I think fearless oversteps the mark but it is good to hear the pro-Israeli side of things, just like it is good to hear the view from the Kremlin on Russian matters from yourself.
Israel - Palestine Discussion | Post Respectfully | Discuss more, tweet less
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I think fearless oversteps the mark but it is good to hear the pro-Israeli side of things, just like it is good to hear the view from the Kremlin on Russian matters from yourself.
We don't all agree on things though. Raoul, Synco, Charlie etc all hold opposite POVs to me and a lot of others but noone is asking them to be punished or censored because they don't come across as bigots. And its not all this thread, Fearless's posts on other threads are as bigoted as this thread.
Has he broken any rules of the forum?
We need bigots in any case. Someone has to make us angry.
Thank feck for Raoul being the main guy here.
Not just India, there has been a pattern across the region of states attempting to manipulate the force of Islamist for their own benefit. Pretty much every player in the region has at one time or another been guilty of this.
The original claim, which came from Hamas sources, was that the baby died from inhalation of tear gas. Assuming that's true, that means she must have been right in the vicinity of the protests, close to the fence. Given that, according to the list of dead posted by @berbatrick above, it appears that every other fatality was a male of fighting age (with the possible exception of some teenagers - it has been confirmed that one 16 year-old fatality was a member of PIJ, don't know about the others), it's quite extraordinary that this 8 month old child got caught up in the protest and died as a result. What the feck was she doing there? I have two young children and I wouldn't allow them within miles of something like this.
“She thought death was better than this life,” said Reem Abu Irmana a day after she lost her youngest daughter. “Every time she went to the demonstrations she prayed to God that she would be martyred.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...uld-be-martyred-gaza-parents-mourn-their-dead
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...uld-be-martyred-gaza-parents-mourn-their-dead
The increased Islamisation in the 90s and onwards is a fair point, but I think even that itself is symptomatic of a growing sense of frustration and desperation. Like you said yourself, a lot of Palestinians felt disillusioned by Arafat’s leadership as he went from the firebrand symbol of the resistance to some kind of hollow celebrity. I think the transition also blowsback from the neutralisation of the secular, nationalist Pan-Arab movement that withered away in the 70s, with theocratic and Islamic movements occupying the void.
Regardless, I can only see Hamas’ influence and appeal grow with the extremely precarious and unapologetically one-sided approach Trump has opted to pursue. When the Palestinians start to realise (if they haven’t already) that any form of diplomatic initiative will from this point on be deemed desperately futile, then Hamas’ violent approach will unfortunately start to look very appealing.
Yeah agreed. The guy has irked me more times than I care to count but he does add a polarity to the CE which would otherwise be a boring leftist echo chamber (And this is coming from a staunch leftist).
His points aren’t difficult to counter or challenge, so use reason instead of calling for the ban hammer.
See, India's strength is diversity - we have done this not just with Islamists!
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...njab-mess-in-80s-Book/articleshow/8665980.cms
About the other fatalities - I know 1 paramedic was killed and a Canadian doctor injured. They were indeed males of fighting age but the doctor claims it was calm when he was shot, below the knee. https://medium.com/@trklou/3d-print...za-field-trials-ends-badly-may-14-970b3f291e7
If that's the case it is not hard to imagine a baby dying where an adult might just be injured and thus not on the list of dead. Indeed there's a photo of another person shot in the leg in that article, who does not look much older than 14.
Given it's a true statement they're possibly mentally ill but the young see no future, unemployment is about 40% I think. Why is it always religion gets the blame? The problem is land and with Israel's population boom growing at 2million a decade as they say no-one is making more land so they want what is there.
Religion is the motor but it only fills a vacuum. The problems are there with or without religion and are more political in nature. Right wing/Leftwing.
I tend to come at this question from the opposite side. The popularity of Hamas, Fatah and the other factions will of course ebb and flow according to a range of factors which evolve over time. Perhaps the Trump phenomenon is one, although it's too soon to tell IMO. But I don't see any consistent trends which suggest that these factors play a major role in shaping Palestinian attitudes towards the peace process. I think the one consistent trend has been a general and continuing Palestinian rejectionism (of a negotiated peace with Israel), and that Hamas' explicitly stated goals reflect this sentiment to a greater degree than the more ambiguous position of their 'secular' rival - hence the reason Hamas remains a potent force.
I should be clear, referring to males of fighting age does not mean I think every fatality was a fighter. And even in those cases, I'm not convinced they needed to be killed as a general rule - I've no doubt the Israelis have been trigger-happy along there. It's just a way of identifying the general profile of those who were close to the fence. This was clearly not an area where parents were taking their kids out for a stroll only to be gunned down by bloodthirsty soldiers.
In any case, the claim is that the baby died from tear gas, not bullets, and that she was located back from the fence in the main body of the protest. All over Twitter there are posts saying she was 'targeted' and 'executed', which seems incredibly unlikely given the alleged cause of death and her supposed location in amongst a body of thousands of other individuals.
It provides the Trump Administration with leverage to make a demand/demands of Israel.
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I don't disagree with a lot of that but blaming it on religion isn't helpful. We didn't blame the US grab of Native American's land on religion, but religion is merely used today as a motivating tool to organise when the issues would be the same with or without.
I'd argue it's more to do with nationalism, although in both Israeli and Palestinian cases the form nationalism had taken has been inextricably shaped by religion - it's a tough job to disentangle the two in order to identify exactly how the one plays on the other.
On the bolded bit, while I don't think it necessarily counters your argument, I'd argue that in terms of culture and national characteristics, if we can speak generally, Israelis and Palestinians are miles and miles apart, much more so than in the case of, say, Irish and British in Northern Ireland. I find it hard to think of an analogous conflict where the two parties are so temperamentally distant.
I'm afraid you are talking to the wrong person on religion. The shame of it is in reality that they both worship the same God as do I. Of course extremism is wrong but these people are fighting for their lives because they have nothing and feel abandoned by everyone else.
Thanks for the support, though I do find it strange the my pro-Israeli remarks are, by definition, overstepping the mark.
It’s not as simple as that. Namely because there isn’t a single, unified Kurdish consensus and as a people they’re fragmented across several countries harbouring unique circumstances, so you’d have to approach it by a country to country case basis.
Take Turkey for example who i’d argue have been the most oppressive towards their Kurdish demographic historically speaking. The Turks themselves have never been at war with Israel and for the most part have enjoyed pretty friendly relations (don’t let the recent Erdogan-Netanyahu Twitter handbags fool you, it’s posturing at its best/worst). Furthermore the PKK, the most powerful Kurdish militant faction in Turkey are of a militant Marxist persuasion and as customary with such movements, classically sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause. In fact the PKK actively fought the Israelis in Lebanon during the events of the civil war there, opting to offer their allegiance to the ‘international Marxist resistance’ that was championing then Palestinian cause at the expense of Israel.
I’d say sympathetic sentiment towards Israel is strongest in Iraqi Kurdistan, namely because they’ve probably suffered the most under an Arab state that’s historically been a bitter adversary to Israel. So when Saddam was gassing the Kurds while also locking horns with Israel, you could see why the Kurds harboured a soft spot for the Israelis by the whole cliched virtue of ‘the enemy of my enemy.....’. These sentiments were intensified recently when Israel publicly backed Kurdish independence during the recent Kurdish referendum of independence (which was comically hypocritical if you ask me).
Now if you take Israel’s two most bitter adversaries at the moment - Iran and Syria, the Kurdish situation in those respective countries is abit more interesting. In the case of Syria the YPG who are the main Kurdish faction in the Syrian civil war have an understanding with the Syrian regime where their respective combatants don’t fight each other. That’s not to say they’re allies (far from it in fact) but they find themselves fighting a common enemy more often than not and both understand that fighting one another would only benefit their common enemies.
Iran on the other hand is also unique since my understanding is Iranian Kurds tend to be abit more embracing of their Iranian nationality to the extent many of them don’t consider being both Iranian and Kurdish as mutually exclusive whereas you’ll seldom hear Iraqi Kurds proudly proclaiming themselves to be Iraqis. It’s also worth remembering that Iran as a whole holds unfavourable views towards the Arabs so it’s a different dynamic compared to say the situation in Iraq. In fact the Iranians supported the Iraqi Kurdish factions fighting Saddam in the 80s and offered refuge for Iraqi Kurds fleeing Saddams brutal retaliation.
I think all in all the only Arab/Islamic countries that are actively opposed to or in a state of war with Israel at the moment are Iran and Syria, and the Kurds there don’t seem to be in such loggerheads with those respective regimes compared to say Turkey which otherwise enjoys a relatively friendly relationship with Israel.
This is an interesting read. A blog from a physician who is field-testing 3D tourniquets and ended up getting shot by an Israeli sniper.
If it's so clear cut why are they refusing to allow UN Investigators in?Serious question. What did the IDF do wrong?
* At the beginning of this thread, numerous posters see claiming snipers massacred 50-60 innocent Palestinians.
* By the middle of the thread, a few were admitting that some Hamas operatives were mingling with the protestors.
* by now we realize that most casualties were either Hamas soldiers or members os other violent groups looking to cause destruction during Nabka. One such other group is the Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which suffered casualties against the IDF
Looking at the complete death toll, and excluding the 8 month old child, (because that’s on another level of fecked up altogether—looks like the child was already seriously sick/wounded, so the family brought the frail child to the protest to add their child.s death to the martyr list. Disgusting!) but if we pay attention to the list of deaths so far, I’m not seeing these “innocents” that others were weeping about earlier in the thread.
One dead innocent is terrible and the world should do everything it can to prevent innocent lives being ended. But from what I can tell, the IDF snipers did their job and protected other innocents, ie women and children inside the border fence.
Nope. IDF vs. Hamas and the Martyrs Brigade
Last, but not least; a quote countering the claims made by various Caf posters that the ppfotesters we’d completely innocent and the IDF are cowards for using high powered rounds on civilians:
Maybe this is why myself and a few others waited for the facts before screaming about the situation and the despicable natural of “David vs. Goliath”
At a demonstration like that it's obvious that Hamas would be there. It's not the 10 or so Hamas operatives that were shot that's the problem. It's the about 50 others that were killed including young children. If you are deploying snipers to take out targets they should make sure those targeted are militants and not kids.
Which is exactly why they burned tyres, and cynically brought in kids.
Any sniper worth their salt knows that you don't take the shot unless you are sure of your target. If you are just firing blind then you're not actually a sniper.
He isn't wrong about it being an apartheid state.
The Palestinian position has almost nothing to do with religion. Oppression can drive any group tondesoeration where it feels it has nothing to lose. A man who feels he has nothing to lose becomes crazy. The Jews were once in the same position.
It's a disgrace that Fearless has never been banned at some point over the years.
Much better posters have come and gone in that time, much bigger RedCafe personalities.
I suppose him and @Raoul have some sort of agreement on here.
Much better posters have come and gone in that time, much bigger RedCafe personalities.
I suppose him and @Raoul have some sort of agreement on here.
There's no agreement. Holyland and Fearless have over the years just represented a minority view here.
Agreed
Wow. Is that really your reply to that comment?
So even though there is dense smoke and the snipers cant see who they are firing at, they should just fire anyway?
Nice to know you agree with a man who bombs Kurds, occupies Cyprus and won't really recognise the Armenian massacre.
Just saying'.
It's very common for oppressed people to use religion as motivation but it's not necessary why they resort to extremism.
Just look at the Jews and Basques?
Israel insists there must be peace before freedom. I don't know any point in history where that has been the case.
Miss that guy. The guy was like Banksy. Do a madness then disappear.
I suppose they got lucky taking out the Hamas operatives, and unlucky that babies were pulled out of nurseries to attend the festivities.
So just shoot them anyway?
Tear gas and tyre smoke is being blamed for the infants death.
Let me ask you this - would YOU bring your child to something like this?
Israel is just a joke of a state and I don’t think any sane person truly takes them seriously as one of the normal states. Murderers and monsters. No amount of mental gymnastics can justify that just like how people try and justifying North Korea or some of Iran’s stuff. The worst part is though Israel in the media and the world protests itself as some western civilized nation while North Korea and Iran are demonized.
R.I.P all of those that have passed away. Sickens me to see some people defend this act. It doesn’t matter if they are banned from a forum or not. You can’t change that sick of a mindset by barring them from a football forum
R.I.P all of those that have passed away. Sickens me to see some people defend this act. It doesn’t matter if they are banned from a forum or not. You can’t change that sick of a mindset by barring them from a football forum
You really have a sick mindset. I suggest you take a seat back and just read what you’re saying. If this is your justification for killing it’s just disgusting.
As for mods who think justifying killings the way you are is just “difference of opinion” well that just goes to show how deep rooted this issue is on mass media. Anyway I hope you get the chance to understand some of the stuff you are saying. Put yourself in their shoes for once
It shouldn't be about luck. It should be about recognising legitimate targets and making sure you only shoot those.
There were dozens killed who weren't Hamas, hundreds upon hundreds shot who weren't Hamas. I can't believe that even you believe it was just Hamas and a young baby.
Dozens were shot tens of metres from the fence so don't make out they were all attacking it either as Hamas.
The IDF knows that every year the Palestinians commemorate Nakba, they shot plenty in 2011, so they know what the march is about, nothing new.
Time you cleared your head of the brainwashing. Or at least stopped spouting it like a paid shill.
I can guarantee you if there was a poster like fearless but who was defending Iran or North Korea in a similar way, he would be banned immediately. But it goes with some of the comments of the admin staff here, like raoul posting do you expect the israel army to throw stones back at them.
Yeah but there were multiple teens killed.
As for would I bring my child. I wouldn't go to something like that myself but I haven't been forced to live in the conditions that the Palestinians have for the past 50+ years. I can't put myself in the shoes of the protesters.