Israel - Palestine Conflict. **Mod note in OP - updated 1st August**

jank wrote: »

Whatever about legitimate criticism of Israel's response to Hamas this post is a disgraceful effort trying to use anything however minor or trivial as a way to tarnish Israel. Well-done.

Israel doesnt need any help tarnishing itself.

The comparisons are apt and honest.

Have you read the number of civillians and children killed in the last 3 weeks?

And without power, water, hospitals, infrastructure, food or shelter many many more will die slowly and agonisingly over the next few months.

And I can almost guarantee the ceasefire will fail as Israel will not allow the blockade to cease.

And Israel will step over the dead bodies as it helps itself to Gazas gas field and its land.

Have you no shame defending this racist, supremist, psychotic government?

I hope ICC make your country pay and pay for the horrors they have inflicted on innocent people.

Just heard via the Guardian, that the ceasefire has ended.
Israel retaliates after rockets are fired from Gaza as ceasefire expires - live coverage http://gu.com/p/4vta9

jank wrote: »

It seems as if Hamas knows that it cannot win militarily so the only way to win is to cause more conflict, keeping antagonising Israel, poke it with a stick time and again and when the angry bear takes a massive swipe back invite the worlds media to report on the scores of dead civilians..... and hope to win via sympathy and world wide pressure on Israel.

It is basicly an admission that the suffering of people of Gaza do not matter to their aims (whatever they may be). Will we expect wide spread condemnation from the west regarding this strategy. Nope..

Pretty sure most of the western populations and their media are quite aware of this. I've yet to see a single person anywhere display anything but contempt for Hamas.

The issue as you full well know is that Israel likes to claim to be a civilised society, yet rises to Hamas's bait and launches massively disproportionate retaliations with zero concern for civilians. When someone reacts badly to a very obvious troll, that reflects worse on the one who reacts than it does on the troll. Trolls know this. Hamas know this.

They want to be seen as the civilised state among the savages, yet they consistently fail to act like it. The nature of their action makes them no better than Hamas, and they come in for greater criticism because they try to claim the high road when they don't have it, and more importantly they have the ability to take the high road, but instead prefer to continue murdering innocent civilians and claiming that they have no other choice. They do have other choices, they just don't want to take them.

The ceasefire had to end as Israel or Egypt were giving nothing to the people of Gaza. They need to keep fighting Israel now until the blockade is lifted. Too many people have died for nothing to come from this massacre. Israel are showing themselves to be perpetrating genocide while America talks about bombing Iraq again to save people from persecution. The world is sick

jank wrote: »

Really, so you think it is fair to use children of Nazi war criminals and tarnish them whereby they must automatically favor what their parents did because of biology? Are you ****ing serious?

Your deliberately mis-interpreting me.
But the article is really interesting:

"When she learned about the Holocaust, it literally made her retch. "I was horrified by what Germans did to Jews," she says. "I was physically disgusted. And I was totally disgusted by even my own Germanness." It is strange to hear things like this over coffee in a clean apartment in the Middle East. "I didn't want to be German," she says. "And because this entered my mind so early, it became as natural as brushing my teeth."
So why did she convert? She grimaces. "It isn't rational. We are talking about religion here." But she says she ran away to Israel to convert when she was 25. And today, she berates herself for her immaturity in doing it. She was shocked by the racism in Israel. Towards her? "Towards the Arabs," she replies. "I felt that I was being told that to be a good Jew, you had to hate Arabs." So she stands at West Bank checkpoints to observe the behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.
"It causes a lot of tension to come here and say the things that I say," she says. So why does she say them? "Because it would be very inconsistent to have had so much criticism of Germans who were terrible cowards when it was still possible to say something, and then to come here and not speak up for justice."
She is through with Israel. She says it is because of the triple whammy of otherness - German, leftwing, gay. A shrink would say that she came here to be wrong, I tell her. "Don't think I haven't thought about it in those terms myself," she replies. "I had wanted to connect myself to a history I did not perceive as shameful. Now I am wondering if I will stay. I am more or less sure that I won't. Sometimes I feel I am not built for it, that I am not strong enough for this country." She runs her hands through her hair briskly, and shakes her head. "Sometimes I feel that just by existing I am always wrong here. But I cannot live with personal attacks now. I cannot bear it."


And later in the same article (while interviewing Hitlers half brother):

And then, to my surprise, he calls his son - his Israeli son - a fascist. "When I hear my own son speak - as I did last weekend - I sat like this," and he does the Hitler salute. "Two of my sons are chauvinists and one of them is even partially racist. I can't listen to fascistic discourse. I don't suffer that." They talk about the Palestinians with contempt. "Each time I hear it is another time too much. If the Holocaust and the Third Reich have really somehow shaped me, I am a sworn democrat. I believe that democracy has to prove itself by keeping the rights of its minorities."

I have been with this man for three hours, insistently asking why - why did you convert? Why? This stray branch of the Hitler family tree stares out at his dull suburban street at the heart of the Jewish state, puffs on his cigarette, and begins to talk about the images of the Holocaust that linger in his mind. "I see that soldier trampling that child and in the end killing it, and I remember that kind of aggression. I remember the feeling of the child, too. I remember both. I could see my father or my grandfather really standing there." ...


And sadly, its happening again, children massacred by racist, heartless b****ds.
We have seen the footage and the proof.