Elie Wiesel: Stop Using Kids as Human Shields

cnn

Oh, us westerners sure are naive about other worldviews, or weltanschauungs, of other people.

Elie Wiesel, probably knowing better than most, expressed his disgust with Hamas' manipulation of western media and TV by essentially following a program of:

a) provoke
b) endanger lives of civilians by telling them "not to listen to Israeli propaganda"

So that, despite Israels relentless leaflet dropping in areas where they attack, there are still plenty of "believers" who have decided to stay put.

It's a remarkably effective, albeit, absolutely satanic, strategy, which is working its magic at pulling at our heart strings.


Here's a reality check: yes. Hamas will deny using children as human shields. Yes. Hamas leadership thinks they're super intelligent: didn't you know? They know something we don't know.

So, people like Khaled Meshal will deny endangering Palestinians. But people who - not Muslim - who study Islamic theology, from Al Ghazali, for example, know the mystic bent of Meshals thinking: Allah is everything. All of reality is Allahs. That means you and I, are part of Allah. And since the Quran represents Allahs "word", the Islamic theologians trained to make sense of the Qurans famous non-linear prose are justified in contending that the lives of Palestinians involved in the conflict are subject to becoming "shahids" - whether they want to or not.

This is all a part of the horrifically whacky anti-intellectualism and - hideously anti-empirical mentality - of Islamists. Suicide attacks? Bad? Of course. But extending that concept to include all men, women and children who accept Islam - and to be permitted to use them as "human shields"? Thats #ing repulsive.

And this is why Islamism is an evil we need to pay attention to

Yeah, just forget about who has the military might and who is dropping the bombs, that's not important. How dare they become radicals, how dare they resist. Palestinians are monsters.

And just for the fun, here are some quotes by Wiesel :
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

“Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.”

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”



Is Wiesel a fraud ?

a reply to: gosseyn

I don't wish to argue with you because I can see that your mind is made up. However, it is a fact that while 700,000 people who fled the area due to warnings from arab militia and have not been allowed to return, there were also 1.25 million jews who were expelled from arab countries.

The expelled jews, who also lost their property, are never heard from anymore. Could it be because they went ahead and re-built their lives?

And those arab countries who expelled 1.25 million jews couldn't make room to absorb 700 refugees from the state of Isreal so that they could also rebuild their lives?

Just saying! 60 years is a long long time to just "wait" for the jews to be driven into the sea.

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: Astrocyte

They fight because they have no dignity left.. They have a choice. Die quietly or die fighting. What would you choose?

a reply to: DarknStormy

They could emigrate and rebuild their lives and provide a future for their children. Its an option.

Tired of Control Freaks

So Israel phone people up and warn them that they are going to bomb their house and expect them to pack up and leave everytime. There are always going to be some people for whom their house is their whole life. I've seen interviews of people who said when they received the phone call they went on the roof and refused to move. Who knows what motivates them to do so, whether they were forced to do it by Hamas, or were convinced that it was right, or that it had been an effective strategy for others in the past, or perhaps they are just a desperate people with little else to lose these days...

Either way, if bombs weren't targeted on or near civilians homes, then I'd guess that less civilians would get killed.

originally posted by: TiredofControlFreaks
a reply to: DarknStormy

They could emigrate and rebuild their lives and provide a future for their children. Its an option.

Tired of Control Freaks

The other option is Israel leaving but can you see them doing that?

a reply to: Astrocyte

So essentially what you're saying is all the civilians deaths, especially children, are all Hamas' fault and Israel is completely free from any responsibility of their actions? Even the 4 boys shelled on a beach by Israeli war ships and 6 UN buildings providing refuge for thousands of displaced Palestinians?

A poll was done by the Washington Institute before the Gaza war and you may find the results interesting.

New Palestinian Poll Shows Hardline Views, But Some Pragmatism Too

New survey results show that violence is not a popular option among Palestinians and that Hamas is not benefiting from the current troubles, giving U.S. policymakers some breathing room to concentrate on more urgent crises in Iraq and Syria while backing practical steps to cool tensions.

BUT THE PUBLIC WANTS "POPULAR RESISTANCE," NOT VIOLENCE
Despite continuing tensions over the June 12 kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank and Israel's resulting intensive searches and arrests, the Palestinian public is not turning toward large-scale violence. Rather, on tactical questions of relations with Israel, respondents broadly supported a nonviolent approach. The survey did not ask specifically about the latest kidnapping, which does appear fairly popular among Palestinians judging from traditional and social media content and anecdotal evidence.

In this survey, when asked whether Hamas "should maintain a ceasefire with Israel in both Gaza and the West Bank," a majority (56%) of West Bank respondents and a remarkable 70% of Gazans said yes. Similarly, asked if Hamas should accept Abbas's position that the new unity government renounce violence against Israel, West Bankers were evenly divided, but a majority (57%) of Gazans answered in the affirmative.

Nevertheless, "popular resistance against the occupation" -- such as demonstrations, strikes, marches, mass refusals to cooperate with Israel, and the like -- was seen as having a positive impact by most respondents in both territories: 62% in the West Bank and 73% in Gaza. And in the week since the survey was completed, Israel's shooting of several Palestinians and arrest of hundreds more in the course of searching for the kidnap victims may be turning the Palestinian public in a more actively hostile direction.

Both the kidnapping and a Palestinian hunger strike in Israeli jails have also maintained public attention on the prisoner issue. Asked what Israel could do "to convince Palestinians that it really wants peace," a large plurality picked "release more Palestinian prisoners." That option far outranked the others, each in the 15-20% range: "share Jerusalem as a joint capital," "stop building in settlements beyond the security barrier," or "grant Palestinians greater freedom of movement and crack down on settler attacks."

HAMAS IS NOT GAINING POLITICAL GROUND FROM THE CRISIS
Most striking, and contrary to common misperception, Hamas is not gaining politically from the kidnapping. Asked who should be the president of Palestine in the next two years, a solid plurality in both the West Bank and Gaza named Abbas (30%) or other Fatah-affiliated leaders: Marwan Barghouti (12%), Muhammad Dahlan (10%), Rami Hamdallah (6%), Mustafa Barghouti (4%), Salam Fayyad (2%), or Mahmoud al-Aloul (1%). These findings strongly suggest that the Palestinian public as a whole has little or no desire to carry out any threats to "dissolve" the Palestinian Authority.

In stark contrast, Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal rated a combined total of just 9% support in the West Bank and 15% in Gaza. Another intriguing finding is that Dahlan has significant popular support among Gazans, at 20%. Also notable is that not one of the other old-guard Fatah figures, such as Abu Ala, Nabil Shaath, or Jibril Rajoub, attracted even 1% support in either the West Bank or Gaza.

It appears Hamas' only real power left is intimidation because by the looks of it they don't have believers but rather victims.

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

I don't wish to argue with you because I can see that your mind is made up. However, it is a fact that while 700,000 people who fled the area due to warnings from arab militia and have not been allowed to return, there were also 1.25 million jews who were expelled from arab countries. The expelled jews, who also lost their property, are never heard from anymore. Could it be because they went ahead and re-built their lives?

So the Palestinians have to pay the price for what other Muslim nations did to Jews? What about all the Palestinians who had to flee from their lands when Israel was formed? These people are not allowed to return to their homes but that's ok because of what happened to Jews right?

And those arab countries who expelled 1.25 million jews couldn't make room to absorb 700 refugees from the state of Isreal so that they could also rebuild their lives?

Those Arab countries shouldn't have to absorb what was far more than 700 refugees from the state of Israel. They should have been allowed to keep their lands instead of giving it up to people who had no rights to the land.

Just saying! 60 years is a long long time to just "wait" for the jews to be driven into the sea.

It looks like you won't have to wait much longer because the Palestinians specifically those from Gaza will be driven into the sea because that is the only place left for them to go. Also the Jews didn't have to be driven into the sea they could have just went back to where they came from.

“I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.”
― Elie Wiesel

a reply to: DarknStormy

Hmm, so you deny Islamism as a political reality?

a reply to: DarknStormy

I would choose:

This is all wrong. I'm going to stop fighting. I will force my government to stop fighting. I will surrender to the Israelis. Suicide is not dying with dignity, it is dying stupidly. It is morally wrong to fight and kill when we have absolutely no chance of winning.

This choice may also protect the lives of my fellow citizens who only want to live quietly, not fighting anyone. We are not fighters or killers, it is the crazy people who make up our government. I will walk away from it and try to make peace, if only by myself.

a reply to: DarknStormy

NO I CAN"T - that is the point isn't it?

Isreal exists and it has a right to. There are many christian countries, there are many muslim countries, there are buddist countries and hindu countries. There is only one jewish country.

After a millenia is jews being blamed for everything from the plague to bad water to killing christian babies and enduring confiscation without compensation, death, genocide and having every civilized country turn their back on them when they tried to get out of Hitler's way - the jews finally have a place to stand on the planet.

Most of the land that was originally the state of Isreal was purchased by the jews. The people we think of as palestinians actually believed they owned the land because they had been allowed to live and farm on it for generations (squatter's rights), however, someone sold the land to the jews! After all, 60 years ago, it was scrub desert land that nobody much cared about until the jews settled there and greened it all up.

The jews never forced anyone to go anywhere. As a matter of fact, about 21 % of Isreal is actually comprised of muslims. The ones who left are the ones who were told to flee by the arab militia and they were told that they could return after the "jews had been pushed into the sea"

Why can't jews have one small country the size of new jersey as their own?

Why doesn't the rest of the arabic countries absorb the 'palistinians"?

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

Oh, that is an old argument. I wonder if people even remember about that? It's almost irrelevant nowadays, but when it happened, Israel would have been wise to take advantage of it the way Arab states have exploited the Arab refugee status.

Israel, Europe and Ameirca absorbed the 700,000 Jews of the Arab world (known as Sephardic Jews). The Arab world stuffed their refugees in camps until a time they would multiply to a number so great that their population would simply overwhelm Israel's capacity to absorb them.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Elie Wiesel, probably knowing better than most, expressed his disgust with Hamas' manipulation of western media and TV by essentially following a program of:

What western media is he watching? Everything is pro Israel. The western media lays on the poor Israel is fighting for it's survival so much you would think they are fighting against the entire world.

Here's a reality check: yes. Hamas will deny using children as human shields.

Gaza is nothing but an open air prison they have no where to go. Israel and Egypt have closed off their borders the open water is the only place left but Israels ships will more than likely shoot them if they run for the water like they did those kids.

a reply to: buster2010

Buster2010

NO - sadly, most jews couldn't go back to where they came from. They came from countries overtaken by the germans. Their neighbours turned them into the nazi's, stole their land, their businesses and their lives. Those jews who managed to crawl back out of the death camps returned to their homelands and found their neighbours living in their previous houses and not really into giving them back.

And yes - the 700,000 figure was accurate in 1948 when the state of Isreal was formed. As I said previously, the jews bought most of the land used to form the state of Isreal.

It was the arab militia who told them to leave - not the jews. Why are you holding the jews responsible?

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: Swills

I'm really not sure.

I wonder, is this site doomed from the beginning to apply the irrationality of conspiracy thinking to subjects like this? The israel-Palestinian conflict?

Lets find out!

Lets look at some of the crazy authoritarian governments of history and reflect on their actions. If you notice, there's a continuity: which makes sense. Just as individuals "emerge' from the context of relationships to become the person they are, soldiers which commit crimes often emerge from states who have vitriolic, racist and prejudiced laws.

Look at Nazi Germany and Russia. They were as evil as they were because their societies - their laws and institutions - had sanctioned a inhumane worldview of other people.

To avoid getting caught up in 'he said, she said' perspectives, I simply analyze what I know about human behavior and how it develops and so I pay great attention to the state apparatus - the "context" which molds the minds of the soldiers - and the claims made.

What I do not understand is how people label Israel an "apartheid state" - or far worse, a Nazi regime. None of their laws reflect any of this. Their higher institutions are humanistic. Their constitution defends the rights of all - race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation: every year there's a gay pride parade in Jerusalem - It seems hardly believable that a state as open and tolerant as this would produce people capable of the claims people level against Israelis.

If you want to be empirical - therefore scientific about it - Israel would not try to kill civilians, on purpose, because they have absolutely nothing to gain from it as a political action - and even more importantly, their soldiers are raised in a society which honors and values difference; and if there exists xenophobia and blind hatred in Israeli society - and i'm not denying there isn't any niche for it's growth - it is in no way sanctioned by mainstream media, as for example, the mindbogglingly inhumane representation of Jews on Al Aqsa TV in Gaza.

On the other side, is Hamas. As I just explained to you, they come from a different weltanchaungg, one that doesn't "resonate" and so almost doesn't seem real to other people. But you have to be on guard against that temptation to dissociate. Because, In the minds of Islamic extremists, Gods "presence" is everywhere. Suicide attacks are an act of free will: a splendid expression of faith in Allahs supremacy.

You really have to 'delve' into the psychology of Hamas to truly capture how hideously delusional and crazed they are.

And on a deeper note - for those who read a lot - the issue at root is between how knowledge is attained; it's an epistemological issue. For Islamists (and any fundamentalists) knowledge is GIVEN FROM WITHOUT, that is, through 'revelation'. Revelation, as history shows us, leads to aberrant behaviour.

Conversely, empiricism, a study of self and environment, reified as psychology and sciences, allows us to connect with one another in a way that levels the playing field.

This issue is not even about Israel - but about how Islamic societies have struggled to transition to become a humanistic society - as the west, Japan, and more and more Asian countries are becoming.

Israel, in fact, if it were to ever collapse, could you imagine how that would be interpreted by the Islamists? Good lord. It would embolden them. They already believe that Israels demise 'heralds' a global caliphate (such is the absurdity of revelational thinking) and so if it happened, I'd imagine ISIS and Boko Haram will be the least of our worries. You can expect Islamism to make much more noise in Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Israel needs to be protected because, at large, they embody humanistic values - whereas Hamas, certainly, embodies the exact opposite: and they show us by their fruits how absurd human thinking and behavior can become when a metaphysics unanchored to any empirical reality rules peoples tihnking.

Rapists and pedo's often blame their victims as well.
At least a rape victim can forge a life after their ordeal.

This weasel guy, I have heard this name before...

originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: DarknStormy

Hmm, so you deny Islamism as a political reality?

Can you explain a bit more? I don't see what your getting at. Thanks.