Jewish Settler Attacks = Terrorism

badbrains said:

JohnnieBeBlue said:

gimmesometruth27 said:

JohnnieBeBlue said:

What good can it bring? How about a stoppage the the 400 rockets that have reigned down on Israel over the past week? Oh, I forgot. That's just a result of "the occupation" so how dare Israel defend its citizens.

it IS a result of the occupation.

what would you do if someone came onto your property, burned your olive grove, took your land, bulldozed your house, jailed your father, and displaced your family?

personally, i would probably want to attack those people. and i would probably die to avenge my family.

Yes, that is a great strategy that is sure to lead to peace. Regardless of whether you'd like to admit it or not, there have been Jews in what is now Israel for over 2000 years. Gaza is not occupied, and for every inch the Israelis have given up, they've only been met with violence in return. If your starting point is that the entire State of Israel is illegitimate, then there really is nothing to talk about at the bargaining table.

Wait, what? Now I'm confused. If Jews have been living there for 2000 years and Palestinians have been living there for 2000 years, how come Israel was "created" 60+ years ago? And how come it says land of Palestine (phalistine) in the bible?

Ya I called them firecrackers cuz that's what they are and you know it. Stop pretending that they're some crazy ass missiles/rockets that are killing Israelis left and right. If they are, then how come the media isn't saying so? Are you now gonna tell us the media is biased against Israel? Or better yet anti-Semitic? Israel has been the ONLY country that has used chemical weapons against the Palestinians in this tragedy. White phosphorus to be exact. Something AGAINST the international law, but then again, when has Israel ever followed or obeyed the law.....rhitorical question.

Actually the bible doesn't refer to the land as Palestine. That name is derived from the name that was imposed on the territory by Rome after the Great Revolt, which took place between 66-70 C.E., which is well after the Bible (Old Testament) was compiled (a few hundred years after).

Calling them firecrackers is a massive understatement. These are long-range rockets that are plenty fatal. The lack of Israeli fatalities is due to a combination of factors, including the relative lack of accuracy of the rockets themselves, but much more importantly the fact that Israel has a well-developed early warning system and an extensive bomb-shelter infrastructure, and to a lesser extent an interception capacity with Iron Dome. But if one of these rockets were to strike an occupied structure they could be plenty fatal.

Just to be clear, I totally disagree with any sort of land operation. I don't think Israel can ignore the rocket fire and do nothing, but a ground assault won't accomplish anything long-term and will entail a lot more risk for the civilian population of Gaza.

Interesting indeed, they were warned. So we can agree that Israel tries to prevent civilian casualties.

Byrnzie said:

JohnnieBeBlue said:

Regardless of whether you'd like to admit it or not, there have been Jews in what is now Israel for over 2000 years. Gaza is not occupied, and for every inch the Israelis have given up, they've only been met with violence in return. If your starting point is that the entire State of Israel is illegitimate, then there really is nothing to talk about at the bargaining table.

Two questions for you:

1. Do you support the illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine?

2. What did Israel 'give up'? Are you talking about their removal of a handful of settlers from Gaza, which were then sent to live in the illegal settlements in the West bank? http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/09/gaza-s10.html "the withdrawal from Gaza is nothing more than a smokescreen to mask Israel’s consolidation of a far more significant land grab of the West Bank, land it has brutally occupied for nearly 40 years in breach of international law and in defiance of countless United Nations resolutions."

Are you referring to the fact that the Israeli's themselves have admitted that the Gaza 'pullout' was just a public relations ploy to enable them to triple settlement construction in the West Bank? http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/top-pm-aide-gaza-plan-aims-to-freeze-the-peace-process-1.136686

Gaza was turned into a virtual prison after the Gaza 'pullout', and the people left to starve. According to Sarah Roy, (Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University), Gaza was "deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution", and "96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.4 million [was left] dependent on humanitarian aid for basic needs." http://electronicintifada.net/content/destroying-gaza/8324

Is that the magnanimous, generous 'giving up' that you're referring to?

1) I support Israel. I don't believe what is happening is ethnic cleansing. That is a gross oversimplification of a complex situation for the purposes of shock and propaganda.

2) What did Israel give up? They were pressured to "remove settlements" just as you and your ilk are always demanding. Did it give more security in Gaza for Israel? I'd say just the opposite. To people like you, everything Israel does is a public relations ploy. Is Gaza a nice place to live? Hardly. Is it a prison as you would like to suggest? Hardly. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/steve-feldman/gaza-prison-or-paradise/

The best and simplest history of the region I've read was recently up on Reddit. It's not perfect, but it's a nice and simple summary for people to appreciate how we got to where we are today. You'll find it's a lot more involved than Byrnzie would like to admit and doesn't just read, "Jews stole land from Arabs and are ethnically cleansing them like Nazis."
Link here : LINK
Ok, I want to start in the 1800s, but we need some catch-up for that...

The Story So Far is that Jewish people lived in what is currently called Palestine a thousand or two years ago, but were conquered by a wide variety of other people and eventually sent into a known-world-wide diaspora. This is why you find Jewish people throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia. The Jewish people are persecuted in most of these places, mostly because they are a minority and tend to keep to themselves, and occasionally take jobs that make other people not like you (e.g., bankers). That's another story though. The Jewish people manage to persevere, though, and consider the Land of Israel to be their homeland to which The Messiah will some day return them.

Around the late-1800s, some Jewish people got tired of waiting for The Messiah, and the Zionist Movement was founded. These were people dedicated to creating a Jewish homeland. Preferably in Israel but they were willing to negotiate. In the early 1900s they established a fund to help this happen.

At the time, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, and this fund was used to buy land (perfectly legally) in Palestine from the people who lived there at the time (the ancestors of modern-day Palestinians but then known simply as "Arabs") and start settlements into which Jewish immigrants were settled. Some of Israel's largest modern cities (such as Tel Aviv) were started around this time.

There was a law at the time stating that a settlement was legal if it was surrounded by a wall and had a watchtower. Jewish people would go over to unclaimed lands at night, and before morning would surround a large area with a wall and build a watchtower. Wham, instant settlement. And they did a lot of this right near Arab lands.

This was perfectly legal at the time, but obviously lead to some friction, as you might imagine. The Muslim Arabs were worried about a lot of Jewish people moving in next door.

In the 1920s, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the newly formed League of Nations declared Palestine to be a British mandate. The British, well aware of the tensions between the Arabs and the Jews, tried to calm things down by simply disallowing Jewish immigration to Palestine. This lead to a lot of illegal immigration - Jewish people would cram into tiny boats and sail in under cover of night, to be met on the shore by established settlers. More overnight settlements popped up, and more tension between the Jews and Arabs, and the Jews and British! The Jewish settlers utilised a lot of terrorist tactics at this time. The whole thing was kinda chaotic.

Bottom line from all this is that the Arabs were worried/mad at the Jews moving into their territory, whereas the Jews believed they were fulfilling their destiny and moving back to their homeland - and were doing it (mostly) legally - buying lands, starting legal settlements, etc - until the British outlawed immigration (but even then, they were buying and settling legally).

After World War II, when the aftermath and absolute horrors of The Holocaust were revealed, the world decided that yeah, maybe the Jewish people should have their own homeland. The Balfour Deceleration, all the way back in 1917, had the British stating their support for establishing a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. The newly formed UN voted on this, and in 1948 the State of Israel declared it's independence.

The very next day, the entire rest of the Middle East started a war against them. They lost.
There were a few more minor wars after that. Then in 1967, there was a major one.

When I say "major", I don't mean by length. It is known in Israel as "The Six-Day War". In it Israel was attacked by seven of it's neighbours, who were thoroughly defeated to such a degree that Israel pushed it's own borders to more "natural" geographical areas - they pushed the border with Syria farther north, taking over the Golan Heights, with Jordan up to the Jordan river, taking over The West Bank and East Jerusalem, and pushed the border with Egypt all the way to the Suez Canal, taking over Gaza and the entire Sinai Peninsula.

So this kinda sucked for the Arabs living in The West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They were now part of Israel.

Israel actually tried to integrate them. Many received full Israeli citizenship, with full rights. the only exception to this was that they were exempt from military service.

This is the part where I turn this into Personal Anecdotes and "I Was There" accounts.
I was born in Israel in the 1970s. I was actually born right after the last "big" war (all the wars after that were 'operations' and 'conflicts'). Until the first Gulf War (1990) I never had to use a bomb shelter (which are a part of every home, or at least every community in Israel).
In fact, by the time I was in my teens, we were using the bomb shelters as storage areas.
And there were Arabs everywhere.

Admittedly, they mostly had what I now would consider menial, labour-intensive jobs. Construction, hauling, gardening. When I was a kid, my perception was that hey, these people that I occasionally hear Adults say we should be afraid of seem nice. This one guy, Daud, worked as a gardener/groundskeeper in my neighbourhood. All the kids loved him and he obviously loved kids. He'd bring us fruit from the village he lived in.

If you'd have asked me when I was 10 or so, I'd have told you that when I'm older I'd probably have Arab neighbours, and my kids would play with their kids, and they'd come over to borrow some sugar and crap like that. Yeah, other Arab countries were The Enemy, but hell, we had peace with Egypt, we had practical peace with Jordan, and "our" Arabs were nice!
Then, in 1987, it all went to hell.

It was one of those things that just escalates out of hand rather than people just sitting down and $%&* talking to each other. There were some problems at a refugee camp, both Arabs and Israelis being killed, then some riots, then an Israeli army truck hit a car, killing four Palestinians, and people decide it was intentional and molotov cocktails start flying.

This is when we started hearing the term "Palestinian", by the way. and by "we" I mean me and the normal population of Israel. This is when they started blocking Palestinians from working and living outside Gaza and the West Bank. This is where we started learning that taking a bus to work might mean dying. This is where fears that should be unreasonable start making people do stupid, stupid things. And you know what? It never got un-stupid. It's been almost 30 years, you'd think some people would remember how well things were going...

ANYway.
Right now, the whole area is a powder-keg. And sadly, there are a LOT of idiots playing around with matches, thinking that when the thing explodes they can go "Hey you started it!" when it doesn't matter who started it when you're both sitting on the damn thing.
There's a lot more to this - proxy wars, set-up-to-fail diplomacy, extremist idiots on both ends. But I think I've ranted for long enough (: I hope this is at least somewhat coherent!

Israel does more to try to prevent civilian deaths than any army in the history of the world. This is well documented.

The Gaza Rules LINK
Israel, unlike Hamas, isn’t trying to kill civilians. It’s taking pains to spare them.

According to many critics, Israel is slaughtering civilians in Gaza. It’s “purposefully wiping out entire families,” says an Arab member of Israel’s parliament. It’s committing “genocide—the murder of entire families,” says Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Iran says Israel has committed “massacres against the defenseless Palestinians.”

The charges are false. By the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.

Israel didn’t choose this fight. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the terrorist organizations that dominate Gaza, claim that Israel provoked the conflict by arresting Hamas members in the
West Bank. But arrests in one territory don’t justify aerial bombardment from another. Israel didn’t hit Gaza until terrorists had fired more than 150 rockets into Israel and had rejected a cease-fire.

Some of the pictures that purport to show devastation from the Israeli strikes are fakes borrowed from other wars. As of Wednesday afternoon, the death count ranged from 30 to 50 or more, depending on where you mark the onset of the conflict. Every death is tragic, and the longer the assault goes on, the higher the toll will go. Still, given that Israel has launched more than 500 airstrikes, you’d have to conclude that either Israel is failing miserably to kill people or, more plausibly, it’s largely trying not to kill them.

Israel’s defense minister admits his forces have targeted “terrorists’ houses” as well as “arms, terror infrastructures, command systems, Hamas institutions, [and] regime buildings.” The houses belong to Hamas military leaders. An Israeli official boasts that “there's not a single Hamas brigade commander that has a home to go back to.” Israel’s legal rationale for targeting these homes is that they were “terror command centers” involved in rocket fire or other “terror activity.” But while Israel has tried to kill commanders in their cars (and has succeeded), it has avoided unannounced strikes on their homes.

The last time Israel targeted buildings in Gaza, a year and a half ago, it used leaflets and phone calls to warn residents to get out beforehand. It also fired flares or low-impact mortars (known as a “knock on the roof”) to signal impending strikes. Human rights groups didn’t accept these measures as protection from legal responsibility, but they did hail them as progress. Israel claims to be applying the same measures today. Hamas and other Palestinian sources confirm that the Israeli military has issued phone warnings to families in the targeted homes.

The worst civilian death toll—seven, at the latest count—occurred in a strike on the Khan Yunis home of a terrorist commander. Hamas calls it a “massacre against women and children.” But residents say the family got both a warning call and a knock on the roof. An Israeli security official says Israeli forces didn’t fire their missile until the family had left the house. The official didn’t understand why some members of the family, and apparently their neighbors, went back inside. The residents say they were trying to “form a human shield.”

Human shields are a difficult problem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Hamas is responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza, because it deliberately sets up rocket launchers and military infrastructure in civilian areas. That excuse is too broad. The low death rate in this week’s airstrikes—and the explanations from Israeli officials as to how the casualty rate has been minimized—show that it’s possible to degrade Hamas’ military assets without killing hundreds of people.

The Khan Yunis scenario is different. There, the human shield was voluntary. According to Ha’aretz, an Israeli officer insisted on Wednesday morning that if other civilians followed this example—responding to prestrike warnings by going onto the roofs to form human shields—Israel wouldn’t be deterred. Maybe the officer was bluffing. But what if this scenario happens again? And what if the would-be martyrs appear on the roof while Israel still has time to avert the strike, which wasn’t the case in Khan Yunis? Would their deaths be homicide? Would they be suicide?

That’s a tough call. But anyone concerned about the deliberate targeting of civilians in this conflict should first look at Hamas. The rocket fire from Gaza into Israel began well before the Israeli assault on Gaza. Initially, the rockets were Islamic Jihad’s idea. But in the last few days, Hamas has joined in with gusto, claiming credit for missiles fired at several Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

Apologists for Hamas argue that its weapons are less precise than Israel’s, so collateral damage is inevitable. That won’t wash. Hamas now has longer-range missiles, known as M-302s or R-160s, that are more precise than its clumsy old Grad rockets. It has been firing the new missiles at cities anyway. Hamas has also flatly rejected the principle of sparing civilians. According to a Hamas spokesman, “All Israelis have now become legitimate targets.”

I’ve criticized Israel for demolishing the West Bank homes of suspected Arab terrorists. That policy is indefensible. But in the Gaza war, it’s clear that Israel has gone to great lengths to minimize civilian deaths. The same can’t be said of Hamas.