Part 7: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[AndHarry]

Thread 1 - started when 3 Israeli boys were found murdered

Thread 2 - Operation Protective Edge

Thread 3 - Operation Protective Edge, the wider conflict and international involvement

Thread 4 - Operation Protective Edge and the different views in Israel and the wider international community

Thread 5 - in which Operation Protective Edge came to an end and the discussion continued

Thread 6 - themes of the conflict, what happens next and how ordinary people can get involved

Welcome to Thread 7.

[mumof2andlovingit]

maybe one of their leaders could find it in their heart to feed their own people?
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4543634,00.html
www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/28/gazas-millionaires-and-billionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/

or what about Arafat's widow - maybe she could donate some funds for food?
www.cbsnews.com/news/arafats-billions/

I wonder if the citizens of Gaza would have more of an agricultural industry if the lovely greenhouses the Israeli's left them weren't systematically destroyed?
www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-chesnoff/gaza-and-palestinian-leadership_b_5589766.html

every nation protects its borders. Why isn't Israel allowed?

[labslondon]

mumof2, we are also real parents. I slept late because I thought it was important to turn up here to counter the constant hasbara. Also I think I will start a forum to assist the Palestinian cause. This thread has highlighted an unbelievable amount of animosity towards an already persecuted race of people - so yes I am a parent - I work study and commute across London (4 hours a day commuting on some days) but I still have the energy to advocate for Palestine - very necessary under the circumstances.

[mumof2andlovingit]

just because a person supports Israel does not mean they are paid. that is a terrible accusation.

[justasecond]

Nipper you sid "I cannot find any "reliable" source that Israel is limiting food supplies to Gaza"

Noam Chomsky among others has written about this
truth-out.org/opinion/item/12635-noam-chomsky-my-visit-to-gaza-the-worlds-largest-open-air-prison


Here is the relevant part of the article :

"All this is part of the general program that Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Prime Minister Olmert, described after Palestinians failed to follow orders in the 2006 elections: "The idea," he said, "is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."

Recently, after several years of effort, the Israeli human rights organization Gisha succeeded in obtaining a court order for the government to release its records detailing plans for the "diet."

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Israel, summarizes them: "Health officials provided calculations of the minimum number of calories needed by Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants to avoid malnutrition. Those figures were then translated into truckloads of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day ... an average of only 67 trucks  much less than half of the minimum requirement  entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began."

The result of imposing the diet, Middle East scholar Juan Cole observes, is that "about 10 percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under age 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition. ... In addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant mothers."

[SamG76]

labs - are Palestinians a race? They're just the people who lived within a certain geographical area in the late 1940s, including many to came as migrants in the 20's, and 30's to take advantage of better work and living conditions under the Zionists. Are they racially any different from Southern Syrians, for example, or Lebanese Sunnis? I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect that you are using the term "race" simply as a stick to bash the Israelis.

I wish I was paid!

[justasecond]

SamG -Mads Gilbert has been banned from entering Gaza by Israel
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/15/mads-gilbert-surgeon-gaza-israel

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-bars-outspoken-norwegian-doctor-mads-gilbert-from-entering-the-gaza-strip-9862340.html#

[PigletInABlanketJohn]

Nippernoo Thu 18-Dec-14 12:00:45
"We are going over old ground again here"

Indeed we are. You repeatedly accuse people of lying, yet you cannot substantiate your accusations.


You also accuse people of having said things which they have in fact not said.

Who is the liar?

[SouthLondonMum1]

You are - of course - entitled to your own opinions.

You are not, however, entitled to your own facts.

Throughout this thread, some of you have posted sheer misinformation You ascribe to the Israelis the most appalling and base motivations for all they do. Meanwhile you ignore the openly genocidal aims and actions of Hamas.

You refuse to accept the reality: Israel is a tiny country surrounded by larger, more powerful nations, many of whom call for her destruction and for the removal of all Jews and Christians from the region.

You ignore that Gaza is run by Hamas, and that peace was promised in return for Israel leaving Gaza. Never mind that Jews have been living in Gaza for centuries and for as long as any other group. Israel left - and the result? More terrorism from Gaza.

No nation would endure deadly missiles raining down on their homes and schools and hospitals.

So yes Israel responded. The deaths of Palestinian Arab children IS tragic and no decent person would fail to be moved. But blame those responsible: HAMAS. They openly boast of using innocents as human shields.

Israeli soldiers are children too - mostly 18 and 19 yr olds. Male and female. They are Jewish and Druze and Muslim and Bedouin. Do you actually think that ANY Israeli mother of ANY faith is happy for their children to be in an army and risk death in this way?

Recently Egypt bombed Gaza repeatedly to create a buffer zone. Egypt also destroyed a hospital because it had been overtaken by militants. Yet I do not see any of you maligning Egypt for doing the same as Israel and for the same reasons.

It is also hilarious that the second anyone defends Israel, they are accused of being 'paid' to do so. Such an accusation reveals hatred and paranoia to such an extreme that it is alarming. Should I assume that YOU are 'paid' by Hamas...?

No? Then don't level such absurd allegations that me for speaking up for Israel. This is meant to be a discussion and instead it is just an excuse for some folk to demonise the sole democracy in the region.

[KareninsGirl]

I couldn't have put it any better southlondon.

[Nippernoo]

I did say a credible source, you quote Chomsky who calls for the abolition of the state of Israel. Chomsky also defends the findings of Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier, who claims that Jews were responsible for World War 2, I presume you do not agree with this? also Gazans have one if the highest obesity rates in the world. politicalarena.org/.../palestinians-have-the-8th.../


"Palestinians" have the 8th highest obesity rate in the world; third highest among women


"Palestinians"(Southern Assyrian's) who live in the Gaza Strip and the Wast Bank of Israel have the 8th highest obesity rate in the...


politicalarena.org

I suggest you find more credible sources for your information, Thousands of tonnes of aid is delivered through to Gaza each week. On the other hand the Egyptians have completely closed the border. In addition, when Israel vacated Gaza they left all their businesses, cultivated land and greenhouses that could have fuelled the economy but instead they destroyed it

[Coachbella]

Interesting about the "alleged" starvation see this link
politicalarena.org/2012/11/25/palestinians-have-the-8th-highest-obesity-rate-in-the-world-third-highest-among-women/

[SamG76]

The Israelis say that he's banned only from Israel. He could go to gaza via Egypt, of course, except that Hamas attacked the crossing, as they did the Erez crossing, so the Egyptians seem none too keen to allow people through the Rafah crossing. Perhaps he could go through the tunnels with his friends....

[PigletInABlanketJohn]

It's very puzzling that some of the people who support the actions of the State of Israel on this thread seem to be genuinely ignorant of some of the troubling things we have previously discussed.

We have people who deny that Israelis steal land in the Occupied Territories to build Illegal Settlements. We've had a denial that Israel prevents Dr. Gilbert from entering Gaza. We've had people who claim to be unaware that Israel has an illegal blockade of Gaza which restricts their ability to export or to import, limits the food and building materials they receive, and on nothing more that seemingly spiteful whim, declares that random items such as jam and coriander are illegal. We've had people claim that the children shelled by an Israeli gunboat while playing football on a beach, or the picnicking family shelled by Israeli artillery, or the Palestinian farmer shot by an Israeli soldier while trying to tend his fields in the shadow of Israel's Apartheid wall, were actually victims of Palestinian rockets. We've had people who are seemingly so ignorant of Menachem Begin's past as the leader of a murderous terrorist gang that they don't even have some sympathetic flannel prepared to try to gloss over it.

It's almost as if these people live in a cocoon where only limited news is available, and the worst aspects of Israel's actions are kept under wraps.

[SouthLondonMum1]

FACT:

[PigletInABlanketJohn]

and some of the people who support the inhumane, wicked and illegal actions by the State of Israel, waste our time with meaningless slogans and irrelevant posters.

[KareninsGirl]

piglet, all those points have been answered. you are just not listening. you either post yet more fabrications or put words in our mouths.

None of that makes what you say fact.

[SamG76]

PIABJ - I read the Guardian, as it happens, so read almost nothing but criticism of Israel. The Israeli blockade of Gaza isn't illegal. And I've read a hostile biography of Begin as well as his autobiography, so am probably better informed about him than most ....

[SouthLondonMum1]

PIG IN A BLANKET:

It is very puzzling to me that you throw around terms like 'illegal settlements' when there is NO consensus that this is the case.

Any country that is attacked, and in pushing back the attacker acquires more land, is not obligated to then return that land. As it happens Israel DID do precisely this when she returned the Sinai - on condition that there would be peace with Egypt.

Stephen Schwebel, formerly president of the International Court of Justice, notes that a nation acting in self-defence may seize and even “occupy” territory when necessary, to protect itself.

He also says that a state may require, as a condition of withdrawal, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory.

Resolution 242 gives Israel a legal right to be in the so-called West Bank. Israel is entitled to administer the territories it won in 1967 until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East is achieved.

[Nippernoo]

elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/the-siege-is-biggest-gaza-myth-of-all.html?m=1

[SouthLondonMum1]

See there you again PIG IN A BLANKET, using pejoratives such as 'wicked'. That is not a fact - it is YOUR subjective and ill informed opinion.

And the 'slogan' is an objectively verifiable FACT - no wonder you don't like it.

[PigletInABlanketJohn]

"It is very puzzling to me that you throw around terms like 'illegal settlements' when there is NO consensus that this is the case"

Excuse me saying that is purest bullshit.

Any bank-robber can say that the ownership of the sack of swag he carries is disputed.

[PigletInABlanketJohn]

'wicked'

Let me test you on this.

Is it wicked to throw someone out of their home, steal their land, destroy their possessions, and refuse them the right to return?

Is it wicked to bomb a school or a hospital, killing babies, children, the old and disabled?

[PigletInABlanketJohn]

Is it wicked to use a captive as a human shield to protect an armed group?

[Nippernoo]

Let me test you

'wicked'

Is it wicked to murder teenagers, is it wicked to send suicide bombers on to school buses, schools, nichtclubs, train stations, is it wicked to drive cars into innocent civilians, is it wicked to murder rabbis praying?