Israel/Gaza

[flash gunner]

Let's not forget the state of Israel was born out of terrorism with the Jewish Lehi terrorist group that used to attack and kill the British in Palestine.

The whole thing is a mess and until both sides agree to share the land equally there will never be peace

The State of Israel was well on it's way before the modern armed struggle.

The Lehi were one of three main groups who fought in the 30's and 40's, they were the smallest numbering around 400 at their strongest point.

But it must be seen in context, the British shot Jews as we landed and came ashore from boats, the British gave arms to the Arabs.
Houses were raided, arms confiscated, (Palestinians) imprisoned
When I have spoken to those who lived there are the time they said the (Israelis) were heavy handed.
It was a struggle for survival.

The Hagannah/Palmach (the largest Jewish group, left wing), were much more conciliatory to the British.
The Irgun/Eitzl wavered between ambivalence to the British and attacking military bases to get arms.

Quartz the bit ive slightly changed and underlined in red could be and is exactly how things are though of today by the Palestinians

[QuartzGooner]

I have seen the changes you have made Flash but there is no comparison.

The Jews were trying to get back to our homeland for years, especially prescient after the Holocaust, and the British were turning us away.

Two of the three armed Jewish groups were fighting a military campaign against the British military and military police, not against civilians, one of the groups (Haganah/Palmach) were at times not fighting the British at all.

The precursor of them, the Shomrim, had been formed as far back as 1909 in response to Arab murders of Jews.
There were only about 85,000 Jews in Turkish province of Palestine/South Syria in 1909, and our presence offered unprecedented economic opportunities for the Arabs.

Yet we were attacked.

There is no struggle for survival for the Arabs, there are almost 2 million Arabs in Israel who live and work.
They have 22 countries of their own and vast mineral wealth (all be it not evenly distributed), yet choose to fight.

[Chippy]

There are none so blind as them that cannot see.

[QuartzGooner]

There are none so blind as them that cannot see.

On the contrary.

I see both sides of the argument, but I know which side I am on and what I believe is morally correct.

[Chippy]

There are none so blind as them that cannot see.

On the contrary.

I see both sides of the argument, but I know which side I am on and what I believe is morally correct.

To be totally pathetic, I know you are wrong. But deep down you know that too.

[Chippy]

[Chippy]

[QuartzGooner]

Chippy

Finkelstein is a mentally ill freak.
Jews have lived in Jerusalem for 3300 years, so much longer than any of the so called Palestinian Arabs.
A "Jew from Brooklyn" is merely an exiled Jew, waiting to return to his spiritual homeland from which he was evicted by force by Romans and successive Arab and Turk invasions.

That map is an anti-Israel propaganda map, it has already been discredited on this thread by Simon, please read earlier pages.

1.) It is not even factually correct - That amount of land was not built up in 1946.

2.) It is highly subjective choosing an arbitrary date of 1946.

3.) In 1946, if that date is to be used, the word Palestinian was used by Jews and not Arabs.

4.) Going back to late 19th century, most of the land of the current state of Israel was sparsely populated, much of it malarial swamps.

5.) Most Arabs in Israel are descended from immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th Century, there never ever was a country called Palestine.

6.) Your map entirely ignores Jordan and Syria, to which 78% of British Mandate of Palestine was given, all Jewish land ownership being barred from Jordan.
This map shows the British Mandate of Palestine, much bigger than modern Israel.



7.) This map shows the land as it was 1300 B.C.E, before any Arab had left Arabia, 1900 years before any Arab had left Arabia.
It shows Jewish loss of land from successive invasions and massacres.



7.) This map shows Israel in the context of surrounding Arab lands.
A tiny country.
Less than 2% of the MIddle East in terms of land size.



8.) This map shows land ceded by Israel to Egypt, modern day loss of Jewish land.

[officepest]

A "Jew from Brooklyn" is merely an exiled Jew, waiting to return to his spiritual homeland from which he was evicted by force by Romans and successive Arab and Turk invasions.

I don't understand this Quartz, I really don't.

What claim (other than the obvious religious) does somebody who may very well never have been to Israel have on land occupied by another person?

[QuartzGooner]

A "Jew from Brooklyn" is merely an exiled Jew, waiting to return to his spiritual homeland from which he was evicted by force by Romans and successive Arab and Turk invasions.

I don't understand this Quartz, I really don't.

What claim (other than the obvious religious) does somebody who may very well never have been to Israel have on land occupied by another person?

Claim?
Religious as mentioned, plus historical and spiritual.

From 1300 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. there was the Kingdom of Israel (at times during this it split into the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah).
Jewish country, with a sizeable non-Jewish population.
Based around capital city of Jerusalem, where there was a temple, at which people prayed for peace for all humanity regardless of faith.
During this time there was trade with the rest of the world, a small amount of Jews travelled to Europe and settled, others to what are now Mexico and the USA and settled.

An invasion by the Assyrians carted off lots of Jews into exile into Asia and Africa.
A subsequent invasion by the Romans killed 1.5 million Jews.
Many were exiled as slaves to Europe and other parts of the Roman Empire.
The rest of the Jews held out in the north of Israel for another 260 years, then were killed or exiled.
A tiny amount managed to cling on, living in the North of Israel and a few in Jerusalem.

There followed 1800 years of successive invasions and different rulers i.e. Arabs, Crusaders, Turks, the British.

During this 1800 years the Jews always tried to return to live and rule the land but were not successful in the main because of poverty and military defeat, and 8th century army of Jews from Iraq was defeated.

In medieval times a few returned, then the return rate increased slightly in the late 18th century.
Followed by another increase from the 1860's onwards.

From the 1920's onwards that increased substantially until the modern state of Israel was founded 1948.

It has increased since then too as various tribes out of our 12 tribes return, i.e. Tribe of Dan from Ethiopia, Tribe of Menasseh from India.

During this whole time, nearly all our prayers are about the land of Israel.
There are religious commandments only applicable there, the area of the lad and above the land is holy and has a unique connection to G-D.

As a people we have different appearances because of rape (by Cossacks) and some non-Jewish men marrying Jewish women and having Jewish children, plus some conversion of faith (rare though that is).

That is why we fight for the land and a Jew from Brooklyn is entitled to live there, it is a return from exile.

[Chippy]

[QuartzGooner]

Noam Chomsky is a renowned anti-Semite and anti-Zionist.
He will use any "excuse" to speak ill of Israel.

He is also incorrect.

The unintentional death of civilians in war is killing, but by no definition is it murder.

Mosques, schools and hospitals are targetted because Hamas fire out of them.

Hamas does has command and control centres, heavy artillery and an army.

It has naval vessels too.

Just because Hamas has less personnel and no air force, does not give it any moral superiority.

Life does not give moral superiority to the weaker or the underdog, it gives it to who is right.
This view that the poor are somehow morally wonderful?
A hotpotch of ideas under the banner of "Liberation Theology" which make little sense to me.

War crimes?
Hamas commits those every day by forcing civilians to sit on the roof of buildings it fires from.
It also breached all international conventions by firing at the Dimona working nuclear facility!

Israel is fighting a war.

War is not the same as war crimes, despite what idealistic intellectuals or ardent anti-Semites try to claim.

[SPUDMASHER]

It seems to me that everyone that speaks out against Israel is deemed to be either an anti semite, a zionist or a mentally ill freak.

The religous claim on the land has absolutely no foundation in the real world. It is based solely on a faith belief and cannot be proven. To do so you would need to prove the existence of God. Nobody can do that.

[DB10GOONER]

Christ, don't know why I am getting into this again but hey-ho!

Chippy, Noam Chomsky is the worst person to quote in defence of your argument, mate. He is known and famous as an anti-Semite. He is a spoiled rich kid that likes to pontificate about politics in the fashion of a spoiled rich kid trying to get attention and/or piss daddy off. He calls himself an anarchist for fucks sake. In this day and age? Yeah, that's right, a rich white anarchist. He also calls himself a "libertarian socialist". Read this for a fucking retarded childlike idealistic load of old shit;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Chomsky's world view is that of a simplistic idealistic moron; The US government is all bad, the Jews are all bad, Israel is all bad. He's a moron.

One other thing, as much as the Western media hate to admit or publicise this now during this current conflict in Gaza, it is a fact that Islamic terror groups are well known for positioning themselves in their own general population in the hope of a media victory publicising how the US/British/Israel have killed innocent civilians. They did it in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and now Hamas are "borrowing" the tactic and doing it too.

Having said that, and also believing that Israel has the right to defend itself, I still believe they have gone too far this time and have handed the moral high ground (at least in western media and popular perception) to Hamas.

Quartzy Jizzle, whilst I believe in the RC version of God I also believe the worst reason in the world to go to war is religion. And also cannot condone a religious "right" to occupy or own land. That is where our religions and views will always be different I suppose, but as Spuddy says it has no foundation in the real world, at least in my view anyway.

Nothing will change while both sides are so entrenched. We only got a semblance of peace in the North of Ireland ( ) when both sides finally agreed to suck it in a bit, just accept that the other side wants one thing and your side something else and then just compromise the fuck out of your beliefs. People talk about compromise as if it's the worst thing in the world, but in all honesty, it is the ONLY thing that will bring any form of peace.

[northbank123]

It is too difficult to articulate my entire views on Israel/Gaza in one post (or even several), so I have just pointed out what I perceive to be weaknesses/faults in the arguments on both sides.

I think Israel certainly has a very strong right to defend itself and people here can't appreciate what it would be like if it was the UK under constant attack, I certainly can't.

But the whole "moral superiority" argument cuts both ways. If Israel wants to be viewed as reasonably defending itself against a terrible terrorist organisation by the international community, it has to accept that it is going to be held to a far higher standard of accountability than Hamas by the international community. Using "them or us" and similar lines of thinking to justify any tit-for-tat attacks (especially ones that are exponentially more deadly towards civilians) undermines any claim to the moral high ground. If they're rely so heavily on the fact that "well, they did it first" then they're either going to be grouped with Hamas (a terrorist organisation), or suffer far stronger and wider condemnation because people expect a higher standard of conduct from them.

That is notwithstanding the fact that Israel has the capacity to blow Gaza off the map, and that if Hamas had the same capability they would happily do so to Israel. I know that Israel does not conduct itself in exactly the same way but fundamentally using that sort of justification for the disregard of civilian lives is going to lead to international condemnation unless they want to be viewed as equal to Hamas, I can't see why that comes as a surprise to some people.