I agree with you, but the citizens of Palestine ELECTED Hamas in a popular ballot, CHOOSE to treat women as second class citizens, CHOOSE to participate in mob violence. I dont want to see innocent people die but I think there is too much of a tendency amongst some to treat Israel as the villains and Palestine as the heroic freedom fighters which is not true.
I agree with you, but the citizens of Palestine ELECTED Hamas in a popular ballot, CHOOSE to treat women as second class citizens, CHOOSE to participate in mob violence. I dont want to see innocent people die but I think there is too much of a tendency amongst some to treat Israel as the villains and Palestine as the heroic freedom fighters which is not true.
What really annoys me is this idea that there needs to be two separate nations for these religions exist.
That's the core issue here. Whilst either group (and both are) want some control, neither will have it.
It's about co-existing. That will never happen in the middle east, at least in our lifetimes. But there will never be peace without it.
It's even more frustrating when those that run from this environment (refugees etc) cause similar issues elsewhere. When I hear people complain about intolerance in the western world, it drives me insane. The Western world is 1000s times more tolerant than the middle east.
I am quite anti-Palestine. They MAY have a slither of a just cause in deserving to live in Gaza and the West Bank free from settlers and enhanced Israeli interference (though if it was up to them they would control all of Israel and drive the jews into the sea) but I find it very difficult to empathize with a people half of whom elect a terrorist organization as their government and who kill far more fellow Palestinians than anyone else. It's as if they havent learn a thing from successful protest and resistance movements of the past - what works is either peaceful mass protest (India) or internal insurrection (Algeria), never attempts at cross border conflict with a state with vast military superiority, nor the transfer of responsibility of violent resistance to a public elected body.
The LAST thing the world needs is another hardcore Islamist totalitarian state and I therefore oppose the notion of Palestinian statehood for this reason.
Calling Hamas "terrorist" is subjective but if you consider Hamas a terrorist organization, the Israeli Governments over the years must have been "terrorists" as well. Hamas does no more terrorist acts than what Israeli governments do.
If you look at the latest conflict, Out of 158 people killed in Gaza, 103 were civilians including 30 children (one fifth) which clearly indicates that Israel is not only targeting soldiers/militants. The fact that they target civilians makes them "terrorists" as well.
Sir Sir_Didier_Drogba;3351353 said:
Also, people talk about Israel being an apartheid state, but it would be far more accurate to describe Palestine as an apartheid (quasi-)state as half of their population (women) are treated far worst than blacks were in apartheid South Africa.
I agree with you, but the citizens of Palestine ELECTED Hamas in a popular ballot, CHOOSE to treat women as second class citizens, CHOOSE to participate in mob violence.
Where is this coming from? That's absolute nonsense. Are you getting confused with Taliban?
Hamas is particularly popular among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, though it also has a following in the West Bank, and to a lesser extent in other Middle Eastern countries. Its popularity stems in part from its welfare wing providing social services to Palestinians in the occupied territories. Such services are not generally provided by the Palestinian Authority. Israeli scholar Reuven Paz estimates that 90% of Hamas activities revolve around "social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities." Social services include running relief programs and funding schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues.
Hamas has funded education and built Islamic charities, libraries, mosques and education centers for women. They also built nurseries, kindergartens and supervised religious schools that provide free meals to children. When children attend their schools and mosques, parents are required to sign oaths of allegiance. Refugees, as well as those left without homes, are able to claim financial and technical assistance from Hamas.
Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, some of its members have attempted to impose Islamic dress or the Hijab head covering on women. Also, the government's "Islamic Endowment Ministry" has deployed Virtue Committee members to warn citizens of the dangers of immodest dress, card playing and dating. However, there are no government laws imposing dress and other moral standards, and the Hamas education ministry reversed one effort to impose Islamic dress on students.
The Hamas education ministry reversed one effort to impose Islamic dress on students. In March 2010, the BBC interviewed five "middle-class" women in Gaza City in March 2010, and all indicated there had been little or no change toward more conservative dress and mores.
Hamas as a political party in Palestine and Hamas the terrorist organization are different.
The fact remains that Israel was created out of thin air and thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes for it to happen. There are people alive in Gaza who remember this. It wasn't 500 years ago. Regarding Jews in that area before World War 2, Jews and Muslims coexisted for centuries. In fact, Jews are considered people of the book and even in lands governed by Sharia law they are afforded tolerance and autonomy. Or at least that used to be the case before Israel poisoned the well in the Middle East and created a segregated country. But oh no, poor Israel.
Sir_Didier_Drogba you are right on this being a stupid protest and they should have learned from Gandhi, but I kind of get the feeling that Israel would just let them all starve and then settle their lands building homes on top of corpses.
I really don't like getting into these discussions, but, I feel obliged to respond to some stuff. @Shifty's victim characterisation, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Maybe it's an American media bias which paints Israel in a good light, but it's the opposite here. Israel are constantly the villain on the news and there have been widespread protests here against them. Spain, and I think large parts of Europe, are pro-Palestine.
Jews aren't afforded autonomy in Arab stats, if by autonomy you mean the right to self-governance. Those are all Muslim states where of course, Jews are allowed to live and are not prosecuted. This is the same as in Israel. There are thousands of muslims in Israel who are afforded equal righs.
Now, the civilian deaths. Yes, they're horrible. No one wants that. Seriously, NO ONE wants that. Israel actually send planes to fly over the strip before an attack and urge civilians to stay away from missle-launching areas and weapons-manufacturing areas and to geneerally stay hidden. So why do 160 people die in Gaza and 3 in Israel? Well, there are several contributing factores:
i. Israel has better defenses. Lots of missiles are intercepted by the Iron Dome system, Israel has nation-wide alarm systems and the general public are trained in what to do when they sound, which generally means heading to the nearest bunker, and there's a bunker in every house and every building. Gaza's defenses are not as good, and this is partly down to the the people in charge not building them. Israel's infrastructure is much better than the one in Gaza, so a missile hit there is far less damaging. Similar to how a cold 100 years ago was more dangerous than it is now, someone injured by a missile in Israel is far likelier to recover than one in Gaza.
ii. Israel under-reports missile hits. Theey actually urged Israelis on the news to not use twitter or any social media to say when a missile has struck nearby. The reasons being that the government doesn't want Hamas to be able to pinpoint where it hits and be able to improve its accuracy. They also don't want to give Hamas the incentive that is knowing that their missiles are effective. Hamas doesn't only report every hit, but it even exaggerates them, because as the underdog, they profit from the figures being so far apart in the media. I've seen news reports show images of months-old Syrian casualties as recent Palestinian deaths (from the BBC, no less), as well as 'worked' images. e.g
iii. But the key thing, is where Hamas launches its missilies from and where Israel does. Hamas consciously picks locations near schools and hospitals (if not in them) to launch missiles from. They use their civilians as shields, knowing that Israel risks media backlash from this. It's perfectly possible for Hamas to isolate their military from their civilians, but it's a tactical defense for them. Similar to when a movie villain takes a hostage so the hero won't shoot him, sometimes you shoot anyway and civilians get hurt. Israel never targets civilians, and have denounced Hamas for this reason just as much than their actual attacks on Israel.
Israel meanwhile, launch their missiles from areas that are far away from any civilian activity. Yet civilians still get hurt. That's because Hamas has no qualms about targetting civilians. Israel try to disarm Hamas, whereas Hamas wants to destroy Israel and it content to kill civilians (I mean, they're classified as a terrorist organization by the UN for a reason). I have family living in suburban parts of Israel that are not only far away from the border, but far away from any military base or whatsoever in Israel. It is a normal town. During the conflict, the alarms were sounded in that area and missiles impacted there. The only reason for a missile to be launched in that direction is if you just want to kill whatever you can get.
The numbers are bad, and it's a tragedy that one person dies, nevermind hundreds, but it's not as simple as 'this side has more deaths therefore it's the good guy'. The Israeli strikes were as a response to continued missiles being launched at Israeli towns from Gaza. Sure, that was a response to the Israel blockade, which is also a response to the missiles. If Hamas could be trusted not to manufacture missiles then the blockade would not be there. Despite the blockade, they're still getting supplies somehow, which shows Israel cannot afford to be more lenient about it.
I think Shifty said something akin to "Israel haven't been in serious threats for years", which is bull****, and is the exact detached mentality that is rampant from people in regions not affected by military conflicts. What? We should let Hamas build missiles and launch them at border towns because, really, only a few people die? That's ridiculous. If a single civilian were to die from a missile attack on any of the western countries you'd go ape****.
Hamas' intent, and they claim this, is to destroy the Jewish state. If we put our guns down and said '**** this, we're done fighting', they would use that opportunity to attack. I agree that co-existing is the solution, and for that Hamas would have to recognise Israel's right to exist. Israel doesn't trust that if they allowed for a completely autonomous Palestinian state with no border control, that they wouldn't use that opportunity to build up an arsenal. Which is why any two-nation solution, from Israel's perspective, must allow for Israel to control the border, which the Palestinians are understandably completely against.
This 'Israel drove the Palestinians out of their homes' thing is misleading. When the borders were set up in 1948, Israel accepted them, the Arab nations did not. The Palestinians could have stayed, but instead, they listened to their Arab neighbours who told them to leave, so that they could bombard Israel and when they were destroyed, they could return to their homes. When Israel wasn't destroyed, and the Arab nations agreed to a ceasfire, the Palestinians were left homeless. They tried to come back, and Israel refused. Why should we allow for people who contrived to destroy us to come back and keep living there, where they would surely work against the Jewish state? No Arab nation agreed to allow them to emigrate, and so they were left with nowhere to go.
Muslims and Jews continue to coexist in the area, just like they do in other muslim states. There isn't any apartheid-esque segregation. There are thousands of muslims living happily in Israel and afforded equal rights. Israel was created from thin air, yeah. Note there was never a Palestinian rule in the area. The west Bank, which is where the illegal settlements issue comes from, was designated to be part of the Arab state of the two-state solution. Following the 1948 war, Jordan captured the area and held it until 1967 when Israel captured it. In 1988 Jordan renounced all ties with the area. I don't agree with settlements being built in the area, but Israel didn't take it from the Palestinians, but from Jordan.
Israel has nation-wide alarm systems and the general public are trained in what to do when they sound, which generally means heading to the nearest bunker, and there's a bunker in every house and every building.
That's it in a nutshell. The blockades, the withholding of taxes collected on behalf of the Palestinians, the barring of any goods entering gaza including medicines has nothing to do with preventing weapons and everything to do with maintaining the misery of a population to eventually either destroy them or force a retaliation that then justifies the pursuit if vengeance.
People seem to think Hamas emerged in a vacuum but the fact is they organised and provided for people in a way that the PLO never did.
Imagine Qatar invests heavily in gaza people then have jobs and are on the way to being economically independent. Now name me a rich country that engages in violent action against an oppressor. The fact is the policies that keep Palestinians in a state of economic dependence on aid are the same ones that force the retaliation and allow for unhelpful rhetoric to emerge.
Don't get too caught up on the religious stuff. It is the same game that has been played for centuries, and that is about the ability of a people to control the resources needed for survival.
I really don't like getting into these discussions, but, I feel obliged to respond to some stuff. @Shifty's victim characterisation, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Maybe it's an American media bias which paints Israel in a good light, but it's the opposite here. Israel are constantly the villain on the news and there have been widespread protests here against them. Spain, and I think large parts of Europe, are pro-Palestine.
Yes, definitely the American media and American politicians. It's odd how Netanyahu is basically throwing up a big middle finger at us with these settlements, but I guess he knows that we'll never withdraw any support because our stupid right wing believes in the imminent rapture, and Israel has to exist and capture the Temple Mount for that to happen (and then Jesus floats down from heaven and all the Jews accept him as the messiah).
I will say that probably the biggest creeps in this whole thing are the arab nations that didn't just accept the Palestinians as refugees.
I dunno what Israel hope to achieve with these settlements, especially ad EVERYONE is against it. That said, I get the anger towards Palesetine's actions. They're trying to go around the peace process by getting into the UN and altered status, to force Israel to cede rather than engage bilateral talks. I think it's damaging to the peace process, but definitely.less than Israel's recent actions.
It's more severe than in previous times though, at least from an Israeli perspective. The missiles are getting to more urban, more northern areas than in the past.
Iran don't support Hamas as much as before when they opposed Assad regime ... however, they have more support from Turkey ...
I feel bad for the poor people of Gaza ... they are the victims of Hamas stupidity/selfishness and ruthless Netanyahu.
I can't believe people are dying all over the middle east and nobody does anything ... Suarez got more attention for his bite than all of these criminals ...
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