"What are they supposed to do, swim for it?"

[babylonsister]

[Fred Sanders]

1. Germany should have been made to pay by carving Israel out of a piece of post war Germany,

not Palestine.

The aggrieved party should be made whole by the aggrieving party! Not a bunch of distant strangers having nothing to do with it. And those distant strangers have been herded into a smaller and smaller and smaller space until they are all now in a prison known as Gaza, a place the size of my big toe, and as attractive. More white privilege.

The only safe place is the beach.......let me withdraw that,
Israel kills children there also, no place is safe, every person is an automatic human shield.

The arc of injustice is also long.

[Iggo]

10. But, but, but....THE BIBLE!!!

[Fred Sanders]

13. It all goes back to worshipping ghost kings in the sky, no doubt. And everyone has their own cloud.

[riqster]

17. Let us all sing:

http://m.

[happyslug]

38. This has NOTHING to do with the bible

Last edited Thu Jul 17, 2014, 06:16 PM - Edit history (1)

The Gaza Strip was that part of the Mid East where the Ancient Philistines lived. It was NEVER part of ancient Israel except under Roman Rule, where Philistine and Judea were viewed as one and the same, but few Jews lived in the Gaza strip. After the Jewish revolt of 70 AD, the area was renamed Palestine after the Philistines, but that is POST biblical period.

Thus Israel does not really care about the Gaza Strip, the real fight has been over the West Bank, for that is the area ancient Israel and later Ancient Judea retreated to when defeated in any battle along the coast.

On the other hand, Israel does care who actually rules Gaza, as long as they accept the fact Israel is stronger. The problem is Hamas is NOT ready to "accept" to Israeli domination. This is complicated by the fact Hamas accepts the West Bank as part of Palestine and thus will defend it even if that means attracting from Gaza, at the same time Israel wants the West Bank to be Jewish.

My sister one Christmas gave me a book on Battle of the Bible written by two Israeli Generals. The big thing I learned from that book is the Israeli High Command see the West Bank as its Strategic fall back position. If things go bad, they want to be able to retreat to the West Bank, just like David and the rest of the Kings of ancient Israel and Judea did. The problem is, the West Bank is at present more Palestinian then Jewish. The whole illegal settlement program, after reading that book, is clear to me, it is a policy of making the West Bank Jewish so if the US ever drops its support for Israel and its neigbors attack Israel, Israel will have a good defensive position, something Israel does NOT have on the plains that extends from the Gaza Strip to the Jezreel valley (where Megido is located, yes the location of Armageddon, which is located on the first defensive position as you march from Egypt North along the coast. Thus easy march till you get to the Jezrell Valley. On the other hand from Gaza you do NOT march north, but turn to the Jerusalem, and the West Bank, you enter an area of hills and valley, perfect for ambushes AND strong defensive position.

In the book on ancient battles, the Israeli Generals mention Napoleon (and his REFUSAL to even go in the direction of Jerusalem) and the Crusades (whose power base was the Jezreel Valley, starting with the Port City of Acre to the Jordan River Valley).

Side note: Up to Two million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea would over flow its banks and flood the Jezreel Valley and then into the Jordan and Dead Sea. Do to this constant flooding, the Jezreel Valley is relatively flat, but has two high areas on each side that make up good defensive positions. The first written records of any battle involves a battle in that area of the world. Acre is the first decent natural port as you march from Egypt, the Jezreel valley is rich farm land, thus armies can be feed. The highland provides what is called "Force Multipliers" i.e. advantages (most high ground) to one side or another. On the other hand the high ground are NOT ridges thus armies can maneuver, i.e. if you can not move on the road by Megiddo, just march a mile or two and march over the same high ground.

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

I bring up the Jezreel Valley, for it show WHY Israel wants the West Bank, it is a good defensive position, it multiples the strength of any army defending that area. On the other hand Gaza can be marched with ease for it is one big plain and unless you have the bigger army, you will lose and lose quickly (as we can see with Israel's quick moves into Gaza).

Now. Israel does NOT have the population to occupy Gaza, thus Israel is willing to accept its existence. The West Bank is a defensible area and Israel wants it for that reason alone (and that was the same reason it was part of Ancient Israel and Ancient Judea, it is in a very good area to defend.

Here is a map of "Ancient" Israel that shows the terrain, please note it calls the Jazreel Valley by its Greek Name, Esdraelon valley:

[Rockyj]

54. F this Shit its over 4,000 yrs worth of BS!

As a Native American we have suffered through the F-c ken genocide and colonization process from biological warfare (small pocks laden blankets), boarding schools (brainwashing our children from age 3 & up that our parents & grandparents are dirty savages), assimilation (moving us basically 2 city slums); taking our land by supposedly allowing us to keep land on reservations (concentration camps) through treaties that were always broken as soon as they discovered the land had anything worthwhile like natural minerals! I can go on & on! WHY can't the Palestinian & Israel people just say FUCK IT! Let's compromise BECAUSE we are TIRED of all this death, destruction & BS & we WANT A FUTURE for OUR Children's children! THIS is what my Native American's ancestors did for our people! They thought 7 Generations ahead & NOT of themselves!

[GeorgeGist]

14. or Florida.

[cali]

20. because there's nothing the surviviors would have liked more than living in the midst of

those who slaughtered them.

furthermore, the move to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine far predates the Holocaust. And did you know that by 1900, Jerusalem was majority Jewish? However much people are in denial about it, that region is the historical homeland of Jews and there has always been a Jewish presence there.

As my old Classics professor once said: The Jews who went to Palestine during that period are like people falling/jumping from a burning building and landing on those below. No one is at fault. There really wasn't a solution.

As far as this statement:

The aggrieved party should be made whole by the aggrieving party

Extraordinary concept at worst and terrible choice of words at best: There is no making "whole" when 60% of a population is exterminated- and violently in a very short period of time.

I've been harshly critical of Israel vis a vis Palestine for years here, but I have no more use for the type of comment that YOU finish your post with. You are demonizing Israel and Israelis just exactly like others demonize Palestinians.

Ugh.

[wryter2000]

52. Well said!

[MNBrewer]

21. Think Zionists would have been content in Europe?

I don't know.

[malaise]

51. Forget not that the Europeans did not want the Jews in Europe

Sadly they created this mess

[n2doc]

2. IDF Navy has that side covered too. n/t

[Fred Sanders]

3. Why is the IDF not being charged with war crimes for vaporizing four children on a beach?

Was the IDF thinking they were building sand castle shields?

Next to 0 coverage in the American media, nada on Fox News, the racial prejudice runs deep, the propaganda is piling higher and higher as hundreds of human shields prove incredibly useless.

[n2doc]

6. Same reason we weren't for destroying Fallujah in Iraq

Power. Israel has a lot of it, and has us to back them up. If the situation had been reversed, one can guarantee that there would be people being sent to the Hague, if they survived capture.

[Fred Sanders]

8. I remember early on in the Iraq fake war when an American smart missiles became very stupid and

slammed directly onto the roof of a civilian school shelter, killing hundreds.

Whoopsie and sweeping under the carpet of blood.....the evil ignoring of human slaughtering is as evil as the act.

[robbob]

30. Yes, we don't 'target' civilians

Therefore we are the 'good guys', no matter how many of them we accidentally kill...

...sickening

[Igel]

7. You confuse outcome with goal.

They are often distinct.

It's been said that anti-Semitism is the only form of discrimination that says your foe is superior. (This, of course, was said many decades ago and shows a rather narrow world-view. Most racisms just say that the foe is inferior in most ways--animals, subhuman, stupid, immoral, etc. If there's an "advantage" it's spun negatively: Blacks, for instance, in racist thought are inferior with a "good sense of rhythm", but ultimately that relies on lack of emotional control and grants them a minor, trivial "virtue". Anti-Semitism is more of a mix: The Jews are immoral, but smarter and, all too often, assumed to be much less capable of making mistakes. Smarts and competence are strong positive virtues, so to spin that negatively, it was deemed to be "cunning" or "devious." So if the Israelis have an outcome, we're justified at least in our own little minds of thinking that their goal was the outcome. We can make mistakes when we do something wrong; they do something wrong, it's intentional and speaks about their deep-seated aversion to real human values and their utter indifference to anybody not like them. It's all about the dog whistle, don't you know?)

[Fred Sanders]

11. Killing four children on the beach needs no analysis, only the parents get to do analysis.

[HERVEPA]

26. Again, bull.

Whatever you think of the Israels, to think they did this on purpose is just dumb.

[Orrex]

29. They were probably aiming at the Hamas military installation located on that beach.

[HERVEPA]

31. I give up.

Seriously, please tell ne why they would do this on purpose.
What possible benefit?

[Chemisse]

33. I think they've been doing this kind of thing all along.

The difference now is that there are foreign journalists present.

As far as motive goes, those children will never grow up to shoot missiles at Israel. I believe Israel would be happy if every single Palestinian was exterminated. Problem gone.

[HERVEPA]

34. Ludicrous answer

Care to try again?

[Chemisse]

42. Oops. You're tripping over your emotions.

Clearly they targeted these children. There must be a reason why. I proposed one. Try using logic and reasoning to rebut if you have any other explanation.

[Orrex]

36. What consequences should Israel face as a result of the deaths?

I don't believe that they targeted the children, but either they fired at the beach deliberately (in which case they need to explain why and be held accountable for it) or they hit the beach by accident (in which case they need to explain why and be held accountable for it).

What measure of accountability do you think is appropriate?

[HERVEPA]

37. They should explain why it happened as much as possible

without compromising their security.

[Orrex]

39. But then what?

Do they offer a bashful mea culpa and move on?

If Hamas had accidentally killed four Israeli children, would it be sufficient for them simply to explain what happened?

[HERVEPA]

41. Three Israeli kids were murdered on purpose.

I missed the explanation.

[Orrex]

43. But you haven't missed the significance.

Last edited Thu Jul 17, 2014, 03:19 PM - Edit history (1)

You have repeatedly expressed disbelief that anyone could believe that the four Palestinian children were deliberately slain, but then you yourself so readily make the connection to the murdered Israeli teens.

Surely you can understand how others might likewise make that connection and might perceive deliberate intent behind the navy's action?


The three murders are inexcusable, and I don't defend them in any way. I wasn't aware that the organization Hamas was responsible for the murders, however.

Still, it seems very different from the deaths of four children caused by the Israeli navy during a military campaign.

[badtoworse]

53. Are you replying to my post?

Children dying in a conflict is tragic regardless of their ethnicity. I haven't explicitly addressed that in this thread.

[cali]

23. Why hasn't the U.S. been charged with war crimes for vaporizing far more children

and other civilians with drones and bombs?

Power. That's why and there are literally dozens of groups and countries of which one could ask that question- all perpetrators of horrible acts within recent history.

And sorry, but there's been extensive coverage of the death of the bombing deaths of the four kids and of Gazan civilian deaths in the U.S. media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/world/middleeast/gaza-strip-beach-explosion-kills-children.html?_r=0

Innocent and Gone: Israeli Strike on Gaza Kills Four Children
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/innocent-gone-israeli-strike-gaza-kills-four-children-n157301

'They went to the beach to play': Deaths of 4 children add to growing toll in Gaza conflict
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/meast/mideast-conflict-children/

Children Playing Hide-and-Seek Killed on Gaza Beach as Horrified War Correspondents Look On
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/07/16/gaza_beach_deaths_children_killed_apparently_by_air_strike.html

That's generally been the tenor of the stories written and broadcast about this atrocity committed by Israel. Hardly Israel apologist stuff.

[Igel]

4. This won't stay in this forum, I'm guessing.

At the same time, Stewart implicates a bigger point.

It's a small little territory with a lot of people. If you set up a missile launcher, you're unlikely to be miles from the nearest family. It's from around 4 to around 8 miles wide (I'm rounding the numbers up) with millions of people. Granted, many are packed into refugee camps, but that's another (quite strange) issue.

If you see a group setting up and firing rockets or missiles, you have two choices as a citizen: You can object, remain indifferent, or approve. You should be aware that those rockets and missiles may draw return fire, not always to the precise location they were fired from, but often after the fact as the production facilities or logistics "facilities" are targeted.

The choice matters. And the verdict has been in for quite a while. Except that Gaza, like many other places, has truly limited civil society. Civil society is mostly the mosques, which are not so much self-organizing as run by the state. In other words, there is no civil society to speak of. (NGOs count minimally for civil society, except in the mind of their organizers; they're not society, they're administrative hierarchies.)

[Fred Sanders]

12. Gaza is a prison, you are free to complicate and justify the murder of the inmates, lucky you.

[Marrah_G]

5. I think alot of people don't understand the size of Gaza

It is less then half the size of NYC, completely walled in, filled with 2 million people living in poverty.

131 square miles with very little resources or hope for the future.

[Fred Sanders]

9. Gaza Penitentiary is what it should be called, not unlike Warsaw in WW2.

[libodem]

15. Yes the

Arid, salt strip prison which was the last place to run. It was wasteland. Now that it has been inhabited it must have made it look worthy to life in. Being chased into the sea to drown.

They bomb or board the rescue ships, remember?

[cali]

24. It is an open air prison. It is not like Warsaw.

even in the brief time before the Warsaw ghetto inhabitants were shipped off to death camps. Let me give you a few clear examples. In January of 1941 the official ration for Jews in the ghetto was 219 calories per day. Now I agree with Juan Cole; what Israel did during the blockade was creepy as hell:

http://www.juancole.com/2012/10/creepy-israeli-planning-for-palestinian-food-insecurity-in-gaza-revealed.html

but it wasn't the deliberate starvation of Gazans in the way that the Nazis deliberately starved those in the Warsaw Ghetto.

There was no humanitarian aid to Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. There were no hospitals. There was no red crescent.

things in Gaza are bad enough. The Israelis are guilty of oppressing the Palestinians, but specious comparisons to the Warsaw Ghetto and genocide- that's what the Warsaw Ghetto was, of course- don't help the Palestinians.

Very unlike the Warsaw Ghetto in virtually every factual way.

[badtoworse]

16. Maybe they should stop firing rockets.

[babylonsister]

18. So they shouldn't defend themselves?

You like the image of sitting ducks?

[badtoworse]

19. It always comes down to who you believe initiated the violence.

My gut tells me that this latest round started with rockets being fired from Gaza. You can't do that and claim self defense when Isreal retaliates.

[hack89]

22. How is this self defense?

retribution perhaps but not self defense.

[cali]

25. Of course Hamas should stop firing rockets. That doesn't justify the

massive Israeli overkill in the face of rocket fire. Or do you disagree with Amnesty International, the U.N. and virtually all the human rights organizations addressing this?

I honestly wish people would either inform themselves a little about I/P or just not offer ignorant opinions.

[babylonsister]

28. Are you responding to me?

I hope not. I find what Israel is doing sickening and yes, everyone should stop firing.

[cali]

32. yes I was responding to you. You defended Hamas firing rockets with the rhetorical

question "So they shouldn't defend themselves?" in response to this comment: "Maybe they should stop firing rockets."

You then said:

You like the image of sitting ducks?


There is no other reasonable interpretation of your words. Now you're saying that "everyone should stop firing".

Yes, Israel has the greater responsibility. Yes what it's doing is disgusting and the deaths illustrate that all too vividly. Having said that Hamas is also repulsive and that they haven't killed but one, is due to Iron Dome- not to their lack of trying to kill civilians.

[heaven05]

27. well all I know

is, one child was killed, then three children were killed and this begat this current round of hate begetting more hate for the future on both sides. Yes the politics of the whole situation stinks, yet 4 dead children started this one. Not to mention the wounded and dead in the 'beach' incident and the 'warfare' between the two belligerents..

[Spitfire of ATJ]

44. Those rockets are more symbolic....

They're covered in slogans and prayers.

That's how they can launch over a thousand of them before someone finally got killed.

[badtoworse]

45. What difference does that make?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

46. Plenty when you hear people act like it's London Blitz 2.0.

[badtoworse]

49. What a brilliant strategy!

Don't exploit your tactical and strategic advantage until the enemy is stronger and capable of mounting a more effective attack.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

50. This is what happens when both sides consider peace to be a weakness.

[Uncle Joe]

35. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, babylonsister.

[Adrahil]

40. Stewart nails it again. NT

[egduj]

47. Why did Egypt block their border with Gaza?

[countryjake]

48. Kicked & Recommended!