Gaza "beach" -- what really happened

[Ford]

Every time Israel tries to be peaceful things get worse for them.

Well they've got a lot more land than they started with. And that's the goal, isn't it?


Having a state of "war" works for Israel because it allows them to justify taking land. If you honestly believe they're all about "peace," you are either hopelessly naive, or know exactly what they're about and are just repeating the propaganda.


You're not naive, Loren.

 

[angelo]

FFS, it is one way to get the land.

I specifically mentioned the two neighbouring Arab regimes that are openly hostile to Israel, but by and large keep to themselves, as worst-case scenario - and still managing to do a lot better than Hamas. That pretty much renders your point that Israel would find other excuses to oppressing Gaza because it perceives all Arabs as a threat, moot.

Neither of those two countries is wholly contained in Eretz Israel. And regarding ____ as a threat, does not mean one is required to oppress _____. Unlike Syria and Lebanon, Gaza is home to a large number of Palestinian people and ruled by Palestinian people, who are still viewed as a threat by the gov't of Israel. Your position ignores these obvious and salient facts which makes it unconvincing.

On the other hand, this particular topic seems akin to arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Isn't Gaza a threat? How many rockets does it have to fire so it can be said it's not a threat? 1000, 2000?

 

[Jayjay]

It isn't justified. But it's roots are known and they are decades of oppression.

But Israel prevents Gaza from becoming normalized with it's illegal blockade and continual illegal invasions and incursions.

And Israel is not working on any peaceful solution which it must exhaust before resorting to violence.

Yes, it is. Last summer for example Israel's initial position was to respond to calm with calm. Hamas on the other hand wanted war and got it. According to the Nuremberg principles that you hold so dear, that means the casualties resulting from that war (including ones made by Israel) are on Hamas.

Israel breaks the law every second of every day with it's illegal blockade and support of illegal settlements.

When exactly has Israel said it will stop breaking the law so that progress can be made?

There are no settlements in Gaza, so that just leaves the blockade, legality of which is more a matter of degree and whether it qualifies as collective punishment according to rules of war. But even if the blockade is illegal, that only justifies resistance against the blockade itself, i.e. targeting ships that patrol the seas and attempts to circumvent it via smuggling for example. It does not justify firing rockets at Israel randomly. Also note that Hamas has not fired a single rocket at the settlements in West Bank so that point is just as moot.

Both sides are breaking international law. Israel with settlements, and maybe by extent of its blockade, and Hamas by not making any attempt to discriminate targets and by using civilians as human shields. Hamas and its apologists don't have the moral high ground to condemn Israel, and such condemnations are pointless anyway because wars are generally not resolved by some platonic ideal of what should happen, but by violence, diplomacy, or some combination of the two.

The continuing blockade on the other hand is justified by Hamas's proven track record of arming itself and attacking Israel.

Fears of potential future events do not justify blockades.

Israel fears paying a price for it's decades of abuse torture and crime.

Those fears do not justify an illegal blockade.

A blockade is a blockade and an occupation is an occupation.

The blockade is part of the occupation. And it is "troops on the ground".

Troops outside the border of your neighbour don't constitute an occupation. Heck, even troops inside the borders of your neighbours are not occupation unless said troops can and do exercise control over the area that they occupy, so merely sending a group of commandos across the border to destroy a target or capture enemy combatants is not an occupation.

The argument of whether limiting territorial waters is an occupation is more interesting one, but as far as I can tell, the term occupation has never been used in context of maritime borders in absence of actual occupation of land. If someone can prove me wrong, I'll gladly concede the point.

Where is the limit when something counts as an invasion?

It needs at least a chance of taking ground and holding it for a while.

Otherwise it is no more than a fleeting nuisance.

Same with Israel. Sending a few tanks over for a day is hardly more than a fleeting nuisance either.

 

[Jayjay]

Every time Israel tries to be peaceful things get worse for them. Hamas is the one that needs to make the first move.

I think Hamas needs to stop making first moves, given that its first move in any situation is usually firing rockets at Israel.

 

[angelo]

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights including being able to vote in general elections, in fact there are several Arab members of the Knesset, than any other Arabs in any other Arabic state. There are no Jews living in any other Arabic land, anywhere in the middle East. I wonder why that is?

 

[Jayjay]

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights including being able to vote in general elections, in fact there are several Arab members of the Knesset, than any other Arabs in any other Arabic state. There are no Jews living in any other Arabic land, anywhere in the middle East. I wonder why that is?

Ok in that case Israel was obviously justified in killing the kids on that beach.

 

[Ford]

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

 

[angelo]

Arafat and other terrorist leaders never wanted peace. They want to push the Jews into the sea. At Palestinian rallies they chant "from the river to the sea " .
They were given a chance to form a state on more than one occasion, on one occasion they were offered 95% of their demands but they still walked away. They want nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

This is fantasy.

There is no near agreement that the Palestinians were offered 95% of their stated demands.

The closest they ever got was Taba. And Israel walked away not the Palestinians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_Summit

Bullshit!!! And some how I think you know it!!

angelo, can you provide a list of the Palestinian demands and show us the offer Israel made that met 95% of them?

We all know Israel refused to meet the 2 main Palestinian demands: the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and Israel withdrawing it's troops to it's own side of the 1967 borders. So how do you figure Israel offered 95% of what the Palestinians were demanding? What other demands were there?

The right of return would spell the end of the Jewish state. Anyway, there were around 500.000 so called Arab refugees, not the 5 million claimed by the Palestinians. Why weren't the refugees re settled in Arab lands? After Germany was defeated in 1945, the victorious Allies seeing that twice before Germany attacked Poland from their eastern zones such as Prussia, it was partitioned and handed to the Poles. 12 million Germans had to be re settled. Also, after the 1948 was of aggression by the Arabs, 800.000 Jews were kicked out of the various Arab nations. Most lived in the various Arab lands for centuries. They didn't become refugees because they were re settled in Israel. Why weren't the Arabs who were displaced re settled in Arab lands? Because it suited their agenda! They were used as tools to garner world opinion against the Israelis.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

They have the same equal rights as all Israeli inhabitants have.

 

[untermensche]

Israel breaks the law every second of every day with it's illegal blockade and support of illegal settlements.

When exactly has Israel said it will stop breaking the law so that progress can be made?

There are no settlements in Gaza, so that just leaves the blockade,

No. The settlements in the West Bank are a crime against all Palestinians.

You can't wipe the blood from Israeli hands so easily.

Both sides are breaking international law. Israel with settlements, and maybe by extent of its blockade, and Hamas by not making any attempt to discriminate targets and by using civilians as human shields.

One side is a nation with full sovereignty and a very powerful and modern military and the other is a small band of criminals, part of a large group being oppressed by the nation with it's military.

The rockets being fired are not just but they are the price for oppression and theft. A price Israel has no right to try to put on the innocent Palestinians living in Gaza. It has peaceful means to end the rockets.

Troops outside the border of your neighbour don't constitute an occupation.

The troops in the waters off Gaza are within the border of Gaza. They are troops on the ground continually enforcing an illegal blockade that is part of a huge military oppression of the Palestinians.

Where is the limit when something counts as an invasion?

It needs at least a chance of taking ground and holding it for a while.

Otherwise it is no more than a fleeting nuisance.

Same with Israel. Sending a few tanks over for a day is hardly more than a fleeting nuisance either.

Israel destroys everything in it's path and holds ground for weeks.

That is an invasion.

 

[Jayjay]

There are no settlements in Gaza, so that just leaves the blockade,

No. The settlements in the West Bank are a crime against all Palestinians.

You can't wipe the blood from Israeli hands so easily.

That's a slippery slope that justifies killing anyone, anytime, anywhere... and calling it "resistance".

And incidentally, it justifies killing the Palestinian kids on the beach. Because if all Palestinians can be viewed as collective victims of crimes perpetrated by Israel, that means all Palestinians, including children, are justifiable treated as collective perpetrators of the crimes they themselves commit. I don't agree with collective guilt and punishment any more than I do with collective victimhood.

Nobody is washing hands of Israel in crimes they commit, it's pointing out what the crime in question actually is and what it's not.

Both sides are breaking international law. Israel with settlements, and maybe by extent of its blockade, and Hamas by not making any attempt to discriminate targets and by using civilians as human shields.

One side is a nation with full sovereignty and a very powerful and modern military and the other is a small band of criminals, part of a large group being oppressed by the nation with it's military.

The rockets being fired are not just but they are the price for oppression and theft. A price Israel has no right to try to put on the innocent Palestinians living in Gaza. It has peaceful means to end the rockets.

That's nonsense and you know it. Rewarding criminal behaviour rarely results in reduction of criminal behaviour.

Troops outside the border of your neighbour don't constitute an occupation.

The troops in the waters off Gaza are within the border of Gaza. They are troops on the ground continually enforcing an illegal blockade that is part of a huge military oppression of the Palestinians.

Where is the limit when something counts as an invasion?

It needs at least a chance of taking ground and holding it for a while.

Otherwise it is no more than a fleeting nuisance.

Same with Israel. Sending a few tanks over for a day is hardly more than a fleeting nuisance either.

Israel destroys everything in it's path and holds ground for weeks.

That is an invasion.

I'm not saying it's not an invasion. But it's not an occupation either. Merely holding ground is not enough, and whether it's weeks or hours is irrelevant. Israel "Destroying everything in its path" is actually an argument against it being an occupation.

 

[Jayjay]

Arafat and other terrorist leaders never wanted peace. They want to push the Jews into the sea. At Palestinian rallies they chant "from the river to the sea " .
They were given a chance to form a state on more than one occasion, on one occasion they were offered 95% of their demands but they still walked away. They want nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

This is fantasy.

There is no near agreement that the Palestinians were offered 95% of their stated demands.

The closest they ever got was Taba. And Israel walked away not the Palestinians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_Summit

Bullshit!!! And some how I think you know it!!

angelo, can you provide a list of the Palestinian demands and show us the offer Israel made that met 95% of them?

We all know Israel refused to meet the 2 main Palestinian demands: the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and Israel withdrawing it's troops to it's own side of the 1967 borders. So how do you figure Israel offered 95% of what the Palestinians were demanding? What other demands were there?

The right of return would spell the end of the Jewish state. Anyway, there were around 500.000 so called Arab refugees, not the 5 million claimed by the Palestinians. Why weren't the refugees re settled in Arab lands? After Germany was defeated in 1945, the victorious Allies seeing that twice before Germany attacked Poland from their eastern zones such as Prussia, it was partitioned and handed to the Poles. 12 million Germans had to be re settled. Also, after the 1948 was of aggression by the Arabs, 800.000 Jews were kicked out of the various Arab nations. Most lived in the various Arab lands for centuries. They didn't become refugees because they were re settled in Israel. Why weren't the Arabs who were displaced re settled in Arab lands? Because it suited their agenda! They were used as tools to garner world opinion against the Israelis.

Shit happens. Whining about what the Arabs did to spite Israel is just as pointless as whining about what the British did for getting in bed with the zionist movement in the first place.

The question is, how to realistically fix the situation?

 

[Arctish]

Arafat and other terrorist leaders never wanted peace. They want to push the Jews into the sea. At Palestinian rallies they chant "from the river to the sea " .
They were given a chance to form a state on more than one occasion, on one occasion they were offered 95% of their demands but they still walked away. They want nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

This is fantasy.

There is no near agreement that the Palestinians were offered 95% of their stated demands.

The closest they ever got was Taba. And Israel walked away not the Palestinians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_Summit

Bullshit!!! And some how I think you know it!!

angelo, can you provide a list of the Palestinian demands and show us the offer Israel made that met 95% of them?

We all know Israel refused to meet the 2 main Palestinian demands: the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and Israel withdrawing it's troops to it's own side of the 1967 borders. So how do you figure Israel offered 95% of what the Palestinians were demanding? What other demands were there?

The right of return would spell the end of the Jewish state. Anyway, there were around 500.000 so called Arab refugees, not the 5 million claimed by the Palestinians. Why weren't the refugees re settled in Arab lands? After Germany was defeated in 1945, the victorious Allies seeing that twice before Germany attacked Poland from their eastern zones such as Prussia, it was partitioned and handed to the Poles. 12 million Germans had to be re settled. Also, after the 1948 was of aggression by the Arabs, 800.000 Jews were kicked out of the various Arab nations. Most lived in the various Arab lands for centuries. They didn't become refugees because they were re settled in Israel. Why weren't the Arabs who were displaced re settled in Arab lands? Because it suited their agenda! They were used as tools to garner world opinion against the Israelis.

The reason I asked you about the 95% figure is because it's another myth, and I was hoping you'd see that.

That number has been thrown around for years, always in some claim about Palestinians getting just about everything they asked for but walking away anyway. But when you look just a little bit closer, it's obvious it's nonsense. There was no demand that was going to be 95% fulfilled. There was no list of demands that was going to be 95% met. There was no partition that would have given 95% of Palestine to the Palestinians, or 95% of the land that didn't have Jewish settlements on it, or 95% of the Palestinian villages. There was no Right of Return for 95% of the Palestinian refugees. There was no 95% of anything. But that claim keeps being made, because it's useful for people who want to portray Palestinians as stupid, greedy, and unreasonable.

It's like Golda Meir's silly saying about "a land without a people for a people without a land". Palestine hasn't been without a people for the past 4,000 years, and in the area around Jericho it's more like 10,000 years. But it's a catchy phrase and a popular myth, so it keeps being repeated.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Every time Israel tries to be peaceful things get worse for them. Hamas is the one that needs to make the first move.

I think Hamas needs to stop making first moves, given that its first move in any situation is usually firing rockets at Israel.

Ok, making different moves.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

I think he's comparing their rights to the rights they would have in other lands rather than the rights of Jews in Israel.

And they have slightly more rights than the Jews in Israel--they have the right not to serve in the military, something the Jews don't.

 

[arkirk]

I think Hamas needs to stop making first moves, given that its first move in any situation is usually firing rockets at Israel.

Ok, making different moves.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

I think he's comparing their rights to the rights they would have in other lands rather than the rights of Jews in Israel.

And they have slightly more rights than the Jews in Israel--they have the right not to serve in the military, something the Jews don't.

You are talking about the Orthodox Jews? They are merely being kept away from weapons. Within the last two years there has been at least one major dislocation of Arabs in Israel "proper" where a Berber village in southern Israel was leveled for new development. I wonder why you and Angelo feel that it is necessary that there be a JEWISH GOVERNMENT anywhere at all in the world.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ok, making different moves.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

I think he's comparing their rights to the rights they would have in other lands rather than the rights of Jews in Israel.

And they have slightly more rights than the Jews in Israel--they have the right not to serve in the military, something the Jews don't.

You are talking about the Orthodox Jews? They are merely being kept away from weapons. Within the last two years there has been at least one major dislocation of Arabs in Israel "proper" where a Berber village in southern Israel was leveled for new development. I wonder why you and Angelo feel that it is necessary that there be a JEWISH GOVERNMENT anywhere at all in the world.

I was talking about the Arabs. They're allowed to serve in the IDF if they want--there's no issue of keeping weapons away from them. It's just they aren't subject to the universal military service that the Jews are.

 

[angelo]

Ok, making different moves.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

I think he's comparing their rights to the rights they would have in other lands rather than the rights of Jews in Israel.

And they have slightly more rights than the Jews in Israel--they have the right not to serve in the military, something the Jews don't.

You are talking about the Orthodox Jews? They are merely being kept away from weapons. Within the last two years there has been at least one major dislocation of Arabs in Israel "proper" where a Berber village in southern Israel was leveled for new development. I wonder why you and Angelo feel that it is necessary that there be a JEWISH GOVERNMENT anywhere at all in the world.

If this is not the most bigoted post I've ever seen, it rates right up there with the worst I've ever seen!!

 

[bilby]

Ok, making different moves.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

I think he's comparing their rights to the rights they would have in other lands rather than the rights of Jews in Israel.

And they have slightly more rights than the Jews in Israel--they have the right not to serve in the military, something the Jews don't.

You are talking about the Orthodox Jews? They are merely being kept away from weapons. Within the last two years there has been at least one major dislocation of Arabs in Israel "proper" where a Berber village in southern Israel was leveled for new development. I wonder why you and Angelo feel that it is necessary that there be a JEWISH GOVERNMENT anywhere at all in the world.

If this is not the most bigoted post I've ever seen, it rates right up there with the worst I've ever seen!!

Why? Do you support theocracy? Do you feel that all appeals for secular government are bigotry?

 

[laughing dog]

If this is not the most bigoted post I've ever seen, it rates right up there with the worst I've ever seen!!

Just I have suspected - you don't read your own posts about Palestinians or Arabs.

 

[angelo]

Ok, making different moves.

- - - Updated - - -

What hasn't been pointed out here is that there are over 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel proper. These Arabs have many more rights

Many more rights? Or equal rights?

I think he's comparing their rights to the rights they would have in other lands rather than the rights of Jews in Israel.

And they have slightly more rights than the Jews in Israel--they have the right not to serve in the military, something the Jews don't.

You are talking about the Orthodox Jews? They are merely being kept away from weapons. Within the last two years there has been at least one major dislocation of Arabs in Israel "proper" where a Berber village in southern Israel was leveled for new development. I wonder why you and Angelo feel that it is necessary that there be a JEWISH GOVERNMENT anywhere at all in the world.

If this is not the most bigoted post I've ever seen, it rates right up there with the worst I've ever seen!!

Why? Do you support theocracy? Do you feel that all appeals for secular government are bigotry?

The Israeli government is a theocracy is it? Why don't you guys just admit that you don't like Jews and be done with it? That you couldn't give a hoot if the only Jewish state and its inhabitants were to be destroyed!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If this is not the most bigoted post I've ever seen, it rates right up there with the worst I've ever seen!!

Why? Do you support theocracy? Do you feel that all appeals for secular government are bigotry?

1) The Palestinians have a far more theocratic government than the Israelis.

2) You're assuming his motivation is anti-theocracy. I see no reason to believe that.