SubscribeNo, they saw it as a way to provoke Israel into a heavy-handed response, get a bunch of civilians killed and emerge with Hamas looking to Palestinians like the only alternative to submitting to the Israeli right.Israeli elections are six weeks away and the current Israeli administration is a Labor/Kadima coalition... who are center-left (on the Israeli political spectrum that is). Kadima was formed by Sharon to implement disengagement from the territories when Likud wouldn't do it.
How about cutting off all aid to Israel and peacefully dismantling it through the UNHow do you propose to "dismantle" Israel? Pass resolutions de-recognizing its democratically elected government? Close its embassies and consulates around the world? Regime change?
The Israeli state is a 60 year failed experiment.A failed experiment at what?
Regime change will have to come from within, but I like those other ideas. Also, the civilized world can cease to recognize Israeli passports and currency.Let me rephrase the question: How do you propose to dismantle Israel in a way that doesn't cause Israel to bunker itself? Say you could get the civilized world to go along with your scheme: Are you thinking that doing to Israel what Israel is doing to the Palestinians with fences and blockades and embargoes will somehow have a different result?
I was actually wondering what will happen to Israel's aid once the U.S. is bankrupt.I could be wrong, but I believe that significant U.S. aid to Israel didn't start until after the Yom Kippur war in the early 70s. Prior to that Israel was largely supported by Jewish fundraising. Losing U.S. aid would hurt Israel, but wouldn't cripple it, and thinking it would presumes that Israel is unwilling to look for aid elsewhere, something it's never been shy about before.
It'd be a bit of a wake up call, yes? Having to dig tunnels to smuggle in common domestic products, and having those tunnels constantly blown up and their entrances bulldozed?No, not really. Israel's existence as a reasonably prosperous country was much more difficult prior to the Yom Kippur war, and it never caused them to consider giving up or radically changing their ways. If anything, perseverance during the period 1948-1972 has paid off, insofar as they're now vastly stronger economically and diplomatically than they were before.
Should Israel simply allow me to pass without inteference because I am an American, or fly an American flag?Actually, I think they were flying a Lebanese flag, which you can see in the video.
Look at it this way, do we have to evaluate the incident as though we don't know whether the Dignity's crew fired on the Israelis with a machine gun, simply because no one has specifically mentioned a machine gun one way or the other? No, that would be absurd. -- Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis AmericaOf course not? Nor should we evaluate the situation as if we know they didn't call ahead, which is what you did in your first post in this thread. Thanks for refuting yourself though, now no one else will have to waste their time.
It's too late. they already have nukes. If Israel feels threatened in conventional warfare then they can just use those and I'm pretty sure no one wants to see that.And what are they going to do with them? Nuke Gaza or the west bank? Come on, they can't use them against enemies that are so close without spreading fallout allover themselves. Nukes are great when your enemies on the other side of the planet, but when they're 10 miles away?
Because right now, the only reason the West isn't freaking right out about this massacre (and it is a massacre, and will be remembered as such) is because the Israelis are killing Arabs. And right now, killing Arabs in general gets the tacit approval of many Americans and, I'm sure, Europeans.What a comfortably glib view of the situation you have. Saves wrestling with a lot of complexity, I'm sure.
Responsibility for the war in Gaza, and for the Palestinian fatalities there, was placed squarely on Hamas by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
"We called the leaders of Hamas and told them, 'Please, do not end the truce'," he said. Hamas ended a six-month truce with Israel two weeks before the Israeli attack.
Because right now, the only reason the West isn't freaking right out about this massacre (and it is a massacre, and will be remembered as such) is because the Israelis are killing Arabs.Actually, the only reason the west is even paying attention is because it involves Israelis and Palestinians. If this was, say Russians vs. Chechnyans , Hutus vs. Tutsis, Sudanese vs. Darfurians, etc, etc no one would be paying any attention whatsoever.
Losing U.S. aid would hurt Israel, but wouldn't cripple it, and thinking it would presumes that Israel is unwilling to look for aid elsewhere, something it's never been shy about before.Most probable contender: India.
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.here are the poll results. And anyway India does not have a U.N. security council veto.
I think many violent abusers would be surprised to learn how little anyone cares about their emotional investment.High marks for dudgeon and loaded metaphor; low marks for an accurate representation of the situation. My point was that you're making the same mistake as the Israelis make with respect to Hamas, namely that all one needs to do is apply sufficient pressure to bend them in the direction you want. Whether or not you agree with the Israeli perspective, there's a lot who do, not least of whom are a lot of Israelis and Jews who exist, with nuclear weapons and a very capable military, in a place that they want to stay.
If you have a better explanation for why the west treats the deaths of hundreds of Arabs as a big yawn, lay it out for us.Because of the belief, correct or not, that Hamas started the latest round of violence, following six months of relative peace, by lobbing 300 mortar shells and rockets into Israel, and that years of "proportionate response" has achieved nothing but a stalemate that kills a bearable number of civilians per month. Because most of the deaths in Gaza aren't civilian deaths, according to neutral observers who place the civilian death toll at 25-30%. Because the Israelis have paper-bombed their targets with warnings to evacuate the immediate area and stay away from Hamas targets.
I suppose I was trying to convey a sort of generalized anger that I get from some of my more pro-Israel friends... when asked to defend Zionism they'll oftentimes resort to insulting Islam.Fair enough. I apologize for my snark.
Rather, the current government should be abolished, and the U.N. should take over and establish a democratic government where everyone is treated equally.Seriously, how do you propose to abolish the current government of Israel? Which country do you think should implement regime change in Israel over the objections of the population?
That is essentially what they did. Pretty brilliant, no?Perhaps not brilliant, but a tried and tested strategy. Palestinians launch rockets, Israel bombs Gaza, destroying buildings and killing civilians, and Hamas is there to provide emergency aid, hospitals, and a health dose of cursing the evil Israelis.
> When you hold someone down and repeatedly kick them, they will still twitch. That is what these Hamas rockets are . The residual twitching of a person held down and kicked. And the fuckers are doing it again.Why is it that we're expected to accept that the responses of Hamas and the Palestinians are just human nature, a natural response to what's happening to them, while simultaneously demanding that Israel not react to rockets and suicide bombs with comparable emotional imbalance. When Israel lashes out, it's supposed to be condemned, but when the Palestinians do it, it's all that can be expected of them?
> But even creating the country required massive displacement.baby_balrog can confirm or deny this, but the creation of Israel displaced no one. It was the war of extermination against Israel in 1948 that displaced the Palestinians, who generally fled to Jordan to avoid being in the middle of a battlefield.
> If you're 6'6" and weigh 220 lbs., and some guy 5'4" weighing 120 lbs. tries to pick a fight and is obviously outmatched and just a bit hot, it's more honorable to walk away or simply try to stop the guy without breaking all his bones.Your analogy fails because, while the rockets and mortar rounds may be a weak blow to the body politic of Israel, to the residents of Sderot they're absolutely life threatening and they have a reasonable expectation that their nation will fight for them.
So rather then actually answering the question, you decided to snark about it instead, which would seem to indicate it's rather difficult.What do you think an appropriate response [to the blockade] would have been on Hamas's part?Calling up John Bolton and asking him, "what should we do to give Israel and excuse to pound the shit out of our country and have the rest of the world, especially the Bush administration, look the other way." That is essentially what they did. Pretty brilliant, no? -- caddis
Seriously, how do you propose to abolish the current government of Israel? Which country do you think should implement regime change in Israel over the objections of the population?Let me put this comment into context here. A lot of times in these threads people respond to one comment that was a response to another one, without reading the initial comment. In this case fleetmouse wrote
How about cutting off all aid to Israel and peacefully dismantling it through the UN, providing right-of-return to the Palestinians and governing the area as a protectorate again?Then Astro Zombie wrote:
Why don't we dismantle Israel indeed. Of course, the only way to effectively to do that would be to kill Israelis, as they are not likely to get driven out of the state or let their country collapse without fighting to the death.My comment was an explanation of how Israel could be dismantled in a way that didn't involve killing every single Israeli. The "country" that would do the dismantling, as clear from the context, would be the U.N.
> I do think it's incumbent upon those with great power to exercise it carefully and judiciously, not out of a need to prove something on the political surface or in a more serious sense a long-term game of territorial gain (which is supposed to be illegal under international law), but history doesn't give me much confidence we'll see a lot of foreign policy built on that platform.I don't disagree with this, but the other side of my point was that the Palestinians are infantilised by arguments that demand more restraint from Israel. If they'd stop launching rockets, Israel would stop bombing them. There's vastly more to the whole conflict, but I think that aspect of it is pretty simple.
No, it is true. See here where you basically say the only way to "dismantle" Israel would be to kill everyone there, when clearly the person you responded too called for a U.N. takeover. I don't think that's likely, but I doubt that if the U.N. security council was serious about replacing the Israeli government, they would have to kill every single person there to do it.No, AZ, you're spinning and misrepresenting what other people are saying.Hardly. I'm responding directly to fleetmouse, who has called for the dismantling of the state of Israel.-- Astro Zombie
> Don't you mean the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in which the Arab powers declared:After being given their own state, in a region in which they'd been oppressed and were already suffering guerrilla attacks, and just a few years after the holocaust ended in a country in which they had enjoyed a pretty safe existence until suddenly the country guaranteeing their rights decided not to do so any more... I'm not surprised that newly minted Israelis declined to dissolve their new nation-state in favour of that offer, by the very countries who were sending their armies to destroy them. Note that the statement you quote was made on the day that they launched a war against Israel."the only solution of the Palestine problem is the establishment of a unitary Palestinian State, in accordance with democratic principles, whereby its inhabitants will enjoy complete equality before the law, [and whereby] minorities will be assured of all the guarantees recognised in democratic constitutional countries, ...."Equal rights and full democratic guarantees for the Jewish residents of Palestine were apparently not enough for them.
And yes, most serious historians point out the fact that the Palestinians had few choices other than to flee or be killed by the Jews, who every major party acknowledged had the clear upper hand militarily.Can you cite this? This isn't my impression of the 1948 war, where the Jews were seriously underequipped and always in danger of running out of supplies. I can certainly be wrong about that.
Historical revisionism doesn't cut it, bucko...I agree, and that's what's so frustrating about these discussions.
> No, it is true. See here where you basically say the only way to "dismantle" Israel would be to kill everyone there, when clearly the person you responded too called for a U.N. takeover. I don't think that's likely, but I doubt that if the U.N. security council was serious about replacing the Israeli government, they would have to kill every single person there to do it.Implying that there's some way to dismantle the government of Israel short of invading and occupying it is also a misrepresentation.
Claiming that anyone who wants regime change in Israeli is in favor of implied genocide is certainly a misrepresentation.
> My work is done here.What is it exactly that you think you've accomplished?
> then Israel wouldn't be obliged to bring down a hammer of death on entire towns.... they just rain fire down upon every civilian they can throw down upon.I missed the headline "Israel Carpetbombs Gaza".
> When you grok that, you'll realize that your assertion that "this will all go away when they stop struggling" is naive.Right, because launching rockets and mortar bombs is the only way to struggle to achieve Palestinian independence. Those poor, benighted Palestinians are just struggling in the only way they know how.
> See my response to jsonic with above, with regards to Israel's intelligence capabilities v. the proportion and form of Israel's military response.I did. The fact that you think Tom Clancy novels and the movie Enemy of the State are accurate representations of intelligence and commando operations, doesn't make it so. The alternative to targeted bombing with collateral damage is a full-scale ground invasion. Which do you think would be worse for the civilians of Gaza?
> Best of MeFi. Don't you think that all boys should be circumcised before they can object, all cats declawed and all fat people banished to the the North Slope where their blubber is an asset? ;) Perhaps we can talk about God and religion next.Emacs, you vi-using heathen!
> Something like that, yeah. As I said, ask yourself what circumstance would make you lob bombs at strangers.It's not hard to understand how their circumstances make the Palestinians want to lob ineffectual homemade rockets at the Israelis, knowing that the response will be very effective laser-guided JDAMs. It's also not hard to understand how the cycle of violence perpetuates itself, and how the Israelis can't tolerate rockets being lobbed on them.
> Wasn't corruption in Fatah the the main reason that Hamas won the election?Fatah's corruption was a big part of it, but Hamas had/has a lot of very genuine support among the Palestinians for the civil services they provide--schools, hospitals, and emergency aid. They were arguably already the government of the Gaza Strip, since they were doing more of what governments do than Fatah was. The election was more recognition of the de facto head of Gaza than a change in government. This was why people argued so strongly against allowing elections there--those in the know foresaw Hamas' easy victory.
> Hang on. Can you all let me know where you buy your mind-reading drugs? Because you need a refund. Who the hell is talking about Tom Clancy? I'm talking about basic intelligence gathering. It exists! There are plenty of ways Israel could be responding to this, and they've chosen to reach for the Overkill Button.You said:
You know, Israel allegedly has this incredible military machine going, and one of the best intelligence agencies in the world. Yet when a rocket attack is launched, do they send in a commando squad to neutralize the parties responsible?As is obvious from the last six days, they know where Hamas figures are. They're not indiscriminately bombing hospitals because they heard that Hamas guys like to hide out in hospitals. That doesn't mean that Israel has ninjas who can flit through the night and silently poison the drink of those commanders. The Gaza Strip is a densely crowded settlement. I doubt it's that possible to sneak in, knife someone, and sneak back out.
> 400+ civilians in six days doesn't sound like a precision job to me, Inspector.Wrong. 400+ deaths total, of whom approx. 25-30% are innocent civilians, as determined by third parties who consider women and anyone under 18 to be a civilian.
> A bit like taking a shotgun to hunt hummingbirds, though, isn't it?Yes, and that seems to be the point--they've had years of proportionate responses, and all it's gotten them is years of more responses. Tit for tat means that the weaker party can set the pace of the conflict at a level sustainable to them.
> And why is it that Israel gets to "accept civilian casualties"?Why do the Palestinians get to accept some Israeli civilian casualties when they kill someone with a rocket, or a suicide bomber?
It amazes me that people with normally logical thought processes somehow think the Palestinians are the good guys here. All of Israel's military attacks would end if the Palestinians would cease suicide bombing and rocket attacks against Israel.Sure, but what's happened in the past was once the violence stopped, settlement expansion began, and Palestinians were harassed and removed from their homes, etc. In this case, there was a pretty severe blockade going on, which was starving people, etc.
Honestly, I don't expect that you're that naive. If the UN came to dismantle the government of the United States, you think most Americans would let it go without a fight?Well, the U.N. has a Security Council veto, so that seems unlikely. The U.S. is also a superpower, which means we can be pretty secure in knowing people wouldn't take us on. But the Israeli situation would be more like what happened in Georga, where a democratically elected government had a ton of it's land ceased and basically didn't do anything except complain about it. You didn't see Georgians fighting to the death.
And if they spent some of that explosives and rocket money on food?Have you been paying attention, it's not a question of being able to pay for stuff, it's a question of being prevented from bringing food into the territory. It's a lot easier to smuggle in rocket parts then it is to smuggle in food for a million people.
You are still failing to realize that the direct cause of the oppression of the Palestinians is their own violent attacks on Israel. If they simply cut out the attacks, then Israel would no longer respond with violence."If she would just stop struggling and let me rape her, I wouldn't need to smack her around so much!"
> Do you know the pre-history to Israel? Because frankly, the rightwing Zionists were a pretty nasty, violent bunch of terrorists. They're also the faction that, over time, became today's Likud Party.Yes, the early Zionist activists were also, in part, terrorists in every sense of the word leading up to their declaration of independence in 1948.
U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said the death toll was estimated at 320-390 and the number of injured at 1,500-1,900. Between 20 percent and 25 percent of the dead are either women or children, said Karen Abu Zayd, U.N. Relief and Works Agency commissioner.Even if you take the upper estimate of the death toll (390) and the upper estimate of the number of women and children who are included (25%) that doesn't equal a hundred people. Where are you getting 400 dead civilians, or even "hundreds" from?
Hamas says some 200 uniformed members of its security forces have been killed, and the U.N. says at least 60 Palestinian civilians have died.
U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said the death toll was estimated at 320-390 and the number of injured at 1,500-1,900. Between 20 percent and 25 percent of the dead are either women or children, said Karen Abu Zayd, U.N. Relief and Works Agency commissioner.Hamas themselves says that around 200 uniformed members have been killed out of an estimated 400 casualties! Is our disagreement because you think these people are civilians?
Hamas says some 200 uniformed members of its security forces have been killed, and the U.N. says at least 60 Palestinian civilians have died.
Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%). By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).
In fact let me ask another question: When Jordan annexed the West Bank for nearly 20 after the 1948 war, why was the Palestinian struggle for self determination against them almost non-existent?Is "it wasn't"
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