with the terrible history Jews have, why is Israel behaving like this?

[ssd]

I would have thought they would be showing more compassion for a repressed minority but the opposite is happening

and Netanyahu saying they told the Palestinians to leave because they were going to be fired on...where the bloody hell would they go to?? IF THEY COULD GO AT ALL

Agree with every word backinthering.

Greenbananas I'm also finding it deeply upsetting. I've seen pictures of dead children, a photo of a devastated father holding his baby - a picture that haunts me. She looked the same age as my beautiful DD. I can't help but think if these were white kids there would be utter outrage and worldwide condemnation. I can't imagine what your neighbours have seen and they are very brave to go to Gaza.

greenbananas - I don't doubt your neighbour is sincere but she is wrong about one thing - I don't think that the cause of this is because some people believe in Mohammed and some don't - it's happening because two lots of people are fighting over the same territory. It wouldn't matter if one lot was German and one lot was British (both Christian) or whatever. (Don't forget that during the first world war the Germans were regularly reputed to bayonet babies etc.)

And I'm sure that there are terrible (and true) stories coming out of Gaza at the moment.

And I'm sure that men from Hamas are terribly 'caring' towards some and certainly of great faith.

But you see I hear the other side - from the Israelis who are also really distressed about the constant rocket attacks, about how to answer their children when they say 'Why do they hate us? Why do they want to kill us?'

The people on both sides suffer and neither of them want this. A few extremists on both sides, yes they want this. But the only hope for peace in the region is to listen to those on both sides who actively want peace - not revenge.

My Jewish FB friends and their children are constantly posting pro Israel propaganda, not a word from any of them of the horrors that are happening in Gaza.

Likewise sponge they are taught at school to see the Arabs as a lower people who deserve to be ridiculed, spat at in the street. They then grow up and join the army.

Disgraceful

On another thread about the current slaughter (I've read various figures today, from 300 dead to 500 - 300 in the morning...) someone linked to a fairly reasonable article looking at 'why now'. It appears Nethanyahu was threatened by Hamas ceding control of Gaza. It seems the Israeli politicians were threatened that Hamas was giving up. So innocent elderly people, disabled people, children, women, and other civilians, are being slaughtered because Hamas was withdrawing, not being aggressive.

Topbanana, you're probably right, it's maybe all about territory. However, my neighbour is also right - this is about religion as well. The bad feeling between Jews and Muslims goes back a long time (despite both being "people of the book")

I think that the fact Muslims see this as a holy war is very worrying.

The Muslim neighbours I speak to are (by definition) tolerant and lovely people who are happy to interact with Christians and build a multi cultural community. What about the radical minority, the teenagers who want to go and fight...

their parents may have more perspective, but we are still likely to have a worldwide holy war on our hands - and to be honest,if I was a Muslim teenager, even in England, I might well feel the same way!

"The role I see of all people is that we spread peace not war."

Yes. And we have to ask ourselves, every time we do anything, is that leading to peace or war?

I think on the other thread I said I have no doubt there are Palestinians who want to wipe anyone Jewish off the face of the earth. This is an ugly view and how do we tackle it? By teaching both groups to see each other as human beings first, by peace initiatives, by outreaches, and stopping the state sponsored violence. Not by bombing an entire population. That's going to have the opposite effect.

Topbanana1: in answer to the that sad question, "'Why do they hate us? Why do they want to kill us?" The answer is: "Because they are not getting a fair deal. Our government has allowed (and indeed supported) settlers to take much of the West Bank and literally throw them out of their own houses and because we have bombed them many times and continue to bomb them."

All of these things have to change.

In apartheid SA, the government tried at one point to do everything it could to uplift the black middle class and yet the anti-apartheid protests and attacks by the ANC continued. The government yelled, "See! They are impossible to deal with. We do all this for them and they continue to attack us."

The attacks continued until they got equal rights with white people. Black people weren't interested in a few scraps thrown at them and they couldn't be bought off by building a few nicer schools and clinics. They wanted a proper democracy.

There may well be suffering on both sides, but it is hardly equivalent. Hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians are being slaughtered, over 1,000 injured, compared to 20 Israelis, most of them soldiers. (As in combatants, not civilians.)

The week before the three Israeli teenagers were killed, ten Palestinians were killed, but that was barely mentioned. Palestinian lives seem to be regarded as far less important than Israeli lives.

I just hope the people working for peace and trying to bring Israelis and Palestinians together make some progress, but there's very little chance of that when Israel is slaughtering Palestinian babies.

Personally, I think what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza is not just to wound Hamas, but to send a clear message to their far more dangerous neighbours. With the world's attention focused on Gaza, there can be no plainer statement about Israel's absolute military might and its determination to defend itself. Remember what's happened in Egypt, in Syria. What's happening in Iraq. The threat from ISIS is very real to Israel.

Israel is genuinely threatened, but Hamas are not the only enemy. As has been pointed out on this thread, Hamas rockets terrorise Israelis, but in fact don't actually cause mass casualties . Kidnappings, although horrific, are relatively rare. Mossad and regular drone strikes could probably contain Hamas.

I can't be the only one to think that the Israelis are playing a longer game. I don't think this is really just about Gaza.

And yes the holy war thing is deeply worrying - maybe the trickiest out of the whole scenario. I think I mentioned on the other thread some bible based Christians I know who are supporting the IDF entirely because it has all been prophesised in the bible apparently. Uh, ok, jolly good then so we don't need to worry about all the children being killed after all then?

Then there are the religion based settlers who believe Israel has been given to them as God's chosen people and choose to interpret that as the biggest chunk of land possible.

And then you have the extremist Muslims who believe it's their duty to kill Jews.

I can't pretend I have answers to all of this but I know it's not more war. That will only entrench it all more. I think education will help and again outreaches and massive peace initiatives.

Shockingundercrackers.
Using the maimed corpses of little children to "send a clear message" is the actions of a psychopath.

Backinthering: my heart agrees with you... But my head tells me it's not as simple as that. Israelis elected their government for a reason. Israel may be the Goliath against Gaza's David, but look at the map of the Middle East. Their position is perilous.

What's happening to the Palestinians is beyond an outrage, the pictures we see with are too horrific to ignore - and yet what can we in the West (who set up the of Israel, who make billions arming it) do? The situation is far more complex and extreme than it first appears IMHO.

I am not defending Israel's actions, to be clear. I am trying to answer the OP's original question. What makes this nation (which of all nations, should understand the horrific sufferings of the powerless) commit the terrible atrocities that they do.

I have been asking that question myself for days, and this is all I can come up with.

What can we in the west do? We can boycott Israel! Just as some of us boycotted South Africa during apartheid (though our delightful government at the time were quite happy to support that regime). We can refuse to buy Israeli goods, refuse to holiday there, write to our MPs to ask them to push for a boycott (I did this tonight). Ultimately when the UN believes Israel has committed crimes against humanity, as it did during the last two operations, they should be held to account by governments across the world.

While the UN contains America it is useless.

There is no point having a organisation apparently for 'peace' when at the helm is the biggest terrorist organisation in the world.

Lets not forget the UN allowed the bombing of sanitation plants in Iraq, leading to a reduction by 92% of people who have access to fresh water, that has risen to 42% but is still a fraction of what it was.

The UN are pointless in matters like this

undercrackers, you could well be right that for Israeli politicians this is more about scaring other countries off than about Gaza itself. Despicable way to use the children of Gaza.

ICanHearYou:
The role I see of all people is that we spread peace not war.
The fact that there are African Jews won't shake your conviction that it's all white Europeans deliberately causing trouble..

The only reason Hamas is attractive to the people of Palestine is because Israel are SUCH barstards, they could do so much with the money and weaponry they have to focus on defence and support for Palestine not war.
The reason Hamas is in power currently is that it fought a bloody struggle against PLO/Fatah and shoved them aside, a struggle that caused the death of approximately 600 Palestinians and was characterised by atrocities and much brutality including:
'the targeting and killing of civilians, public executions of political opponents and captives, throwing prisoners off high-rise apartment buildings, fighting in hospitals, and shooting from a jeep marked with "TV" insignias. The International Committee of the Red Cross has denounced attacks in and around two hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza strip' [from Wikipedia]

Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot. The MB is an import from Egypt. Palestinians have been governed by essentially a bunch of militant terrorists and out-and-out racketeers who have managed to become obscenely rich despite the poverty all around them ever since 1947. Hamas are not attractive to Palestinians any more than the rule of the UVF or the Provisional IRA would be attractive to anyone. If you think you might like that, move to Belfast. See how welcome you will be. See how nice it is there in the months of July and August.

This present conflict is taking place in the context of ISIS making headway in Iraq, and no state that fears ISIS would do any differently. SA is armed to the teeth. Jordan likewise. The US has suddenly become very silent on the matter of Iran and its arms.

The US also started up aid to Egypt again and has been very quiet on the topic of the recent election of el-Sisi as president, a volte face that occurred after somebody in Washington suddenly woke up and saw that the Muslim Brotherhood had taken over in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring (a revolution that was encouraged by stupid State Department officials and Hillary Clinton who did not understand that you do not start a revolution and then leave it to others to finish it, and who apparently forgot that the ME and N Africa are crawling with militant Islamists.)

The 'Arab Spring' should be an object lesson in why foreign policy should never be conducted on the basis of sentimentality, and the dangers of being carried away by your own hubris.

The israel-Palestine issue is not complex. Israeli regime has committed so many crimes against humanity - it has dehumanised the palestinians to the extent that some sections of israelis actually believe that Israel is justified in what it is doing. More so, the Israeli government has repeated the same lies so many times that the world has started to believe that it is complex. Was south African apartheid complex or was it a gross injustice? This Too is a gross injustice.

Palestinians have been so dehumanised, their appeals to the world leaders fell on deaf ears. They have been bombed every 2 years over the last 6 years at least - their children have been slaughtered, disembowelled, their parents have been killed mercilessly, they are a traumatised nation. Their homes get bulldozed. They get told to flee the bombardments but are caged and have nowhere to flee. Then they get leaflets telling them that it is their own fault that they are being killed (they voted Hamas). It is a sick twisted joke. So now, they fight back. Stones against tanks. Unsophisticated rockets against the most sophisticated missile technology in the world which works at pin point precision apparently. Which leaves me to draw one conclusion - Israeli regime has compete disregard for Palestinian life.

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
? Frederick Douglass

Committing mass genocide because you fear ISIS is an appalling excuse. There is something quite disgusting about slaughtering oppressed women and children in their 100s to ensure the threat of ISiS doesn't gain stronghold.

How about actually seriously making amends and treating palestinians like humans and not the caged ghosts that they have become to Israel, being killed like they are playing some video games.

But no, by giving Palestinians what is rightfully theirs will create mass hysteria in the Israeli parliament as they quite like to maintain the status quo and the oppression and like to build on land that's not theirs.

“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...”
? Malcolm X

It seems to me that part of the problem is that rhetoric has taken the place of rationality, both on the ground and elsewhere.

It always helps to hold facts in high regard.

Yrupita that's not an unbiased view at all....:/
Palestinians murder israeli's too. This is not a one sided conflict and quoting Malcolm X won't swing my opinion either.

Agree with Yruapita. Anything else sounds like an attempt to justify slaughter. Not a one sided conflict? The casualties tell a different story.
This isn't just a political narrative. It's people's lives - snd deaths.
How would you feel if it was your child's pathetic little corpse you were clutching?
That might sound emotive but it's those poor people's reality right now.

Take a look at this link from the other thread. Is Gideon Levy a self-loathing lily-livered traitor to his people or someone who wants real peace? See www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/is-gideon-levy-the-most-hated-man-in-israel-or-just-the-most-heroic-2087909.html

www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/23/us-israel-diplomacy-idUSBREA2M0ER20140323

Israeli diplomats launched an unprecedented strike on Sunday, forcing the complete closure of embassies around the world as they escalated a dispute over pay, officials said.

This was on the 23 march