Jewish family: Germany officer spat on our passports

reply to post by mattpryor

I would defend anyone that I thought was being unjustly treated. I don't care where they're from.

Matt, I have to take you to task on that statement.

If that is the case, why aren't you on side with the Palestinians?

Are you saying there isn't enough documented evidence from very credible unbiased source of the crimes that Israel is perpetrating on the Palestinian civilian population? Are you implying that the Palestinians are treated justly by the Israelis?

What about the use of white phosphorus, cluster bombs and other new weapons being tested on the Palestinians? What about the check points, the wall, the constant settler's harassment of defenceless Palestinian farmers?

What about the Zionist terrorism that the Palestinians have been facing for the last 60 years including systematic ethnic cleansing. What about the apartheid system that they are forced to live in? Not to mention the concentration camp condition that has been imposed on them.

Really, Matt, if you are sincere with that statement, you'll have to spend the rest of your life defending the Palestinians and condemning the Israelis.

Originally posted by mattpryor
However, different cultures have very different belief systems and different values they teach to their kids. I don't think that's deniable. I happen to think that Judaism by and large is a good culture that teaches good values.

Have you read the Torah? Have you seen what is happening in Palestine? Judaism by its very nature is not actually a very nice religion at all, truth be told.

(not that many of them are anyway, but I digress...)

reply to post by A Conscience


I wondered how long it would be before you waded into this conversation.

Why do I have to take sides between Israeli civilians and Palestinians civilians? As your friend above pointed out, they're all people and they all deserve to live in dignity and to get on with their lives.

Where I do take sides is between Hamas, who are a militaristic, despotic band of thugs and Jihadists, who are holding the population of Gaza in perpetual misery, who steal aid supplies and money from well intentioned Westerners and callously exploit Western liberal sentiments, and the government of Israel which is democratically elected and is doing what it can to protect its own civilians from terror attacks.

I take the side of Western civilization against terrorists and murderers.

War is unpleasant. War is painful. War maims and kills, and its not always the bad guys. No army is infallible no matter how good their training or ethical codes, because an army is made of human beings.

Every government has an absolute right to defend its population from hostile attacks, to do otherwise is criminally negligent. I choose the path of defending Israel's actions because I believe they did what was a tragic necessity.

I am a sentient, thinking human being, although you have me down as an inhuman monster. I saw what happened. I saw the suffering and the injury. And in choosing to support Israel I also choose to share the burden of guilt of the consequences. You have chosen the easy path of turning your back on the good guys because it makes you feel better about yourself, and in doing so you are siding with the enemies of the very freedoms and liberal values that make you such an empathetic human being. Tragic and ironic.

[edit on 24-7-2009 by mattpryor]

Originally posted by mattpryor
Where I do take sides is between Hamas, who are a militaristic, despotic band of thugs and Jihadists, who are holding the population of Gaza in perpetual misery, who steal aid supplies and money from well intentioned Westerners and callously exploit Western liberal sentiments, and the government of Israel which is democratically elected and is doing what it can to protect its own civilians from terror attacks.

I take the side of Western civilization against terrorists and murderers.

I find this particularly hypocritical. Here is why. A DIRECT quote from YOU, on the previous page:

I would also support any democratically elected government and its people against any barbaric terrorist movement.

Hamas, whether you like them or not, was democratically elected by the people. It doesn't matter if you like their politics or not. They were democratically elected. Let me repeat; THEY WERE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED. Now will you support the Palestinians and their plight to have Israel remove illegal settlements, and move back to the land that was agreed upon in 1948? Remember it was not the Palestinians that waged war against Israel in 1967, it was other nations. You could say that from the perspective of the Palestinian people, Israel is a barbaric terrorist movement.

I don't expect you to give any quarter on your convictions, but I do want to point out how hypocritical you are. You will fire back with Hamas is still a terrorist org, even if they were elected democratically. It is the usual fall back for Israel apologists. Always forgetting that in some places your idea of who should be elected doesn't count for squat.

reply to post by Rook1545


If you definition of "democratically elected" is to win 56% of the seats and then proceed to murder and torture your opposition to gain absolute power then you have a very strange way of defining democracy.

reply to post by mattpryor


And I'm not an "Israeli apologist". I don't apologise for them. I support them. Don't label me.

Originally posted by mattpryor
reply to post by Rook1545

 

If you definition of "democratically elected" is to win 56% of the seats and then proceed to murder and torture your opposition to gain absolute power then you have a very strange way of defining democracy.

Really? I would like you to show me proof that this happened. I am not saying it didn't, I am saying I want proof it did.

Would you say that the new government in Iraq, which was democratically elected, under US supervision, is democratic? There were allegations that new government did the same thing.

And yes I would say they were democratically elected. You just said yourself, "win 56% of seats". What they did after, if shown it did happen, is horrible, but you cannot deny that they were democratically elected.

Would also say that a country that uses the guise of democracy, and then goes against the very will of the people it is supposed to be representative of, is still a democracy? To me there is really no difference, as both do not stand up to the tenets of what democracy means.

reply to post by mattpryor

Where I do take sides is between Hamas, who are a militaristic, despotic band of thugs and Jihadists, who are holding the population of Gaza in perpetual misery, who steal aid supplies and money from well intentioned Westerners and callously exploit Western liberal sentiments, and the government of Israel which is democratically elected and is doing what it can to protect its own civilians from terror attacks.

The reality is the Israeli Government does NOTHING to protect it's citizens from terrorist attacks.

It does not:

Seek a just and equitable negotiated peace that redresses and compensates for loss, but seeks to dictate terms of peace that are as limited in there scope as they are likely to be dishonored by Israel in the future as it has always rushed to dishonor on any excuse made available previous agreements.

Nor does it take the illegally occupied lands and set them up as a buffer zone to create a 'no mans' swath of land where Israeli citizens live safely beyond the range of known freedom fighters weapons.

Nor does it seek to use sound and discretionary and judiciuos policing methods to attempt to apprehend and then try in fair and open and impartial courts those it suspects may be acting violently towards the Israeli State.

Nor does it use a proportionate response to freedom fighters whose pitiful weapons can make little more than a political impact not a military one but rather than seeking an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth a sheckle for a sheckle instead takes a thousand eyes for an eye, a thousand teeth for a tooth, and a million sheckles in damage for one sheckle of damage caused to it.

It is simply collective punishment of a whole entire mass of people who are as much a hostage to Israeli warmongering and propoganda as the rest of the world, but more so because the previous effectiveness of that warmongering and propoganda has left them isolated from the rest of the world and it's willingness to 'impose' an equitable peace and restitution.

Yet as the Age changes so does that status quo friend MattPryor. The Israeli Government sees that, the American Government sees that, the Birtish Government sees that.

Yet rather than accept that times change, people learn and grow and become wiser and seek always to be better and do better, the Israeli government and the Zionist movement simply tries to step up the pace and scope of what has clearly started to fail, and it has failed because free thinking people not intimidated by 'code' words like anti-Semite will no longer tolerate the hypocracy and deciet involved. Their consciousness will not let them and the collective conscious in the New Age grows and grows.

The path Israel and it's blind and unquestioning Zionist followers take is a path to ruin. It is only arrogance, vanity and greed that keeps them so feverishly engaged in that folly.

It is folly though Matt the world has had enough of blind hatred, double standards, bigotry and indiscriminate and disproportianate violence.

The Hebrews clung to their Age of the Ram thinking all throughout the Age of Picses and look around that fair walls of your fabled city and surely you can not be so blind as to see that all you have sewn around you is chaos, poverty, disease and dispair.

The rest of humanity is moving forward, and this old age thinking simply holds us all back.

Holds us all back from putting aside baseless fears and prejudices, holds us all back from applying standards and rules of law evenly to all peoples, holds us back from dignity and peace and prosperity.

It is time for Israel and the Zionists to grow up and mature, or at least your propoganda efforts which are now Ages old too, and no longer tried and true, so for pity's sake please stop trying them already!

MattPryor I have fathered many children, one of them is Jewish by the way, a Catholic here, a Mormon there, an athiest here, and agnostic there and a Protestant to boot.

I love them all the same, as any real father should.

It is not up to the children to say when they are wrong or right, it really is up to the parent.

We are all children in the eyes of your fabled and mythical Lord and G-d, why pretend one child is right simply for the sake of it wanting to be right when ultimately it is not the child but the father that decides.

Karma is real though MattPryor and the Jews of the world will stop suffering needlessly when they stop causing others to suffer needlessly.

Blessed are the Peacemakers MattPryor.

reply to post by mattpryor

Where I do take sides is between Hamas, who are a militaristic, despotic band of thugs and Jihadists, who are holding the population of Gaza in perpetual misery, who steal aid supplies and money from well intentioned Westerners and callously exploit Western liberal sentiments, and the government of Israel which is democratically elected and is doing what it can to protect its own civilians from terror attacks.

I take the side of Western civilization against terrorists and murderers.

Hamas is a democratically elected government of Gaza. Contradictory to what you believe, "Through its funding and management of schools, health-care clinics, mosques, youth groups, athletic clubs and day-care centers, Hamas by the mid-1990s had attained a "well-entrenched" presence in the West Bank and Gaza. An estimated 80 to 90 percent of Hamas revenues fund health, social welfare, religious, cultural, and educational services." (source:en.wikipedia.org...)

If not for Hamas, Gazans would be at the mercy of blood thirsty IDF with no means of protection or retaliation. Maybe you should be asking the Palestinians who are actually holding them "in perpetual misery" It may serve to enlighten you a lot more.

Try to get your facts from independent sources rather than Israeli government and IDF propaganda machine.

If you take the side of Western civilization against terrorists and murderers, then, maybe you should really have a good look at Israel.

A country founded on terrorism, a country that continuously carry out assassinations, piracy, targeting of children. A country that carries out terrorism on land , air and sea.

A country with a government that comprises the world's largest collection of terrorist, past and present. This is not even taking into consideration of Mossad's dirty closet of terrorist secrets.

Israel is synonymous with terrorism. Full stop.

(going slightly off topic here, but statements like these needed to be challenged.]

[edit on 24-7-2009 by A Conscience]

reply to post by Rook1545


Battle of Gaza, 2007 - Wikipedia, not an impartial source but gives some background.

After the re-ignition of the Fatah-Hamas conflict on June 10, Hamas militants seized several Fatah members and threw one of them, Mohammed Sweirki, an officer in the elite Palestinian Presidential Guard, off the top of the tallest building in Gaza

On June 11, the residences of both Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah's leader and the Palestinian Authority president, and of then-Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, were targeted with gun and shell fire.[13]

On June 12, Hamas began attacking posts held by their Fatah faction rivals. Hundreds of Hamas fighters had moved on the positions after giving their occupants two hours to leave.[citation needed] A major Fatah base in the northern town of Jabaliya fell to Hamas fighters, witnesses told AFP news agency. Heavy fighting also raged around the main Fatah headquarters in Gaza City, with Hamas militants attacking with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.[13]

Originally posted by mattpryor
reply to post by mattpryor

 

And I'm not an "Israeli apologist". I don't apologise for them. I support them. Don't label me.

You are not meant to like the term "Israeli apologist". It is a term used to describe supporters of Israel.

reply to post by mattpryor


Here are some articles that would seem to say that is was in fact Fatah that started the fighting. Keep in mind these are Israeli and Zionist (actually in the website name, so not me calling them that):

will there be a civil war? Clearly, armed resistance to Hamas's encroachment on Fatah-controlled areas and institutions is happening periodically. Yet both sides are trying to avoid an all-out struggle. Continuing anarchy and periodic clashes seem more likely than full-scale battle.

From here

It's the Wild West in Gaza, with Fatah "security forces" going on a rampage against the Hamas-led government: The security men shot out the windows of the parliament before storming the two-building Cabinet complex, where they smashed furniture, destroyed computers and scattered documents. No casualties were reported. But the mob set fire to one of the Cabinet buildings, causing heavy damage as flames quickly spread.

Here

You can't really say it was one without the other. Fatah members were not just standing around with their hands in their pockets. Still, while neither of these groups will ever get humanitarian awards, Hamas was still DEMOCRATICALLY elected. Like I said previously, just because the way they do business does not agree with you, it doesn't matter what you think. I don't like the way Israel does business, but it doesn't matter what I think, they will do what they think they have to do.

The only way anything will change is if the rest of the World shows BOTH of these parties that they are acting like petulant little children and need to stop. That means cutting off all support to both sides. Moving the "new Berlin Wall" to where the boundaries should be. Putting neutral state guards on top of those towers, and enforcing a no-man's land on BOTH sides of it. Any Palestinian or Israeli that comes within 500 feet of that wall without express permission gets laid out. Once they can see that the world is sick of this crap and will force them to get along, they might just decide to play nice.

reply to post by mattpryor

If you definition of "democratically elected" is to win 56% of the seats and then proceed to murder and torture your opposition to gain absolute power then you have a very strange way of defining democracy.

The opposition which you so highly regarded is a puppet government set up with US and Israel support. This a classic divide and rule strategy set up by western powers to weaken the population for easier control and containment.

As with all other middle eastern governments which US and Israel supports, the common traits are rampant corruption and despotism. Something which both countries, exploit with glee.

As much as $700 million of public funds have been stolen by Fatah officials.

This excerpt says it all.

"It wasn’t Palestinian religious fervor that opened the doors for Hamas, it was Hamas's honesty and Fatah's corruption. The strategy the "west" has decided to follow now is to strangle Hamas and fatten Fatah.

This is difficult because Hamas needs very little to get by and Fatah's proven capacity to engulf donor's money uselessly is limitless. A basic principal is at work here that explains the fall of Fatah and the rise of Hamas: when public servants are honest and hardworking it is surprising how much can be done with little money, but crooked politicians are a literally a bottomless pit.

If the United States, Israel and the hapless European Union, were intelligent they would shower money on Hamas, hoping to corrupt them in the same way they did Fatah"
(source:seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com...]

It seems it was Fatah that did all the stealing and not Hamas which you have accused. As I said before, you should expand your horizon a bit more and not just depend on Israel government's propaganda.

reply to post by Rook1545


I didn't say it was one side or the other. In the West Bank Fattah staged a coup against Hamas and vice-versa in Gaza. Both are as bad as each other. No government that takes power by violence is legitimate.

Originally posted by masonwatcher

Originally posted by mattpryor
reply to post by mattpryor

 

And I'm not an "Israeli apologist". I don't apologise for them. I support them. Don't label me.

You are not meant to like the term "Israeli apologist". It is a term used to describe supporters of Israel.

No, it's an insult. So be it, I'll take it on the chin.

[edit on 24-7-2009 by mattpryor]

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Good lord this is hard work. Your posts just get longer and longer. Where on earth do you find the time?

seek a just and equitable negotiated peace that redresses and compensates for loss, but seeks to dictate terms of peace that are as limited in there scope as they are likely to be dishonored by Israel in the future as it has always rushed to dishonor on any excuse made available previous agreements.

Yes they do. Netanyahu has said on at least three occasions that I can remember that he is willing to having unconditional peace talks with any Palestinian representatives that will sit down with him. On each occasion this has been rejected, because neither faction will negotiate with Israel on any terms unless their own preconditions are met first.

What kind of negotiating tactic is that?

Who is the peace maker? Who is the obstacle to peace?

Nor does it take the illegally occupied lands and set them up as a buffer zone to create a 'no mans' swath of land where Israeli citizens live safely beyond the range of known freedom fighters weapons.

Freedom fighters, that one's a classic.

Since the "illegally occupied lands" are populated by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that is hardly a practical solution is it?

Or are you suggesting that Israel should now also evacuate and demolish border towns such as Sderot?

Nor does it seek to use sound and discretionary and judiciuos policing methods to attempt to apprehend and then try in fair and open and impartial courts those it suspects may be acting violently towards the Israeli State.

So they should go into Gaza and arrest anyone firing a rocket? You think Hamas would let them do that do you?

Nor does it use a proportionate response to freedom fighters whose pitiful weapons can make little more than a political impact not a military one but rather than seeking an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth a sheckle for a sheckle instead takes a thousand eyes for an eye, a thousand teeth for a tooth, and a million sheckles in damage for one sheckle of damage caused to it.

Firstly, it's very easy for you to say that when you don't have rockets landing on your home. They only reason that civilian casualties are not higher is because Israel has the infrastructure to deal with rocket attacks like air-raid shelters and sirens. The psychological damage that it does to people living in target areas is very real.

Why don't you ask some people from Sderot or Ashkelon how "pathetic" the rockets are. Ask them what it's like to go to sleep every night for 8 years not knowing whether a Qassam rocket is going to land on your head.

Of course it was political - political violence. AKA terrorism. They wanted Israel to evacuate the border towns and cede land. Hamas does not want to control Gaza, they want ALL OF ISRAEL to be an Islamic state. It's in their charter for crying out loud.

Secondly, proportionality. What the hell should Israel do? Lob rockets back at Gazan homes, factories, playgrounds and schools for every one that's launched at Israel? What would that achieve? How would it stop the rockets? Should Israel recruit some suicide bombers perhaps? Explain to me what you mean by proportionality.

It is simply collective punishment of a whole entire mass of people who are as much a hostage to Israeli warmongering and propoganda as the rest of the world, but more so because the previous effectiveness of that warmongering and propoganda has left them isolated from the rest of the world and it's willingness to 'impose' an equitable peace and restitution.

No, people in Gaza are not a hostage to Israeli warmongering, they are hostage to Hamas's refusal to make peace or act like a proper government.

If Hamas had stopped firing rockets Israel would have left them alone. Given time and trust and dialogue the borders would have been reopened. But they didn't. They kept on firing rockets.

I'm afraid that your arguments are based on idealism and wishful thinking and are not based on the harsh realities of the region.

You can only make peace with people that are willing to make peace. Hamas only offered Israel war and violence, and in the end it bit them in the ass. No sympathy for them here. I do have sympathy for the innocent victims of war however, on both sides, no matter how much you wish to demonize me and claim that I don't. Whatever, you don't know me and you never will.

That's me done for the day, so you can all go ahead and attack me and call me more names if that makes you feel righteous. I won't stop speaking up for what I believe is right, even if I'm the only person on ATS that believes it.

This is a thread about Judaism and the Holocaust. Pretty sure they weren't going "We're better than you we love Israel yay Israel rocks."

Not Zionism and Palestine.

But I can see how people can get confused, I guess. I mean, not really.

I would have expected this thread to go towards the neo-Nazi and Aryan discussion. Not, you know, Israel v Palestine as always. But I guess someone saw the word Israel and had to go throw rocks at it.

reply to post by The Last Man on Earth


Did you know the Torah is the same as the Old Testament?
Did you know Christians still believe that stuff?

How come you don't go nailing on everyone who believes in the Old Testament, then? It's NOT just the Jews.

Originally posted by mattpryor
reply to post by Rook1545

 

I didn't say it was one side or the other. In the West Bank Fattah staged a coup against Hamas and vice-versa in Gaza. Both are as bad as each other. No government that takes power by violence is legitimate.

But they never took power by violence. They took power by the vote. You said yourself, they won 56% of the seats in an election. That means they were, despite your objections, democratically elected. You cannot demand people use democracy, then try to invalidate it when the results do not match your desires.

That has been a problem with the West and Israel for years. They have come out and said, if there is democratic elections in the Palesitian territory, they will talk with the people. When it turns out it is not the people they want to win, they demonize them and refuse to talk. If they are so willing to invalidate what these people want, why should those people give a rat's a** about what the rest of the world thinks?

Now, having taken the long way back to the topic. Here is why I don't believe the story. It is the entire Israel/Everyone else conflict all rolled up in a nice little easy to digest ball of crap. Look at the comparisons of this incident to the last 10 years of conflict history with Israel.

The lady says that for no reason she was singled out and discriminated against. Compare that to the Lebanon War. Israel said it's soldiers were taken captive for no reason at all. Back to the story, it would appear that she had overstayed her visa, this being illegal. Back to the war, it seems that Israeli forces were actually planning an attack on Lebanon and just needed some kind of excuse. In both cases deflection and feigned ignorance is being used to cover up a misdeed, thus placing the onus on the other party.

Man compares the offender to someone or something that represents the struggles of Jewish or Israeli history, in this case Hitler (can't get much worse than that). During that little skirmish, Hezbollah were used as the big bad boogie men, despite not having provoked Israel for quite a while.

In the story the guard spit on the Passport and made "machine gun sound when the man held up his children for passport verification, all of this mysteriously unprovable, except by one mystery witness. In the July War, Israel says that Hezbollah fired rockets at a group of Humvees and that was provocation for response. However it has been shown, that the rockets were in fact launched as a response to Israels bombardment not only of Hezbollah strongholds, but of Beirut and reports of UN observer positions. This would say that in both cases, there definite lies used to further a cause. What cause though? Well let's find out.

In my opinion, the cause of these kinds of stories and actions, is bolster World public support for Israel. It has been shown throughout history that Israel will do whatever it takes to get sympathy from the World to justify their actions. What would be the outcome from this story? Vilify the German people. Show that they cannot be trusted to have Israel's best interests at heart when it come to Middle Eastern affairs. This was, afterall, an employee of the German Government. This is a representative of the people elected to govern the German people and speak on it's behalf on World events and politics. This would undermine and criticism that Germany levels at Israel, no matter how weel founded. "Remember that time that German guard spit on that poor Israeli lady's passport? Germany hate Israel, they want Israel to fail". It has been shown in this very thread that people will vilify an entire country by what one person may or may not have done.

Let me wrap this entire essay, which very few will actually read by saying this: To control opinion, is to control policy. If Israel can control how people see them, they can control how the World's governments will let them act. This is absolutely brilliant. As long as they can play the victim, and airbrush actual events and details, like they have, they can do whatever they want.

Originally posted by savetimerushonline


Man this is so shocking! This must of been a horrible experience for that family to go through, especially when they have their children with them. I think we are on the verge of a global shift in peoples attitudes towards the Jews, as anti semitism is becoming more and more main stream. Obama being a muslim is kinda like a green light to begin persecuting the arch enemy of the muslims... the Jews.

I don't agree with all of Israels policys, but this incident needs to be investigated further, and the officer involved needs to be brought to justice.

www.ynetnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I think its a bs story, but then again who knows for sure. NOw if this story was about an American, Canadian or UK citizien we probably would not even see this story anywhere, but since it was someone who happens to be Jewish it makes news. Yes the Jewish people were treated horifically by the Nazi's 60 years ago. Same goes for the Africans. The white man treated them horribly for years (slavery). The English and French well they pretty much treated The Irish, Scottish and many more nations terribly throughout their own sordid history. The point I am trying to make is that every one of our ancestors had attrocities performed on them throughout history, but you would sound pretty silly calling a Limey anti-scottish or such. I think the holocaust card and the foolish phrase anti-semitism has been and still is being over used just as the black man and slavery is. People just need to learn to get over things that happened in the past and move on, otherwise we are doomed as a civilization. There will always be a handful of racist, hate mongering people in the world, but we need to ignore these people and their agenda. If something is ignored and shunned long enough it eventually ceases to exist. We were all created equally and should treat each with love and respect.
How can we move forward when we keep looking backwards.