Gaza ***GRAPHIC PICS***

Last-12-Exit said:

I could care less who started what and when, but it's time for both sides to forget about the past and start over.

Hi Last-12-Exit,
I have some major problems with the sentiment you've expressed here. Before I continue: Are you American? I will assume you are not from Palestine or the Middle East in this post. But I will ask you to try to understand what a Palestinian may think or feel with the sentiment expressed above.

Let us say you are a Palestinian living anywhere in the world: Perhaps you grew up in the West Bank yourself under a brutal occupation. Maybe you have a wife who lives behind the green line (in Israel) that you can never see because Israel does not allow to travel a few miles into their land because of where you were born. Maybe you have a job that takes you hours to get to every day, and to come home every day, because you have to pass through checkpoints. Or you have family that lives behind the illegal wall that Israel built through the West Bank that cuts off villages from each other. And you have to deal with illegal Jewish settlers who come burn your farm just because of the person you were born to be; Perhaps your family lived in what is now Israel during the 1947-1948 ethnic cleansing of the land, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes due to the Zionists seeking to create a "Jewish state" - and you now live in a refugee camp because your family was unable to return to their homes. You have relatives who in the 1950s tried to walk back home and were shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Life in a refugee is all you know, and you pray for the day you can go back home; Maybe you are a child in Gaza - your family was also made refugees in 1947-48 and has gone to Gaza, as nearly 75% of the population living in the Strip are. Maybe you have dreams of going to another country for school, because you're a bright student and won a scholarship to go to Harvard. But you can't go because Israel (along with Egypt) has imposed a brutal land, air and sea siege that has essentially trapped you in one of the most densely populated pieces of land in the world, and you are stuck there. And you have to deal with constant bombardment from the air, land and sea by soldiers, and you know Palestinians personally who were shot for walking "too close" to the border, even though it's still within the limit that Israel has technically allowed for you.

Or maybe you even grew up in the West or elsewhere in the world, but have close family relatives dealing with this on a daily basis.

Would you not ask yourself, as a Palestinian, "why is this happening?" Would you not ask, "why did people do this to us?" Any decent history book has documented well what Zionists did to create the state of Israel, by expelling Palestinians, and what they have been doing since to maintain their control over the land, which includes separating large segments of Palestinian communities from the rest. Any decent history book has documented well the conditions the Palestinians have faced, all due to one basic fact: one dominant side, with one of the largest militaries in the world, will not give us rights that are equal to theirs, who will not allow us to simply return to our homes - all because they want a state that is exclusively theirs. All because it is not enough for all of us to have equal rights - they want the land for themselves.

I ask you, when you look at it through the eyes of the Palestinians, is it as simple as "forgetting who started what and when" - especially given that this "when" is still ongoing? Is it simple to just ignore the past given that Palestinians are still subjected to the same injustices they were subjected to in the past? To "start over", would you not agree, through the Palestinian perspective, they would need for the wrongs inflicted on them to be corrected?

Now, take yourself out of the Palestinian perspective. You're just another human being. Do you not see the humanity in these simple demands of the Palestinian people? To just be equal?

(P.S. We cannot compare the "Palestinian narrative" to the "Zionist narrative". We have to remember something: This is not a double-edged sword. This is a conflict with an oppressed, and an oppressor. We can't ignore the power dynamic between the two parties. We know all too well of many conflicts that included an oppressed and an oppressor. Let's drop the bullshit, and finally treat this issue as one, as it well deserves.)

Byrnzie said:

You're not debating, you're just talking shite.

I guess your right If talking shit is asking for peace,and asking both sides to look in the mirror and come clean with their respective shortcomings.