Part 5: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

New thread again.

Thread 1 - started when 3 Israeli boys were found murdered.

Thread 2 - in which we mainly discussed Operation Protective Edge.

Thread 3 - in which we continued to discuss Operation Protective Edge, the wider conflict and international involvement.

Thread 4 - in which Operation Protective Edge was examined further and we looked at the different views from inside Israel and the international community.

Another reminder of the Mumsnet Talk Guidelines.

i keep coming back to how it would have been if the nazi apologists had shouted this loudly at us to mind our own business and that we didn't know what we were talking about, that we should get our facts right and we couldn't possibly know what a threat the jews were. as it was we waited far too long with appeasement policies. i also can't help but think that those apologists probably sounded exactly like the israeli apologists and the woman in knesset who called all muslims snakes and called for the death of mothers, or the knesset member above who wants to put them in concentration camps to be deported elsewhere and for any remaining to carry a special ID.

it is all so horrifically parallel.

it makes you wonder if these israelis leading this kind of movement learnt their tactics via studying nazi strategists. it all seems so similar in language and style and justification.

'death to all arabs' chanted in the streets, 'they' (the snakes) don't even love their children, 'they' are not human like us, they should not have rights in this land, they are a 'demographic problem', they breed too much, they x, y and z.

nazi germany's propaganda machine about jews ran very similarly with very similar rhetoric.

we think oh people don't learn but i think the fact is this israeli leadership learnt very, very well from the holocaust and are reproducing what they learnt upon another race. it is devastatingly insulting to those who died in the holocaust and those who died fighting against the nazi's to try and free jews from their oppression. it feels like israel is spitting on all of their graves to me.

can you imagine how soldiers who fought to liberate the jewish people would feel watching what is being done to palestinians? these were men who lost so many comrades in the war and took comfort that they had fought and won against a facist genocidal regime. if they had to see the same genocidal facism resurrected and enacted on another people by the very people who had it enacted upon them before it would feel like such a devastating waste of human life that they saw sacrificed in WWII.

Claig ….. come on, when the PLO was more radical than the Fatah of 2003 onwards, ‘encouraging’ a Hamas sworn to destroy your State, is relative. Call it ‘politics’, without the guns and a Mosad hit squad.

Re a two State solution, that can be the only solution, and the closest they got was a few years BEFORE Hamas came to power, as I believe that this was NOT part of any pre conditioned agreement with fatah.

“In 2003, Israel made a unilateral decision to dismantle all Jewish settlements in Gaza and some settlements in the West Bank. In 2005, around 8,000 settlers were forcibly evicted from Gaza by the Israeli army, along with 500 from the West Bank, and moved into alternative accommodation provided by the Israeli government.”

“Many of the settlers, some of whom believe Israel has a biblical claim to Gaza and the West Bank, felt betrayed.”

Re ISIS, it is not our policy to go around trying to identify those in 4x4 trucks as a certain group, and killing them if we don’t like them. Which country would welcome the West in with an open mandate to hunt-and-destroy Arabs in trucks, by air, within their own country – and not get a domestic backlash, whether the West didn’t make a mistake and take out the wrong truck, or not?

Certainly not Iraq who refused U.S. and other western help versus ISIS.

Re stopping a newly formed Hamas in shorts (with Harry-hind-sight knowing via a time tunnel that one of several militant parties within Gaza, would win a totally surprised election and come to power in 2006 and grow so fast) versus doing a deal with Arafat.

I can’t be arsed to look up when Arafat dies and what his ‘mood’ was at the time, but it appears that his replacement, Abbas, was someone getting somewhere with a wider peace initiative.

Clearly when a dispute is so deep between two parties, it NEEDS the willingness of both leaders/governments to negotiate seriously AT THE SAME TIME, willing to take the DOMESTIC heat back home.

My point is that we can ‘what if’ until the cows come home, ONCE HAMAS came in and began preparing for a perpetual war against without a care for the safety of their own citizens when waging that war, there could not be any progress and that is where we are today.

Honeybadger I totally agree. What happened to Never Again. And lest we forget.

History repeats itself, just different people.

I was at a protest March last week amd the rabbis there were saying the same thing honey.

The parallels are uncanny. But they can also be applied to other regimes in existence which are brutal including Burma, Syria etc. I think there will always be evil people who think their race is superior to another or that another race deserves to be subjugated.

One thing the apologists have said which I do agree with is that we need to also look at other regimes committing massacres. Like Syria. Thanks in part to these threads where apologists highlighted the lack of condemnation in Syria I have looked at the situation there and it beggars belief. Where have I been all these years? How has so much inhumanity gone unchecked in this region without me really knowing? It's shameful for me.

The reason I think this massacre has galvanised the world is that the west are definitely complicit in the massacre as we helped create the situation and our governments are the financial support for this regime. We are implicated massively.

Isitmebut How much has Israel spend on it's Army and weapons over the last several years?

A better question would be:
How much have our governments spent a on Israeli arms recently?

This is from four days ago. Excellent video of Senator Norris in Ireland. Israel, no one believes you anymore

16,446 million us dollars in 2011 according to this military spending

I may be stupid (and probably am, but then I don't follow politics much these days for the sake of my blood pressure), but is anyone else very nervous about nuclear weapons currently held and 'live' out in the ME? These are obviously not working as a deterrent... what's the next step then?

"Defence Minister Matan Vilnai : We are going to visit the holocaust on Gaza

That's Nazi talk. I'm not calling him a Nazi, he's describing himself as a nazi"

-Senator Norris

So, Israels contract for Arms to the UK is worth £42 Million, perhaps we need to target the government to stop selling them to them? (although not happy that we deal in Arms anyway, but thats another thread)

Shit world init.

goldvelvet ..... are you trying the justify the economic (and social) crisis within Gaza due to Hamas's objects over their peoples welfare, as a real need to spend $ for $ on it's military, on an arms race with Israel it cannot possibly win?

Israel is a larger country with several borders, has had Egypt, Syria, Jordan etc attack it, Iran like Hamas, wants to see it's total destruction, as has other islamists even within friendly nations - and with the volatile political situation in those countries, plus Libya, they could be turned upon at any moment and need to be prepared.

Israeli's do no appear to have any of the economic, social and health problems the Palestinians have, and fearing for their security, are behind their governments ability to defend itself.

How many of the 1.7 million Palestinians living in a small area called Gaza, who voted for Hamas in 2006, mainly due to Fatah's corruption - knew they were voting to be both neglected by their own government and placed in between their arms factories, storage, and rocket launchers???

It's refreshing to see/here of two politicians today speaking out.
Surely the rest can only follow, once they stop being cowards.

Excellent speech by Senator Norris indeed. What struck me about the video however was the total lack of involvement from the floor - people playing with their phones, rolling their eyes, looking bored and uncomfortable.

Their government it ultimately controlled by The Israeli government and their border policies though isn't it? Israel control the import and export of everything out of Gaza as well as it's costal fishing perimeters. Hence how they are able to implement blockades of food going into Gaza medicine & cut off the power.

Do you think that the palestinians in Gaza should have 0 weapons. And no money at all spent on defence? What to you is a proportionate amount that they spend on their defence if any money at all?

Excellent video of Senator Norris in Ireland, thank you. He nails it.

Goldvelvet ..... it is not for me or you to decide the Gaza defence budget over the needs of the people, but clearly something is wrong with their budget and just Hamas being there stops a lot of western aid.

Costal fishing perimeters, to terrorists who attack them by sea, go figure.

If Hamas can get into Gaza thousands of rockets/missiles, components for factories to build Iranian missiles to reach Tel Aviv - how many do you think they'd get it WITHOUT an import blockade as that appears to be Hamas's core import/export business?

Senator Norris says it all.

Sorry to be super cynical (verging on paranoid) but I suspect the Qatari flight just escorted into Manchester on the back of a hoax bomb threat is a distraction to deflect the british public from warsi's resignation and the Israeli outrage. Never mind not believing Israel. I don't believe the official UK output any more.

Israel has the upper hand for now, but is becoming isolated in the world. South America can hold its head up high. Shame on the rest of the world.

www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7da99642-1bc2-11e4-adc7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz39WZUZ9hB

Itsitme explain to me why the blockade of food and medicine is also necessary stopping food entering Gaza for up to 4 days?

Re Israel military costs – does anyone know how much it recently cost Israel to use nearly 3,000 sophisticated missiles, fired to shoot down in mid air Hamas missiles and rockets, aimed at Israeli women and children?

That can’t be cheap, and not in their citizens interests to run out, methinks.

Qu Ive been waiting for a distraction for days tbh, but Im cynical as well.

What concerns me is that over the next few weeks the media coverage will lessen, the outrage will lessen and other stories will dominate. The people of Gaza have suffered years of abuse from Israel, many people have followed and protested for a long time about this. Please remember, the bombing will stop at some point, but the peoples suffering will continue now for as long as it takes for Israel to wipe them out, bombs although horrific are a quick death for many, many many more will die very slowly. Now that the tunnels have ended, supplies of food, water and medicine will be very difficult to get in.

Its fantastic to see people showing support now, but unless Israel is stopped this will not end.

Goldvelvet ..... I can't explain why it takes so long to get into the UK via Heathrow, so I'll be buggered if I know the ins and outs and methods of Israeli S.U.S. blockades.

Maybe if there weren't so many 'friendly' nations trying send military equipment to Hamas running out of ammo, labeling could be taken at face value.

1Step so right.