Let's get this right: Israel, not Hamas, started the war in Gaza

[sherazade]

Israel broke the four month ceasefire in november 2008 after a raid into the territory which killed six member of hamas.

Hamas responded with the rockets.

Prior to this, Gaza's people has been subject to an almost 2 year long siege involving harsh sanctions against its people which has resulted in appalling life conditions. According to Ann short a ridiculously high percentagte of Gazan children are 'malnourished' because of the siege.

Hamas is asking for the siege to be lifted.
Hamas is not a terrorist organisaiton. It is a democratically (first fair elections in the middle east) elected polticial party made up of highly qualified and educated doctors, lawyers, and engineers and is amongst the most highly educated governing body in the world with over 500 phD's between its members. It is certainly not 'misogynistic', with many women amongst it upper ranks.

It was hamas' internal, not foreign, policy which got them elected.

Now with almost a thousand innocents dead, the lack of compassion on this forum has sickened me beyond belief.

This is a sad, sad, world we live in.

that was my quote- about the blood of the innocents haunting the israelis.

Yes, all very dry and academic, but the Palestinians have no legitimate right to the debated lands either.

Neither of them do, which is why there's a problem. If you seek the dispersal of the Jews (again), then you should equally seek the dispersal of the Palestinians .. and build a Disney theme park on the Gaza Strip.

Abraham has a lot to answer for.

Didn't someone establish that Palestiniens are semitic too?. Surely then you would have to say anti-israeli which is quite different.

sorry, here it is: i condemn hamas for legitimising the blood spilling of jews everywhere. i do not believe in the spilling of anyone's blood as a solution/acceptable response for anything.
no doubt i'll STILL get accused of being anti semitic, but there it is for the record.

Let's keep it simple. The Palestinians said, "No," to a state of their own? The first of many times?

And for every vile quote made by Israelis, I can find one espousing hatred by Palestinian leaders.

Let's not try to claim the blood of innocents is on one side only.

Sorry Sherezade - it was your quote.

Desiderata, help me out here since I may have a few gaps in my middle east history. Those quotes by senior israelis admit there were Palestiniens already living there that had to be removed. Is that true or not?

onager, i'm an arab but apparently i am not longer classes as a semite. not only has the zionist lobby legitimised the bulldozing of our homes and farms that we inhabited for centuries and were the orignials inhabitants ( we didnt have a right to them, says desiderata), they have also tried to trash our ethnic origins, to strengthen the 'anti semitic' answer to every damn thing you throw at them

both sides have vile quotes, but empires have been built on the quotes of the zionists, built, guarded, funded with billions of dollars, defended with one of the biggest armies in the world, and tens of thousands killed. israel is FOUNDED on the substance of these quotes, the quotes from the palestinians also similarly vile, are a response to this illegal occupation.

also it is glib to say we offered the palestinians a state too. someone comes into your house, takes over by killing half your family , bring their entire family with them to settle there, tells you its their because the bible said it is AND they have major world powers backing them and says 'well you can have the toilet'. you can have the toilet as your state, just make sure you dont elect anyone we don't like.

No, you will not continue to be accused of it, Shez. If that's what you feel, that's fine by me.

But we should not forget that Palestine is, historically, a region and not a country. And it's a spurious region at that.

If the Germans had conquered Britain during WWII, that would have been an invasion of a nation state. The case between Israel and Palestine is as blurred as Mr Magoo's eyesight.

Abraham had two sons; Isaac and Ishmael. The Palestinians are the descendents of Ishmael, and the Jews the descendents of Isaac. Abraham left no will, so the land dispute has been going on for two thousand years ... and this against a biblical backdrop which has no clear basis in historical fact!!!

This is more complex than any 'civil war' that's gone on before it, and I decry the number of English people who feel the need to get viscerally, emotionally involved in something they have no concept of whatsoever.

I don't think anyone thinks the Palestinian sense of grievance is spurious.

What I deplore is the British love of the perceived underdog constantly getting in the way of the facts.

And the facts are that no one has a legitimate right to that land.

White farmers have been turfed out of Zimbabwe. Many of them have been farming land for three or four generations. No one doubts that the land is Zimbabwean, it is simply the people who till the fields who come under question.

In the Middle East, it isn't even that simple.

Very, very well said Desiderata.

I'm absolutely shocked and appalled by some of the comments on this thread:

"Well, I've had enough of Israel. It's hardly worth the trouble, is it? Let them all go to America where they have a huge fan base. It would save a lot of strife and bloodshed."

"Them" being who? Jews?? This is just anti-semitism. Yes, let's persecute them again, after all, after 2000 years they're pretty used to being driven as refugees all over the globe.

"stop the violence on palestinians (whose land was stolen in the first place) and Hamas will not fire a rocket again."

Now that is just not accurate is it. Hamas did not start using terrorism, firing rockets, and effectively starving their own people because of violence on palestinians. Hamas - like you by the sound of it - deny the right of Israel to exist. Until this changes, or a compromise can be reached (which has happened again and again over the past 30 years, broken by one side or the other), the violence can not stop.

And there's also just a tiny bit of controversy over whose land it is historically isn't there.

Can understand why you are so emotional and upset about this but this is not rational.

Desiderata, are you really saying that palestinians have lived there all that time yet it isn't their home because of Abraham's will?.

That takes my breath away.

Please tell me that I misunderstood that.

Yes, you misunderstood that, because I have never said that it isn't the Palestinians's homeland.

What I have said is that it is also the Jewish homeland.

Do you honestly think that, without that crucial controversy, this would have gone on for so long? Do you think the UN plucked the nation of Israel out of thin air in 1948?? That they could have put in anywhere, but they decided on there purely by chance?

That is the crux of the controversy. If you've missed that, you've missed the whole point.

so, jews in their millions who have never previously stepped foot in palestine, become nationals of israel by default.

according to abraham.

Okay that's a relief. I think of you as one of the sensible ones so was worried there

So there were Jews there already and Palestinians living together. I assume you're not saying it was the homeland of any Jews who were born in other countries?

by the way i am absolutely not saying that jews should not live peacefully in palestine. i am talking about the mass removal of homes, the killings, and the forced fleeing of the palestinians. if everything was so nice and fair why did so many palestinians die, flee and become refugees? israel WAS created at the expense of the palestinians.

The Jews were displaced, were they not? They coudn't set foot in Palestine.

If you're not aware of Abraham and the controversy surrounding him, then I'm frankly surprised. The Jews and the Arabs descend from Abraham. Or at least, that is what the Jews and the Arabs in that region believe.

In biblical times, lands were granted by the patriarch. This current conflict arises, (cradle to grave stuff through millennia), because Abraham's last wishes have not been established.

It is the Jews who were displaced, and not the Palestinians.

This arose in the main because Jewry allowed usury (the act of money-lending). Both the Muslim and Christian religions (years back), forbade usury, so the Jews became the target of both love and hatred.

Pogroms against the Jews can be traced back to the early middle-ages. The Jews would lend kings money, and when kings could not afford to pay them back, jews were slaughtered in their thousands.

They have been a displaced race of people for a thousand years or more. If you want to talk about David and Goliath, I would put Israel as the David, and not the other way around. They have had years of persecution.

But ultimately David, of course, won.

And yes, if you want my fait au complis, the reason why western states tend to favour Israel is because Israel is probably still lending them money.

Some things don't change.

But I like to favour a pan-political point of view. It is no good to focus on dead babies, however sad that is. If the Palestinians could do it, they would too.

Peeps, if it incomprehensible to us. But I think, in fact I would urge, that we are grown up enough to see both sides ... and to understand that there are certain parts of the globe where emotions run so high that rationality no longer comes into play.

Desiderata, I may know more than you think, but I wanted it spelt out by someone other than myself.

You are putting forward the argument that people who have not lived in Palestine for a thousand years nevertheless own it and have the right to throw out the people who have lived there all this time.

Since we have all moved elsewhere over the millenia we can all argue that a country our ancestors lived in now belongs to us. That argument can probably justify every war of conquest in history, every enslavement and every genocide.

In fact if you define homeland that way it effectively upholds the BNP view that people have a 'home' they should all be sent back to.

I began this weeks ago feeling that my sympathies lie with both sides. I actually said that the sufferers on both sides are not the ones who started it, but the ones who inherited the problem. That we should look for some kind of compromise.

I never thought the Jews had any rights to the land, but they were refugees I said. Of course they took it when offered. Anyone would.

What I have read here and other places has eroded my sympathies. If this view is held by the Israelis and used to justify their actions then I am disgusted.

I will continue to feel sorry for the innocents on both sides, but anyone claiming ownership on those grounds is not an innocent and not deserving of any sympathy at all.

revjustaboutlikesvests, it helps my peace of mind since I don't want to believe a whole nation thinks that way.