THE WAR IN GAZA

another point to consider in the gaza struggle is the viscious fighting between
the fatah and hamas factions .

Quote:

PATRICK MARTIN

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

January 7, 2009 at 5:41 AM EST

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK " When Usama Abu Nahel looks at the conflict in Gaza he feels nothing but contempt. He is one of the people who hate Hamas more than the Israelis do.

It was 19 months ago when Mr. Abu Nahel, then 25 and a member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza, was dragged from his house by a group of Hamas militants, taken to one of their warehouses and "kneecapped." He was shot 30 times in the left leg, doctors said; then in the right leg six times.

"As I lay on the ground in agony, they ran over me in their jeep," he recalls.

He'd like to spit as he says this, but not in the neat room he keeps in a house for victims such as him in Ramallah.

for complete article see :
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090107.wgazafatah07/BNStory/Front

1 Reply

@hamburger,

That doesn't seem to be in sinc with the views of Walter, Infra, et al., who view Hamas members as relative saints.

1 Reply

Plenty of blame to go around. Enough to reach from here to Pluto.

But blaming people, groups, or factions doesn't really deal with the problem.

No matter who is to blame for the problem...the problem remains the problem.

Anybody who want to live there should be able to live there...so my next comment does not go to the question of whether or not anyone group of people should or should not be living there...but...

...the state of Israel seems to be the sticking point.

I have become convinced that no peace will ever prevail in that area so long as Arabs live there and a state of Israel exists.

Kill all the Arabs...or do away with the state of Israel in that area.

The latter can be done without asking any Jews or Arabs to move. The state of Israel simply buys some land somewhere and sets up an Independent state of Israel...preferably in the United States. The state of Israel will be completely safe here...and any Jews who want to live over in the Middle East can do so. Government for that area has got to be taken out of the hands of both Arabs and Jews...and placed in the hands of a United Nations protectorate.

Either that...or let them all battle it out and accept that chances are the rest of the world will get involved and there is a decent chance that a huge hurt will be put on humanity.

What the ****! If we can't learn to get along...maybe wiping us all out is the best thing we can do.

1 Reply

@Advocate,

Advocate wrote:

That doesn't seem to be in sinc with the views of Walter, Infra, et al., who view Hamas members as relative saints.

I don't know about Infra's and et al.'s views, but could you kindly give a source where I said something even near of "Hamas being saints"?

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Quote:

British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state.

George assereted gratuitously that that was British duplicity.

And it makes a change to have arable land and water resources mentioned as well.

And an election in Israel is not far off.

Thanks Walt.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

It is the general tenor of your comments, and the paucity of Hamas criticism.

1 Reply

@hamburger,

Quote:

i'm also reasonably sure that the wealthy of the middle-east prefer the problems of gaza to stay in gaza . they wouldn't want to part with any of their riches to help the poor .

It might be that they wish to keep Israel on a permanent war footing thus restricting their economic potential.

1 Reply

@spendius,

I thought everybody knew that Truman used the creation of the new state to beat Dewey. He was not expected to do so at the time.

You should all look at the water supply problem. It was an important factor in Iraq as well.

0 Replies

@Advocate,

Advocate wrote:

It is the general tenor of your comments, and the paucity of Hamas criticism.

You must have some kind of eye and/or ear infection.

Do you consider a "paucity of criticism" (certainly you are aware of what criticism means, positive as well as negative criticism) generally as a sign that someone labels something as "saint"?

I'm sure, you wrote already to Avi Shlaim, since you didn't respond to that ...

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Meanwhile Russia has cut off the gas supply to a large chunk of Europe.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Really? I'd thought it was only the pipeline via the Ukraine.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Is that not feeding a large chunk of Europe?

But it's off topic. I only mentioned it to reinforce the point about the water supply in the Mid East.

Quote:

The New Water Politics of the Middle East
By Ilan Berman and Paul Michael Wihbey

[Published in Strategic Review, Summer 1999.]

The crisis over water in the Middle East is escalating. Despite existing agreements, dwindling resources " increasingly affected by pollution, agricultural/industrial initiatives and population growth " have elevated the strategic importance of water in the region. For Middle Eastern nations, many already treading the razor’s edge of conflict, water is becoming a catalyst for confrontation " an issue of national security and foreign policy as well as domestic stability. Given water’s growing ability to redefine interstate relations, the success of future efforts to address water sharing and distribution will hinge upon political and strategic approaches to this diminishing natural resource.

0 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

frank wrote :

Quote:

What the ****! If we can't learn to get along...maybe wiping us all out is the best thing we can do.

or perhaps a 40 foot high wall is needed to separate the groups .
i just recalled the "belfast PEACE wall " .
in february 2008 it was still standing - i wonder if has come down now ?

http://intoleitrim.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/peacewall2.jpg

and remember that this wall was erected to keep "christians" from killing each other .
i wouldn't be so foolish as to compare belfast with palestine/israel ... but i am wondering ... ...

Quote:

The Irish Times - Ireland | Friday, February 8, 2008
Should Belfast's 'Peace Wall' come down?
Following a recent article, journalist Fionnuala O'Connor responds to the idea that it is time to destroy Belfast's so-called 'peace walls', a series of separation barriers segregating Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods. "It takes fresh eyes and minds to suggest that 40-foot high fencing between Catholics and Protestants and brick walls across streets need not be permanent structures. But it takes no more than a well-informed drive in and around them to remember why each is where it is, and to see that anyone who lives elsewhere would have some nerve persuading the residents to take up their chisels and set about peaceful demolition. A top dressing of normality may hearten many, but in dozens of streets people know that one bad injury from a well-aimed stone could still bring out hysterical crowds. They live along the faultlines of an ancient quarrel unresolved, indeed largely untouched, by today's peace."

link :
http://www.eurotopics.net/en/search/results/archiv_article/ARTICLE24478-Should-Belfast-s-Peace-Wall-come-down

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Regarding Shlaim, big deal! He is just one person. Certainly there are other academics who feel differently, and who make a better argument than does Shlaim.

Your mention of "criticism" is cute, certainly disingenuous.

1 Reply

I figured it out. Hamas fires rockets at Israel because it can.

0 Replies

@Advocate,

Advocate wrote:

Your mention of "criticism" is cute, certainly disingenuous.

Well, referring to your name here, as a homo iuris legumque you certainly can judge such.

Advocate wrote:

Regarding Shlaim, big deal! He is just one person. Certainly there are other academics who feel differently, and who make a better argument than does Shlaim.

And why did you mention that I was the one who wrote Shlaim's quote?

0 Replies

Well--In 1948 a Democrat president forced Israel into existence as a gamble to win re-election against the advice of two of his most trusted aides and instituted a government there of terrorists one of whom went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1956 a Republican president forced Israel/Britain/France to pull back from Suez: an action which some see as the first cause of the whole mess in the region. The Iraqi government, friendly to the west, was slaughtered shortly afterwards which then produced Saddam.

Then, in 1962, a Democratic president supported Egypt against Israel and Britian and the reversed the policy and by the time he was killed had become anti-Egypt and offered the US Sixth Fleet to protect Israel and sold large supplies of weaponry to Israel.

His successor, another friend of Israel, sold even more arms to Israel. But Vietnam got in the way. All he could do was advise Egypt that he would not stand in the way of Israel as Ike had done.

The Six Day war ensued in which Egypt got stuffed along with Jordan and Syria and Israel grabbed the West Bank and the Gaza strip and all of Jerusalem.

Now we have a Republican president supporting Israel,

And shortly a Democrat president whose one pronouncement I have seen is much less symathetic to Israel than those of Ms Rice who seems to me to be out of her depth.

The invasion of Georgia and the threat to eastern Europe from Russia over energy supplies, which the EU have announced to be "totally unacceptable" has left US foreign policy upended.

There's a financial crisis which nobody knows how to fix and a poverty stricken population of 1.5 million crammed into 125 square miles and totally dependent on aid being slaughtered on a duck shoot with phosphorous bombs and tanks crewed by soldiers who simply dare not be captured and the bitterness created will last decades if not forever.

And the US indulges in a 3 months long transfer of power during which its policy is effectively leaderless.

And high ranking politicians are coming on the telly day after day wittering about how much they deplore the loss of innocent lives as if they have discovered a hidden Saint Theresa within themselves and are "doing all they can."

And we all watch horrified, disgusted and in a despair of futility. The veto is out in the ironically named Security Council.

Go shopping--as Mr Cheyney advised. Use more oil.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Spendius, you said several things I could easily second, but you mentioned one thing that I am required to second...and to do so in as loud a voice as Internet babble will allow.

You wrote:

Quote:

And the US indulges in a 3 months long transfer of power during which its policy is effectively leaderless.

How America can allow this travesty against common sense to continue is beyond me.

We see dozens of posts and blog dealing with ending the Electoral College (something I will never advocate)...and almost nothing about the fact that we make the single most powerful person in the world a lame duck for over three months.

It is insane!

Now look, I understand that there is a very complicated change over that occurs...a change of the guard unlike anything else in any other democracy...but that does not excuse the danger in which we put ourselves--and by extension, the rest of the world because of the procedure.

It sucks.

Thanks for mentioning it, Spendius.

2 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

And maybe, Frank, the Israeli push is taking advantage of it.

They come in the front door of No 10 here as soon as the result is known and are up and running right away. The loser departs from a side entrance although Mrs Bloody Thatcher broke the tradition with a tear-jerking song and dance. I suspect it will be a long time before we put another woman in there.

She once advised us on national television to beat inflation by stocking up our freezers. Only about 1% of the population had freezers at the time and they were all millionaires.

0 Replies

For anyone that thinks the Jews and Arabs lived peacefully in the Holy Land, before the formal state of Israel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

I cannot help but think that the non-Jews (aka, Gentiles) in this thread, that are burning cerebral calories, trying to figure out what to do with these recalcitrant Israeli Jews, that insist on protecting their citizens, is funny at best, offensive at worst. Does anyone see that the problem exists today, is in great measure due to world opinion just "yawning," so to speak, when over the last several years an Israeli was wounded by a rocket, or an Israeli was found dead near an Arab village. In other words, since Israel did not want to react EACH time there was some act of terror on Israeli citizens, the problem festered, and today has been exacerbated by longer range rockets/missiles that now can have payloads.

So, many liberal peace loving people today might feel Israel, as the victim of years of terrorism, is to blame, because Israel is now forced to deal with a problem that was not addressed for years, partly due to world opinion being what it is.

Anyway, I do not see Israelis going anywhere, since they like having a Jewish country where they do not have to be a deferent minority. The problem only appears unsolvable today, because the perception is that the Israelis are just European Jews living in the Middle East. No, based on a universal Israeli draft, the Middle Eastern Jews, that became part of Israel after the 1957 war, and now comprise more than50% of the Jewish population, meet and mix with European Jews in the Army (as an example) and there are now third generation Sabras that are neither European Jews, nor Jews from an Arab country. Plus, with over 120,000 Ethiopian Jews, it is possible that Jews might one day be the "whales" of humanity, so to speak, since like the whale that went back to the ocean, having once been a land dweller, the Israelis will go back to being a people of color, having once been white. Then the world will see that to take sides in the ongoing conflict with Muslims reflects just a religious war, which it really is today in truth.

Naturally, so much of the world (the Christian world to be exact, in my opinion) would like to disenfranchise Jews from a homeland, since it goes against historical theology where Jews, having rejected Christ, should not have their own country (aka wandering Jew).

I also do not think there are many that would want Israelis as their next door neighbors. Regardless, there is a population of Israelis, I thought, that do have dual citizenship - U.S. and Israel. So in effect, this group has two homelands. But the question is really, in my opinion, do the Muslims get Israel back, so as not to offend their religious belief that the Israeli land belongs to Muslims only (why I say it is now just a religious war - the Jewish homeland perception is just a red-herring for those that would like to disenfranchise Jews in Israel, I believe).

Keep burning the midnight oil. You are doing what was done by generations of feudal princes during the Middle Ages - trying to answer the question - what do we do with the Jews in the kingdom?

And to all a good night (quoting Santa).

2 Replies

THE WAR IN GAZA

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