In defense of Israel's 'disproportionate' response in Gaza

[multi]

All we will ever be told is that it's justifiable to kill innocent civilians like that because it is Israel defending itself. That is all we need to know.

Then we put faith in the UN to deal with it fairly and it has always been unable to. Nothing will ever change with that , it is set in stone...

The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to occupy Palestinian land, lay siege to Palestinian populations in Bantustans surrounded by an apartheid wall, starve the population, cut them off from fuel and electricity, uproot their trees and crops, and launch periodic raids and targeted assassinations against them and their elected leadership, and if this population resists these massive Israeli attacks against their lives and the fabric of their society and Israel responds by slaughtering them en masse, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should.

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[theknife]

Originally Posted by multi

All we will ever be told is that it's justifiable to kill innocent civilians like that because it is Israel defending itself. That is all we need to know.
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Israel had 13 people killed, 3 of them civilians, in this latest round. so, 13 dead Israelis = 1300 dead Palestinians.

[multi]

I guess it's like this... say I am Hamas and you are Israel.

I keep flicking toothpicks at your face in the bar... you yell STOP
but I laugh and keep flicking the toothpicks at your face.
The bar security do nothing...
So you get up and close both my eyes ( No one in the bar pulls you off because you are 16stone and solidly built..a few onlookers shout out hey... hey.. but no one does anything to stop you)

I just laugh and keep flicking toothpicks at your face .. hard , then harder...occasionally getting one in your eye.

Do you beat me unconscious or leave?

Leave and run the risk of having to fight several big hairy bikers on the way out for being such a wimp..



not a great analogy... but you get my drift?

[multi]

Obama urges Israel to open Gaza borders
President Barack Obama urged Israel on Thursday to open its borders with Gaza.

The plea came in a speech that signalled the new US administration’s shift from Bush-era policy on the Middle East and the world as a whole. In a high-profile address on his second day in office, just hours after he signed an executive order to close the centre at Guantánamo Bay, Mr Obama proclaimed that the US would “actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians” in the wake of this month’s Gaza war.

[multi]

This sounds more like how the situation unfolded..

The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.

Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.

The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

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[Nicobie]

U got to be kidding.

Too upset to read the whole thread.

There is no defense for Israel's killing that I can see

[Shani]

i think multi has it with the toothpicks analogy...
also the knife it is quite terrifying living under rocket fire. especially in the southern cities of sderot where such rocket fire has been going on daily for almost 10 years with minimal response from israel. victims arent just measured in deaths, but there are victims of terror who cannot leave their homes for fear of an alarm signaling rocket fire (mind you i came very close to being in one of these areas on my recent trip to israel, missed it by not much at all). Israel has shown so much restraint, but it got to a point where its just not bearable. Citizens living in the borders of their homeland have the right to feel safe within those borders.

As to children being killed, didnt you hear hamas admitted they use children as human shields? its well known...