Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
I asked because you appeared to be doing the sectarian shuffle - it's always the other lot who are responsible and it's always down to them to satisfy the conditions of the other-other lot first.
No, that's not my position. Both sides must abide by the terms of agreements made. Israel did abide by the Oslo Accords, for example, and the Palestinians did not, right from the start.
Also, this about who is doing what. Iran funds Hamas, and Hamas has fomented these Israel Day and Nakba day protests, and they've done it regularly. This is not new. Most of the people killed, the 58, were Hamas folks, but there are women and children in the mix (attacking the fence and Israeli soldiers) because Hamas literally puts them in harms way on purpose. Not only do they do that, but they hide their military/weapons behind schools and hospitals.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
Look, Gaza is a humanitarian disaster area.
Because of Hamas. Israel is not in Gaza. Gaza is not part of Israel.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
Egypt, Israel, and the PA bear and share responsibility for this. Sure Hamas are a bunch of ideological zealots, bolstered by Iran, who put their own interests first - preferring to posture and spend what little money there is on guns and bullets rather than ensuring a stable power supply or sanitation services, schools and hospitals, teachers and doctors and the like. But Hamas is not the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people are not Hamas.
It doesn't change the fact that the Palestinian people overwhelmingly support the goals of Hamas, which is anti-Jew and out to destroy Israel. And, it doesn't change the fact that they use civilians as human shields, and send civilians into harms way for the precise purpose of creating the controversy that they create. Israel is not to blame for that.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
Gaza is under a strict economic blockade, a stranglehold tightly enforced by both Israel and Eygpt - there's no jobs, no meaningful agriculture, no manufacturing, no exports, and the main imports are drawn either from a very limit range of Israeli-approved humanitarian aid or the empty promises of religious ideologues.
Solution - descry and disavow terrorism and accept partition, and state that what is desired is to live peacefully side-by-side with the Israeli state. Ask for help from the UN to fix those problems.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
And as is always the case in regions of social breakdown the nasty guys with the guns get to control what little resources there are along with deciding who's going to get them - "Your children to the fence or you won't get your two bags of flour."
I know, that's horrible. That's the point I made. It's not Israel indiscriminately killing women and children. It's Hamas and the Palestinian leadership fomenting violent riots and purposefully putting people in harms way.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
Wilfully and persistently conflating the Palestinian people for Hamas is the kind of political bollocks that we've heard over and over again, in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Chechnya, and Myanmar etc.
I don't conflate them at all. The fact remains, Israel has a right to exist. It was legally formed in exactly the same way as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, out of the carcass of the Ottoman Empire. It is not an illegal state. It is not a stolen state. The fact also remains that the Palestinian Arabs and all the Arab league countries rejected the 1948 partition, preferring instead to go to war and try to destroy Israel, and it was that Arab-initiated war that caused people to flee the scene and become refugees, first in Jordan and then when abandoned by Jordan, they became the stateless area. Stateless, why? Because they refuse to accept a two state solution. That's been the case since then, and the prevailing view among Palestinians - the people, not just Hamas - is that Jews are evil, and Israel should be destroyed because it's not just the west bank that is partially occupied territory - it's all of Israel - the entire state of Israel they think is occupied by an invader and those invaders are to be eradicated.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
It's a politically convenient method for casting the other lot, all of them, as fundamentally and inherently malign, devious, immoral, and violent, and of providing the other-other lot with the illusion of moral superiority that justifies whatever action is politically expedient to take against them.
Nobody is doing that. The country that is maligned the most in the media, for example, is Israel. As bizarre as it is, the media paints it as Israel's fault that Palestinians attack the border fence, and attack Israeli soldiers -- they're using kites and balloods to send up molotov cocktails over soldiers to set fires - and to try to set fires to fields and buildings in Israel.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:38 pm
And it should be no surprise that the situation is boiling over, because as the humanitarian crisis deepens in Gaza, as it is, so grows the desperation and anger of the people - nudged in the back by the nasty guys with guns only to be shot in the face by Israel from the other side of the exclusion zone. Israel is the political, economic, and military force in this stand off, and it's escalation of the enmity between opposing ideologies now appears to be being politically sanctioned and underwritten by the current US administration. This suits the right-wingers and hardliners in Israel - it maintains the requisite level of perpetual threat that justifies their hardline stance and their political pleas that only they can secure and protect Israelis from the slavering hordes at their gate. They have no interest in peace, and indeed need Gaza to be in crisis to justify their existence and their actions. This was shown not too long ago when one high ranking Israeli responded to the idea of Palestinian protesters breaching the fence with something to the effect of, "Let them. We have enough bullets for everyone." Now we're treated to the Israel administration once again shifting the burden entirely onto Hamas, and by extension everyone in Gaza - man, woman and child - making them entirely responsible for Israel's killing of predominantly unarmed protesters on the Gaza side of the exclusion zone. How is peace even possible if that kind of rhetoric reflects the prevailing view of the Israeli administration? So yeah, I call the sectarian shuffle on this kind of reflexive apologetics for Israel's ongoing action in this crisis, and to my mind much of it is a cosy convenience that belies not just a abject failure of common decency but it also handily avoids holding Israel to account for what it's actually done, and continues to do, with regards to Gaza and the Palestinian people.
They aren't unarmed protesters. These were not "peaceful protests." There is no reason for 8 year olds, or infants, to be at violent protests on the border, where they're attacking the fence and Israeli soldiers. Most of the people shot were Hamas men, not women and children and the women and children who were there are dead because of Hamas.
Hamas admits that most of those killed were Hamas members -
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/ ... v13aaQvzIU senior Hamas official Salah Bardawil said 50 out of the nearly 60 protesters killed Monday were Hamas members, with the others being “from the people.”
Here is an interview on CBC that makes valid points:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as- ... -1.4663690 We didn't send the Palestinians against the fence. Hamas did.
Hamas was very, very open about the goal of this operation. It was to break the fence and kill Israelis and destroy our country.
Hamas sent 40,000 people against our border to break through the border and kill our civilians. That's the only reason.
Hamas sends civilians to die for media coverage - says Hamas --
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=25414
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar