Israel/Palestine; has the shit finally hit the fan?

[JimC]

You've only quoted one-half of the definition in the Treaty, and it is not genocide if people "leave." Genocide is killing -- destroying a people. That hasn't happened. There are more Palestinians today than there were 5, 10, 15, 20,25, 30, 35, and 40 years ago. There are way more Arabs, both inside and outside Israel, than there were in the past too.

Where is the genocide?

I quoted the entire definition.

Looking at the expansion of Israel's territory, and the wall, and the blockade, and so on and so on, it appears to me to have the hallmarks of a genocide.

We are free to disagree with each other. I agree with you on lots of matters - just not this one my friend. I hope we don't fall out just because we have a difference of opinion.

I don't think it fits the definition of genocide, but the treatment of Palestinian arabs by Israel within their boundaries has been very poor, and the continuing expansion of the territories seized by the right-wing zionist settlers has been atrocious...

However, this is balanced by the islamic fanaticism of Hamas et al...

There is no obvious solution; the bloodletting will continue indefinitely...

A useful object lesson of the consequences of delusional monotheism in tribally oriented hominids...

[Jesus_of_Nazareth]

Oh, well, fuck the UN and everybody else. Israel has the right of conquest and the moral suasion of being attacked unprovoked by its neighbors in 1967, so "occupied territories" is meaningless propaganda. It's now Israel. End of story.

By the same logic if the Palestinians (or Martians?!) can expel the Jews then they can also simply say "It's now Palestine - end of story".......in both scenarios the only end is when the other side are all dead. .....at the moment Israel is secure (US and own Nukes means no need to worry about getting gased) - but history teaches that stuff changes. In 100 years time Israel could be wiped off the map (Global Warming might actually happen! or a lot of other scenarios that make Israel uninhabitable) - the only sure protection against that is if the neighbours don't want to do that and are willing to help defend you.


But the Jewish tribe is fundamentaly a death cult - as the thing that most unites them is the prospect of being wiped out, and therefore quite intentional to keep that pot boiling......even at the price of sometimes the pot bubbling over.

[Coito ergo sum]

It's easy to be paranoid when everyone around you really does want you dead.

[mistermack]

It's easy to be paranoid when everyone around you really does want you dead.

So you ARE paranoid then? Got it at last !

[Coito ergo sum]

When Israel’s short-sighted critics insistently refuse to look beyond the numerical asymmetry, the very effectiveness of Iron Dome becomes the latest weapon with which to attack Israel for its purported aggression. All those Gazans are suffering terribly, dozens have been killed, yet hardly any Israelis are dying? That can’t be right. How can the Israelis claim to be the victims of unprovoked and indiscriminate aggression? They’re still alive.

Even the reasonably fair-minded foreign news teams focus on Gaza. It’s a much better story. When you’ve done the first article about Israel’s missile defense system intercepting a rocket that, yes, would have killed dozens in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beersheba or Tel Aviv, except that it didn’t, you’ll only be repeating yourself if you do a second piece along the same lines a day later. But Gaza? Fresh faces of suffering daily.

And the cumulative impact is to convey a sense of relentless Israeli assault on the densely populated Gaza Strip that simply must be unjustified. After all, again, the Israelis aren’t dying. They must be in the wrong.

So to restate what is blindingly obvious and yet still so often ignored: The fact that Israeli citizens have not been dying in large numbers in this conflict to date has nothing to do with Hamas, which is employing its very mightiest efforts to kill us, and which is highly skilled and experienced in the endeavor. We live, rather, because in partnership with our American allies we added Iron Dome, a remarkable new supplement to the alarm systems, safe rooms, fortified schools and other measures into which we have poured effort and resources over the years to defend our civilians from attack.

And Palestinians in Gaza are dying in growing numbers because they are either directly involved in trying to kill us or — to our genuine sorrow and Hamas’s cynical delight — they had the misfortune to be sleeping, walking, talking, studying or praying very close to a key Hamas terror chief, missile launch site, ammunition store or other element of the sprawling Hamas kill-the-Jews infrastructure.

To put it succinctly, Hamas is doing its best to kill any and all of us in Israel, while cynically seeking to protect itself from attack by emplacing its offensive capacity among Gaza’s often unwitting civilians. And Israel is doing its best to prevent its citizens being killed, while trying to thwart the attacks without harming Gaza’s civilians. There’s the relevant asymmetry.

The fact that Hamas and its Iranian-led sponsors have been thwarted this time — the shock they must have felt, and the awe we feel, at the astonishing success of Iron Dome — is no excuse for underestimating the ongoing danger. We reduced the strategic terrorist onslaught of the Second Intifada through a combination of arrests, intelligence work and the West Bank security barrier. So they switched their focus to rocket fire, devilishly anticipating that no barrier could stop an airborne assault. Now that we’ve found a means to reduce that threat, you can be 100 percent certain that our enemies are even now seeking new means to overcome those fiendish Zionists’ latest life-saving innovation.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-danger ... iron-dome/

[Coito ergo sum]

Ah, yes...and Hamas just blew up a civilian bus in Tel Aviv... the good guys.

[Tyrannical]

There is never going to be peace in the middle east between Jews and Muslims as long as their is a Jewish State in the middle of things.

[Coito ergo sum]

There is never going to be peace in the middle east between Jews and Muslims as long as their is a Jewish State in the middle of things.

...so, the answer is, turn the Jewish state into a Muslim state.

[MrJonno]

There is never going to be peace in the middle east between Jews and Muslims as long as their is a Jewish State in the middle of things.

...so, the answer is, turn the Jewish state into a Muslim state.

How about turning it into a secular state ?

[Seth]

Arabs can be citizens in Israel, including Palestinian Arabs. They can't be citizens of Israel if they weren't born in Israel or weren't naturalized Israeli citizens, and you can't live in the Ramallah and just apply for Israeli citizenship. Wouldn't make sense that they could.

Land grabbing, assuming it is occurring, arguendo, is not genocide if they're not destroying the Palestinian people. It may be wrong, but it wouldn't be genocide.

According to Lemkin - who drafted the UN law - it is genocide:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups."

Lemkin's an idiot. He's conflating genocide, which is the killing of human beings, with any act that disturbs somebody's culture. By his metric any warfare at all is automatically "genocide" because in every war there are two combatants who are engaged in "disintigrating" the political and social institutions of their enemy. By his metric, all of Islam is pursuing genocide against ever non-Muslim on earth...which happens to be true.

Besides, the Israeli plan for the West Bank and Gaza is quite ridiculously simple: Live in peace with us. It's the Islamic terrorists who are causing all the trouble because they don't want to live in peace with Israel, they want to destroy it and kill every Jew on the planet, and have since about 600 CE.

Hamas views every Palestinian killed as a martyr's sacrifice towards the cause of Israel's destruction. In fact, as we've seen, they kill their own people and try to falsely blame it on Israel. The people of Gaza and the West Bank are merely disposable pawns in Hamas' machinations, and if they object to being turned into cannon fodder, Hamas will punish and/or kill them.

Sounds like genocide to me by your metric. So where's your antipathy and outrage at Hamas?

[Coito ergo sum]

There is never going to be peace in the middle east between Jews and Muslims as long as their is a Jewish State in the middle of things.

...so, the answer is, turn the Jewish state into a Muslim state.

How about turning it into a secular state ?

Sure, sounds great. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia...can lead the way.

I'm preparing a few fucks to give about a plot of desert the size of New Jersey so they're ready for when the "Muslim countries" go secular, or express a shadow of an intent to do so. At least in Israel, Christians and Muslims can practice their religions freely and participate in civil government equally. That can't be said for Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan....





The entirety of North Africa, all of Asia Minor, the entire middle east, and most of central asia is "Muslim," and a piece of sand the size of Vancouver Island is "Jewish" and that's too much of a catastrophe for the Muslims to bear. Excuse me while I try to compose myself due to all the outrage this justifies.

[cronus]

Ceasefire....end of round one.

[Coito ergo sum]

racist monsters -- [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... H-IINhvQvI[/youtube]

[cronus]

racist monsters -- [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... H-IINhvQvI[/youtube]

That does not bode well for the ceasefire then?

[Cormac]

Arabs can be citizens in Israel, including Palestinian Arabs. They can't be citizens of Israel if they weren't born in Israel or weren't naturalized Israeli citizens, and you can't live in the Ramallah and just apply for Israeli citizenship. Wouldn't make sense that they could.

Land grabbing, assuming it is occurring, arguendo, is not genocide if they're not destroying the Palestinian people. It may be wrong, but it wouldn't be genocide.

According to Lemkin - who drafted the UN law - it is genocide:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups."

Lemkin's an idiot. He's conflating genocide, which is the killing of human beings, with any act that disturbs somebody's culture. By his metric any warfare at all is automatically "genocide" because in every war there are two combatants who are engaged in "disintigrating" the political and social institutions of their enemy. By his metric, all of Islam is pursuing genocide against ever non-Muslim on earth...which happens to be true.

Besides, the Israeli plan for the West Bank and Gaza is quite ridiculously simple: Live in peace with us. It's the Islamic terrorists who are causing all the trouble because they don't want to live in peace with Israel, they want to destroy it and kill every Jew on the planet, and have since about 600 CE.

Hamas views every Palestinian killed as a martyr's sacrifice towards the cause of Israel's destruction. In fact, as we've seen, they kill their own people and try to falsely blame it on Israel. The people of Gaza and the West Bank are merely disposable pawns in Hamas' machinations, and if they object to being turned into cannon fodder, Hamas will punish and/or kill them.

Sounds like genocide to me by your metric. So where's your antipathy and outrage at Hamas?

Lemkin was the man who defined genocide, and was the architect of that declaration by the UN. He fought for Poland in the late 30s and was a Polish new who lost a huge number of family members in the holocaust. He knew what he was talking about.

The Israeli plans for Palestinians are plain - keep on expanding, and creating "facts on the ground" until there is no space for a viable Palestinian state. This, combined with the blockade and complete control of the "borders" of Palestine is part of the plan to destroy conditions of life. Words are one thing, deeds are another.