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| Re: An Article Worth Reading: Why They Hate Israel (1218783) | |||
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Re: An Article Worth Reading: Why They Hate Israel |
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Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Mon Aug 25 15:53:56 2014, in response to Re: An Article Worth Reading: Why They Hate Israel, posted by Nilet on Sun Aug 24 23:48:19 2014. ...that they don't let anybody leave. It isn't Israel's problem if Egypt enacts its own blockade in accordance with their own national interests. Let's be fair and if you are going to criticize Israel for its blockade, also make sure to criticize Egypt for doing the same. The fact you continue to claim that somehow the blockades are different shows your biases and true colors. There are four ways out of Gaza— into Egypt, into Israel, into the Mediterranean, and into the air. Egypt restricts the first, just like every other country. Israel restricts the second, just like every other country. However, Israel also restricts the third and fourth. Often violently. Can you name any other country that prevents people from leaving by air or sea? That's not the same thing as merely restricting access to one's own borders. Right now, a Gazan who has permission from Italy to travel to Italy by sea or permission from Argentina to travel to Argentina by air is unable to do so without permission from Israel despite the fact that they will not be entering Israel at any point. Gaza doesn't have an airport or a seaport, so it is necessary for all Gazans to travel either via Egypt or Israel to go anywhere else in the world. Again, Israel is not solely responsible for the fact that Gazans have to do this, and Israel should be under no additional obligation to provide this to Gaza when compared to Egypt. I'd be willing to bet most Gazans would rather travel via Egypt, anyway. Very few countries or territories in the world have no airport, so this is a bit of an unusual circumstance. I'm not familiar enough with the tactical decisions as to why the IDF chose to bomb the Gaza Airport during the Second Intifada, but it seems reasonable that a country might respond that way in response to terrorist attacks against its civilian population. (As an aside, if the Palestinians don't start the Intifada in 2000, perhaps there wouldn't be a need for the Security Fence in the West Bank that you bemoan all the time. There is a very strong correlation between the frequency of terrorist attacks against Israelis and the construction of the wall. I'm not saying the wall needed to run through people's olive groves, but building it was not a mistake.) Vis a vis the seaport and naval blockade, Gaza has never had a proper seaport, although they would like to build one. While there is only one other naval blockade in use right now (Armenia has been blockaded by sea since 1988), there have been plenty of other, shorter naval blockades in recent years against Taiwan, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Iraq, and other nations. Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran and Israel in 1973, so it isn't like Israel hasn't been blockaded itself. Your unrelenting criticism of Israel's blockade in light of the fact that other countries do this too does little to suggest that your issues are closed borders and people's predisposition to fight wars. That's as maybe, but it doesn't change the fact of what Israel is doing. Even Henry steals your car and then Irene burns down your house, you're worse off for Irene's actions regardless of Henry, and Henry's actions don't justify what Irene did. Yes it does. If the supplies were used for their intended purposes, Israel would be happy to send them in and the Gazans would be happy to receive them. You fail to see what role Hamas has in this mess and why Israel is not going to engage in any policy other than one that protects its self interests, just like any other country would. The problem is Hamas, not Israel. And your problem is that you fail, time and time again, to see that Hamas is the aggressor and at fault for much of what is going on in Gaza, not Israel, and then you promote policies that would put Israel and the values you supposedly stand for in extremely grave danger. This again? Israel is the aggressor. It's not self-defense if you attacked first. Open a history book, read about the events of May 1947, and see who attacked first. It wasn't Israel. The problem is that they define approximately everything as a "weapon," leaving Gaza unable to access vital supplies. Because Hamas finds ways to use lots of conventional items (i.e. ketchup) as weapons (i.e. fake blood for the propaganda that you fall for on a regular basis). Gaza is evil because when they conduct military operations, they don't have anywhere else to move their citizens because Gaza is tiny and is basically a prison that no one is allowed to leave without special permission from Israel. There are many open spaces in Gaza that Hamas could operate from and chooses not to, putting civilians at risk. So Hamas does have somewhere to go. If you truly cared about the Palestinian civilians, you would speak up against the egregious violation of international law that Hamas has engaged in since the moment they took control of Gaza. Perhaps by some means other than launching giant bombs at the hospital and declaring that God will sort the dead? What other means would those be? Sending in ground troops? That doesn't end well for anyone. The truth of the matter is you have no suggestion in response to this that doesn't result in Hamas continuing to oppress innocent Gazans while firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Once again, do you not see that Israel is a military superpower and Gaza is basically a concentration camp (pre-1940s definition)? Gaza could have been an economic powerhouse and a model to the West Bank of how an independent Palestinian state could thrive if Israel wasn't present on its territory. The Palestinians blew it up, literally, destroying all the infrastructure Israel left them to start their independent economy. Hamas "hides" in civilian areas because there is literally nowhere else that they can physically go. You can't force someone into a tiny room full of people and then blame them for crowding the other people there. See above. When you deliberately aim at civilians, it's not "collateral damage." It's a war crime. Was the US threatened with charges at the ICC for war crimes when errant bombs dropped in Afghanistan and Iraq? That's bullshit and everybody knows it. No it isn't. It's the truth and only anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, "anti-war" types can't see it, lest they bring themselves to realize that Israel isn't the problem in Gaza. Most Israelis this and most Israelis that, but the settlements are still standing and the natives of the West Bank are still second class citizens in an apartheid state behind a wall. The settlements will disappear when a peaceful, independent Palestinian state can be established. The chances of that happening now just took a big hit, since Hamas managed to fire a rocket at Yahud and shut down Ben Gurion Airport. Few Israelis even want to discuss giving up the West Bank right now. Again, the Palestinians have missed an opportunity for themselves by stalling in the recent round of peace negotiations instead of taking them seriously. If they wanted a state, they could have had it a long time ago. If they are continuing to fight for Israel's destruction and are unwilling to settle for anything less than that, they aren't going to win that battle any time soon. If you want to get your neighbor to make huge concessions, you need to build trust. Israel has been waiting for 66 years for a legitimate peace partner to come forward to resolve this conflict, and while it waits, the Palestinians and Arabs have started wars and intifadas. Not a real recipe for a lasting peace. You sure you want to blame Israel for that? It was ridiculous enough when you were claiming the events of the early 20th century were directly relevant to the conflict. Here we go again. If you don't understand where the origins of this situation truly date back to, you shouldn't bother replying to this post, or anything else Israel related untiil you do. Come on, there's a statute of limitations on calling something your "homeland." Why should the people living there today be shoved aside to make way for people who have some tenuous ancestral connection that predates the Roman Empire? Because the statue of limitations doesn't run out when you have a continuous presence in the land, and the "ancestral connection" isn't tenuous. Archeological remains have shown a constant, Jewish presence throughout modern-day Israel for thousands of years. Do you have any idea when the Palestinians came about? (Here's a hint, many of them deny the existence of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem, and their leaders often condone illegal digs that destroy archeological evidence of a Jewish presence on the land.) I had ancestors in England, Germany, and Poland within the last few hundred years, but I doubt any of those countries would let me in if I claimed "right of return." You ought to look up the citizenship laws for those countries. You might be surprised at what you find. And what about all the people who lived in present-day Israel between then and now? You're confusing me with Olog and CMM. They can stay, and they've been offered a state of their own, but they have rejected each and every proposal, preferring to go to war or to launch terror attacks against Israel instead. Or before the Jews showed up? The Jews showed up when Abraham arrived from Ur-Kasdim. They haven't really left since then. My homeland is on the other side of the planet from Israel— as is yours, since we've heard you're an immigrant to Israel. My home is wherever I happen to be. Are you saying that no immigrant can claim a connection to his or her new homeland? That sounds like something CMM would say. Who is the extremist now? I certainly don't feel any sense of ancestral connection to a place so distant that the ancestors who lived there wouldn't register as relatives on a genetic test. I can pass that test. I'm a many times great-grandson of Aaron the priest, Moses's brother, and a blood test can do a damn good job of providing evidence of that. So tell me— is there something specific about the three thousand year timeframe, or does any country an ancestor of yours lived in count as your "homeland?" Does it apply to everyone or just Jews? What about converts? If someone can trace a few thousand years of Icelandic ancestry but then converts to Judaism, does Israel become his homeland? What about someone with clear Jewish ancestry, but only on his father's side? Or does it depend on whether his father is Orthodox or Reform? Your hatred of organized religion is quite clear here, you don't need to remind us of it all the time. A homeland is the concept of the place (cultural geography) with which an ethnic group holds a long history and a deep cultural association, or the country in which a particular national identity began. Israel meets the criteria as set forth by this definition for all Jews, including converts and those who are Jewish through patrilinial descent. In fact, the State of Israel's own immigration policies confirm that. You're blinded by your own biases so much it isn't even funny anymore. Oh, so you believe that Israel should end the blockade/occupation and make a serious attempt to negotiate for peace? Or maybe Israel should just annex Gaza, give the Gazans full Israeli citizenship, and boot Hamas? Wasn't really getting that vibe from your posts. I believe the Palestinians should make a sincere and serious effort at negotiating with Israel, and they might find their lives drastically improved. I wouldn't have voted for Likud and there are times I have questioned Bibi's commitment to the two state solution (lately he seems to think it isn't happening any time soon, but I don't blame him for that in light of recent events, and you shouldn't either), but I believe he has done things in the hopes of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and Abu Mazen has dawdled each and every time Obama has forced Bibi to make concessions to his coalition and supporters in the name of reaching a final agreement. The world should be extremely upset with Fatah for failing to show up to the negotiations in 2010 for the first 9 months of the settlement freeze that Netanyahu took huge political risks to enact. It should be no surprise to anyone that after refusing to negotiate for much of that time, there was no willingness by Israel to extend that freeze. There is lots of blame to go around with regard to this mess over the years, and yes, some of it falls on Israel, but not in the proportion that you insist it does. So would you care to explain what tactics Hamas was using before they existed? You think Hamas just sprung up in 2007? Seriously Nilet, each time you post you make yourself look even more foolish. I strongly suggest you actually read what I have to say and read some history books and get a better understanding of what has happened in the Middle East in the past and what is going on today. What you claim to know is filled with so much bullshit in the form of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda in the name of being "anti-war" that you have no idea what mess you've gotten yourself in to. |
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