell network was jammed, so Karim walked to his father’s house. His father told him that thousands of people from Sinjar were headed their way, fleeing north through the mountains to get out of Iraq and into Kurdistan. It suddenly became clear that Karim would have to abandon his home and escape with his family.
ISIS had launched its attack on Sinjar during the night. Peshmerga militiamen were outgunned—their assault rifles against the extremists’ captured fifty-caliber guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, anti-aircraft weapons, and armored vehicles. The Kurds began to run out of ammunition, and those who could retreated north toward Kurdistan. By dawn, the extremists were pouring into town. Later, ISIS posted triumphant photos on Twitter: bullet-riddled corpses of peshmerga in the streets and dirt fields; an ISIS fighter aiming his pistol at the heads of five men lying face down on the ground; Arab locals who stayed in Sinjar jubilantly greeting the new occupiers.
Karim had time to do just one thing: burn all the documents that connected him to America—photos of him posing with Army officers, a CD from the medical charity—in case he was stopped on the road by militants or his house was searched. He watched the record of his experience during the period of the Americans in Iraq turn to ash, and felt nothing except the urge to get to safety.
By 9:30 A.M., Karim and his extended family were crowded into his brother’s car and his father’s pickup truck. They’d had no time to pack, and for the drive through the heat of the desert they took nothing but water, bread, canned milk for Karim’s two-year-old son, and their AK-47s. At first, Karim’s father refused to go along. A stubborn man, he said, “Let them kill me in my town, but I will never leave it.” Fortunately, the father’s paralyzed cousin, who had been left behind by his family, pleaded with him, and at the last minute the two old men joined the exodus. Karim’s twenty or so family members were the last to get out of the area by car, and they joined a massive traffic jam headed northwest. Thousands of other Yazidi families had to flee on foot into the mountains: “They couldn’t leave. They didn’t know how to leave. They waited too long to leave,” Karim said.
Karim drove in a convoy of two hundred and fifty or three hundred cars. They stuck together for safety. The group decided against taking the most direct route to Kurdistan, which would have taken them through the Arab border town of Rabiya. ISIS wasn’t the only danger—Yazidi Kurds have come to regard Sunni Arabs generally as a threat. So they drove across the border at an unmarked point into Syria, where Kurdish rebels—who form one side in the complex Syrian civil war—were in control of the area. The rebels waved the convoy on, while Syrian Arab villagers stared or took videos with their mobile phones. A relative of Karim’s happened to be a cigarette smuggler and knew the way across the desert once the roads disappeared. (“Everyone and everything has his day,” Karim told me.) The undercarriage of Karim’s car began to break off in pieces. They drove for hours through Syria, crossed back into Iraq, and shortly afterward reached a checkpoint into Kurdistan, where the line of cars was so long that they had to wait for hours more. It wasn’t until nightfall, nearly twelve hours after they had fled their home, that Karim and his family reached the Kurdish town of Dohuk, where he happened to have a brother who gave them shelter in his small apartment.
“Compared with other people here, I’m in heaven,” Karim said by phone from Dohuk. “Some are in camps for refugees. It’s very hot and very hard. We are safe, but thousands of families are in the mountains. Thousands.”
Karim heard that one young man had been executed by ISIS for no reason other than being Yazidi. A friend of Karim’s was hiding in the mountains, running low on supplies, and out of battery power in his phone. Another friend, an Arab (“He is not a religion guy, he’s open-minded, it doesn’t matter if you’re Christian or Yazidi,” Karim said), had stayed in Sinjar and was trapped in his home. Now ISIS was going house to house, with information provided by locals, looking for Iraqi soldiers and police, for people with money, for Kurds. They had already taken away the friend’s brother, a police officer. No one knows for sure how many people ISIS has killed since the attack on Sinjar. Karim heard that it is many hundreds.
Prince Tahseen Said, “the world leader of the Yazidis,” has issued an appeal to Kurdish, Iraqi, Arab, and European leaders, as well as to Ban Ki-moon and Barack Obama. It reads: “I ask for aid and to lend a hand and help the people of Sinjar areas and its affiliates and villages and complexes which are home to the people of the Yazidi religion. I invite [you] to assume [your] humanitarian and nationalistic responsibilities towards them and help them in their plight and the difficult conditions in which they live today.”
It’s hard to know what, if anything, is left of the humanitarian responsibilities of the international community. The age of intervention is over, killed in large part by the Iraq war. But justifiable skepticism about the use of military force seems also to have killed off the impulse to show solidarity with the helpless victims of atrocities in faraway places. There’s barely any public awareness of the unfolding disaster in northwestern Iraq, let alone a campaign of international support for the Yazidis—or for the Christians who have been driven out of Mosul or the Sunni Arabs who don’t want to live under the tyranny of ISIS. The front-page news continues to be the war in Gaza, a particular Western obsession whether one’s views are pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace, or pro-plague-on-both-houses. Nothing that either side has done in that terrible conflict comes close to the routine brutality of ISIS.
Karim couldn’t help expressing bitterness about this. “I don’t see any attention from the rest of the world,” he said. “In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, ‘Save Gaza, save Gaza.’ ”
Yesterday, a senior U.S. official told me that the Obama Administration is contemplating an airlift, coördinated with the United Nations, of humanitarian supplies by C-130 transport planes to the Yazidis hiding in the Sinjar mountains. There are at least twenty thousand and perhaps as many as a hundred thousand of them, including some peshmerga militiamen providing a thin cover of protection. The U.N. has reported that dozens of children have died of thirst in the heat. ISIS controls the entrance to the mountains. Iraqi helicopters have dropped some supplies, including food and water, but the refugees are hard to find and hard to reach.
It was encouraging to learn that humanitarian supplies might be on the way, but we always seem to be at least a step behind as ISIS rolls over local forces and consolidates power. ISIS is not Al Qaeda. It operates like an army, taking territory, creating a state. The aim of the Sinjar operation seems to be control of the Mosul Dam, the largest dam in Iraq, which provides electricity to Mosul, Baghdad, and much of the country. According to one expert, if ISIS takes the dam, which is located on the Tigris River, it would have the means to put Mosul under thirty metres of water, and Baghdad under five. Other nearby targets could include the Kurdish cities of Erbil and Dohuk. Karim reported that residents of Dohuk, inundated with refugees, felt not just a sense of responsibility for Sinjar but also alarm, and that they were stocking up on supplies in case of an attack.
One way to protect the innocent and hurt those who are terrorizing them would be for the U.S. to launch air strikes on ISIS positions. That option has been discussed within the administration since the fall of Mosul, in June, but it runs against President Obama’s foreign-policy tendencies. “The President’s first instinct is, ‘Let’s help them to do it,’ ” the official told me. “The minute we do something, it changes the game.” This time, unlike in Syria, it isn’t hard to figure out how to “help them to do it”: send arms to the Kurds, America’s only secular-minded, pluralistic Muslim allies in the region, and the only force in the area with the means and the will to protect thousands of lives. (Dexter Filkins wrote, on Monday, about the possibility of American military aid to the Kurds.) Perhaps the U.S., Europe, and the U.N. can’t or won’t prevent genocide in northwestern Iraq, but the Kurds can. The fact that the peshmerga were outgunned by ISIS and ran out of ammunition in Sinjar says that we are a step behind on this front, too. According to the Times, Washington has turned down Kurdish requests for American weapons for fear of alienating and undermining Iraq’s central government in Baghdad.
It seems delusional to imagine that there is such a thing as an Iraqi central government that should be given priority over stopping ISIS and preventing a massacre. That dream of the American project in Iraq is gone. But perhaps the Obama Administration is being more realistic. Yesterday, I also learned that the U.S. is, in fact, sending arms to the Kurds—just not openly. This was even more welcome news, though it’s too bad that the weapons didn’t reach the peshmerga in time to defend Sinjar. The U.S. Joint Operation Center in Erbil is helping peshmerga ground troops and the Iraqi air force to coordinate attacks on ISIS, providing intelligence from the sky. It’s a breakthrough that the Kurds and the Iraqis are cooperating at all. “For the moment,” the senior official said. “And it could all fall apart, because it’s lightning in a bottle.”
The official said that peshmerga forces are organizing to retake Sinjar. Karim heard the same thing in Dohuk, and he said that he wants to be in the first group that returns to his hometown. Meanwhile, he’s volunteering with the American medical charity he used to work for, helping other refugees in Dohuk. He told his children that they’re on an extended vacation in Kurdistan.
This is a situation that deserves more attention than its getting. You can argue that I'm only bringing it up to deflect from Israel, but at least I'm bringing it up. If the situations in Northeast Iraq (again, this was published today) and Syria received equal attention to what's going on in Gaza (so not that Gaza would be under less scrutiny) I'd be glad. Israel would likely feel more compelled to take international criticism seriously if it didn't feel so regularly singled out.
Again, I'm equally interested in reducing humanitarian disasters in different hot zones. I'm not sure if you are.
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride. Backseat lover, I have to say that it's nice you want peace and all, but do you have an actual constructive method with which we can reach peace other than "love each other" (which sounds like you plagiarized Gob from arrested development)? We haven't been spending this thread just yelling insults and curses, we have actually been discussing the deep history of this conflict and trying to explain the very legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. So when you reduce the conflict to "tribal warfare" and say things like "both sides are to blame" without really investigating and researching this issue, who do you think you are helping except for the oppressor? Is this what you were saying during the apartheid regime in South Africa? I don't think history would have judged you well if that were the case.
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
Backseat lover, I have to say that it's nice you want peace and all, but do you have an actual constructive method with which we can reach peace other than "love each other" (which sounds like you plagiarized Gob from arrested development)? We haven't been spending this thread just yelling insults and curses, we have actually been discussing the deep history of this conflict and trying to explain the very legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. So when you reduce the conflict to "tribal warfare" and say things like "both sides are to blame" without really investigating and researching this issue, who do you think you are helping except for the oppressor? Is this what you were saying during the apartheid regime in South Africa? I don't think history would have judged you well if that were the case.
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
I don't see how you can claim Syria isn't relevant.
This is a situation that deserves more attention than its getting. You can argue that I'm only bringing it up to deflect from Israel, but at least I'm bringing it up. If the situations in Northeast Iraq (again, this was published today) and Syria received equal attention to what's going on in Gaza (so not that Gaza would be under less scrutiny) I'd be glad. Israel would likely feel more compelled to take international criticism seriously if it didn't feel so regularly singled out.
Again, I'm equally interested in reducing humanitarian disasters in different hot zones. I'm not sure if you are.
Your sources are trash and simply reveal how poorly you understand the Middle East. The way that nonsensical article speaks about the Iraqi social and political landscape sounds like it came straight out of some toolish DC rightwing think tank. You've contributed nothing to this thread but lies and bullshit articles, while your tactics to defend Israel are very clear. The article blaming the conflict on Hamas already showed your true intentions, and it also displayed your poor lack of understanding regarding the history of the conflict, and the Middle East in general if I'm being perfectly honest. I mean seriously, you're telling me Israel would give a shit if it didn't feel "singled out"? What kind of propaganda is this? Did they care what anyone thought when they expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948? Did they care when they shot Palestinians by the thousands in the 1950's when they tried to cross the borer simply to go back to check on their homes? Did they care when they expelled a further 400,000 in 1967? Or when they set up the checkpoints and the separation wall? Or when they invaded Lebanon and killed tens of thousands in a matter of a couple of months? Did the world care for that matter? What'd they do to stop it?
Your arguments are devoid of reality - And the thing is, I wouldn't even mind if you'd at least engage me in discussion, but instead you are trolling by constantly posting other articles, bullshit statistics (I still can't get over the 130,000 Palestinians dead in Syria, and you wrote it more than once which is just HYSTERICAL), and ignoring any calls to discuss while you demand people address all your ridiculous questions. Next...
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
Backseat lover, I have to say that it's nice you want peace and all, but do you have an actual constructive method with which we can reach peace other than "love each other" (which sounds like you plagiarized Gob from arrested development)? We haven't been spending this thread just yelling insults and curses, we have actually been discussing the deep history of this conflict and trying to explain the very legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. So when you reduce the conflict to "tribal warfare" and say things like "both sides are to blame" without really investigating and researching this issue, who do you think you are helping except for the oppressor? Is this what you were saying during the apartheid regime in South Africa? I don't think history would have judged you well if that were the case.
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
I don't see how you can claim Syria isn't relevant. To a discussion on Israeli injustices, which the US government sponsors?
I am trying to talk to you...I think Israel has done lots wrong. You just don't seem interested in any viewpoint that's doesn't begin and end with Israel as the sole source of trouble in the Middle East. And that's just not true.
I mean, do you think Hamas has done anything wrong at all? How about ISIS?
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
Backseat lover, I have to say that it's nice you want peace and all, but do you have an actual constructive method with which we can reach peace other than "love each other" (which sounds like you plagiarized Gob from arrested development)? We haven't been spending this thread just yelling insults and curses, we have actually been discussing the deep history of this conflict and trying to explain the very legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. So when you reduce the conflict to "tribal warfare" and say things like "both sides are to blame" without really investigating and researching this issue, who do you think you are helping except for the oppressor? Is this what you were saying during the apartheid regime in South Africa? I don't think history would have judged you well if that were the case.
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
What exactly do you have to add now, other than reiterating your stance over and over?
BTW, this is NOT A DEBATE THREAD, this thread is about being anti-war, pro-peace, pro-understanding, and everything else Eddie Vedder has said which is still being overlooked here.
I honestly want you to stop thinking about the situation as you and all the other finger-pointers have been, and start thinking about resolution. Resolution. Do you really think that that force on the Israeli govt will cause peace? Has war ever caused peace? Think differently, for bob's sake. Question yourself. Question your pride and why being right in all of this is more important than peace for the people of Palestine and Israel.
Me saying that we got to get over ourselves and actually work with each other to solve these complicated issues always go unnoticed. Because no one wants to hear that. No one wants to really think about it. Because the blame game, the anger... That's much more interesting (to the few).
By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
Backseat lover, I have to say that it's nice you want peace and all, but do you have an actual constructive method with which we can reach peace other than "love each other" (which sounds like you plagiarized Gob from arrested development)? We haven't been spending this thread just yelling insults and curses, we have actually been discussing the deep history of this conflict and trying to explain the very legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. So when you reduce the conflict to "tribal warfare" and say things like "both sides are to blame" without really investigating and researching this issue, who do you think you are helping except for the oppressor? Is this what you were saying during the apartheid regime in South Africa? I don't think history would have judged you well if that were the case.
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
What exactly do you have to add now, other than reiterating your stance over and over?
BTW, this is NOT A DEBATE THREAD, this thread is about being anti-war, pro-peace, pro-understanding, and everything else Eddie Vedder has said which is still being overlooked here.
I honestly want you to stop thinking about the situation as you and all the other finger-pointers have been, and start thinking about resolution. Resolution. Do you really think that that force on the Israeli govt will cause peace? Has war ever caused peace? Think differently, for bob's sake. Question yourself. Question your pride and why being right in all of this is more important than peace for the people of Palestine and Israel.
Me saying that we got to get over ourselves and actually work with each other to solve these complicated issues always go unnoticed. Because no one wants to hear that. No one wants to really think about it. Because the blame game, the anger... That's much more interesting.
First of all, this is a thread meant for a discussion, it's not Woodstock. If the mods wish to close it, they can do so at any moment. So far, the discussion has been allowed to continue. Secondly: The Palestinians actually don't just want peace. Many of those languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan have "peace". But what they need is justice. And justice means righting the wrong that was done. They aren't allowed to go back to their homes. Those living inside historic Palestine are subject to apartheid like conditions. The way to peace is by getting the international community, including you, to force Israel - the oppressor and occupier - to end their occupation. Why do you automatically assume that this means a call for war? What exactly do you have to disagree with here?
I am trying to talk to you...I think Israel has done lots wrong. You just don't seem interested in any viewpoint that's doesn't begin and end with Israel as the sole source of trouble in the Middle East. And that's just not true.
I mean, do you think Hamas has done anything wrong at all? How about ISIS?
Come on, who are you fooling, I've debated this topic with many people before. You posted an article and demanded someone respond. I did and then you ignored it and demanded someone respond to other questions, and so on. You keep playing a game trying to distract people, that's not a discussion. It's also why I'm done responding to your articles unless you want to talk about something substantive. Trying to bring isis into this discussion is just a lame attempt to whitewash Israeli crimes.
Comments
classic
"he who forgets will be destined to remember"
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
There's a good starting point actually - what would a resolution to the conflict look like for you - in Israel/Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, to start with 3 areas in the region where civilian rights are being violated. Please address all 3 areas and not just Israel/Palestine.
Cronauer: "Now, we got a special situation right now. Okay, there's a Puerto Rican waitress. She brings you a little thing of red soup. She got some tomato soup. Oh, she slips, she spills it on your brand new gaberdine pants that you paid more than a color TV for. You're a little angry, so you say to her... Minh?"
Vietnamese Student Minh: "Uh, look what you did and bleepdamn it and stupid and crap."
Vietnamese Student: "That's stupid. You don't call someone crap."
Tuan: "No, you step on crap. You don't call it to a person."
Vietnamese Student: "You can step on crap. I know you can."
Vietnamese Student: "They can be full of bleep. He said."
Cronauer: "No, no. You see, you step in bleep, you can be full of crap."
Vietnamese Student: "I'm pretty sure you can step in crap. I once saw it in a French movie."
Vietnamese Student: "How can some person look like a bleep? It's impossible."
Cronauer: "I think... okay, we can stop with the debate on the great ca-ca right now. "
There’s barely any public awareness of the unfolding disaster in northwestern Iraq, let alone a campaign of international support for the Yazidis—or for the Christians who have been driven out of Mosul or the Sunni Arabs who don’t want to live under the tyranny of ISIS. The front-page news continues to be the war in Gaza, a particular Western obsession whether one’s views are pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace, or pro-plague-on-both-houses. Nothing that either side has done in that terrible conflict comes close to the routine brutality of ISIS.
Karim couldn’t help expressing bitterness about this. “I don’t see any attention from the rest of the world,” he said. “In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, ‘Save Gaza, save Gaza.’ ”
A humanitarian crisis that could turn into a genocide is taking place right now in the mountains of northwestern Iraq. It hasn’t made the front page, because the place and the people are obscure, and there’s a lot of other horrible news to compete with. I’ve learned about it mainly because the crisis has upended the life of someone I wrote about in the magazine several weeks ago.
Last Sunday, Karim woke up around 7:30 A.M., after coming home late the night before. He was about to have breakfast when his phone rang—a friend was calling to see how he was doing. Karim is a Yazidi, a member of an ancient religious minority in Iraq. Ethnically, he’s Kurdish. An engineer and a father of three young children, Karim spent years working for the U.S. Army in his area, then for an American medical charity. He’s been waiting for months to find out whether the U.S. government will grant him a Special Immigrant Visa because of his service, and because of the danger he currently faces.
Karim is from a small town north of the district center, Sinjar, between Mosul and the Syrian border. Sinjar is a historic Yazidi area with an Arab minority. Depending on who’s drawing the map, Sinjar belongs to either the northernmost part of Iraq or the westernmost part of Kurdistan. Since June, when extremist fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham captured Mosul, they’ve been on the outskirts of Sinjar, facing off against a small number of Kurdish peshmerga militiamen. ISIS regards Yazidis as devil worshippers, and its fighters have been executing Yazidi men who won’t convert to Islam on the spot, taking away the women as jihadi brides. So there were many reasons why a friend might worry about Karim.
“I don’t know,” Karim said. “My situation is O.K.” “No, it’s not O.K.!” his friend said. “Sinjar is under the control of ISIS.”
Karim had not yet heard this calamitous news. “I’ll call some friends and get back to you,” he said.
But the cell network was jammed, so Karim walked to his father’s house. His father told him that thousands of people from Sinjar were headed their way, fleeing north through the mountains to get out of Iraq and into Kurdistan. It suddenly became clear that Karim would have to abandon his home and escape with his family.
ISIS had launched its attack on Sinjar during the night. Peshmerga militiamen were outgunned—their assault rifles against the extremists’ captured fifty-caliber guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, anti-aircraft weapons, and armored vehicles. The Kurds began to run out of ammunition, and those who could retreated north toward Kurdistan. By dawn, the extremists were pouring into town. Later, ISIS posted triumphant photos on Twitter: bullet-riddled corpses of peshmerga in the streets and dirt fields; an ISIS fighter aiming his pistol at the heads of five men lying face down on the ground; Arab locals who stayed in Sinjar jubilantly greeting the new occupiers.
Karim had time to do just one thing: burn all the documents that connected him to America—photos of him posing with Army officers, a CD from the medical charity—in case he was stopped on the road by militants or his house was searched. He watched the record of his experience during the period of the Americans in Iraq turn to ash, and felt nothing except the urge to get to safety.
By 9:30 A.M., Karim and his extended family were crowded into his brother’s car and his father’s pickup truck. They’d had no time to pack, and for the drive through the heat of the desert they took nothing but water, bread, canned milk for Karim’s two-year-old son, and their AK-47s. At first, Karim’s father refused to go along. A stubborn man, he said, “Let them kill me in my town, but I will never leave it.” Fortunately, the father’s paralyzed cousin, who had been left behind by his family, pleaded with him, and at the last minute the two old men joined the exodus. Karim’s twenty or so family members were the last to get out of the area by car, and they joined a massive traffic jam headed northwest. Thousands of other Yazidi families had to flee on foot into the mountains: “They couldn’t leave. They didn’t know how to leave. They waited too long to leave,” Karim said.
“Compared with other people here, I’m in heaven,” Karim said by phone from Dohuk. “Some are in camps for refugees. It’s very hot and very hard. We are safe, but thousands of families are in the mountains. Thousands.”
Karim heard that one young man had been executed by ISIS for no reason other than being Yazidi. A friend of Karim’s was hiding in the mountains, running low on supplies, and out of battery power in his phone. Another friend, an Arab (“He is not a religion guy, he’s open-minded, it doesn’t matter if you’re Christian or Yazidi,” Karim said), had stayed in Sinjar and was trapped in his home. Now ISIS was going house to house, with information provided by locals, looking for Iraqi soldiers and police, for people with money, for Kurds. They had already taken away the friend’s brother, a police officer. No one knows for sure how many people ISIS has killed since the attack on Sinjar. Karim heard that it is many hundreds.
Prince Tahseen Said, “the world leader of the Yazidis,” has issued an appeal to Kurdish, Iraqi, Arab, and European leaders, as well as to Ban Ki-moon and Barack Obama. It reads: “I ask for aid and to lend a hand and help the people of Sinjar areas and its affiliates and villages and complexes which are home to the people of the Yazidi religion. I invite [you] to assume [your] humanitarian and nationalistic responsibilities towards them and help them in their plight and the difficult conditions in which they live today.”
It’s hard to know what, if anything, is left of the humanitarian responsibilities of the international community. The age of intervention is over, killed in large part by the Iraq war. But justifiable skepticism about the use of military force seems also to have killed off the impulse to show solidarity with the helpless victims of atrocities in faraway places. There’s barely any public awareness of the unfolding disaster in northwestern Iraq, let alone a campaign of international support for the Yazidis—or for the Christians who have been driven out of Mosul or the Sunni Arabs who don’t want to live under the tyranny of ISIS. The front-page news continues to be the war in Gaza, a particular Western obsession whether one’s views are pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace, or pro-plague-on-both-houses. Nothing that either side has done in that terrible conflict comes close to the routine brutality of ISIS.
Karim couldn’t help expressing bitterness about this. “I don’t see any attention from the rest of the world,” he said. “In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, ‘Save Gaza, save Gaza.’ ”
Yesterday, a senior U.S. official told me that the Obama Administration is contemplating an airlift, coördinated with the United Nations, of humanitarian supplies by C-130 transport planes to the Yazidis hiding in the Sinjar mountains. There are at least twenty thousand and perhaps as many as a hundred thousand of them, including some peshmerga militiamen providing a thin cover of protection. The U.N. has reported that dozens of children have died of thirst in the heat. ISIS controls the entrance to the mountains. Iraqi helicopters have dropped some supplies, including food and water, but the refugees are hard to find and hard to reach.
It was encouraging to learn that humanitarian supplies might be on the way, but we always seem to be at least a step behind as ISIS rolls over local forces and consolidates power. ISIS is not Al Qaeda. It operates like an army, taking territory, creating a state. The aim of the Sinjar operation seems to be control of the Mosul Dam, the largest dam in Iraq, which provides electricity to Mosul, Baghdad, and much of the country. According to one expert, if ISIS takes the dam, which is located on the Tigris River, it would have the means to put Mosul under thirty metres of water, and Baghdad under five. Other nearby targets could include the Kurdish cities of Erbil and Dohuk. Karim reported that residents of Dohuk, inundated with refugees, felt not just a sense of responsibility for Sinjar but also alarm, and that they were stocking up on supplies in case of an attack.
It seems delusional to imagine that there is such a thing as an Iraqi central government that should be given priority over stopping ISIS and preventing a massacre. That dream of the American project in Iraq is gone. But perhaps the Obama Administration is being more realistic. Yesterday, I also learned that the U.S. is, in fact, sending arms to the Kurds—just not openly. This was even more welcome news, though it’s too bad that the weapons didn’t reach the peshmerga in time to defend Sinjar. The U.S. Joint Operation Center in Erbil is helping peshmerga ground troops and the Iraqi air force to coordinate attacks on ISIS, providing intelligence from the sky. It’s a breakthrough that the Kurds and the Iraqis are cooperating at all. “For the moment,” the senior official said. “And it could all fall apart, because it’s lightning in a bottle.”
The official said that peshmerga forces are organizing to retake Sinjar. Karim heard the same thing in Dohuk, and he said that he wants to be in the first group that returns to his hometown. Meanwhile, he’s volunteering with the American medical charity he used to work for, helping other refugees in Dohuk. He told his children that they’re on an extended vacation in Kurdistan.
Again, I'm equally interested in reducing humanitarian disasters in different hot zones. I'm not sure if you are.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
Backseat lover, I have to say that it's nice you want peace and all, but do you have an actual constructive method with which we can reach peace other than "love each other" (which sounds like you plagiarized Gob from arrested development)? We haven't been spending this thread just yelling insults and curses, we have actually been discussing the deep history of this conflict and trying to explain the very legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. So when you reduce the conflict to "tribal warfare" and say things like "both sides are to blame" without really investigating and researching this issue, who do you think you are helping except for the oppressor? Is this what you were saying during the apartheid regime in South Africa? I don't think history would have judged you well if that were the case.
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
Keep fighting. It just keeps you spinning your wheels, going absolutely nowhere. No one is really interested in peace for the people when they insist on choosing sides. People would rather spin their wheels than to work for actual progress, solutions and ultimately peace. Because that means actually working together and eating our stupid pride.
well said
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
I don't see how you can claim Syria isn't relevant.
Your arguments are devoid of reality - And the thing is, I wouldn't even mind if you'd at least engage me in discussion, but instead you are trolling by constantly posting other articles, bullshit statistics (I still can't get over the 130,000 Palestinians dead in Syria, and you wrote it more than once which is just HYSTERICAL), and ignoring any calls to discuss while you demand people address all your ridiculous questions. Next...
To a discussion on Israeli injustices, which the US government sponsors?
I mean, do you think Hamas has done anything wrong at all? How about ISIS?
How is it that calling for Israel to dismantle its illegal occupation, for Palestinians to be given equal rights and for the refugees who were kicked out of their homes to be allowed to go back all of a sudden turns into a discussion saying, "what about Syria?" as if it's relevant, and "both sides are at fault" as if somehow the Palestinians are at fault for being under occupation and kicked out of their homes. This miseducated contribution does not lead to peace, it furthers oppression. You've been making the point for 20 pages now that you want peace. We get it. What do you have to add now? At least when we point out Israel's injustices, we are providing context and history, as well as evidence, to our arguments, rather than just spreading misinformation.
What exactly do you have to add now, other than reiterating your stance over and over?
BTW, this is NOT A DEBATE THREAD, this thread is about being anti-war, pro-peace, pro-understanding, and everything else Eddie Vedder has said which is still being overlooked here.
I honestly want you to stop thinking about the situation as you and all the other finger-pointers have been, and start thinking about resolution. Resolution. Do you really think that that force on the Israeli govt will cause peace? Has war ever caused peace? Think differently, for bob's sake. Question yourself. Question your pride and why being right in all of this is more important than peace for the people of Palestine and Israel.
Me saying that we got to get over ourselves and actually work with each other to solve these complicated issues always go unnoticed. Because no one wants to hear that. No one wants to really think about it. Because the blame game, the anger... That's much more interesting (to the few).
BTW, this is NOT A DEBATE THREAD, this thread is about being anti-war, pro-peace, pro-understanding, and everything else Eddie Vedder has said which is still being overlooked here.
I honestly want you to stop thinking about the situation as you and all the other finger-pointers have been, and start thinking about resolution. Resolution. Do you really think that that force on the Israeli govt will cause peace? Has war ever caused peace? Think differently, for bob's sake. Question yourself. Question your pride and why being right in all of this is more important than peace for the people of Palestine and Israel.
Me saying that we got to get over ourselves and actually work with each other to solve these complicated issues always go unnoticed. Because no one wants to hear that. No one wants to really think about it. Because the blame game, the anger... That's much more interesting.
First of all, this is a thread meant for a discussion, it's not Woodstock. If the mods wish to close it, they can do so at any moment. So far, the discussion has been allowed to continue. Secondly:
The Palestinians actually don't just want peace. Many of those languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan have "peace". But what they need is justice. And justice means righting the wrong that was done. They aren't allowed to go back to their homes. Those living inside historic Palestine are subject to apartheid like conditions. The way to peace is by getting the international community, including you, to force Israel - the oppressor and occupier - to end their occupation. Why do you automatically assume that this means a call for war? What exactly do you have to disagree with here?