Click on images to enlarge
Israel says no country can tolerate rocket attacks on its civilian population. True, but Israel is not a country with legitimate borders. Hamas has actually been firing rockets into occupied Palestinian territory and not Israeli land.
Here is a map of Palestine that Israel does not want the world to see. It clearly shows how Israel has illegally expanded its territory into Palestinian lands since 1947 and that the region around Gaza hit by rockets is land that falls well outside the borders of Israel proper (as per the 1947 UN partition). The second map shows the exedus of refugees from Palestine as Israel grabbed more territory over 6 decades.
In firing mickey mouse rockets, not only has Hamas been acting in self defence - perfectly legally under international law - against the Israeli siege which has turned Gaza into a concentration camp but also resisting the occupation of Palestinian land immediately bordering Gaza to the north.
The Jewish law of eye for an eye means that the Palestinians are now entitled to kill at least 800 Israelis and wound 4000 others, of whom one third must be children. In fact, the Israelis have killed more than 5,100 Palestinians since 2000 while the Palestinians have killed 1000 Israelis, so to get even 4100 more Israelis must die.
No decent human being likes to see people being murdered and maimed but Israelis living on stolen Palestinian land, beyond the borders of Israel proper, cannot be described as human, let alone decent.
36 comments:
philip you disappoint me with this silliness..
come on - ive read better on your blog..
Lirun
You must be telepathic.
I thought you'd be the first to pour cold water on my improving writing skills.
Nobody
No one denies Israel's right to respond to rocket attacks (even though proportionality and the Geneva Convention are not concepts it worrries about). Please don't crow about Hamas's charter because you could flatten Gaza and its 1.5 million inhabitants in one day if you chose to.
By the same token, the Palestinians under any label (Fatah, Hamas, islamic Jihad...whatever) have every right to defend themselves against occupation that extends beyond the 1947 partition lines.
It is war, and Israel is winning in the short term. But Israel will never ever feel secure and the conflict will continue for generations until your leaders come to their senses, abandon their stupid Zionist ambitions and sly tactics and accept the Saudi plan which gives Israel fantastic property rights over much of Palestine. The Arabs and the rest of the world have accepted it, but it seems there is no limit to Zionist avarice.
"The Jewish law of eye for an eye"???
A little instruction:
"The phrase "an eye for an eye", {Arabic|العين بالعين}, (al'ain bil'ain);{Hebrew Name 1|עין תחת עין|ayin tahat ayin}, is a quotation from Exodus 21:23–27 in which a person who has taken the eye of another in a fight is instructed to give his own eye in compensation. At the root of the non-Biblical form of this principle is that one of the purposes of the law is to provide equitable retaliation for an offended party. It defined and restricted the extent of retaliation. This early belief is reflected in the Code of Hammurabi and in the laws of the Hebrew Bible"
"The Oral Law explains, based upon the biblical verses, that the Bible mandates a sophisticated five-part monetary form of compensation, consisting of payment for "Damages, Pain, Medical Expenses, Incapacitation, and Mental Anguish" — which underlies many modern legal codes. Some rabbinic literature explains, moreover, that the expression, "An eye for an eye, etc." suggests that the perpetrator deserves to lose his own eye, but that biblical law treats him leniently."
(wiki)
As you can see, it is not a "Jewish" law and not even originally a Hebrew law, but a common law that initiated from what is today's Iraq, long before there were Hebrews in the land of Israel..
The "Jewish" part comes in later, interpreting the law in humanely acceptable terms that will not inflict any more unnecessary violence but will extract the full recompense authorized by the law.
And anyway you look at it, you are wrong to apply this law to the present Israeli campaign in Gaza.
"Proportionality" in international law does not mean that the damage
you cause your enemy should be equal the harm your enemy has done to you. What it means is that the force you use should fit the military objective, and tha the military objective should be an effective defence and preemption.
Israel's aim is to stop Hamas's rockets into Israel. This firing of rockets is done in order achieve Hamas' political goals. It is violence directed at random civilians and property, and thus
completely illegitimate.
If Israel has the right to self defence, then this right translates directly into the use of whatever force is needed to stopping Hamas' attacks, no more and no less.
The goal is not retaliation or punishment but the removal of a physical, present and on-going threat.
Your "eye for an eye" argument shows you understand nothing about Jewish law, or international law, for that matter.
Philip I said...
Nobody
No one denies Israel's right to respond to rocket attacks (even though proportionality and the Geneva Convention are not concepts it worrries about). Please don't crow about Hamas's charter because you could flatten Gaza and its 1.5 million inhabitants in one day if you chose to.
Correct. And this is not what we are doing. So what is all fuss about?
Proportionality? But there can be no proportionality between us and the Arabs for a very simple reason - we attach a very different value to human life. Every single Israeli casualty is a loss for Israelis, while on the other side there exists a culture that treats its people as a cannon fodder, and a very willing cannon fodder I would say. Arab governments never try to minimize their or other side's civilian casualties and it looks like people care neither. So what if we retaliate on Gaza in the same proportion, it does not make any impression on these people. They dress their children as Kamikadzes. All this rage about Gaza on the Arab street is powered only by nationalist fervor. It has nothing to do with the very limited casualties in Gaza, neither the Arab street would care for thousands of Arabs or the same Palestinians if they would have died in another Arab civil war.
The issue of proportionality exists here only for this reason. We value each Israeli life as one hundred Arab ones and this death ratio is perfectly acceptable for the Arabs too. There can be no Israeli government that would drag its people into such a war as Hamas just did to the Palestinians. But this war is pefectly ok for Hamas, it's perfectly ok for the Palestinians. What kind of proportionality can exist here?
Nobody, you talk like a Nazi. You mention the loving and caring übermensch in Israel, and the wild beasts across the border in Palestine, who have no (or much less) love for their own, but only regard their children and brothers as "cannon fodder", ergo: people who are less worthy to live and survive. You insinuate that they would come back in revenge, and that this is the reason why there can be no proportionality, why you're bombing them, why you have been intimidating and oppressing them for decades now: They don't value life as much as the Israelis do, so it's okay to slaughter them. You're a fascist. Yet another horror added to the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel, to the false casus belli, those lies about the Hamas allegedly breaking the ceasefire, whereas Israeli intelligence already in November clearly wrote publicly that not Hamas broke the ceasefire, but Israel—twice—, before the war itself started. The right of Israel to defend itself? To live in peace? No, no. That's only the modern version of the century-long habit of lamenting without suffering.
Philip,
On the subject of Zionist avarice, I frequently peddle my theory of pain vs. pleasure: Israel will continue to hold on to territory as long as the cost remains bearable:
Back in Nov 07 I wrote:
"My often-stated pain vs. pleasure equation suggests that the status quo in any given context only changes when the pain exceeds the pleasure. From 1967 until the beginning of the intifada, the occupation was relatively pain-free for Israel. The first Intifada managed to inflict enough pain on Israelis for them to seriously reconsider the occupation, setting the stage for Oslo. Thanks to the Bus bombings and Intifada II - the Palestinians, emboldened by Barak’s Lebanon withdrawal, seriously overplayed their hand and helped hasten the arrival of the bulldozer and his disengagement policies and Wall – which ultimately critically reduced their ability to inflict pain. In fact, the West Bank may be experiencing a period of relative quiet comparable to the first two decades after the 6-day war. Only time will tell when the next Palestinian mobilization, and the ability to inflict pain – and change, will come. Will it agitate for a Palestinian state or a binational one or a confederation with Jordan? Time will tell. In the meantime, we’re in a game of musical chairs where the Israelis have switched off the music and sat on all the chairs "
That said, Israel has little motivation to listen to our bleatings. Even the fiery Nasrallah is cautious.
If Arabs had the unity and strength to seriously hit Israel and inflict severe damage, the equation would be different. Israel dares to do what it wants in Gaza (as it did in Beirut in 82) because she knows that if the neighbouring Arabs were to declare war they would lose Damascus in 2 hours and Cairo in 3.
This has nothing to do with law or principles, or values.. Welcome to the jungle.
Well, then let me get you up to speed, my little fascist. What have Israelis and/or Jews been doing? At this very moment Israel is imprisoning anti-war protesters in their own country. A few months ago some Jews even publicly burned Christian Bibles. What a peaceful and superior culture you have! But the worst crime was turning Gaza into a huge modern-day Warsaw Ghetto, killing numerous of Arabs and Palestinians by blockades and attacks over the decades, all based on those lies about "(imminent) security interests" and the "right to live in peace". Lamenting without suffering! Those ghettos, regions of Palestinian concentration, are nothing but a sick joke when compared to the wealth and security just across the border. And you're seriously saying that there's "not a single properly managed country", with "no science, no technology"? Apart from the obvious fact that Israel would not be where it is today without the aid of the US and many western countries (so much for the "superior" Israeli culture ex nihilo), with regard to the Palestine territories, we know the reason for their steady decline and poor state, namely the decade-long oppression by Israel and its kowtow allies. Lack of support (including human rights propagation etc.) is also a major reason for the overall state of many Arab countries. In any case: shame on you for using that as an argument.
But slowly that's all changing. Due to the "war against terror", the majority of resources from the West have been going into the Arab world for a long time now, factually rerouting them from former aids for Israel. Israel is already forced to leave some occupied territories, like Gush Katif, but everything points to that this is only the beginning. Western politics toward Palestine and the Arab world will change, and the latest slaughter in Gaza is definitely not helping. One day Israel will stand alone, and the US and its allies (e.g. the EU) will ask themselves, if in this globalized world it would not be better to act "imperially", i.e. by focusing more on the really important nations, those in the Arab world, and by reducing support for a tiny spot of land called Israel, most of which was established illegally anyway. The signs are clear, it has already begun. And Israel has seen the signs: The demands for a NATO membership of Israel are voiced much louder these days than usual.
Contentious centrist
I stand to be corrected and bow to your learned exposition of the concepts of eye for an eye and proportionality.
Try and explain this to the children, parents, sisters and brothers of the 800 dead people in the Gaza concentration camp.
The big picture remains. Israel is an aggressor country with creeping settlements and no legitimate borders. While there are many civilised and reasonable Israelis who yearn for peace, the majority still allows itself to be blinded by foolish Zionist propaganda, which fuels extremism in the Arab world.
Lock up your Zionists and we'll lock up our extremists. Fair deal?
Let me say this again: For important players like the US and the EU (let alone China & Russia), there can be no complete loyalty to Israel, no unconditional support, if they want to be globally influential and dominating superpowers.
You can't eat the cake and keep it. You can't ask to be taken seriously as a global force, if on the other hand you still resort to anachronistic nationalist partisanship. That's why Israel might be lost one day, might be doomed to perish—at least in its current form.
By the way Philip, I also dream of the day when Syrians rule the world.
Once at Beirut airport, I was taken into the barracks and strip-searched by 5 Syrian mukhabarat who were looking for my Canadian passport (I was travelling on my Palestine Refugee document at a time of a short-lived law to strip Palestinians who have dual citizenship of their refugee status). Most people would find the experience humiliating, but I was severely aroused.
They eventually found the passport but all I had to do to get out of the jam was to bribe their moustachioed Chief of Airport Mukhabarat and I was on my way to the gate.
Wallah ya Philip, believe me when I tell you that when the chief saw those green USD bills, his eyes widened and he promptly offered me a cup of tea. He then asked his men to ensure that my plane does not leave without me on it. I was escorted to the gate like a Head of State!
So in the end I say, if for a couple of dollars I can be offered a cup ot tea, stripsearched by 5 hairy Levantines in uniform, and then escorted like a Chef D'État to my plane, I can only say that Syrian Rule of the World suits me just fine, when can I exchange my Canadian passport for a Syrian one?
Nizo
Off topic, but welcome to the blog and I'm glad you enjoyed your brush with the moustachioed "shabab". I am sure there are many around the world who will sell their mothers for a few dollar bills.
The Bible-burning is just one example, but a good one in a polemic discussion such as this one. Generally speaking, there is no freedom of religion in Israel, and therefore the country ignores basic human rights, like other allegedly civilized countries, e.g. Turkey.
And of course the lack of support is not the only reason for the often dire state many Arabic countries are in. I didn't say anything different. To say that their own actions don't play any role in this, would be plain stupid.
That said, Israel has little motivation to listen to our bleatings. Even the fiery Nasrallah is cautious.
If Arabs had the unity and strength to seriously hit Israel and inflict severe damage, the equation would be different. Israel dares to do what it wants in Gaza (as it did in Beirut in 82) because she knows that if the neighbouring Arabs were to declare war they would lose Damascus in 2 hours and Cairo in 3.
Israel by far is not using its fill military might to crash the Palestinians. Surgical strikes and sending soldiers in are all all meant to do work that could have been easily done by a dozen of howitzers. If the Arabs inflict more damage on Israel, the response will be escalated accordingly. Hamas and Gazans have more than enough time to come up with something constructive. Instead there were rockets and warlike rhetoric and now as usual bleatings started.
Another blatant lie from little fascist Nobody: "Israel was created as a socialist atheist state, it had nothing to do with religion."
The land of Israel, the state for a Jewish majority, has everything to do with religion, because the Jews are not only a people, but by being born a Jew from your mother's blood you are also automatically part of the religion, whether you consider yourself an atheist or not. All such considerations are after the fact, made later in life. But it doesn't matter, because by the self-concept of Judaism, you can't separate religion from race. As a Jew you're born that way.
So by creating Israel as an allegedly safe haven for the Jewish people, they also created a safe haven for the Jewish religion.
Anonymous said...
And a general note: What's wrong with losing Cairo and Damascus, if you want to destroy Israel once and for all? Arab = wussy?
Nothing is wrong of course. Cairo, Damascus, Rabat Amon, Beirut ... all of them can go for the sake of destruction of Israel together with their populations and this is exactly what I am saying. What proportionality can be preserved when you are dealing with a nation of psychopathic Kamikadzes? Israel cares for its people and even for civilians on the other side, but the Arabs care for nothing. Just to talk about proportionality in this situation is funny :D :D
Israel deliberately drew Hamas into this conflict by breaking the terms of the 6-month truce through incursions into Gaza that killed several Palestinians. Its callous and calculated over-reaction to Hamas’s firing of home-made rockets is a smokescreen.
Israel’s ultimate goal is to stretch the road to peace by several more years, preferrably beyond Obama’s term. Its leaders have been doing this successfully for 60 years and their biggest triumph has been to neutralise Egypt. I wonder what will happen when Mubarak goes.
Philip I: Its callous and calculated over-reaction to Hamas’s firing of home-made rockets is a smokescreen.
It's more than a smokescreen. It's a lie, war propaganda and the faked casus belli. But even those few "home-made rockets" were not fired by Hamas during the ceasefire. Hamas only fired back twice as a reaction to the two Israeli bombardments. The Israeli intelligence report clearly states it was not the Hamas militias, but terrorist splinter cells not operating under Hamas/Damascus rule, who account for the roughly 2 to 4 rockets per month from June to November.
If Palestinians were to convert to Judaism, you would have thousands of Palestinians on the streets, protesting Hamas abuses.
Gila
Shalom. If Palestinians were to convert to Judaism, there would surely be no Hamas left.
Zionists would no longer need their worldwide propaganda machine and Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah would be enjoyed by all the Semites (again).
I've wanted to tell Nobody to chill on the supremacist rhetoric - but it seems that some refuting is also in order here.
Jack: "all terrorists are muslims". Nonsense. Your country produces a good share of them, my friend. One word: Hebron.
Actually, a second one: settlers.
"oil rich countries do not spend internally". Factually incorrect. Until recently, for instance, Saudi Arabian citizens didn't pay their electricity or water bills: the government took care of it. Then at one point the Gov realised that it was mismanaging its resources, putting too much money into physical infrastructure - you need to see the Saudi roads network to understand - and not enough into development projects, which they're barely beginning to do. In a sense, they've just discovered what fiscal responsibility is all about - and that's actually a GOOD thing.
Ceasefire: Israel broke it first, Nov 4th. Confirmed by, among many others, by CNN.
Nobody: your ramblings about how Jewish lives are worth a hundred Arab ones, and calling us "a nation of psychopathic kamikazes" (dude, there's not D in kamikaDze) is not only rude but helps little advance the discussion. And it completely discredits you.
Oh, yeah - and no one touches Cairo!! :)
Philip and all commentors - A good lively circular discussion going on here, seesawing from emotional to rational, from theoretical to practical, from hate to love, and back again. Wouldn't it be dandy if everyone converted to Internetism, with the motto, "The Mouse is Mightier Than the Sword!"
Savtadotty
I take my hat off to you. Thank you for your wrapup comment. Perhaps the mouse is mightier that the sword.
Mo-ha-med said...
Nobody: your ramblings about how Jewish lives are worth a hundred Arab ones, and calling us "a nation of psychopathic kamikazes" (dude, there's not D in kamikaDze) is not only rude but helps little advance the discussion. And it completely discredits you.
Sure. This lovely post sure helps a lot to advance the discussion. Calling you a nation of psychopathic kamikaZes does not discredit me. It's these idiots who don't mind sacrificing Cairo for Damascus for the sake of destruction of Israel once and for all who discredit you. It's this bunch of hallucinating Muslim Brothers who are trying to transform an indefensible square meter of wasteland into South Lebanon who discredit you. It's people like you and Philip who justify them and provide one hundred and one explanations and justifications for their actions who discredit your nation. My thesis about you being a nation of psychopathic kamikaZes is confirmed by your very actions, blogs and comments.
This is all bullshit.
The Arabs did not accept the partition plan.
Israel did not expand illegally.
There is no such historical term as "Palestinian lands."
The weapons Hamas uses and are capable of destroying, injuring, killing, and terrorizing.
Israel LEFT Gaza over three years ago.
The rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza into southern Israel are not in response to any Israeli siege on Gaza.
These rockets and mortars have not been directed at civilians for the past many years in any kind of self-defense.
Israel is finally responding to the attacks from Gaza after many years.
If the people of Gaza want their own independent country they can declare and create one in Gaza and stop relying on Israel for services.
Eye for an eye is not about quid pro quo killing.
Israelis do not live on stolen Palestinian land.
The British mandate of Palestine ended and since then there has not been any Palestinian land.
And even if any of your nonsense were factually true it is unacceptable to respond to a political situation with violence.
[i]No decent human being likes to see people being murdered and maimed but Israelis living on stolen Palestinian land, beyond the borders of Israel proper, cannot be described as human, let alone decent.[/i]
This is one of the most racist sentences I have read in a very long time. You can agree or disagree with Israel, and you are entitled to your own opinion, but saying that someone (anyone!) is not "human" or can not be described as "human" is very racist.
I guess that, by your logic, if someone from Sderot move to, for instance, Paris, he or she will be again a human being.
So, summarizing, being a "human" depends on where do you live.
Amazing.
Anonymous
Being human means you have not lost your sense of justice and humanity towards the oppressed and impoverished.
Israelis living on occupied Palestinian lands beyond the country's legitimate 1947 borders know full well that these lands do not belong to them (and let's not hear any Talmudic mumbo jumbo). Yet the Arabs have come up with a peace plan (the Saudi Plan) that gives Israel land rights over much wider territory than the 1947 UN partition. What more do you want?
Your earlier post suggests you are in denial of Israel's aggression towards the Palestinian people as manifested by the relentless creep of illegal settlements and the catalogue of humiliating treatment.
If Israel truly wanted peace it would not build settlements on occupied territory and if the settlers had any humanity or decency left in them they would live within Israel proper or stay put in the US, Europe and Russia.
Watch the videos that I have posted and learn from history, and this friendly advice goes both to Arab and Jew.
No one touches Cairo!
And no one touches Damascus, for that matter! And Jerusalem, and and and… it's all everyone's cultural heritage.
An alternative solution for Palestine: Many Israelis have been calling for an international peacekeeping mission (UN or NATO), stationed at the border in Egypt and possibly also in Gaza itself.
My humble suggestion… step 1: Let the EU handle it; send troops to occupy the Palestine territories and Israel; create something like an EU Protectorate Greater Palestine, with a European governor and a peacekeeping force; Palestine & Israel will at first lose all sovereignty and autonomy; disarmament (incl. nuclear weapons in Israel); those who disobey will be imprisoned or tried or (if inevitable) killed; step 2: introduce the Euro, rebuild, invest big time, allow Israelis and Palestinians to move freely in the EU, Palestine and Israel; allow them to vote; give them EU passports; step 3: start a political process that will merge into the EU as full-fledged members all states of the Mediterranean Union that are not yet members (yes, incl. Syria etc.); if it takes too long, create an intermediate status for those countries beyond mere affiliation; step 4: create a sovereign nation of Palestine as a full EU-member, where former Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs; Jews, Muslims—in other words: all citizens of the EU—can live freely and peacefully; Jerusalem will be primarily the religious center for the Jews; Muslims have their holy cities in Saudi-Arabia; but for Jerusalem being also el-Kuds, the Muslims will receive far-reaching religious privileges (but secondary); Christianity will only be allowed as a non-native religion with all rights but no privileges (we already have Rome, Constantinople, Damascus etc.)—that's only fair to my mind.
PS (concerning the Partition Plan): as far as I know the UN majority agreed to the Partition Plan, but in the Security Council, the US (being the Israeli minions that they are) vetoed the plan, making it legally non-binding.
Phillip,
I have to disagree with your comments. The partition plan was accepted by the Jewish people. They declared a country on those borders. The Arabs declared war and attacked Israel. I don't think anybody disagrees with those facts.
Because of that war and the 1967 war, Israel rightfully decided that they could not live within those borders. As a self-defense strategy it took over more land. I think the peace process in the past number of years has proven that Israel is willing to live in peace with the Arabs in the west bank and the gaza strip. If they would stop using violence and negotiate in good faith they would find a very willing partner. Hamas has already declared that they will not accept any cease-fire which requires them to stop shooting rockets into Israel.
If Israel were to stop their action of self-defense in gaza to protect their innocent civilians, it would basically be turning around bending over, pulling down its pants and yelling "rape me."
'silliness' is the greatest understatement.
Philip, you have certainly proven yourself to be anti-semitic by claiming Israelis to be non-human.
Your claim that Israel should be wiped off the map is also a criteria for being accused of being anti-semitic. Watch yourself there.... ;-)
Mickey Mouse rockets??
Please view this video and let me know if you would not want to retaliate if it was your children and homes being attacked daily for the past 7 years!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TexcGsFiBE&eurl
Your claim about stolen Palestinian land is false and pathetic. No land was stolen.
Hello?? Partition Plan, rejected by the Arabs, invasion of Arab states in 1948 leading to their losing of the war, land given back to Egypt in 1979 as part of peace deal, peace with Jordan... think you'll find Israel is a truly peace loving country that often feels the need to defend itself when surrounded by enemy states that are openly anti-semitic and want to see if wiped off the map.
Don't see you protesting the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that are still living in Jordanian refugee camps. Don't hear you lamenting the shoot to kill policy Egypt has towards any Palestinian that is caught jumping the Rafah border.
Face it Philip, you hate Jews. Pathetic.
RockofGalilee and BraveJworld
Gentlemen, I would refer you to this post Should Hamas recognise Israel? but here's an extract:
"Let us be clear on the history. Palestine was a British mandated territory from the end of the First world War to 1947. The UN partitioned the territory in 1947 into a Jewish state and an Arab state (resolution 181). Israel established itself in 1948 on the land alloted to the Jewish state, which amounted to 56% of the territory, or 1393 km². To be precise, Israel never officially defined its own borders and went on to grab a bit more land than it was entitled to under the partition plan. The Arabs never accepted the partition and went on to wage wars against the Jewish state, most of which they have lost together with a great deal more territory. Interestingly, Iran, India and Yugoslavia, which had taken part in the 11-neutral country committee that investigated the situation in Palestine before the UN decison, wanted to create a single federated state for Arabs and Jews. They did not think the partition would be a good recipe for peaceful coexistence in the long term or create viable economies. So they voted against the partition along with the Arab states.
Hamas's charter does not recognise Israel's right to exist, not even within its 1947 borders. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear which Israel the Quartet wants Hamas to recognise. The territory that Israel now controls is 15 times bigger (20,770 km²) than the original land alloted to it in 1947. Israel has captured these lands in battles with the Arabs, annexed them and established permanent settlements over them. Morality and justice aside, trying to pick though the 60-year conflict between Arabs and Israelis to apportion blame and then attempt to roll back history does not take us very far. There are winners and losers in most battles. The Arabs have lost. Rolling back history can only be done through patient negotiations and building trust over decades, or fighting more battles with the risk of losing more territory and lives."
So, my attitude has always been let's bury the past and compromise for the sake of everyone in the region. Easier said than done. What have always gotten in the way have been the SETTLEMENTS. No one can deny that if you win a war and capture territory, you will naturally want to use that territory to give yourself strategic depth and bargaining power. However once you annex the territory, start importing immigrants, build permanent settlements for them and evict the local inhabitants, you create new facts on the ground, escalate the conflict and do untold harm to the lives of millions of ordinary Palestinians.
So, here again my atittude is that Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians have every right to defend themselves and seek to recapture their land by whatever means. You have the right to defend your citizens and so have they. You have the upper hand militarily and can wipe them off the face of the earth with great ease. Such power breeds arrogance and foolishness and what we are seeing in Gaza today is a clear example of callousness, popularism and shortsightness for cheap domestic political gains. Hamas was elected by the people but you chose to undermine it instead of talking to it as a legitimate representative of a large section of the Palestinian population.T he Saudi peace plan remains on the table but you continue to ignore it and the cycle of violence keeps turning.
If you accuse me of anti Semitism again I'll punch you in the face, metaphorically speaking. You seem to ignore the fact I myself am a Semite and I can safely bet that my nose is just as big as yours.
There never was a Palestinian state, so the Jews are certainly not occupying it. After the British left the sovereign country that took over the land on the west bank of the Jordan river was Jordan. Egypt took over the Gaza strip. Jordan and Egypt both attacked Israel and in defending itself, Israel took some of that land. They attacked Israel again and Israel took more of its land. In peace accords Egypt refused to take back the Gaza strip, though they received Sinai.
Jordan doesn't want the land back and never has requested it. In peace talks with Jordan, Ramallah never was put on the table by either side. Israel is the only other sovereign entity since the British have left. Who do you think the land should be given "back" to?
Before the modern day state of Israel was formed in 1948, the last time this land was ruled by the local population was by the Jewish people a long time ago.
rockofgalilee
"You cannot be serious", as McEnroe used to shout!
The fact that no Palestinian state was formed at the time of the partition does not mean the Palestinian inhabitants did not exist. Just watch the films that I have posted. They still exist in their millions and have been driven out of their homes and lands and are living in tents and tin huts.
Just raise your hand when you have dismantled the settlements and are ready give back land that does not belong to the State of Israel. You will find that the Palestinian Authority will be more than happy to oblige.
The Palestinians are not without fault and stupidy. But Israel, a mighty and well organised, armed and funded regional power, has used every overt and covert tactic known to humanity in the last 60 years to undermine or physically destroy any serious Palestinian efforts to establish viable administrative and economic structures over the mosaic of little cantons that they are left with.
We can argue until we are blue in the face but the simple truth is that the majority of Israelis are just not ready for a permanent peace agreement that involves giving up large swathes of captured land and dismantling settlements. They talk the talk but do not walk the walk.
Every time we inch closer to such an agreement, hardliners in the Israeli establishment and Zionist organisations find ingenious ways to undermine the process.
One of these abhorant and successful tactics, that is employed with monotonous frequency, is needling, antagonisng and then drawing predictable Palestinian extremists into battle so as to create the conditions and excuses for a large scale military operation - a well calculated and callous over-reaction - that detroys more of the Palestinian administrative, physical and economic infrastructures and any hopes of ever establishing a viable state over the occupied territories.
Funny. All the lies, hysteria, emotional outbursts, Jihad, historic revisionism, blood libels, logical fallacies of every kind, perversions of morality and reason. All the wars and suicide bombers and rockets and snipers shooting civilians on our roads. All the axe-wielding barbarians and monkeys on tractors rampaging in our cities.
And we're still winning.
And we're winning more every day.
Growing stronger every day.
Isn't that indicative of something? :)
There certainly were Arab inhabitants. A number of them are citizens of Israel. Israel has one major requirement and that is existence. Any agreement that does not guarantee Israel's existence is bound to fail. Lets talk about the Golan Heights for example. Before Israel took the Golan heights, your people were shooting into our villages from atop the hills. What would stop you from doing it again if we gave it back?
Israel created the Palestinian Authority to try and give it some power. However, everytime they give them some freedom, more suicide bombers show up in our cities. We removed all settlements from the Gaza Strip and removed all the soldiers. If the gazans would have tried to build an economy they would have had help. Instead they destroyed the greenhouses they were given and started shooting rockets at innocent civilians.
Egypt has suggested a ceasefire and Hamas has stated that they will never give up shooting rockets.
Learn from history or you are bound to repeat it. The palestinians live in squalor because their own people have betrayed them.
Rockofgalilee
The Arab neighbours' threat to Israel's existence; this is yet another concept that Israeli strategists use to scare their own population and draw unwarranted sympathy from the rest of an ill-informed world.
Which is the sole nuclear power in the region and has never signed a non-proliferation agreement? which country has the largest and most lethal stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and the sophisticated long-range rockets to deliver them? Which country has the largest airforce and most modern spy satellites watching every inch of territory around it? and which country has the unshakable military, intelligence and financial backing of the most powerful nation on earth - the USA?
Palestinians, Syrians and the Lebanese should be asking this question and worrying about their own existence in the face of such overwhelming power.
I keep repeating this, the Saudi peace plan not only gives Israel legal and diplomatic recognition over much of Palestine but also provides international guarantees of security.
These is no better security for Israel than a just peace with the Palestinians.
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