What Am I Missing? - Israel and Hamas (Palestinians)

[roberth]

Do you think Arabs in Israel enjoy what you or I would call freedom?

I don't know, I haven't been to Israel.

I did find this.

http://www.middle-east-info.org/gate...rael/index.htm

[Mick-Boy]

We're going to disagree on whether or not you're playing moral equivalency games.

Fair enough.

I would agree with that, except when it comes to the Palestinians.

Why are they an exception?

You said earlier that we're talking about Palestinians not the rest of the Arab world. Unfortunately none of this happens in a vacuum. Our dealings with China have an affect on our dealings with India. Our dealings with Palestine have an affect on our dealings with the rest of the Arab world whether we like it or not.

[Ronin13]

I like how no one addressed what I said... must have been pretty true stuff.

The entire Palestine vs Israel match is pretty old and tired. Israel is very accepting to a peaceful solution, but it just seems too many factions aligned with Palestine are hell bent on destroying the Jews entirely. I side with Israel, I have friends who live there, were born there, and currently serve in their armed forces.

[Mick-Boy]

OK Ronin. It's off on a tangent but I'm feeling ornery tonight so I'll play.

Of course it's about perspective. My side is right theirs is wrong. It helps us justify the terrible things we do.

Perspective and winning is all bunk. The perspective of the world is that killing innocents to gain ground on a political means is wrong. That's what terrorists do, the very definition includes to "incite terror." What the founding fathers of America were doing could never, and will never be classified as terrorist- they never killed innocent civilians to gain some psychological advantage over their enemies.

So where would Dresden or Hiroshima fit into that thought process?

They were fighting an illegal occupation of land that they wanted for their own.

Kind of like the Palestinians no?

A freedom fighter is someone against dictatorship or tyranny, a terrorist is someone who uses acts of violence to incite and inspire terror to achieve a political goal. You can't dispute this, this is not only the definition I learned in my Counter-Terrorism training, it's also what the UN and various other organizations have agreed is a good description of a very troubling word in our common use today. To say that AQ, Hamas, PLO, and other "enemies of various states" are not terrorists when they clearly kill innocent civilians on scales that far exceed accidental or "collateral damage" by the US military, you basically should just check yourself into a home for the mentally challenged because you have a sick twisted view on the world. No person has the right to kill an innocent person for no justified reason- that is murder. No matter what perspective you have, unless you truly are one of these depraved individuals who actually think you're in the right (and you probably cried when OBL was killed- read: NOT MURDERED but justifiably killed), a terrorist is not a good thing to be, regardless of the cause behind it, and I'm pretty sure there is a special spot in whatever punishing afterlife (Hell?) just for terrorists.

I'm not saying you're wrong here. I agree with most of what you said. But if you don't think that members of AQ, Hamas, and the PLO truly believe that they're fighting against tyranny you don't understand the enemy. (NOTE: The PLO has not been designated as a terrorist org but the US or Israel since 1991)

Now, got that off my chest, Israel is right, the violent aspect to the Palestinian movement is wrong- sure it's black and white, but really in the big picture here that's really all the matters, the gray area is just background noise.

The big picture from where I'm sitting is that US interests are all that matter. Everything else should just be means to an end.

[Hoosier]

To me? No, never. It is always wrong. Well, unless it's her fantasy but I guess that's not really rape.

To some guy in Africa, who wants his tribe's legacy to continue on? Absolutely right to him. But you could argue he doesn't have a concept of "right" and "wrong", or rather, his concepts of right and wrong are totally different to ours.

Are you justifying the actions of the guy in Africa, or just explaining how someone else may have a different perspective?

There are some very few universal moral truths, and in my mind they all spring from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule. Outside of self defense or clearly defined war (which is the same thing), it's wrong to murder. In my mind, that includes murder as punishment.

Doing violence to another person against their will is wrong universally. I can imagine someone would believe otherwise, and would act according to their belief -- but I'd never say that justifies it, and I would use all available force to stop it.

H.

[Graves]

"Tonight" Mick? You must be on my shift...or on the other side of the world.

[Mick-Boy]

The entire Palestine vs Israel match is pretty old and tired.

How true.

Israel is very accepting to a peaceful solution, but it just seems too many factions aligned with Palestine are hell bent on destroying the Jews entirely.

Correction. Israel SAYS they would be accepting to a peaceful solution. However their actions don't bear that out.

The extreme factions on both sides are an issue and will likely always be an issue (it's hard to argue with someone when "god says" they're right) but they don't come close to the "big issue".

There are really three "big" issues preventing a sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine.

1. Jerusalem
2. Settlers in the West Bank
3. The right of return for Palestinian refugees.

To speak intelligently about these issues will require getting into a bit of history so bare with me.

JERUSALEM-Under UN resolution 181 (Nov 29, 1947) Jerusalem was supposed to be directly administered by the UN. The British (being the governing power) were responsible to implement the plan. The fear of backlash to British interests from the Arab World caused them to resign their mandate over Palestine and withdraw. Jordan (then called Trans-Jordan) took the opportunity to cross the Jordan river and invade what was supposed to be the "Arab State". They took the West Bank and Jerusalem in Heavy fighting with the Haganah. By the time an armistice was reached in 1949 the city was divided in two. West Jerusalem was controlled by the Israelis. East Jerusalem by Trans-Jordan. It remained that way until the 1967 war (also called the Six-Day War). On June 7 Mordechi Gur's 55th Paratrooper entered and held the Old City of Jerusalem. From that point on the city has been controlled and administered by the Israelis (with the exception of the Temple Mount, where the al-Aqsa Mosque (Dome of the Rock) is controlled by a muslim waqf). In 1980 Israel passed a law (The Jerusalem Law) declaring Jerusalem "Whole and united" as the capital of Israel. The UN Security Counsel passed a vote (14-0 with the US abstaining) immediately afterwards for the Israelis to withdraw the Law. The Palestinians have also declared that the capital of the Palestinian State is to be in East Jerusalem. That was the major stumbling block between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at the 2000 Camp David Summit.

Israel has alternately offered and refused to give over control of East Jerusalem depending on the Prime Minister. Any time the topic of dividing Israel comes up it's met with fierce opposition from both Right-wing Orthodox Jews and Christian-Zionists One more issue of late is the fact that Israel is even now building more apartment blocks for Israelis in East Jerusalem despite Prime Minister Olmert saying at the Annapolis conference (Nov '07) that Israel would cease all settlement activity in the West Bank (Israel's position is that East Jerusalem is not part of the West Bank). The Palestinian position was stated By Arafat at the 2000 Camp David Summit "the Arab leader who would surrender Jerusalem is not born yet".

SETTLEMENTS-Search "Israeli Settlement" and do some reading. This issue has a possible solution that has been proposed and accepted by both sides a couple of times. Basically the Israeli Government will assess the area the settlements occupy (approx. 5% of the West Bank) and give an equal amount of land to the Palestinian Government. The Israeli far right wing sees this as unacceptable and has gone so far as to claim all the land to the Jordan River. Some Palestinian's oppose this because they feel it legitimizes Israelis "stealing" their land.

RIGHT OF RETURN-At this point there are something on the order of 4 million Palestinian "refugees" outside the borders of Israel and Palestine. These are people or the children/grandchildren of people who left their homes in what is now the State of Israel and the Palestinian Territory. The Palestinian people claim they have the right to return to their original land or homes based on UN General Assembly Resolution 3236. The Israelis adamantly refuse and see this as tantamount to national suicide. The Israelis argue that Israel was created as a Democratic Jewish State and allowing the right of return would change the demographic so drastically that the population would be over 40% Arab. Thus destroying any identity of a Jewish State. The proposed solution is to offer displaced Palestinians the right to return to what will likely become the Palestinian State or offer them compensation.

Obviously there are many more, smaller issues in addition to these three. The whole process is complicated by Hard-liners on both sides who refuse to compromise what they see as their "god given" right to the land. I could link a half dozen recent articles showing the actions of both sides undercutting the peace process but if you read the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) and the news put out by the Palestinian Media Center (www.palestine-pmc.com) even for a short time you can see some shining examples for yourself.

[Mick-Boy]

"Tonight" Mick? You must be on my shift...or on the other side of the world.

Other side of the world. Colorado is only my home about half the year. The rest of the time it's whatever garden spot the DOD needs me in. Currently that's Afghanistan. It's where the party is.

[Ronin13]

OK Ronin. It's off on a tangent but I'm feeling ornery tonight so I'll play.

Of course it's about perspective. My side is right theirs is wrong. It helps us justify the terrible things we do.

Wrong is wrong no matter what side it's on- what the Clinton admin did with the Rwanda situation was wrong- so we're not 100% innocent.

So where would Dresden or Hiroshima fit into that thought process?

Different time, and believe it or not (you probably won't) Hiroshima saved many more lives than it took, on both sides... inevitably we would have invaded the Japanese mainland and that would have been much worse.

Kind of like the Palestinians no?

No, since Israel was Jewish sovereign territory long before it was occupied by the Palestinians (see: Roman history). And the UN declared that land theirs after WWII after how many years of them waiting for their homeland to be returned? Many Jewish (and Christian) holy sites in modern day Israel out dates Islam.

I'm not saying you're wrong here. I agree with most of what you said. But if you don't think that members of AQ, Hamas, and the PLO truly believe that they're fighting against tyranny you don't understand the enemy. (NOTE: The PLO has not been designated as a terrorist org but the US or Israel since 1991)

Big difference between tyranny and them just pissed because the rightful owners got their land back.

The big picture from where I'm sitting is that US interests are all that matter. Everything else should just be means to an end.

You do realize that US interests include global cooperation and alliances right? Otherwise I do truly think you need to go back and re-take some US and World History. Being an isolationist country would probably be the worst thing we could do right now, or ever.

[Hoosier]

The United States needs to pick a side, warts and all, and support that side exclusively.

Why should this be true? The concept of "A Side" is inaccurate, it makes the wild assumption that the millions of residents in these places are the same, want the same, act the same. It might be more fair to say that we want to be on the side of the millions of people who live there, minus the idiots who keep killing people.

There are plenty of Palestinians who just want to raise their kids. The workers that build these Israeli settlements out on the tops of mountains are mostly Palestinians trying to do well by their family.

And then there are groups of determined and funded people who want to do things like capture a soldier and hold him for five years, returning him gaunt and in exchange for 1,000 convicted felons.

It's the wide range of attitudes and actions that you just can't paint the entire thing in black and white.

A former coworker and programmer friend lives in Tel Aviv. He's an American who married an Israeli. Ever since then, I put this show on my DVR www.linktv.org/mosaic, it shows Israeli local news in English, since he said that's what he watches. His Hebrew has gotten pretty fluent, but he says it's "relaxing" to listen in english without having to kind of process a foreign language. It also shows Al Jazeera, Doha, Saudi Arabia, and Qatari news in English. It's strange to hear English being translated to Arabaic, back into English.

www.linktv.org/mosaic

Watch the video at about 8:00 minutes in is the Israeli local news

H.