Israel has invaded Gaza...

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

"I blame the Jews." - Godfrey



Pete

I blame you.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

"I blame the Jews." - Godfrey



Pete

Don't feel guilty pete. Everybody blames the Jews.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Don't feel guilty pete. Everybody blames the Jews.

Not everybody Ike. Personally I see these unguided rocket attacks out of Gaza as the same shit the Nazi's pulled on England, terror attacks for lack of a better analogy. I sure hope that Hamas runs out of them before the IDF gets really fuckin' mean. Shalom, my friend.

Interesting bit of dissent from former IDF members. http://www.washingtonpost.com/postev...serve/?hpid=z3

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by bobabode

Not everybody Ike. Personally I see these unguided rocket attacks out of Gaza as the same shit the Nazi's pulled on England, terror attacks for lack of a better analogy. I sure hope that Hamas runs out of them before the IDF gets really fuckin' mean. Shalom, my friend.

Interesting bit of dissent from former IDF members. http://www.washingtonpost.com/postev...serve/?hpid=z3

OK thanks. But like I said...it's personal for me.

And I suppose I might say something about that as well. I'm pretty sure I disclosed a long time ago (but in case I didn't, here goes) that my hatred for firearms was instilled in me long ago. A hot August Friday night in 1962 when, after leaving the blonde's house after our date, I dropped in to see one of my best friends from high school who's parents were away for a couple of days. Found him on the floor in the kitchen with his brains blown all over the place. We were both 16 years old. The coppers never figured out who did it, and none of us thought they tried very hard. And there were three or four other gun incidents in my life, where people I cared about were killed or maimed forever. But that one that night...that was the one. So I've been pretty clear that the gun thing is personal for me. The gunners can challenge me, they can provide all their 2nd Amendment crap, and their side of the numbers and data game...but I'm typically pretty clear with them that I don't give a shit what fetid chunks come spewing out of their festering pieholes about guns...because it's personal. And of course there's not a feather ruffled on the part of my progressive brethren that my position on guns is personal.

Right up until I suggest that my attitudes about Israel are personal. Which is when I get the "...it's pretty clear you have an 'obstructed view'..." bullshit from the lefties. It's a selective accusation of an obstructed view of course. When it's about guns there's no problem with my obstructed view, but when it's Israel I'm just all fucked up in the head about it...in which case, my progressive brethren can take a long walk off a short pier. Including Zeke and his petulant bullshit.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Including Zeke and his petulant bullshit.

That you cannot rationally disprove because you are -- apparently -- incapable of analytical thought.

[BlueStreak]

Guys,

Hamas are no angels, that's for sure. But Israel is even worse. Zionism is just a religious excuse for apartheid. Imagine the UN deciding to give one of our states to a specific group of people. Then labeling the existing population as "terrorists" and corralling them into an ever decreasing plot of land as they shell and bulldoze their neighborhoods and restrict their ability to engage in commerce, relegating them to perpetual poverty. Then acting shocked and outraged when they respond with rage and violence............That is the true face of Israel. That is the other side of the story that we are not allowed to hear or talk about, because it is supposedly, "anti-Semitic". No, it isn't "anti-Semitic", it's the ugly truth.

Dave

[VanishingPoi]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Guys,

Hamas are no angels, that's for sure. But Israel is even worse. Zionism is just a religious excuse for apartheid. Imagine the UN deciding to give one of our states to a specific group of people. Then labeling the existing population as "terrorists" and corralling them into an ever decreasing plot of land as they shell and bulldoze their neighborhoods and restrict their ability to engage in commerce, relegating them to perpetual poverty. Then acting shocked and outraged when they respond with rage and violence............That is the true face of Israel. That is the other side of the story that we are not allowed to hear or talk about, because it is supposedly, "anti-Semitic". No, it isn't "anti-Semitic", it's the ugly truth.

Dave

Yes, it is the ugly truth and you do have a great way of putting it! Much appreciated.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Guys,

Hamas are no angels, that's for sure. But Israel is even worse. Zionism is just a religious excuse for apartheid. Imagine the UN deciding to give one of our states to a specific group of people. Then labeling the existing population as "terrorists" and corralling them into an ever decreasing plot of land as they shell and bulldoze their neighborhoods and restrict their ability to engage in commerce, relegating them to perpetual poverty. Then acting shocked and outraged when they respond with rage and violence............That is the true face of Israel. That is the other side of the story that we are not allowed to hear or talk about, because it is supposedly, "anti-Semitic". No, it isn't "anti-Semitic", it's the ugly truth.

Dave

And if any politician or newsman in the USA had the nerve to even intimate what you said, they'd be run out of town on a rail. Interestingly, one is free to have and express such sentiments in Israel, but not here.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by finnbow

And if any politician or newsman in the USA had the nerve to even intimate what you said, they'd be run out of town on a rail. Interestingly, one is free to have and express such sentiments in Israel, but not here.

This is a serious inquiry Finn. When you look at the history...what does the history tell you? Particularly the history of the "occupation" or "annexation" of the West Bank and Gaza. I'll tell you what it tells me, but I'd be interested in what you think, because whenever I present this information to any of my fellow lefties...it pretty much goes dead silent. Outside of jumping back to their droning about what bloodthirsty baby killers Israeli Jews turned out to be. OK...anyway...

After the 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, the Jordanians annexed the West Bank, and the Egyptians annexed Gaza. And they held those territories until they were kicked out on their ass by the Israelis in the '67 war. At which point the State of Israel decided that they required this dirt as increased security against another attack, not by Palestinians, but by their sovereign neighbors. From '48 to '67 this "Palestinian land" was controlled by Jordanians and Egyptians. The Arab League didn't like it too much, and it was only supported by Britain and curiously Iraq and Pakistan. My study tells me the reason for this support from the Iraq and Pakistan was because they wanted to remain on tip top friendly terms with Jordan and Egypt. And even though the other members of the Arab League didn't approve...there was not a peep, or an action out of any of them to do anything about it. And...history tells us, that living conditions (outside of the city of Jerusalem) were pretty much as miserable for the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza, as they are now. West Bank Palestinians were made citizens of Jordan at the time of the formal annexation in 1950, and because of conditions in the West Bank, a majority of the residents there actually moved to the East Bank side...mostly into Amman and it's environs.

Just prior to the beginning of the '67 war, the Israelis pleaded with Jordan to remain neutral...Jordan attacked from the West Bank on the first day of the war and within a week their forces were driven to the east side of the Jordan River. There is a serious argument from those who have actually studied the history that if Jordan had remained neutral in 1967, the West Bank would still be part of Jordan today and most of this bullshit over the Palestinian homeland on the West Bank for the past 40 years would never have happened.

The history of Gaza is a little more complicated, with Palestinian rule between 1947 and 1959 at which time the strip was officially merged into what was briefly called the "United Arab Republic." All references to an independent Gaza were abolished and Egyptian administration was officially imposed. Gaza was unilaterally annexed by Nasser. With the same outcomes of the quality of life for the residents and the shift in control after the '67 war.

My point in all of this is...what was the reaction by "Palestinians" to the occupation of "their land" by Jordan and Egypt. In Gaza there was virtually nothing. On the West Bank, the PLO was founded in 1964 to follow "armed struggle for the independence of the Palestinian people." Did the PLO begin it's violence by directing it at the occupiers of their West Bank homeland? Of course not...the began their armed struggle in 1964 with a series of terrorist attacks on civilian Israelis in territory west of the Jordanian occupied West Bank.

The fact is that there was no PLO action against the Jordanian occupiers in the West Bank, there was no Hamas, or any other "liberation" organization in Gaza taking action against the Egyptian occupiers. There was none of this shit until after it was Jews who took over control of those territories in 1967. The Arab world made it's one little peep of displeasure through the Arab League in 1950 and that was the end of it.

The Palestinian people have been subject to occupation and control of what they consider to be their land, by other countries since the end of WWII. But somehow it's only the outrage it is, as miserably as they were treated by their Arab brothers between 1947 and 1967, when it the Jews. And anybody who says that had the Palestinians taken up arms and committed terrorist acts against Jordan and Egypt, that the reaction from Jordan and Egypt would have been any less direct than it has been by Israel they're lying through their teeth. It would have been considerably worse. The PLO's West Bank land was occupied by Arabs...and the PLO decided to terrorize the Jews in Israel for christ's sake.

It's history that nobody wants to talk about.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

This is a serious inquiry Finn. When you look at the history...what does the history tell you? Particularly the history of the "occupation" or "annexation" of the West Bank and Gaza....

It comes as little surprise that religious differences play a role in this conflict (as they do in many others). Keep in mind that Palestinians supported the objectives of Egypt and Jordan back then against a common enemy. That enough is to explain the entire dynamic you refer to (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).

That said, none of this is particularly relevant to Palestinians younger than 30-40 years old. All they know is that they live in an open-air prison/ghetto and their houses are being bombed while Israel actively continues to recruit settlers to occupy further lands in the West Bank.

I'm neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian in this conflict and, if anything, I lean pretty strongly towards Israel. My son, who has lived in Tel Aviv for 2 years, has now experienced two such conflicts and has remained safe due to their technical superiority (to which he has contributed, BTW).

That said, there are 2 sides to every story and the American public only knows one side. I too only knew the one side until I visited there (for a total of 5 weeks over several trips in the past 30 years). It's far more complex than "Palestinians are evil and Israelis are righteous."