Part 6: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

Sorry, lost the end of the thread there!

Thread 5

MajesticWhine, I completely agree.

Hi, I'm back after semi lurking for a week or two. Feel sick it's starting again. Still feel utterly useless even though I am trying to boycott (but, more importantly, writing to various companies and letting them know), am harassing my MP - latest response is that he has forwarded my message to the home secretary and he will respond - and joined recently formed Palestine Solidarity Group (but not had an actual meeting yet.)
The fact it's started again is making me want to rant and throw things!

Will now read the previous few pages of the thread to get up to speed.

In terms of solutions, I think the common ground is that almost no one on here agrees with the Israeli state's support/encouragement/active participation in illegal settlements, so I think that is something.

The question is how to put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the settlements (and this of course leaves out the whole Gaza horror)?

I found this article about Noam Chomsky in one of the SA papers interesting - see mg.co.za/article/2014-07-04-israels-path-worse-than-apartheid.

He doesn't seem to agree with sanctions which I found surprising. However part of his reasoning seems to be that the education isn't there (as it was for SA's apartheid issues) and given the stupidity of kosher products being removed from supermarket shelves you have to wonder if he isn't right.

Hamas denying firing rockets and there seems to be a lot of suspicion that they were actually fired at all or originated in Gaza.
How can those poor people take another round of bombardments?

Backinthering: I read somewhere that Gaza is roughly the size of the Isle of Wight. I spent some time on the I of W years ago and it is tiny. When you think about how many tonnes of explosive have been dropped on Gaza, you just wonder how anyone is going to emerge from this alive, let alone in any form of mental or physical health. It's insane.

Depressed. Two year olds and five year olds don't fire rockets.

More from Noam Chomsky if anyone's interested - see www.greenleft.org.au/node/57118

Thanks for the Chomsky links wordsmith, will have a read.
If only the talks had made some progress, some tiny concession.... this was horribly inevitable yet I still hoped that somehow something good would come out of it. Stupid of me.

i'm afraid i had no hope of it lasting. sadly i don't trust reports of rockets fired from gaza - maybe they were, maybe they weren't, i can't know because i can't israel's claims given the lies and brutal criminality.

the protestors baying for blood and demonstrating against the ceasefire are presumably nutty's voting demographic (as if his evil wasn't motive enough). i'm disgusted by the people's demands to get back in there bombing again and essentially demanding that gaza be wiped off the map. there is a special place in hell for these people if there turns out to be hell.

missing word sorry - i can't 'trust' israel's claims

According to Al Jazeera Hamas claimed responsibility for the rockets

wordsmith, thank you for the Naom Chomsky interview. The image of shooting fish to keep the rest of the 'caged animals' scared was terribly haunting and painful. Israel does not want peace or negotiations. The only hope for justice is if the rest of the world protests more loudly. We need to be firm on the economic boycotts.

I have also been lurking but am grateful to all the regular posters for keeping the thread going. Accoring to Sky the ceasfire was broken by Hamas in response to an assination attempt by Israel on a senior Hamas member.

sorry about the typos

alemci I thought the article you linked was good and presents a balanced.view.

www.middleeasteye.net/columns/israels-spinning-moral-compass-1874508340

Has anyone linked to this before? About the Israeli mindset: the one that needs to change! I found it a level headed article, very clear. Interesting that the pollsters only poll Jewish Israelis and not minority groups.

Twitter saying five children have died since ceasefire ended.

Now that the ceasefire has ended, will the weapon sales be blocked- or do Cameron, Osborne and Hammond need some reminders?!

So very very depressing. I have a feeling israel wwill attack harder than ever to punish the Gazans further and to make them stop begging for an end to the siege.

Twitter is already awash with photos of dead children. I note israel is not sending in ground troops. Too scared of idf casualties I think. What cowards yo bomb children from air and sea. I don't believe a word israel says. Al jazeera reported yesterday that Israel was hardly present for the last few days of negotiations. The ceasefire was probably used to restock weapons and phosphorus gas to use on babies.

And it's not only Gazans who are being punished. Palestinians in Israel are facing brutality too electronicintifada.net/content/palestinians-israel-beaten-arrested-gaza-support/13774

So much for all the apologists on here screaming that Israel treats Arabs as equal.

Some good news though www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=721308

Israel is ending it export of poultry and dairy from occupied territories.

A great article about youngsters refusing to join the idf edition.cnn.com/2014/08/18/world/meast/israel-refusers/index.html?c=&page=4

We need more young courageous objectors like these kids.

Other news which is relevant is that it's the fourth day protestors have blockaded an israeli cargo ship in oak land refusing to let it dock amd unload. Boycott divestment and sanctions has to be the way forward. Keep boycotting and writing to MP's. It all makes a difference.

Thanks for all the interesting posts, peeps.

Majestic, thanks for the links to the polls. They do make interesting reading, particularly on the need for peace, but I'm afraid I'm not convinced they show Palestinians are against a single state solution. the Gallup poll didn't even ask that question (it did ask about a 2-state solution) and was conducted 2 years ago. The Washington Institute poll, although current, also acknowledges that their results are inconsistent with other findings: "... just 31% of West Bankers and 22% of Gazans would opt instead to 'end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to achieve a two-state solution.' And even fewer, contrary to other recent findings, pick a 'one-state solution,' in which 'Arabs and Jews will have equal rights in one country, from the river to the sea.' "

Here's an insight into the disgusting mechanisms employed in shutting down dissent, here a case of academic freedom. Luckily, on this thread, we're quite aware of the 'point scoring' and other strategies it outlines. www.truth-out.org/news/item/25587-as-repression-escalates-on-us-campuses-an-account-of-my-ordeal-with-the-israel-lobby-and-uc

Excuse me now, got to go and write to no.10. Again.

QnBoudi that link was very scary. The students' original complaints are SO pathetic, (and, as an aside, I think not far removed from a lot of the kinds of fuss made by some undergraduates (of all faiths, races, genders) who don't appear to know what a university education is for! )

see it's the conscientious objectors i celebrate come the 'war memorial' type festivities. not because i don't appreciate the loss of soldier life etc but because they tend to be the forgotten casualties and heroes of war time and many, many lost their lives through being shot, or dying in prison etc.

in my last diversity role when we were coming up for the centenary stuff i read tons and prepared loads of stuff about all the various groups who worked against the war and supported the COs - the quakers are the obvious ones but there were some real surprises (at least to me who may have been a bit ignorant to be fair) like socialist groups (re: we have more in common with each other than our ruling masters so why should we kill each other in their games) and feminists - it actually caused a big rift in the feminist movement where some thought only feminism mattered and some said no resisting patriarchal wars and killing IS a feminist issue.

those young people resisting conscription in israel and demonstrating against the war are heroes. i don't know what makes one person swallow the kool aid and another stay human and compassionate but i'm glad the latter exists and i hope to god that it turns out we're the overall majority.

and this is why i find it crazymaking and irritating to the extreme to argue about hamas v idf crap. those are not the sides to me - the sides are do you think killing innocents is ok or not and it doesn't matter that 'that side did it' or not - if you don't believe in killing innocents then it isn't justifiable because someone else did it or does it too. and literally if enough people held onto that simple notion and wanted peace and justice and to never accept killing then there would be peace because no one would vote for a government who slaughters people whatever side of the national/religious/whatever fence they were on.

to me it's as simple as innocent people are dying in the thousands and it is being justified and supported by people in power who claim to speak on our behalf. that's not ok. i'm not pro hamas because i'm anti military force on civilians. i am pro life (not in the commandeered sense that actualy means misogynistic twattery), pro dignity, pro people not getting caught up in rich men's games and losing their lives in the process. etc.

thanks majestic.

The questions should be, do YOU acknowledge that for an Israeli citizen, whether lobbing rockets/missiles, tunnelling or walking up their street with a machine gun and grenades, in fear or outcome, it matters not a jot to them if it is a Jihadist Sunni Hamas, or Sunni ISIS terrorists doing the killing?

I would say that it does matter. Hamas is an entity they can do something about, through pressuring their government to accept a Fatah-led unity government, campaigning for the withdrawal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, engaging in initiatives that bring Israeli and Palestinian civilians together in a positive way and voting for political parties who are more likely to resolve the situation by participating in the road map. IS isn't something they can such direct and indirect control over.

Of course, if you're going to make a point that it doesn't matter to the dead or terrorised person whether their killer or terroriser is part of one group or another then that applies equally to Palestinian civilians to whom it doesn't matter if they are killed or terrorised in a 'moral' way by the IDF or as part of crimes against humanity by the IDF, Hamas or the random Jihadists running around Gaza.

"campaigning for the withdrawal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank"

I don't understand that. Israel is never going to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and give back the Illegal Settlements. What can people campaign for that Israel might actually do?