Lets be Honest about Hamas and Israel...

And i will say this further for those ideologues out there. I have, as i mentioned, palestinian friends here, and they never speak with hatred or prejudice of any other groups and i engage them in discussions of this regularly, most often they are afraid to even debate for fear of being ostracized and spend most of their time, just like you or I, worrying about feeding their children, spending time with loved ones, and providing security for their family for the future. I have also talked with jews on the subject before, and listened in horror as they detail their beliefs that all palestinians, and arabs, must be cleansed from the face of the earth, and likened them to animals and diseases. The jewish attitude is another sad example of the age old truism which is "beware, lest ye become that which ye hate most"

Lastly, the idea that israel is killing only targets is rediculous. The whole paradigm of "soft targets" and "collateral damage" are horrifying euphemisms for the killing of innocent people, and the majority of the dead are just that, women and children. Just like when america labels all the casualties of their bombs in afghanistan as terrorists then when you look it up later its actually wedding parties and schools. Dont be naive, deny ignorance

Originally posted by pexx421
What you dont see is what is well known internationally. A "peacefire" and what it means to both....it means israel gets to live normal and comparatively peacefully. In the meantime, what does peacefire mean to palestinians? It means they get to live with their food, electricity, and medicine cut off by the israeli's, it means they get to continue life under israeli occupation, with checkpoints manned by armed israeli's, with nothing resembling free will or self determination. Israel has regularly been condemned by the UN for atrocities against palestine, and why is that? Are the UN just anti-semites and pro muslim? Many of Israel's OWN public speakers say that the treatment of palestine reminds them of the german ghetto's and concentration camps.

Well said. Of course, firing rockets on Israel is horrible but what do you expect when Israel is starving them and have cut them off economically from the rest of the world. There are many Israeli peace groups who call for the end to the occupation and were horrified at Obama's unconditional support for Israel. What do you say to them?

Don't ignore the deliberate zionist mission of genocide against the Palestinians. I used to have the simple-minded view as well that the Palestinians were the crazed terrorists and the Israelis were the peace loving people trying to defend themselves. Talking to people who have been there from the Canadian embassy, talking to my Jewish friend who says they are as bad as the Nazis were to them, and reading books by Jewish and Palestinian peace activists changed my opinion quickly.

reply to post by ghofer

Don't ignore the deliberate zionist mission of genocide against the Palestinians.

How many killed constitutes a genocide for you?

Are the West Bank Palestinians also genocide number for you?

You need a number?? Do you understand what genocide even means? From wikipedia:

"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2, of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Several actions by the Israelis fit this definition. Take a look at these links from Jew Watch and ifAmericansKnew:
www.jewwatch.com...
www.ifamericansknew.org...

It seems quite odd to me that Americans are more supportive of the Israeli government than most jews I know and just about everyone else on the planet.


[edit on 28-12-2008 by ghofer]

I wouldn't care if Israel loaded up BLU-82's on every C-130 they had, started dropping one per grid, and kept going until they got to the bottom of Gaza.

Then pull back, tell the survivors no more mortars, no more rockets, no more sniping, and no more tunneling, or you'd be back to start it all over again.

There would then be peace in Gaza.

Come to think of it, it would reduce the overpopulation problem they keep bitching about.

reply to post by ghofer


Do you distinguish between fights and genocide? Genocide is what is happening in Darfur. What is happening in Israel and Gaza is nothing compared to Darfur.

The number of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces in 2007 decreased by 43 percent since last year, to 373, but the total number of Palestinians killed this year reached a record high because of the 344 Palestinians killed in the internecine conflict, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said in its year-end report.

www.haaretz.com...

Don't you think that if Israel was committing genocide that the number of Palestinians would be 10 fold or more?

Notice that Israel has not closed the borders to the West Bank or bombing the West Bank, nor are they about to invade the West Bank. That tells me there is no genocide in the West Bank where Palestinians also reside.


Humanitarian Aid- As far as Israel not allowing aid in, one must also ask why aid wasn't brought in through the Egypt Gaza border. Could it also be that Egypt is a part of this genocide plan you speak about?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I know what genocide is. I just don't buy that this is a genocide.

I posted some articles on why it's genocide... not sure if you read them or not. And I don't know what the deal is with Egypt. They could be doing a lot more to help I think. I guess there is a fear someone mentioned of Hamas moving into Egypt but to me it seems like they are trying to keep the Palenstinian suffering bad to make Israel look worse maybe. I don't know. The whole thing sickens me.

reply to post by ghofer

The whole thing sickens me.

I agree 100% on this. I just wish they would find a good solution to end this off and on fighting once and for all. I also wish the world would put the same passion in Africa where many are dying far worse deaths and the world simply turns their head. Appreciate the debate.

reply to post by Dracula23

I would like to see what the US would have done if Mexico was controlled by extremists who shot 80 rockets a day into LA.

Well, Mexico has allowed 30,000,000 of its citizens to cross over illegally into the United States, to steal American jobs, get free medical care, free schooling for their children, and commit crimes against American citizens, and our government HAS DONE NOTHING. In fact, Mexico has assisted those crossing into the US illegally, by giving them maps and guides.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Sorry Prof, The US has allowed Mexico citizens in by turning a blind eye. The government has known since 1986, the last amnesty, that illegals were in our country and chose to tolerate it because it was good for business. Once 9/11 happened and people started questioning how the hijackers got in is when politicians started talking harsh about sealing the border and how bad illegal immigration was. Funny thing is that most , if not all, of those hijackers entered legally. Go figure. Guess it was to take the pressure off the government. If Mexico was launching missiles at us, we would squash them and take their land.

By the way, where did you get 30 million from?

[edit on 29-12-2008 by jam321]

Again the stupidest comparison I ever hear on ATS. Luckily for America, Canada and Mexico are not Muslim fanatics.

Ah I bet you say that to everyone during your three months on ATS who doesn’t say the appropriate pro Israel/Zionist/Habiru thing! The again thing kind of gives you away.

And as for America standing by its agreements im sure the Iraqis and Iranians and most other Muslim countries would disagree, therefore they burn the American flag in every protest.

Yes your right, seems some foreign meddling interlopers with a religious bent, have through bribery, threat and blackmail corrupted our government to indiscriminately provide advanced weapons and financial aide to a country not founded on church and state and even more indiscriminately use our U.N. Security Council Veto to save them from the wrath of countless attempts to sanction and censure them brought by a near total majority of the world body for their numerous and atrociously appalling human rights violations.

It’s made us a lot less popular than we were before 1948 hint, hint!

Wake up! Israel is fighting the same battle that the US is fighting; The only difference is that Israel is in the front line.

Oh I am awake alright, but I beg to differ the only difference is a so called ally who spies on us and extorts us, and bombards us with propaganda through news organizations they control; drug is into the war via our corrupt political leaders, bankers and corporate heads.

It’s why all the treason trials will be creating a new front line in Washington D.C. and you will have to finally honor the United Nation’s British Mandate of Palestine accords that allowed your immigration into the pariah nation Israel has become through it’s terrorist campaign to renege on those accords.

In case you are little confused which you seem to be, the United States of America was founded on separation of church and state. It has 50 states and two territories, none of them are named Israel.

Hopefully it will cease to exist before any further aide; subsidies or agreements are given to it or made with it.

Sure cut down on some of those costly treason trials so many so called Americans will shortly be facing.

reply to post by jam321

Sorry Prof, The US has allowed Mexico citizens in by turning a blind eye. The government has known since 1986, the last amnesty, that illegals were in our country and chose to tolerate it because it was good for business. Once 9/11 happened and people started questioning how the hijackers got in is when politicians started talking harsh about sealing the border and how bad illegal immigration was. Funny thing is that most , if not all, of those hijackers entered legally. Go figure. Guess it was to take the pressure off the government. If Mexico was launching missiles at us, we would squash them and take their land. By the way, where did you get 30 million from?

That was exactly my point. The US has done NOTHING about the 30 million illegal aliens in this country.
As to where I got the number, there are quite a few sources, but here is one of them:
www.louisianaimmigrationlawyers.com...

Here is another one:
www.capsweb.org...

The new report, "The Illegal Population Explosion: A Realistic Appraisal of its Actual Size, Implications for the Future, and Consequences for Public Policy Decisions and Citizen Activism," was released at a News Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Four experts who contributed to the 45-page study explained their findings that illegal aliens in the U.S. total at least 20 million, but perhaps as many as 38 million or more

reply to post by jam321

Isn't the US always trying to dictate to Mexico and Columbia how they should run their war on drugs?

The United States of America incorporated as a religious not for profit entity in 1988, under Bush 1. Like his own Father Prescott who worked so hard to help set up the Nazi Party in Germany before that pesky trading with the enemies act shut him and the Rockefellers down in that endeavor, he and his son have managed to provide us with the perfect cornerstones of a fascist state.

A strong great decider, a military industrial complex, a security industrial complex, and a prison industrial complex are the pillars of our fascist government.

UNICORE Industries whose stock is almost entirely held by Senators and America’s Elite Families utilizes the world’s largest Federal Prison population as less than minimum wage labor to manufacture a wide variety of signs, clothing and furniture sold through contract to U.S. Government agencies for top dollar.

The war on drugs helps employ a vast security network keeping the security industrial complex humming along, and the prison industrial complex full and working at maximum productivity!

Naturally foreign governments have to be paid to not interfering in their own citizen’s cultivation, manufacturing and shipment of drugs to us in order to make all this possible.

Unlike Israel we make sure everyone gets their cut!

Of course it is probably so the CIA can smuggle theirs in scott free, but they do try to dictate.

No the CIA was incorporated as a for profit business in 1972. I hear both the United Nations and Israel hold larger shares in this corporation than any American does!

It’s highly profitable and the only way to ensure no smugglers who haven’t also paid off their governments back home end up profiting on this never ending lucrative war.

Any other questions?

Dooper, you could probably say the same thing about bombing every inch of the United States, and how much peace it would bring to the rest of the world... not to mention how much of the worlds resources would be more evenly distributed.

First of all, I don't think we can leave out the previous years for one reason: today's actions are made because of yesterday's events, and the people who is acting today (on both sides, but more on the Palestinian side) were not even born when the state of Israel was created, and that was the source of the problem.

About Hamas, I think the problem was that the international community did not acted in a way to prevent the possibility of what they consider a terrorist organisation to run in the elections. From the moment they could enter the elections and win, it was obvious that they would use all they could to reach their objectives.

The people that voted in Hamas, obviously, does not see them as terrorists, because they are on the same side, they were all born in a condition that is very different from what their fathers and grand-fathers told them (and we all know that this type of talk passes from father to son, how things used to be "in the good old times"), so they only see Israel as a source of evil.

Should Israel act in a different way? Certainly, they have obligations that they have always ignored.

Should they ignore the attacks by Hamas? I think not, but I don't think that indiscriminate killings will solve the problem, one of the first reactions I saw on TV was that there were already people volunteering as suicide bombers to kill Israelis.

And that is the biggest problem, as we say in Portugal, "quem torto nasce tarde ou nunca se endireita", meaning "those we are born crooked(or twisted) only latter or never get straightened", and this was what happened, the way Israel was created could only cause troubles, but those who created it were not there, so it did not really mattered to them.

How can things be "straighten up"? I do not really know, only when all sides stop being so selfish can things work, but as both sides (as all people from the Mediterranean area ) are very stubborn, I do not see an end to this.

reply to post by ArMaP


Exactly! This issue between Israel and Palestinian PLO and now Hamas goes way back. And both have been not so accomodating to their agreements made at the negotiating table.

The only real way to establish peace is for both sides to change their attitudes and start sticking to their agreements.



Cheers!!!!

Originally posted by traderjack




Well, the US and Mexico has allowed millions of illegals into the US. Among them are 100k of gang members that are responsible for hundreds of US deaths annually.

So, next time you make an argument like this get your facts straight ahead of time.

His facts are straight. Mexico isn't firing rockets into the USA. Poke a lion like Israel and eventually he's going to bite. So stop your crying Arab world. We all know you are playing a game to undermine Israel. Just look out when you piss off the lion that you have been teasing.

I think both sides are at fault, and I have very little sympathy for either side. Well. Actually, I think the whole thing is tragic. Tragic, stupid and childish. People are fighting over /dirt/. I cannot find any high moral ground for people whom would kill one another because of ethnicity and religion. They're all insane and sometimes I think we should nuke the entire place from orbit, so that no one gets any of this land for a very long time.

Not that I really would want that to happen, but really, it's very annoying that this tiny little scrap of land is such a big deal. Can't they simply live together? How about one single country? For crying out loud, every other place on the face of the earth has become a melting pot, but these people cannot act like adults and get over ancient history?

WHY ARE THEY FIRING ROCKETS????

Oh wait... These bad , naughty Palestinians are starving to death because Israel have built houses and structures all over their farms.

WHY ARE THEY FIRING ROCKETS???

Maybe it's because the Palestinians are sick of the Israeli snipers shooting innocents (11 year old school girls) and torturing people whilst under arrest.

Maybe it's because civilians and ambulances are constantly on the reciving end of Israel's draconian shoot first policy....

Maybe, just maybe it's because they have been forced out of their rightfully owned land...


Yet, these por-Israel types on here can't see that can they?