Conflict flares up in Gaza again

[Saba'a]

Over the last couple years I've debated for and against you on many topics. Never have I seen you display such a shallow analysis of a topic.

Urban warfare is never as simple as root out and destroy. Combatants are not honest on Hamas side (they'd be stupid if they were). They don't wear uniforms, purposefully. They hide their faces, purposefully. They are indistinguishable from the civilian population. They stash their guns, remove their masks and pretend to be civilians. Then shoot the soldier (easily identifiable in military fatigues) conducting the search in the back. They also shoot while hiding in a non combatant crowd, shoot from windows of buildings with a literal human shield between them and the window. If a soldier returns fire, civilians get killed or wounded. If a soldier doesn't return fire, he or his brother in arms gets killed or injured. It's a lose-lose for the IDF for avoiding civilians, once again. But at least they're destroying tunnels and weapons caches, something which is difficult if not impossible to do with an air raid (without very heavy collateral damage, anyway).

For some reason, you are irrationally biased against Israel. In your eyes they can do no right, or even attempt to be doing right.

Why is someone biased if they dont support your view blindly? The point is - what will the killings of hamas achieve in the long term. The solution is unfortunately a difficult one - peace.

 

[hellfire]

Why is someone biased if they dont support your view blindly? The point is - what will the killings of hamas achieve in the long term. The solution is unfortunately a difficult one - peace.

I resent that statement. He's not neutral, and that makes him biased.

Peace is always the best route. Not even a debate. But who is the peace partner? Israel has shown willingness for peace over and over again. Now you may claim it's not a true willingness. But you'd be wrong. Israel has signed 2 peace treaties with neighboring countries who were bitter enemies until that point. As soon as the Palestinians want peace they will find a willing partner.
Hamas, on the other hand, doesn't even pretend to want peace. They want nothing less than the destruction of Israel and the removal of any Jewish presence in there region. From the river to the sea.

 

[d0b33]

Israeli scholar: ‘Only raping the sister of a Palestinian can deter him’

Dr. Mordechai Keidar, a lecturer on Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, is well known for his right wing views. Yet today in an interview [Heb] to the Israeli Broadcasting authority given after the finding of the three bodies of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah (July 1, 2014), he showed what he believes to be the truth about “Middle Eastern culture.”

Keidar: “A terrorist, like those who kidnapped the boys and killed them, the only thing that will deter them, is if they know that either their sister or mother will be raped if they are caught. What can we do? This is the culture that we live in –“

Interviewer, Yossi Hadar: “—Yes, this sounds bad, but…”

Keidar: “It sounds very bad, but this is a lesson. This is the Middle East. Only the knowledge that –

Hadar: “Well, we can’t do things like this –“

Keidar: “I’m telling you, I’m talking about them, I’m not talking about what we can do or not do. I’m telling you what they live in. This is the only thing that deters a suicide bomber. If he knows that when he pulls the trigger, or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s it. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, to keep the honor of his sister. This is the culture of the Middle East. I didn’t create it, but this is the situation.”

It’s important to point out that Kedar is the chairman of Israel Academia Monitor, a watchdog group that tries to blacklist post and anti-Zionist academics in Israel who speak out against government policies or the state.

http://972mag.com/nstt_feeditem/isr...ng-the-sister-of-a-palestinian-can-deter-him/

 

[Alan]

When even Bill Maher talks sense one the subject it must really be clear cut.

HARMAN: Charles Krauthammer, whom I seldom agree with, wrote the other day that Israel is using a missile defense system to protect its citizens and Hamas is using its citizens to protect its missiles. (applause from audience)

MAHER: That's good, yeah.

MAHER: Yeah, I do feel, to your point, that if the Hamas people had the opportunity, they would kill the maximum number of Israelis, which would be all, and Israel has the opportunity to kill way more and they do not.

HARMAN: No.

MAHER: It seems like they are the victim of the soft bigotry of high expectations.

No argument there. It's guerilla tactics vs a traditional military force.

The same as the US vs the Taliban. the US vs the Somalians.

And they can't be beaten. Why does Israel think they are any different ?

Well in that the Israel might as well turn their weapons on themselves and commit mass Seppuku.

I am biased but not irrationally - the civilian deaths of 5 to 1 from a country who claims the moral high-ground makes it a no-brainer.

naturally Israel being a western democracy.....

 

[AthenianOwl]

Israeli shells hit Gaza hospital, kill four: medics

(Reuters) - An Israeli tank shell hit the third floor of Al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, killing four people and wounding 16, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said.

The spokesman said the third floor housed an intensive care unit and operating theaters. Other shells had fallen around the hospital, he added, with officials calling on the Red Cross to help evacuate patients.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment. In the past it has accused Hamas Islamist militants of firing rockets from the grounds of Gaza hospitals and of seeking refuge in the buildings.

Is Israel really that much different from Hamas???

 

[sparticus]

I dont get you, where have I ever said otherwise, I have also numerous times Im against settlements.

Ok so answer this then , how should the Palestinians react wrt to years of land settlements ?

 

[daveza]

Well in that the Israel might as well turn their weapons on themselves and commit mass Seppuku.

You have a solution to the stalemate ?

Israel has made it clear the palestinians will never be free of Israeli control, no one state, no two state.

What is left for them but to fight ?

And why is it right that the jews may have their own autonomous homeland but the palestinians may not ?

 

[Alan]

You have a solution to the stalemate ?

Israel has made it clear the palestinians will never be free of Israeli control, no one state, no two state.

What is left for them but to fight ?

And why is it right that the jews may have their own autonomous homeland but the palestinians may not ?

Stalemate is better than defeat at the hands of Hamas for Israel that you advocate.

Ultimately it's up to the Palestinians how long the stalemate lasts which they will suffer considerably more from. Until they get leadership that has their best interests at heart. They had a great opportunity in 2000 for genuine progress but their leadership failed them and today they suffer the consequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit

 

[Saba'a]

Stalemate is better than defeat at the hands of Hamas for Israel that you advocate.

Ultimately it's up to the Palestinians how long the stalemate lasts which they will suffer considerably more from. Until they get leadership that has their best interests at heart. They had a great opportunity in 2000 for genuine progress but their leadership failed them and today they suffer the consequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli–Palestinian_peace_process

 

[lived666]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli–Palestinian_peace_process

2008 they were as close as possible, just both sides had spineless leaders unable to take the next step:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Israel-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Also at the moment there is the Mofaz 50 billion plan for Gaza...who knows, maybe that is enough of a carrot to stop fighting for a while:
http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-...zation-for-dollars-plan-gains-traction-368319

More than likely this is just going to go round in circles a few more times though...quiet for a while until hamas rebuilds the tunnels and rearms courtesy of Qatar and Iran and round 3 starts.

 

[daveza]

Ultimately it's up to the Palestinians how long the stalemate lasts which they will suffer considerably more from.

No it's not. Netanyahu has made it clear Israel will control the game so that the palestinians have little left to play for.

There is no hope for them to control their own destiny other than fighting for it.

 

[AthenianOwl]

No it's not. Netanyahu has made it clear israel will control the game so that the Palestinians have little left to play for.

There is no hope for them to control their own destiny other than fighting for it.

fify

 

[d0b33]

fify

lol had to read it twice.

 

[Seriously]

Wow .

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/632333-Cover-Up!-Child-punched-by-teacher-dies/page2


I'm amazed you seem to have a heart.

What is the difference between this child and a Gaza one who watches parts of his leg bleed out a few feet away from his body ?

Nothing! No difference. This kid died because brainless savage vermin killed him like an animal DELIBERATELY. The palestinian kids die because the cowardly islamist extremist vermin called hamas are hiding DELIBERATELY between kids and woman civilians, even forcing them, while shooting at the IDF. Thats their modus operandi to create bad media coverage but Islamic supporters will never see it like that as it goes against the grain of their pseudo Allah!

 

[daveza]

The palestinian kids die because the cowardly islamist extremist vermin called hamas are hiding DELIBERATELY between kids and woman civilians, even forcing them, while shooting at the IDF.

The Palestinian kids die because the IDF kills them.

It's as simple as that.

 

[LazyLion]

The Palestinian kids die because the IDF kills them.

It's as simple as that.

This has been disproved already in this thread.
There is ample evidence that Hamas keeps children in close proximity to rocket launch sites and military platforms so that they will become cannon fodder.
Go watch the video posted earlier in this thread, look at the pictures.

 

[Looney]

The Palestinian kids die because the IDF kills them.

It's as simple as that.

NO Sir! You are sadly mistaken!

Hamas kills their children

http://youtu.be/wNbWoIO5Vv4

If you put a gun in a child's hand and tell him to shoot at someone. You are to blame for whatever happens to him.

I don't care how you try and spin this.

 

[Seriously]

This has been disproved already in this thread.
There is ample evidence that Hamas keeps children in close proximity to rocket launch sites and military platforms so that they will become cannon fodder.
Go watch the video posted earlier in this thread, look at the pictures.

The pro Islamic faction in this thread refuse to even consider facts and evidence as presented in this thread. Allah forbade them to accept facts and evidence it seems!

 

[LazyLion]

(This from a liberal US news source)
Israel's Deadly Invasion of Gaza Is Morally Justified.....
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118788/israels-war-gaza-morally-justified

Children are dying in Gaza. In the coming days, more will die. And though many die as shields cruelly used by cynical Hamas terrorists, they are being killed by bombs from Israeli planes and shells from Israeli tanks. And so even as we acknowledge that Hamas’ hands are stained with the blood of its own people, for Israel, too, there must be a moral accounting.

I do not mean simply a refrain we have heard frequently in recent weeks: “No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens.” This sentence is probably true. But it is also irrelevant. The question is not what some other country would do, but what Israel ought to do. And that question is not as easily answered. In fact, it presents us with one of the great moral paradoxes and tragedies of our time: A war which must be fought—and which seems impossible to fight morally.

Traditionally, moral thinking about war is divided into two broad questions. First, we ask whether the decision to go to war was a moral one. In doing so, we ask: Are the reasons for the war morally compelling? Were less-destructive alternatives considered and pursued?

For Israel, the first question seems easier to answer. Few would deny that, in principle, Israel’s war with Hamas is both just and necessary. Israel acts on the most clear justification possible: self-defense after days of restraint, warnings, and pleas—as rockets continued to land on its cities and later, as militants sprang from tunnels to kill its citizens. Ceasefires have been offered, but Hamas has rejected them. And whatever criticisms one may have of Israel’s failures to midwife an effective and peaceful alternative to Hamas (and I have many), these do not undermine the fundamental justice of this self-defense.

But there is also a second, larger question: How should wars be fought? And here, Israel runs into a problem. Because in the conduct of war, we insist not only that combatants be the sole targets of military action or that steps be taken to reduce civilian deaths. But we also insist on proportionality; that the military value of a target must outweigh the anticipated harm to civilians.

And on this key issue, Israel may seem to fail the test. True, Israel only targets combatants and takes unprecedented efforts at avoiding civilians (making personalized phone calls to civilians before striking areas near them), but can we confidently say that the anticipated harm to innocents is justified by Israel’s expected military gains? The degrading of Hamas’ rocket capabilities, and most of all the destruction of its terrifying network of offensive tunnels (fortified by the limited cement that Israel permitted into Gaza for humanitarian purposes) are valuable military goals. But as the Palestinian death count rises above 500—many of these civilian—I find myself bewildered: Are these tunnels really worth the lives of all those children?

And the truly horrifying thing is that it is pretty clear that Israel couldn’t do much better. With Hamas headquarters, weapons caches, and infiltration tunnels buried below hospitals, mosques and homes, there may simply be no way for Israel to actually pass the test of proportionality. The killing of any individual Hamas operative, the destruction of any particular piece of terrorist infrastructure, can seem pale and insignificant beside the quantity of innocent death.

We are thus left with a paradox: Morality demands that Israel fight this war, but allows no way to fight it morally. In this conflict, reason itself seems to fail.

There is, however, a way out of this paradox. And we find it at the moment we realize that Hamas’ actions have made this war about more than Israel or Palestine; it's a war about future of morality in armed conflicts. For if Israel declines to fight, we live in a world where terror groups use their own civilians, and twist morality itself, to bind the hands of those who try to fight morally. In this world, cruelty is an advantage, and the moral are powerless in the face of aggression and indiscriminate attack. And make no mistake: The eyes of the world are on Hamas, and terrorist groups worldwide will—as they have for generations—learn from the tactics of Gazan terrorists and the world’s reaction. So if Israel allows Hamas’ human shields to defeat it now, we will all reap the results in the years to come.

But there is an alternative. We can say that there is a principle worth fighting and dying for: Civilians cannot be used to make just wars impossible and morality will not be used as a tool to disarm. And once we have that principle, the proportionality calculation changes. The deaths of innocents are not simply outweighed by Israelis’ right to live without daily rockets and terrorists tunneling into a kibbutz playground; but by the defense of a world in which terrorists cannot use morality to achieve victory over those who try to fight morally. It is the protection of that world, one in which moral soldiers still have a fighting chance, that justifies Israel’s operations against Hamas today. And it is that greater cause that decisively outweighs the terrible toll in innocent life.

 

[Alan]

No it's not. Netanyahu has made it clear Israel will control the game so that the palestinians have little left to play for.

There is no hope for them to control their own destiny other than fighting for it.

Netanyahu controls who they vote for. Those Mossad mind control devices now taking over entire populations!

What kind of destiny does Hamas offer them? and you want the Israelis to share in it.

You would do your nut if Hamas or Fatah were political parties in this country. Then again you voted for the party of necklacing and mall bombings and how well is that turning out for you?