Israel

Neil3030

Sickening.

We are talking about a nuclear nation that goes into towns with tanks and heavy bombing to combat men armed with the odd rifle or two. They then call this a war on terrorism? They have America's support because the yanks want to keep their Jewish citizens happy. A sick nation if you ask me. On the News they are always seen as the good guys because you hear of suicide bombers killing thousands of jews, which i don't condone but you have to ask yourself why someone would hate a country so much as to want to take his or her own life just to atack them. Israel are no good guys. Just look at the picture.

Boston

the cicle of abuse, abusie becomes abusier, they are several times worse then the nazi's for the simple reason no one will stand against them

Stephen

flamewar ahoy!

Victor

Originally posted by Neil3030
On the News they are always seen as the good guys because you hear of suicide bombers killing thousands of jews,

This is over stating the facts.

However, I saw the picture on the paper and yes it disturbed me. Like the footage of the soldiers shooting at the feet of the women on the way home with her shopping - as the reporter put it "shoot first, ask questions later".

azezil

Originally posted by Neil3030
On the News they are always seen as the good guys

I wouldn't agree with that, not sure what news you were listening too but the news i heard was about suicide bombers but they usually only kill one or two and injure some more. Then the Israilies send in their gun ships n blow the crap outta something!

I'v always seen teh Isralie's as teh agressive, unrelenting one.


And that pic is sickening

Neil3030

You are right i may have exaggerated the distructiveness of the suicide bombers but I always get the feeling that Sky News are more sympathetic towards Israel.

Keeks

Sky news is but BBC news is not al all sympathic towards them.

Having worked in the aera I've seen the hatred first hand and it is hundreds times worse than the sectarianism in the North. There will never be peace there unless Big Brother gets involved and actually does something. the Israelies are some of the most self centred and ignorant ppl I have ever met. They are totally blinded by the propaganda that their government (Sheron) tells them. the place has become really bad since he took over as prome minister.

Sand

I remeber Kevin Myers writing an article about people who made comments similar to:

Israelies are some of the most self centred and ignorant ppl I have ever met. They are totally blinded by the propaganda that their government (Sheron) tells them.

The article boiled down to: take a group of people, give them a massive chip on their shoulder along the lines of the holocaust, place them in a region where theyre actively despised by a large proportion (Id say majority but ill say proportion to avoid hairsplitting) of their neighbours, throw in an ongoing campaign of terrorism and attacks which sow an understandable fear and suspicion along with a healthy dose of ruthlessness.

And then people act all surprised when the Israelis dont act,vote and speak like people who live normal lives, in safe calm regions with little to no threat of death at any time from complete strangers.

Keeks

The only real was i could expalin them to my friends when i came back was that it was a country full of ppl who had the same bigoted ideas ad Ian Paisley. It was only way i make ppl understand what its like. Imagine a country of ian Paisleys.

/me shudders @ d thought

The Gopher

Yes Israel does a load of inhumane **** but gets off with a slap on the rist by the US.What Israel is doing at the mo is much worse than what the Serbs were doing in Kosovo before full scale war broke out.And the US was cricicising the Serbs long before the large scale massacres.1000-2000 people have died in Israel in riots and airstrikes mainly and the US says very little.12,000 Kosovans died i8n massacres-only a few dozen died in riots etc.But the US went mental on them for those deaths.On the subject of news bias I find that the likes of Jeremy Bowen and John Simpson on the BBC are very pro Palestinian-mainly cos many of their reports are based around the civillian suffering there.But generally I find sky news has no opinion in particular.

Victor

Originally posted by The Gopher
But generally I find sky news has no opinion in particular.

Watching Sky the other day and I am paraphrasing with the first one here:

Israeli with gun = doing his duty
Palestinian with gun = gunman

Victor

Originally posted by The Gopher
But generally I find sky news has no opinion in particular.

Watching Sky the other day and I am paraphrasing with the first one here:

Israeli with gun = doing his duty
Palestinian with gun = gunman

This was immediately after showing footage of Israeli soldiers firing at the feet of a woman walking home with shopping.

adnans

Personal Testimony of an Israeli Refusenik by Asaf Oron, is at least worth a read when discussing a topic about Israel.

adnans

Sand

1000-2000 people have died in Israel in riots and airstrikes mainly and the US says very little.12,000 Kosovans died i8n massacres-only a few dozen died in riots etc.But the US went mental on them for those deaths.

Hard to compare as the kosovars werent running into resteraunts and pizza parlours, detonating the exsplosives attached to them and commiting pre meditated murder of women, children and pensioners who were unlucky enough to be there.

BTW can anyone point me to a statistical breakdown of the deaths in this current round of violence? I.E Israeli Milatary, Israeli Police, Israeli civillians (including settlers) and Palestinian militants, palestinian authority officials (police and otherwise) and palestinian civillians? Preferably by a source which is not anti US/Israel or anti Palestine as they inevitably let their passions cloud their judgement.

The Gopher

Not sure of any exact figures but this week alone 50 people died.It passed the 1000 death toll perhaps last summer if I remember right.Since it has calmed down a little I would say that perhaps 1300 have died?Roughly 8-10 times as many Palestinians die as Israelis.
And the Kosovo Albanians DID kill civillians-though not on the scale of Palestinians.About a dozen farmers of serb origin were massacred soon after the peacekeepers arrived.Also about 400 other Serbs have died since the end of the war.

Sand

Hmmm I know the number of Israeli dead was a fraction of the palestinian dead. I was more interested in what the ratio fo civillian casualties was on both sides- i.e is it that 70% of Israeli casualties were civillian whilst say 70% of the Palestinian dead were militants/rioters/suicide bombers etc etc. Just out of curiosity. If anyone knows of such a statistical breakdown Id be grateful.

As for Kosovar attacks on Serbs after the arrival of NATO/UN forces we agree that the scale is not comparable.We also agree that such attacks are not acceptable regardless of justification (Id hope anyway). In Kosovo Milosevics regime carried out a sustained campaign of apartheid and systematic murder. Clearly Evil. The Kosovars (previous to the "liberation" anyway) were not as "violent" an oppressed people as the palestinians. You might claim that Israel is doing the same as Serbia (the implication from your comparison of Israel to Milosevics Serbia). Certainly its policy of *encouraging* settlements cannot be supported. So its pretty clear then that Israel is evil. But then we have Palestinians carrying out the aforementioned terrorism. So clearly theyre evil.

Whose a US president to support then? For every Arab woman getting shot at by Israeli troops theres a dozen Arabs carrying out suicide bombings against Israeli women and children. Whose more evil (seeing as weve got to the "best of a bad bunch" as Typedef put it in another thread regarding the PDs)?

Hard for the (rare) US president, who feels free to go against the large Pro-Israeli lobby in the US, and take a strongly moral stance to decide eh? Of course its fairly easy for the non-involved to decide - the side most associated with the US is cleary the most evil!

This could explain why a lot of Israel/Palestine threads start of with a long round of denouncing Israel with a few " of course i dont agree with suicide bombers but we should really try to understand why someone would want to blow up women and children" thrown in. Very few (any?) start off with the purpose of brining a palestinian atrocity in for discussion.

Personally I cant blame the current US philosophy of washing their hands of the problem (as much as the can- the pro-israeli lobby must be appeased to some degree).

they are several times worse then the nazi's for the simple reason no one will stand against them

Wooh, Boston finds somebody worse than me:|

Neil3030

Look at the picture, sand. That is a human being lying dead on the ground. Someone's son. And those 3 sick individuals treating him like a prize. How could you stand up for a country that carries out this kind of behaviour? Soldiers with years of training and the latest weapons versus a gunman trying to protect his city. That man wasn't killing women and children by blowing himself up. He was trying to defend his town from an army.

pugwall

Its sick
I wonder if the 'angry' Eoghan Harris (Hack with the Sunday Indo who also happens to have that "massive chip on his shoulder along the lines of the holocaust") bought the times that particular day and saw that revolting pic. That Palistinian man was killed with filthy American money.

Typedef

The article boiled down to: take a group of people, give them a massive chip on their shoulder along the lines of the holocaust, place them in a region where theyre actively despised by a large proportion (Id say majority but ill say proportion to avoid hairsplitting) of their neighbours, throw in an ongoing campaign of terrorism and attacks which sow an understandable fear and suspicion along with a healthy dose of ruthlessness.

And then people act all surprised when the Israelis dont act,vote and speak like people who live normal lives, in safe calm regions with little to no threat of death at any time from complete strangers. [/B]

Point of glaringly obvious fact!

The Israeli army is occupying palestinian land, it is bulldozing palestinian homes and the state of Israel is forcebly colonizing the 'annexed' land with Jew only 'settlements'. There is not a campaign of terror ongoing against Israel, Israel is clearly in the wrong here, the United Nations has tried and failed to interviene to constrain Israel inumerate times since the first wave of illegal Israeli annexation, occupation and Jew Supremecist actions have plagued the Palestinian people.
It is 'not' a terrorist campaign (at least on the Palestinian side), it is action of self defence, as I have stated Israel occupies land and colonises it contrary to the wishes of the 'entire' UN bar the US and Israel it self and that is all that has prevented foreign 'international' troops from long ago intervienign in some form.

Do the Palestinians not have the right, to not have their homes bulldozed by the Israeli army? Do the Palestinian people not have the right to their own state? Do people, the media and Pro-Israeli sentiments at large honestly believe that if one spits out one's pro-Israeli propaganda long enough and in the most ignorant and unobjective way possible that it will somehow become logic? Do these same people think if they call people nazi's long enough that suddenly their moronic totalitarian propaganda will enunciate itself as truth?
Never, for as long as I live will I ever capitulate to the extraneous error of logic, reason and morality that allows people to support Israel, a state which.

In terroritories occupied contrary to UN mandate has
1. Given 60,000 (illegal) colonists 17 times the right and acces to water than the 2.x million palestinian people who (legally) live on that land.
2. Allowed it's army acting in the name of the Israeli state and therefore representative of that state, to murder maim, and kill innocent people, bulldoze their houses, bomb their cars, and asassinate people it 'suspects' of being terrorists. The big difference here is (now try to assimilate this) Hamas does not act in the name of the palestinian state, that is why it is wrong to retaliate against the palestinian people for what Hamas does. Now if (some) people would try to look past the end of their biggoted nose and actually notice the difference here 'major' progress would be made.
3. Has made 'refugees' of 750,000 people who have been 'displaced' or some other such non-thought word from their own land, why because those people were terrorists?
4. Is in direct contravention of the 1948 UN resolution calling for the withdrawal of Israel troops from Palestinian land, and calls on Israel to make a quote 'Land for peace deal' with representatives of the Palestinian people.
5.Participated in the suppression of the human rights of the Palestinian people, it has denied them equal status with Jewish people on the grounds of religion, it has denied people the right to trial by jury instead favoring a policy of arbitrary asassination of 'terrorists' where 'terrorist' is anyone Israel deems so, it has in a contigious way flouted it's obligations to comply with the most basic requirements of the international community for 54 years and has with US protection enjoyed a status of being totally above the 'law', where other countries that infringe on UN resolutions in some instances get 1/50 the period of time to comply with resolutions.

And all the while Israel makes a mockery of five million years of human evolution and ten thousand years post-iceage civilisation, by it's blank cheque form the world's pre-eminant superpower, a superpower which lethargically allows any transgression to pe perpitrated by the state of Israel, a superpower that labels Palestine as 'terrorist' for resisting such clearly unfathomable supression, repression and terrorisation.

Sand

Look at the picture, sand. That is a human being lying dead on the ground. Someone's son. And those 3 sick individuals treating him like a prize. How could you stand up for a country that carries out this kind of behaviour?

Your obviously choked up with such righteous indignation that you missed the fact that I havent commented on the photo in any shape or form in your urge to attack somebody. But lets comment to satisfy you.

Im unfamiliar with the exact event but taking your description mentioned above Id have to say that soldiers tend to kill gunmen- or gunmen tend to kill soldiers. It could quite have easily been any of those Israeli soldiers dead and the palestinian celebrating his victory over the zionist satan spawn. Soldiers will tend to get crude in their victory "celebrations" (anyone who tries to pull condoning rape or assorted war crimes out of that statement is quite simply a moron and should keep it to themselves) because its one way to build up the sheer insanity/agression it takes to go into a situation where youre liable to be killed, rather than run away from said situation as most people would do. Soldiers have been celebrating killing their enemies and having survived for as long as their has been war. And it has been tolerated all down history. So is Israel good or evil because of this? Or it simply the way things are disagreeable as they might be?

Hmm Im pretty sure i criticised Israel when I said their policy of encouraging settlements could not be supported. If I defend Israel its because so many are intent to go on for yonks and yonks about the wrongs Israel have done- thus proving their evil- and yet dismiss Palestinian atrocities with "Well I dont condone terrorism but boy those evil Israelis are the ones really responsible by *making* them go out there attack civillians". My viewpoint is that theyre as bad as each other, but at the very least the Israelis do not engage in the evil of deliberately attacking targets seeking maximum civillian deaths.

Speaking of people who go on yonks and yonks about the wrongs Israel have done....Oh heres Typedef. Of course for Type he does not have to deal with the moral problem I posed regarding whose most evil in the post Neil responded to because....

It is 'not' a terrorist campaign (at least on the Palestinian side), it is action of self defence

So clearly not evil. The Israelis being the only ones doing anything evil its then quite clear whose not evil.

And all the while Israel makes a mockery of five million years of human evolution and ten thousand years pos-iceage civilisation,

And suicide bombers are what? A celebration of human evolution and post ice age civillisation?

Just to make sure we all know whose the most evil we can go for the "Most Associated With the US" acid test....

it's blank cheque form the world's pre-eminant superpower, a superpower with lethargically allows any transgression to pe perpitrated by the state of Israel, a superpower that labels Palestine as 'terrorist' for resisting such clearly unfathomable supression, repression and terrorisation.

Thats settled then. BTW i think that labelling of terrorist has something to do with the suicide bombings. I could be wrong.


Type is caught in the JPF trap. Because Israel is evil the palestinians cannot be. The fact that they could both carry out evil acts never enters his head. Even if they did hed still be hellbent on "proving" the Israelis were more evil, thus picking the "best of a bad bunch"- something he ridiculed in that PDs/SF thread there.

Im pretty sure Im a nazi cos I dont go along with the JPF view that the Israelis are evil and the Palestinians are good (or at least merely naughty)

Moriarty

Originally posted by Neil3030


Sickening.

That it is, but its not unique. In just about every long-term or high intensity conflict, similar things have occoured upto and including the gulf war. It dosent make it right, but you seem to think that only Israeli soldiers would do such a thing.

Originally posted by Neil3030
We are talking about a nuclear nation that goes into towns with tanks and heavy bombing to combat men armed with the odd rifle or two.

Would you prefer Israel to send in its soldiers in jeeps, so that they can more easily be killed? What exactly would the point in that be? They have tanks etc, so they use em.

You are very wrong with the use of the term 'heavy bombing'. Dresden during WW2 - that was heavy bombing. The Israelis are carrying out small-scale tactical bombing. Very different things, used for very different objectives.

Originally posted by Neil3030
Israel are no good guys. Just look at the picture.

With that twisted logic, Britan, Germany, France, the US, every other NATO member to a greater or lesser extent, Russia and numerous other countries are 'bad guys' because their troops have participated in similar things in their recent past. Go figure.

Ri-ra

I see the references to the JPF/ PFJ "splitters" are back in swing.

Even though they're trite attempts to deflect from real discussion, it's a shame that in this particular case they take on a crassly offensive resonance.

Keeks

Originally posted by adnans
Personal Testimony of an Israeli Refusenik by Asaf Oron, is at least worth a read when discussing a topic about Israel.

adnans

That is a really good article. Cheers for that adnans. Its good to get an insight into how ppl who live there see things. it would be nice to find a pro-israeli and a palestinian viewpoint aswell just to compare thinkings.

Sand

I see the references to the JPF/ PFJ "splitters" are back in swing.
Even though they're trite attempts to deflect from real discussion,

Rather ironic Ri-Ra. Someones using the JPF references to deflect from real discussion though:)

bonkey

Why is it that every single discussion on the Israel/Palestine argument seems to be filled with opinions that imply one side or the other is the victim.

The general consensus of the international body politik, which everyone (media, laypeople, and the nations themselves) seems to disregard is that both sides are at fault. Israel's occupation is not just under any stretch of the imagination, but neither is the Palestinian "response" to this occupation.

Pointing fingers at Israel and saying "nasty bully's" does absolutely nothing to mitigate the actions of the Palestinians. However, this is not to say that the Israeli's somehow have the higher moral ground. They dont.

There is no easy solution. Simply pointing at one side or the other and saying "you must stop such unacceptable practices" is pointless, because the simple fact is that both groups engage in unacceptable practices, and it is nigh on impossible to convince one group that they should somehow lead the way in stopping the fight. Leading the way is simply seen as a polite way of saying "admitting defeat", and so cannot happen.

jc

Boston

right so the palestinian are wrong, no one would dear say killing anybody is a good thing or that good things can come from it, but the simply fact is if it was in any other location, then they would have never resorted to this level of extremism they never would have needed to because this matter would have been sorted out long ago

damn sure if it ws in euope it wouldnt have lasted 5 years let alone 50

Boston

i think, as in kosovo the powers that be would step in long before you had people willing to blow themselves apart in the hundreads, or even worse people willing the fact an isreali prison

they certainly wouldnt be funding and selling weapons to one side

nick_riviera

The tragedy of the current situation is that surely both sides should be able to see what a final peace settlement will look like, ie; Israeli withdrawal from the territories,dismantling of the settlements,and some kind of compromises on Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.There is no military solution to this but the current Israeli goverment seems set on continuing with the current strategy,which aside from the pain it is causing on the Palestinian side is damaging their own economy and morale.From what I hear,ordinary Israelis have never been so nervous,over a year after Sharon started to "get tough" on the Palestinians.Mind you,the Palestinian Authority should crack down on the propoganda that gets taught and broadcast in the territories,did anyone see the picture of the kid on front of the Irish Times today?If only a passive resistence movement would begin among Palestinians,they'd get their homeland faster.

Boston

there are and have been several, none worked. i mean were the hell did the home rule party get us?

Keeks

Originally posted by Boston
there are and have been several, none worked. i mean were the hell did the home rule party get us?

A lot of dead Irish ppl during WW I

Boston

good point,