Part 6: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

Sorry, lost the end of the thread there!

Thread 5

i think the sad reality is that facism and hate can happen anywhere and within any population. israelis are not immune to it by virtue of history.

the holocaust teaches us to condemn and speak up wherever we see these things and to whoever they are done and by whomever. there's no immunity or exemption just because it happened to your group before. in fact if we're honest people who have been terrorised, even if not in that generation but within the psyche let's say of the group of the group consciousness may in fact be more likely to jump to extremist responses to perceived threat or extreme attitudes and emotional arousal towards groups they perceive as a threat.

sadly the massively boundaried 'us' mentality (which a historic persecution and trauma will no doubt heighten) creates a very distinct 'them' by definition. whilst many people will learn generalised lessons from the holocaust some factions will learn lessons purely about their group, their safety, their defensiveness.

i suspect the israeli education system and presentation of the holocaust develops the narrow perspective rather than the wider humanist one and that may be hard for outsiders to understand as they think 'how can they not learn from this' etc. the reality is they've learned but they've taken a very different lesson from the events.

HB, could you or PJ please pm me? Thx.

I read in last week's Spectator that 6 PC of Israelis were opposed to the horror of the war that we witnessed this summer. That was only in Taki's column so not sure that that is true. I'd like to believe not.

96% were happy with it and considered proportionate and justified according to what i read arabella.

Was that Taki in Spectator? That' where I read it. Not sure how reliable he is. Please pm me, hb.

QnBoudi - part 3 of my response. Sorry for length, but it's due to the quoting, not my windbagging.

"You still haven't engaged with peled's alternative view. The point he makes is that the Arabs have never presented a genuine military threat." I couldn't find your Peled link but looked up his blog. He writes beautifully and persuasively. It is hard to reconcile his father's insider view that the '67 war posed no threat to Israel with certain facts of the time: Egypt, Iraq and Syria & Jordan mobilising troops along the borders, declaring their intention of destroying Israel and removing the UN buffer forces from the border. I found his future vision of a country inspiring, but from the little I read, it seemed that he wanted Israel to act unilaterally, and that peace would surely follow. I don't share this view. I think it takes two. Both sides have to act toward peace, whether that's moving toward a two-state solution or even his vision of a single united state.

"As for providing evidence, you ddon'thave to be an expert on everything and able to counter everybody's arguments in detail. No one does. But if you're going to profess strong opinions, they should be based on something, and when others challenge those with ample contrary evidence, you can'tjust turn your head away and stick to your old claims! Or at least you ccan'tdo that and still hold credibility." My contributions are all "based on something"! They just don't gel with your views. When quoting sources I stick to ones that may have credibility with this crowd (e.g. Al Jazeera) rather than ones from the Israeli press. When I was looking upstream for that Peled link I saw an old comment of yours which accused me of shameless lies. I assure you that I engage honestly, otherwise what is the point?

"Finally, please direct me to some of the 'increasing testimony' (but none of this 'Mr X says...' stuff which would not stand up in a court of law!) on Hamas'suse of human shields." I did post a link to such testimony a page or 2 back (here it is again). Actually, I think the term "human shields" is a misnomer. Hamas appears to use its citizens as human bait. Apart from testimony, let's consider a fact. This summer Hamas sited its missiles in heavily populated areas. Fact. It makes no obvious military sense. There are many open or abandoned spaces from which they could have discreetly fired, without risking their own people with retaliation fire. But it makes perfect sense if you feel that dead civilians will incur the sympathy and outrage of the world, causing the cessation of arms and supplies sent to their enemy. Which happened. Please give me another reason why Hamas fired missiles from schools, hospitals and hotels full of international journalists (video evidence on link).

I am not saying this to deflect criticism of Israel. Israel takes it on the chin. I am saying this because all the blame is put on Israel and none on Hamas. Let's examine the partner for peace that Israel has to negotiate with.

it's quoted in the video testimony i linked above from the russell tribunal.

OK, sergeant, I bow out here. There's no discussion with someone who believes that Hamas bears 'at least half' the responsibility for Palestinian deaths and destruction. You're defending israel's decision to drop more munitions than were used in the entire 2nd world war on that tiny bit of overpopulated land (and that's just in this latest round of 'mowing the lawn'). You've seen the idf use phosphorous and depleted uranium and think that's appropriate to 'avoid the threat of a nuclear winter'! (Spot the bitter irony?) And you're basing your opinions on hearsay testimonies that can't be questioned or validated. But no, you're not for mass murder of innocents. I'm speechless.

it takes you to the edges of sanity doesn't it? it's like the brain can't fully grasp that a) anyone would commit evil like this and that b) seemingly otherwise reasonable people would defend it as just.

we know from history that people can go along with evil and justify it as it is happening to the 'other' but you sort of hope that we've learnt from that. that a nation especially who studies that history intensely and emerged from it might have learned the most. in fact all they learnt it seems is a sense of justification to commit any evil they wish on the 'other' themselves.

in frank terms it is seriously fucked up.

sorry apparently my brain has been so stretched it hasn't got room to remember punctuation anymore.

The Israelis aren't that bad are they:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11136897/Syrian-boy-5-survives-bullet-lodged-in-neck.html

Does that one boy in the PR release compensate for the thousands of non-combatants killed and maimed by Israeli forces in the last few months, many of them children?

Or is it just a drop in the ocean which is intended to make those who support the actions of the state of Israel feel smug?

ooh one child. well done. that totally redeems bombing hospitals and schools full of children right?

do not watch this unless you have a heart of stone

The the House of Commons is debating a motion on 13th October, calling for Parliament to recognise a Palestinian State alongside the State of Israel. You can ask your MP to attend and support the motion via this PSC link.

And for all those who have pounced on the ndtv footage of Hama's rockets, pls see the reporter's (sreenivasan jain) piece 'Truth vs Hype: notes from an unequal war'. I'll save you the bother of looking it up and quote a few of the main points.
Talking about netanyahu's use of the alleged Hama's rocket launch (which btw shows no faces/identities of the perpetrators etc) at a press conference, jain states it is "illogical for Israel to use this video to claim the moral high ground... It doesn't change Israel's culpability ... Simply establishing that Hama's fires rockets from residential areas (sic) doesn't in any way condone Israels response".
He cites Rafah as an example of this disproportionate 'response', saying " what we found is nothing short of a massacre".
He clearly points out that Palestinians have a legal right to resist the brutal occupation.
He goes on to say that Israel "doesn't offer any concrete proof" or "any credible explanations" for its claims.
He notes it is unreasonable to insist Hama's recognise Israel when Israel won't say where its borders are.

So, in this digital age where drones and satellites are all around, where phone footage abounds, its ridiculous to take the ONLY hazy, unidentifiable video clip of what appears to be a hamas rocket launch and use that alleged evidence to justify the utter carnage seen in the rest of the world's videos, tweets etc. No one's buying it. Except those who have something to lose. And that would be the thieves and thugs who are stealing land and crying 'victim'.

Yes, velvet. I'm considering whether to ask my staunchly pro Israel mp to reveal how many of these requests she's had. I know she won't support it, but have got everyone I know to sign it anyway.

Did everyone see that Sweden's set to recognise Palestine? Let's hope it starts an avalanche.

Sweden's announcement has got Israel irritated who now want to 'talk' to the swedish ambassador. I also hope that the world stands up to israeli bullies.

go sweden! enough countries speak out and make a stand and the ones who don't begin to look like the self interested pariahs they are and are forced to think again hopefully.

No one answered my question: Please give me a reason why Hamas fired missiles from schools, hospitals and hotels full of international journalists?

It is not just the NDTV footage. All TV footage that I saw over the summer showed Hamas firing from heavily built up residential areas. Does anyone think otherwise?

You mention that Israel's culpability is not affected by where Hamas fires from. What about Hamas's culpability about where it fires from? (Let alone where it fires at). Why is no one examining that? And considering its effect on the Palestinian death toll?

You mention that Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation. Gaza is not occupied. The West Bank government (which is in the occupied region) did not see fit to fire on civilian populations.

This thread is utterly one-sided. But in real life, there are two sides. I understand the compassion for the Palestinian cause but I don't understand the refusal to see any culpability.

would you like to point on a map to the tiny bit of land that is gaza with a population of over 1.5million people that isn't heavily populated?

also just clarify IF someone fired a missile from your near your child's school tomorrow would you be cool with the goverment carpet bombing the school with the children in it?

Even in the heavily populated gaza Strip there are desert areas, Honeybadger - a simple Google Earth search shows them quite clearly, but then I'm sure you knew that

It will be interesting to see if anyone actually answers sergeantmajor's points ...

No HoneyBadger. I am not cool with anyone bombing any school. But I would not absolve the party who fired the missile from the school in the first place, especially as it was in full expectation of retaliation fire. My question: why do you absolve them? And my original question: why did they fire from a school?

Why are people 'absolving' hamas? I'd say there are 2 main reasons. Firstly, it's because they have a legal right to resist occupation. Secondly, there's the whole question of proportionality. However, I haven't heard anyone who supports Israel's actions discuss this; they simply dismiss it as eg an 'emotive' concept.

I find it both a circular and an offensive argument to say that Hamas does (and should) 'fully expect retaliation'. Just because world leaders have consistently allowed Israel's excessive, unjustified brutality in the past, is not a valid reason for the Palestinians to just roll over and accept this injustice. I can't believe that those who earlier complained about victim blaming (in the context of jews being responsible for antisemitism) have no compunction doing the exact same thing, effectively saying "wicked, evil Hamas are wilfully making Israel attack them"!!!