|
Israel bombs Gaza...again. (pg. 17)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Yohan |
| quote: | Originally posted by InfiniteEclipse
Yohan, for clarification, do you agree with points 3,4,5 or are those none-issues? |
i agree (to a degree) to those points, which is consistent with my position that both side are in the wrong
though I had to bite my tongue at point 4. what about the horrors the Hamas is dishing out?
still trying to figure out whether Anas believes that Palestinians are justified in taking whatever action they can (incl acts of terrorism) against Israeli 'oppressors'. still mildly amused at the attempt to portray Palestinians (and Hamas) as the 'good' guy |
|
|
| Anas Attia |
| quote: | Originally posted by Abercrombie
As you say, I'm ill-informed, so no matter what I say it's wrong to you.
At this point Anas, it's reduntant discussing this with you. You deny Israel's existence like Hamas so we know what side you are on, so it is pointless discussing with you as you've clearly explained in this thread, and proved it in the past. |
.
nvm not even gonna respond. what an insult. |
|
|
| Anas Attia |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yohan
i agree (to a degree) to those points, which is consistent with my position that both side are in the wrong
though I had to bite my tongue at point 4. what about the horrors the Hamas is dishing out?
still trying to figure out whether Anas believes that Palestinians are justified in taking whatever action they can (incl acts of terrorism) against Israeli 'oppressors'. still mildly amused at the attempt to portray Palestinians (and Hamas) as the 'good' guy |
Why are you trying to figure that out? when did I say anything close to that? I said look at it in their point of view so you know what their mad at, so you know how to fix the problem.
Also, why are you trying to put Palestinians and hammas under the same group of people. they are not! hammas is their government... and if you know anything about world politics you will know government does not equal people.
anyways i really have to go... |
|
|
| Yohan |
| quote: | Originally posted by Anas Attia
Why are you trying to figure that out? when did I say anything close to that? I said look at it in their point of view so you know what their mad at, so you know how to fix the problem. |
because I dont recall a post from you condemning Hamas, but rather sidestepping the issue.
| quote: |
Also, why are you trying to put Palestinians and hammas under the same group of people. they are not! hammas is their government... and if you know anything about world politics you will know government does not equal people. |
I know both entities are separate.
but the actions Hamas are taking, they'd argue that since they are elected by the Palestinian people, are therefore representing... |
|
|
| Anas Attia |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yohan
I know both entities are separate.
but the actions Hamas are taking, they'd argue that since they are elected by the Palestinian people, are therefore representing... |
Under your logic... bush..elected..so all Americans want what bush wants.
yohan, not sure what your problem is, but it seems you just like to argue. no basis or evidence to support your claims. |
|
|
| Abercrombie |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yohan
still mildly amused at the attempt to portray Palestinians (and Hamas) as the 'good' guy |
Most Palestinians are the good guys. Hamas on the other hand...
| quote: | Originally posted by Anas Attia
.
nvm not even gonna respond. what an insult. |
of course not, admitting it will lose all what little credibility you have left. |
|
|
| InfiniteEclipse |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yohan
i agree (to a degree) to those points, which is consistent with my position that both side are in the wrong
though I had to bite my tongue at point 4. what about the horrors the Hamas is dishing out?
still trying to figure out whether Anas believes that Palestinians are justified in taking whatever action they can (incl acts of terrorism) against Israeli 'oppressors'. still mildly amused at the attempt to portray Palestinians (and Hamas) as the 'good' guy |
Fair enough. I see what you are saying.
The issue of terrorism however, should be examined with care, on a case by case basis. Terrorism, as accusations from either side, tends to be loosely defined (not by you per say but generally). My trouble is, if an occupied lacks any formal military training or weaponry amidst the absence of technological advancement, should we consider their aggression as defensive or as terrorism. To clarify, consider missiles blindly fired into Israel. The general western consensus holds this to be acts of terrorism. On the other hand, these aggressors simply do not possess the means to advance forward and attack select targets. When is it terrorism and when is it patriotism.
This thought really encompasses far more than the current Israel/Palestine conflict, and Chomsky would have a field day. |
|
|
| Anas Attia |
| quote: | Originally posted by Abercrombie
of course not, admitting it will lose all what little credibility you have left. |
keep pressing buttons. don't bother actually contributing to the debate in any way. Cheers for accusing me of such a horrible thing. I appreciate it, and i'm sure everyone else that thinks like you appreciates it too.
Im not going to waste my time here any further, placing my name on the line just to be harassed by you. thanks. |
|
|
| ChemEnhanced |
funny post in
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
...I forgot what I was going to say....but it was really funny. |
|
|
| InfiniteEclipse |
| Something to do with walking into a bar? |
|
|
| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Anas Attia
Palestinian territories: 3,760,000[1]
Jordan 2,700,000[2]
Israel 1,318,000
Syria 434,896
Lebanon 405,425
Chile 300,000
USA 67,842[11]
Egypt 70,245
Honduras 54,000[3]
Kuwait 50,000
Brazil 50,000[4]
Yemen 24,000[3]
Canada 23,975 (2006 Census)[5]
Australia 15,000
Colombia 12,000[3]
Guatemala 1,400[3]
|
I can't for the life of me understand what these numbers are supposed to mean. Where did they come from? Are they counting family lines that haven't lived in the region for several generations as "Palestinian"? By that logic, almost every Jew in the world today is "Israeli".
| quote: | If you want visit the following link to see who has taken over that area of land over the past couple of thousand years, doesn't matter who took it over, there is still a people called the Palestinians all throughout the conquests:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
|
I'm loath to accept any Wikipedia article as a valid source for any topic that's even remotely controversial, but since you yourself posted this source, I'd like to dig up a few points that don't seem to jibe with your numbers:
| quote: | | According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850 had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews[165] |
| quote: | | According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy,[166] the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.[167] |
Hard to believe that the number not only expanded to over 10 million in such a short time but managed to spread itself so thinly across the globe. Even if you accept that, a 19th century population of under 350,000 is hardly an entire civilization.
From the "travelers' impressions" section:
| quote: | Alphonse de Lamartine visited Palestine in 1835, "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence ... as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Herculaneam a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways, in the country ... the tomb of a whole people.[170]
...
The Dutch scholar and cartographer Adriaan Reland visited Palestine in 1695, made a population census, and came to the conclusion that Palestine was mostly empty with several existing communities of Jews and Christians.[183]
...
In 1898, German Kaiser Wilhelm II also visited Palestine. He was appalled at the condition of the country. The Ottomans had stripped the forests for lumber and firewood. The Palestinian Arabs had let an old Roman aqueduct fall into ruin. The ultimate ecological curse was the ubiquitous herds of black goats. For nearly 2,000 years after the dispersion of the Jews, Arabs had allowed their goats to graze unfenced across Palestine. They had eaten the grass down to its roots, and the topsoil had eroded and blown away. The biblical land of milk and honey had become a dust bowl.
– Palestine: The Original Sin, Meir Abelson |
So far, this isn't painting a picture of a vibrant community with a rich cultural history. It describes exactly as I said earlier - a mixed, tribal, almost nomadic population, scattered sporadically across the land. They grew a lot of wheat and that was about it.
Even on Wikipedia, the facts seem to be on my side, not yours. Yes, there was a region called Palestine. Yes, there were people living there. No, it was not a nation-state in the same way it has been since the mid-20th century. There was no independent central government, no Palestinian flag, nothing.
It's completely fine if you want to talk about the history of the Palestine region, or if you want to talk about today's Palestinian Territories and the State of Palestine, but it's absolutely crucial to realize that these two entities are not the same. When you talk about Palestinians living all over the world - descendants of families who emigrated from the region in the 19th century - these people don't have any closer ties to the present state of Palestine than I do to Poland and Germany where my family came from over 3 generations ago.
Now, land claims aside, because we all seem to more or less agree that they're tangential to the issue...
| quote: | | You will see that the amount of space available to the Palestinians has shrunk, drastically... even after the sanction in 1947. It is still shrinking. |
I haven't seen any evidence to support the claim that it's still shrinking, unless you mean per capita. Israel continues to make more and more land concessions and so the total amount of land available to Palestinians has actually been increasing over the past 20 years.
With respect to the less recent "shrinkage", yes, that's true, Israel is presently occupying more land than the original U.N. partition plan gave them. When you have war, borders change. Early on, the neighbouring Arab countries grossly underestimated Israel's military capabilities and made the very stupid mistake of launching actual military offensives, each time getting crushed. Even without a passing knowledge of military strategy, it ought to be obvious that Israel would have had no way to continue its survival without a military occupation of the hostile areas.
Now a lot of supporters of the so-called intifada maintain that Israel made the first offensive in 1948, but the Arabs had already rejected the U.N. partition plan at that point and were already mounting a major offensive. Regardless, it isn't and never has been customary at any point in human history to return occupied lands after a war, with the exception of a total regime change or severe restrictions (i.e. the USA having its own troops in Japan to enforce the ban on any Japanese military entity). Further still, it's well-documented in each and every war after 1948 that the Arabs (Palestinians, whatever) attacked first.
There's no argument here over whether or not Israel has expanded its borders into Arab (not Palestinian) territories; it most certainly has. But if you're really going to obsess over the recent history of the region as opposed to the real current reasons for the war (specifically, Hamas wanting Israel off the map, period), then you have to ask the question why. Israel has the technology, training, and intelligence to mount a full-out conquest of the region if they so choose; instead, they keep giving more land to Palestine and tolerate rocket attacks every day from the Palestinian state. It's pretty hard to believe that they're doing this for fun.
Can it really be a coincidence that every time Israel evacuates a particular territory, a new wave of rocket attacks start from that very territory? It's clear in hindsight that the military occupations of those regions were to protect Israeli civilians.
But, in the end, this speculation doesn't even matter, because as I mentioned before, the rocket attacks and suicide bombs aren't based on land claims. They're based on the expressly stated intent of Hamas to eliminate Israel at any cost. As long as the Israel and the rest of the west continues to try to interpret it as a land claim, the fighting will never end. |
|
|
| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Anas Attia
1. The war in the middle east, is primary one sided, with a massive power on one end vs a small civilian force on the other. (small isn't the keyword here, its civilian)
2. Israel is building a wall much much bigger than that which was build in Berlin. I'm sure you all remember how happy everyone was when that was taken down.
3. The Palestinian people don't have control of their own land, water and food supplies. They are in a controlled environment run by their oppressors.
4. No media outlets are able to go into this controlled area, as Israel wont let them. Even Israelis living in Israel don't even have the slightest clue at the horrors being administered by their army.
5. Foreign aid to the Palestinians is extremely hindered, as well as postal mail and commerce.
6. The Palestinians virtually have no human rights... Period. |
This is one of the most disturbingly one-sided views of the war that I have ever read. Allow me to present you with a reality check:
- Israel's superior technology is used only in retaliation and only against known military targets. Low-tech methods like suicide bombs and molotovs and rockets kill more innocent people than a precision-guided missile. So yes, it is one sided, but not on the side that you seem to think.
- Hamas is not a "civilian" force. They have organization, recruitment, technology, and training. They are a military entity. The fact that they choose to operate amongst civilians and in civilian areas, instead of in uniforms and in remote areas as modern rules of engagement demand, is the part worth mentioning.
- The Palestinian people do have control of their water and food supplies but their government (Hamas) refuses to do anything to maintain them, so Israel does it for them. In many ways it's more like welfare than occupation. If there were even a kernel of truth to what you suggest, all Israel would have to do to win this war or any negotiation would be to cut off the food supply; why don't they do it?
- Israel has banned media access because the Palestinians are fighting (and winning) a propaganda war in the western media. No doubt you'll want to tell us that this is ridiculous and that the media is biased toward Israel, but to somebody with sense, a cursory analysis of a few middle-east articles in the Star or NY Times will quickly dispel that notion. The most poignant example I can think of would be the Jenin "massacre" that most media outlets loudly trumpeted which turned out to be a total lie.
- Foreign aid is hindered because a known terrorist organization (Hamas) is acting as their government. We can debate whether or not Hamas is really acting on behalf of or in the best interest of all Palestinians, but the fact remains that we don't send aid to terrorists. In order to send aid, we have to have some guarantee that the money isn't going to be used for more weapons and training.
- Palestinians have more human rights in Israel than they do or ever did in the neighbouring countries. |
|
|
|
|
