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war in Gaza
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Anonymous
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You fail to address the power inbalance, the disproportionate response and the other alternatives available to Israel other than military force.
From your response, the answer to the PP is yes, you and your family's demise are acceptable collateral damage for the war of questionable motivation. |
Anonymous
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[quote=Anonymous
I do feel sorry for the innocent civilians on both sides; and I completely fault the Hamas fighters for deliberately acting to put their civilian population most at risk so they can gain YOUR sympathy. I highly doubt you do feel sorry for the innocent civilians in Gaza, because if you did feel any concern, any horror, you'd look past the party line we're being fed by the MSM. Clearly you don't want to hear anything other than Israeli military propaganda (which is for the most part indistinguishable from MSM reports). UN and humanitarian agencies have said that Israeli soldiers use Palestinian families as human shields, and of course that's not being reported in the US. Our government, our media - and perhaps you? - hold the lives of Palestinian innocents dirt cheap. And please don't come back at me with "Hamas did this to their own people". I do not like Hamas. I abhor their attack on southern Israel. But they did not butcher Gazan women and children. Persistent claims to the contrary are just an intellectually lazy and morally disgusting attempt to blame civilians for their own slaughter. |
Anonymous
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The Israeli Central Elections Council has just banned Israel's two Arab parties from participating in the upcoming national elections. Fortunately, the Supreme Court is not likely to uphold it.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054867.html More democratic than other countries in the Middle East but not a democracy like the United States. |
Anonymous
I agree with pp here. The attack on Gaza is terrible and I condemn the Israelis for it. But what is also sad is that it is bolstering Hamas's reputation in the Middle East. |
Anonymous
| How about this slant: There are groups on both sides who genuinely want peace. What can the Obama administration do to empower these groups? |
Anonymous
Let me add a relevant quote from HRC's opening statement at her confirmation hearing (taken from a NYT live blog by Kate Phillips):
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Anonymous
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"Hey, Hamas, go build some official army buildings so we can blow the shit out of them. Wear uniforms too, please. Bombings will take place Monday-Friday from 10am-5pm. Arrange your people accordingly. Thank you."
Is that what you would like for Isreal to say? |
Anonymous
| I think Israel is showing pretty remarkable restraint. Seriously, they could turn Gaza into a wasteland if they really wanted to. Yes, some innocents have been killed but that's the kind of collateral damage you have to expect when you are a militia-style "army" with no real military infrastructure. And as for the really lame Navy Yard/Marine Barracks analogy, that scenario is false because what you listed are OFFICIAL MILITARY INSTALLATIONS. Easily identifiable and targetable. When your munitions depot is a secret tunnel under Akmed's house, then, yes, you are exposing your civilians to enemy fire. No right minded "government" would do such a thing. Hamas does not have the best interests of its people at heart, plain and simple. It relies on fuelling hatred of Israelis as a method of staying in power. |
Anonymous
Bigoted much? And that's "Ahmed" by the way. No "k". |
Anonymous
Well then, I must be bigoted too because I agree with the Akmed poster (although I did know the spelling thank you) completely. But then again, I also know that 99.9% of the posters here are smarter, more educated, more compassionate, and I imagine sexier and thinner than I because they tell me so routinely 
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Anonymous
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I used to be a kneejerk defender of oppressed Palestinians like a majority of the posters above. I hated the suffering and injustice I saw.
But as I matured, traveled, and experienced terrorism myself, I realized that Israel is in an incredibly difficult position, struggling with the morality issues of their situation-- while the Palestinians are just not really doing much of that. Sure, there are some scholars and feminists and sports teams fighting for peace, but by and large, as a population, they are not working to move towards peace. Period. The suffering and injustice is because they have become the pawns of a larger dysfunctional Arab and Muslim campaign against Israel and America. Their brothers (and some sisters) are screwing them, because they have nothing better to do. Arab Muslim society is a backwards disaster (no thanks to the US) with no democracy, no capitalism, no hope for most people. This is why they have been sending rockets into Israel in repeated acts of terrorism. Yes, I hate seeing women and children killed. The unjust Iraq war killed many many more for much less of a reason. But Israel, like the US, is a somewhat civilized western democracy, that is imperfect. Hamas is not. They are acting like barbarians, inciting violence, and manipulating kneejerk liberals in the US and Europe into defending them. |
Anonymous
And you're not a bigot because ??? |
Anonymous
Oh for crying in the night. Someone is a bigot because they dont agree with a society? Come on, If you think that most Arabs agree with the way America does things or how our country and democracy is ran, you're wrong. Are they bigots as well? |
Anonymous
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"While much attention has been focused on alleged Israeli human rights violations in the volatile West Bank and Gaza, the popular press has chosen to virtually ignore violations of fundamental human rights that take place daily in almost every Arab country. According to annual reports compiled by the State Department, most of the Arab states are ruled by oppressive, dictatorial regimes, which deny their citizens basic freedoms of political expression, speech, press and due process. The Arab Human Development Report published by a group of Arab researchers from the UN Development Program concluded that out of the seven regions of the world, Arab countries had the lowest freedom score. They also had the lowest ranking for "voice and accountability," a measure of various aspects of the political process, civil liberties, political rights and independence of the media. In most Arab countries, the Shari'a, or Islamic law, defines the rules of traditional social behavior. Under the law, women are accorded a role inferior to that of men, and are therefore discriminated against with regard to personal rights and freedoms. Wife-beating is a relatively common practice in Arab countries, and abused women have little recourse. As the State Department has noted regarding Jordan (and most of the Arab world): "Wife beating is technically grounds for divorce, but the husband may seek to demonstrate that he has authority from the Koran to correct an irreligious or disobedient wife by striking her."
Guess Im a bigot for thinking that way of life is backwards. |
Anonymous
First of all, you're assuming that the foreign power would never miss! I said that my house could be bombed by accident. According to your logic, that would be okay because the Navy Yard is located in a residential area. It would be okay to bomb by accident the houses of people who live next to the Marine Barracks because the Marines were so cowardly as to put their barracks in a regular neighborhood. And if I live next door to a Senator? Or to the Secretary of State? Israel is going after political leaders. I suppose it's okay to bomb my rowhouse (by accident of course) that happens to be attached to Senator So 'n So's house? Are they hiding among civilians? Back when I lived in a nicer neighborhood, I lived near Madeline Albright and dc went to school a block from John Kerry's house. According to your logic, dc's school would be expendable because John Kerry was using the school as human shields. |