Israeli - Palestinian Conflict

So Hamas doing it justifies Israel's indiscriminate attacks?

Hamas uses innocents as human shields. Plenty of proof out there to prove this is happening. This is why the death count is so ridiculously high not because of wanton Israeli barbarity like you and everyone else seems to think.

However isolated acts of barbarity, such as the attack on the children on the beach at Gaza for instance, are 100% wrong and the individuals responsible should be brought to justice. Every army in the world has it's fair share of maniacs unfortunately and no, I'm not condoning Israel's conduct but to paint Israel and it's army on a par with the worst atrocity perpetrators in human history is wrong.

Israelis will decide for themselves who leads them (a right not offered to Gazans by the "democratically elected" Hamas), and if they disagree what their government does, they vote them out. What they do want is peace and quiet to live their lives, without rockets fired into their country for years on end. I'm pretty sure the same applies to Palestinians as well.

In reference to your blogpost earlier Kaos I feel where any politicians are concerned, they ALL have dirty hands in one way or another, and Israeli politicians are no exception. The overriding difference between them and Hamas, however - is that Israeli politicians recognise their first duty is to protect their citizens, not use them as cannon fodder.
 
UNRWA Condemns Placement of Rockets, for a Second Time, in One of Its Schools

Today, in the course of the regular inspection of its premises, UNRWA discovered rockets hidden in a vacant school in the Gaza Strip. As soon as the rockets were discovered, UNRWA staff were withdrawn from the premises, and so we are unable to confirm the precise number of rockets. The school is situated between two other UNRWA schools that currently each accommodate 1,500 internally displaced persons.

UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.

The Agency immediately informed the relevant parties and is pursuing all possible measures for the removal of the objects in order to preserve the safety and security of the school. UNRWA will launch a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident.

http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press...placement-rockets-second-time-one-its-schools
 
They're not indiscriminate. Rockets fired from/stored in a hospital make it a legitimate military target.

That's an extremely dangerous precedence don't you think? It allows Israel to just whitewash and justify bombing almost anything with the tenuous caveat of claims that it was harbouring rockets/militants, especially since most the time these claims can't be validated.
 
Hamas uses innocents as human shields. Plenty of proof out there to prove this is happening. This is why the death count is so ridiculously high not because of wanton Israeli barbarity like you and everyone else seems to think.

However isolated acts of barbarity, such as the attack on the children on the beach at Gaza for instance, are 100% wrong and the individuals responsible should be brought to justice. Every army in the world has it's fair share of maniacs unfortunately and no, I'm not condoning Israel's conduct but to paint Israel and it's army on a par with the worst atrocity perpetrators in human history is wrong.

Israelis will decide for themselves who leads them (a right not offered to Gazans by the "democratically elected" Hamas), and if they disagree what their government does, they vote them out. What they do want is peace and quiet to live their lives, without rockets fired into their country for years on end. I'm pretty sure the same applies to Palestinians as well.

In reference to your blogpost earlier Kaos I feel where any politicians are concerned, they ALL have dirty hands in one way or another, and Israeli politicians are no exception. The overriding difference between them and Hamas, however - is that Israeli politicians recognise their first duty is to protect their citizens, not use them as cannon fodder.

Both Hamas and Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, they're stuck in the crossfire.

The attack on beach was not an isolated incident - factor in the attacks on hospitals, disabled persons shelters, cafes and schools and suddenly you're left with a lot of 'isolated' incidents.

The elections in Gaza were open and Hamas were legitimately elected. It was Bush and Rice's plot to get them overthrown following this democratic process that lead to the bitter civil war with Fatah, leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Israel respect their dead more than all the Arab nations put together, I'll concede that.
 
So they deliberately targeted these kids out of folly and the need for fun then? Big claim you're making there without any concrete proof.

A basic optical device would show that they were only children. Are we to believe that the IDF doesn't have or know how to use the most basic of army equipment?

Still the IDF is full of cowards. We all know that. They used young children as human shields to check for bombs.
 
That's an extremely dangerous precedence don't you think? It allows Israel to just whitewash and justify bombing almost anything with the tenuous caveat of claims that it was harbouring rockets/militants, especially since most the time these claims can't be validated.

I'm sure the legal advice the IDF gets means that evidence for use of those civilian installations by combatants would be available if Israelis are charged by international courts.
 
Both Hamas and Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, they're stuck in the crossfire.

The attack on beach was not an isolated incident - factor in the attacks on hospitals, disabled persons shelters, cafes and schools and suddenly you're left with a lot of 'isolated' incidents.

The elections in Gaza were open and Hamas were legitimately elected. It was Bush and Rice's plot to get them overthrown following this democratic process that lead to the bitter civil war with Fatah, leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Israel respect their dead more than all the Arab nations put together, I'll concede that.

There's evidence for rocket storage and firing from schools, use of ambulances by combatants and the use of local population as human shields.

Israel first and foremost respects life more than its Arab enemies.
 
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A basic optical device would show that they were only children. Are we to believe that the IDF doesn't have or know how to use the most basic of army equipment?

Still the IDF is full of cowards. We all know that. They used young children as human shields to check for bombs.

Using this logic, the IDF deliberately kills its own soldiers in friendly-fire incidents.
 
Nine Things the Israeli Ambassador Conveniently Didn't Say About Gaza


The suffering in Gaza continues unabated. The strip is blockaded from land, sea and air and bombed from land, sea and air. The death toll has climbed past 550, including at least 100 Palestinian children.

Yet, still, silver-tongued Israeli officials continue to take to the airwaves to defend the indefensible. On Tuesday I appeared alongside Israel's ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, on BBC Radio 2's The Jeremy Vine Show, to discuss the Gaza crisis. I wasn't able to debate the ambassador directly: I answered Vine's questions first while Taub sat silently next to me; then he answered Vine's questions while I (with great difficulty and much self-restraint) sat silently next to him. You can listen to the full interviews below, including my points about Israel's brutal 'Dahiya doctrine' and the horrific effects of the siege on Gaza's 1.7m-strong populace.

Given I wasn't able to respond to Taub's points on the show, however, and given the ambassador was able to have the last word, I thought I'd deal with some of the myths he pushed, live on air, in this particular blogpost.

Here are nine things that the Israeli ambassador to the UK conveniently didn't mention - or got flat wrong - during his radio interview yesterday, based on nine of his quotes from that interview:

1) "We pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005... we pulled out of every inch."

Israel likes to pretend that the occupation of Gaza ended with Ariel Sharon's 'unilateral disengagement' from the strip in August 2005. It didn't. Israel is still, legally, the occupying power and continues to control Gaza's territorial borders, coastal waters and airspace. In fact, as Harvard University Middle East expert Sara Roy noted in the Boston Globe in 2012: "Israeli-imposed buffer zones -- areas of restricted access -- now absorb nearly 14 percent of Gaza's total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land. Similarly, the sea buffer zone covers 85 percent of the maritime area promised to Palestinians in the Oslo Accords, reducing 20 nautical miles to three..." Israel also continues to control the Palestinian Population Registry, which has the power to define who is a "Palestinian" and who is a legal resident of Gaza. Does Gaza sound sovereign, independent or un-occupied to you?

2) "Hamas took over the Gaza Strip by force."

Yes it did, in June 2007, after being elected to office in January 2006. But what Taub omitted to mention is that it did so in order to pre-empt a coup planned by the Bush administration and egged on by the Israelis. As investigative journalist David Rose pointed out in his acclaimed Vanity Fair piece on the coup, based on leaked documents from the US State Department, it was "President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams [who] backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever."

3) "At the end of the day democracy is... some sort of commitment to basic democratic values."

Put to one side the fact that Israel rules over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem while denying them the right to vote in Israeli elections, let's take a look for a moment at the 'democratic' fate of Palestinians who live legally inside of Israel as citizens of the Jewish State. There are, according to Ha'aretz, "695 communities, located in regional councils that control about 80 percent of the state's land" which have vetting committees, protected by law, that prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from buying or renting property in those communities. Israel also operates discriminatory citizenship laws - chief among them, the 1950 Law of Return and the 1952 Citizenship Law - which privilege Jewish citizens over Palestinian citizens. What happened to "basic democratic values"?

4) "Hamas has brutalised the people of Gaza."

Yes it has. Hams is undoubtedly guilty of massive human rights abuses inside Gaza. But does that excuse Israel's 47-year brutalisation of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories? Consider this Reuters report from June 2013: "A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces on Thursday of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields. Palestinian children in the Gaza and the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, are routinely denied registration of their birth and access to health care, decent schools and clean water, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said." Is this not brutalisation? Is this not a massive abuse of Palestinian human rights? How about bombing a cafe in which Gazans were watching the World Cup? Or bombing a shelter for Gaza's disabled residents?

5) "Israel has been trying to show restraint."

If "restraint" results in 500-plus dead in a matter of days, the vast majority of them civilians, including kids on beaches and disabled people in shelters, then I wouldn't want to see what Taub defines as a lack of restraint. Also, as I mentioned in my remarks to Vine, Israel is using the Dahiya doctrine which, as the 2009 United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict noted, is an Israeli security concept coined by former IDF general Gadi Eizenkot that involves "the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations". Targeting civilian populations and properties isn't evidence of "restraint", it's evidence of war crimes.

Good read.
 
Using this logic, the IDF deliberately kills its own soldiers in friendly-fire incidents.

Yep. Its exactly the same. Grown men carrying guns look exactly the same as children playing football on a beach in daylight.
 
I'm sure the legal advice the IDF gets means that evidence for use of those civilian installations by combatants would be available if Israelis are charged by international courts.

There'd be no need since the United States would see to it that Israel remains untouchable. They know this and hence aren't afraid of the international community calling its bluff.

There's evidence for rocket storage and firing from schools, use of ambulances by combatants and the use of local population as human shields.

Israel first and foremost respects life more than its Arab enemies.

Evidence from which source? The IDF? Like I said the IDF can hit any highly populated structure and dignify it with the alleged claim that it harbours something nasty.
 
Both Hamas and Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, they're stuck in the crossfire.

The attack on beach was not an isolated incident - factor in the attacks on hospitals, disabled persons shelters, cafes and schools and suddenly you're left with a lot of 'isolated' incidents.

The elections in Gaza were open and Hamas were legitimately elected. It was Bush and Rice's plot to get them overthrown following this democratic process that lead to the bitter civil war with Fatah, leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Israel respect their dead more than all the Arab nations put together, I'll concede that.

As Holy said a second ago, What is Israel meant to do if Hamas is firing rockets from these places on purpose, to inflate the death counts in order to damage Israel's reputation? The Hamas leadership has practically come out and ordered it!

I have massive doubts about the legitimacy of the said elections but that's just my opinion.

That's absolutely right. If you exclude the Israeli politicians from the mix you will find that most Israelis want peace, could you say the same for most Palestinians?
 
The whole notion of the Palestinian movement being so downtrodden and hard done to is getting rather boring now. Until they desire peace more than they desire the annihilation of Israel and the Jews then this will never end.
 
There'd be no need since the United States would see to it that Israel remains untouchable. They know this and hence aren't afraid of the international community calling its bluff.



Evidence from which source? The IDF? Like I said the IDF can hit any highly populated structure and dignify it with the alleged claim that it harbours something nasty.

Not if it has footage of rockets being launched from the building before it is struck.
 
As Holy said a second ago, What is Israel meant to do if Hamas is firing rockets from these places on purpose, to inflate the death counts in order to damage Israel's reputation? The Hamas leadership has practically come out and ordered it!

I have massive doubts about the legitimacy of the said elections but that's just my opinion.

That's absolutely right. If you exclude the Israeli politicians from the mix you will find that most Israelis want peace, could you say the same for most Palestinians?

Many of these locations did not harbour any Hamas militants nor did rocket fire source from them. Houses which were completely clean were destroyed.

Why do you doubt the legitimacy of the election? Do you think Hamas fixed the election? That would be pretty hard to do considering the most the de facto power resides with Fatah who incidentally are on better terms with Israel. I mean heck, the US channelled $2million to the Fatah electoral campaign in the weeks before the elections as a last ditch, desperate attempt to get them to win it.

Most Israelis want peace and most Palestinians want justice. Peace for Israel doesn't necessarily mean justice (or even peace for that matter) for the Palestinians. Until there is justice, there can't be peace.
 
Most Israelis want peace and most Palestinians want justice. Peace for Israel doesn't necessarily mean justice (or even peace for that matter) for the Palestinians. Until there is justice, there can't be peace.

Justice. Will that include some kind of compensation to my Iraqi grandparents who lost everything in 48?
 
Justice. Will that include some kind of compensation to my Iraqi grandparents who lost everything in 48?

The treatment of Jews in Arab countries is deplorable, back in 48 and now (if any remain). I would love nothing more than to see Iraq's Jewish community restored but unfortunately most of them have moved on and I don't see them wanting to return (can't blame them really).

There's still hope to salvage a Palestine (and don't give me your customary "Jordan!" answer :lol:)
 
Many of these locations did not harbour any Hamas militants nor did rocket fire source from them. Houses which were completely clean were destroyed.

Why do you doubt the legitimacy of the election? Do you think Hamas fixed the election? That would be pretty hard to do considering the most the de facto power resides with Fatah who incidentally are on better terms with Israel. I mean heck, the US channelled $2million to the Fatah electoral campaign in the weeks before the elections as a last ditch, desperate attempt to get them to win it.

Most Israelis want peace and most Palestinians want justice. Peace for Israel doesn't necessarily mean justice (or even peace for that matter) for the Palestinians. Until there is justice, there can't be peace.

Justice in the eyes of the Palestinians means the elimination of the Jewish state. You are not honest when you ignore this fact in your two-line summary.