lodp wrote:Moishe,
As for the brutality of the occupation, I can't give a comprehensive description of all the years of occupation. Just for an impression, take a look a this
Human Rights Watch report on the time between September 2000 and late October 2002, according to which 637 Israelis but more than a triple of that number, 1,949 Palestinians, were killed during that period. Those numbers include 79 Israeli as opposed to 292 Palestinian children.
For some information on Jenin and operation Defensive Shield look at this
document of the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem and this
Human Rights Watch report on Jenin.
The occupied territories are more and more turning into dungeons for the Palestinian people. The Westbank is dissected by roads only available for use by settlers. Out of a total of 65 Checkpoints in the territories, only 9 are set up on the border to the mainland, the rest is there only to restrict movement within. About 20% of the Palestinian population of the Westbank are not allowed to cross these checkpoints at all (i.e. because they have relatives who got killed when throwing stones, another instance of sippenhaft). Others have to stand in line for hours on a daily basis, on their way to school or their workplace. When Checkpoints are closed, which happens frequently, children can't get home from school, mothers are seperated from their families, people can't get to a doctor or a hospital. For more information turn to
Machsom Watch, an organization of jewish Israeli women who monitor checkpoints in the Westbank.
The stand you take is not pro-Israeli, Moishe. The state of Israel has to grant the people in the territories their human rights and the possibility for a life in dignity, independent of security concerns. Doing this is not bowing before terror. It is a moral obligation. And I sincerly believe that it is the only way to keep a vast majority of peacful Palestinians from listening to the very small minority that wants to drive the Jews into the sea.
Here's my problem with your scenario:
You are taking, as your sources, either Palestinians or Arabs (in the case of Human Rights Watch) or Israelis committed to Peace and non-violence,
no matter what the cost to Israel.
To address the latter for a moment.
I once heard a very moving hour long dissertation from one of these Israeli women, I forget her name, but she was part of "Women in Green?? Black??" or something like that. She was Rachel Corrie's mentor (the American girl who was bulldozed).
She was asked at the end of her speech, "You have laid out what you believe the Israelis should do as regards to how they should treat the Palestinians; surrender land; withdraw; etcetera. What should the Palestinians do?"
She replied that that was not her point nor her message. She was only interested in Israel doing the "right thing."
This is all well and noble. However, if there is a 4 year history (the current murderous rampage of the Palestinians); or a 56 year history (the daily attacks by Arabs and Palestinians against specifically random innocent people all over the world that the Arab or Palestinian butchers claim are being murdered because Israel exists); or a 2,000 year history (the wanton murder of Jews for every damn reason imaginable since Rome obliterated Jerusalem, murdering over 2 million Jews; enslaving another 2 million and driving the rest into exile) of murder and barbaric destruction, then making "peace at whatever cost" with your oppressors is and has been provably demonstrated to be individual, national and racial suicide. Bad plan. Israelis who believe in this policy are suicidal.
However, you want to use Machsom Watch as a group of Israelis who report Israeli abuses of Palestinians at checkpoints.
Good!
They should live, be well and continue to try and stop abuses of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints.
This is a good thing.
Except, of course, when they abuse Israeli soldiers who are simply trying to do their job - which is to ensure that the Arab Palestinian murderers who daily,
daily attempt to kill people do not have a chance to do so.
And they do abuse these soldiers who are simply trying to do their job.
And, they do report soldiers who abuse Palestinians.
And, these soldiers are often charged and penalized.
All in all, their work should continue. Humanizing soldiers is always a good thing, when they don't have to kill you. (When they have to kill you, it's a bad thing to humanize them.)
Now, if you could please find me a similiar group of men or women amongst the Palestinians.
When you do, let us know.
Now, let's go with the former.
Find me non-leftist; non-Palestinian; non-Arab members of Human Rights Watch that do not hate Israel or the United States.
I would be willing to listen to what that mythical person has to say about Israel and Israelis.
As regards to your Jenin / Human Rights Watch beliefs:
Quote:No evidence of massacre in Jenin, says Human Rights Watch
By The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - A U.S.-based human rights group said Israeli troops may have committed "war crimes" during the house-to-house battle at the Jenin refugee camp, but there was no evidence supporting Palestinian claims of a massacre.
In a report to be published Friday, Human Rights Watch said three of its investigators spent a week gathering testimony in the Jenin camp and documented the deaths of 52 Palestinians, 22 of whom were civilians.
"Many of the civilians were killed willfully or unlawfully," a summary of the 48-page report said. "The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious and in some cases appear to be war crimes."
An army spokesman said the military was studying the summary. Israel has said that Palestinian militants themselves broke the rules of war by setting up bases and stockpiling arms and explosives in a civilian residential area.
Danny Ayalon, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said, "I flatly reject the war crimes charge. It was a war zone. It was full of booby traps and explosives," adding that the Israeli army "did everything to be reasonable."
He also disputed the group's figures. "Of the 51 bodies found, 44 were of armed terrorists and seven of civilians, which we very much regret," he said.
The Jenin Hospital said Wednesday that 52 bodies had been recovered so far.
The eight days of fierce fighting in the camp ended April 11 and left 23 Israeli soldiers dead and dozens more wounded.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday called Jenin "the new Stalingrad," referring to the Russian city now known as Volgograd where about 1 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died during a 200-day offensive by the German army, in the bloodiest battle of World War ll.
Other Palestinian officials have alleged that hundreds of Palestinians were killed during the Israeli invasion of the Jenin camp. Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN that 500 Palestinians had been killed in the fighting, although he later told The Associated Press he could not document the figure.
Human Rights Watch said its experts had found nothing to back such allegations.
"Human Rights Watch did not find evidence to support claims that the (Israeli military) massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the camp," the report said.
Fakhri Turkman, a Palestinian Legislative Council member and the head of an emergency committee set up to help camp residents, criticized Human Rights Watch and other groups who did not use the term "massacre" to describe the Israeli operation.
"Sometimes we call it a massacre when you kill one innocent person," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Citing specific cases, Human Rights Watch charged that troops killed a wounded Palestinian gunman hours after he had been disarmed. The group also alleged that fire from an Israeli armored vehicle killed a 14-year-old boy on his way to buy groceries after the army lifted its curfew in the camp.
It said a 57-year-old man, Kamal Zghair, was shot and then run over by tanks as he was moving along a main road in a wheelchair, displaying a white flag. The report said a paralyzed man was crushed in the rubble of his home after soldiers refused to give his family sufficient time to carry him away before the army bulldozed the house.
You choose to believe the Palestinian or Arab investigators of Human Rights Watch.
I choose not to believe them.
Why?
Because there is no objectivity.
You cannot claim to objectively accuse someone of a crime when you refuse to acknowledge or accuse someone else of far more heinous crimes committed against the person whom you are accusing.
Where is the objectivity in that?
You choose to believe that the deliberate, cold-blooded, indiscrimate, murder of totally innocent people is the same as:
killing the leader of a terrorist group;
or fixed gun battles with terrorists;
or even the accidental death of civlians;
or even, even the deliberate death of civilians
as an aberrant form of behaviour by soldiers in a society that prosecutes these soldiers because of its citizens such as those in Machsom Watch.
Your belief is immoral.
All things are not the same.
Surrendering to evil does not make you better or right or even alive.
We live in a world full of mistakes and good and bad people.
You choose to believe that Israel is bad because it has these mistakes and these good and bad people.
I
know that deliberate, purposeful, indiscrimate, hateful, butchering of people who are 100% innocent of any crime whatsoever against their murderer is evil. It is a sick and twisted darkness that the Palestinians, in particular, have taught their Arab and Muslim brothers.
You believe that all things are the same.
Show me your "vast majority of peaceful Palestinians" who are trying to live in peace with Israel.
You have already shown me the peaceful Israelis who are willing to do anything, anything, including allowing their own citizens to be murdered, that are willing to make peace at all and any cost.
Show me their "Palestinian" equivalent.
All things are not the same.
