Sympathy for Israel

[shadowmaster]

Thirdly, given all the conflict and death in the world and who does what to whom, why does this particular conflict get people all worked up? What is special about this one rather than any other?

Interesting point, possible reasons are as follows-

1) Hypocrisy of the US and the UK government, when it comes to Israel. Have you ever seen the British or the US government criticise Israel? Very rarely or never. Any resolution against Israel is immediately vetoed by either the US, UK or both.

2) Hypocrisy of the Israeli government, they pretend to want peace, but they continue to eat up Palestinian land, use disproportionate force, ignore every UN resolution/law/convention under the sun and have little regard for human rights of Palestinians.

3) I don't know why, but it gets a lot of media coverage even when Hamas do something, therefore its continually fresh in people's mind. Plus I imagine it sells more papers

4) Hard-line supporters on both sides. If you ever talk with a hard-line zionist, you will understand.

5) Its a close issue many Muslim and Jewish people, which form a significant part of this population.

4) Its in the middle east, all the fun happens there

You are right, there are lot worse things happening in the world but for reasons above it just gets more people worked up.

[Singh400]

As such, it shouldn't matter the background of the poster - that is one of the principal advantages of the web - and will remain so for this debate.

Of course it does. A Jewish person/Israeli is more likely to defend their countries actions and make excuses. I'm not saying that all Israelis support what their government are doing, but a good chunk do I should think.

Just like the Gazans would support Hamas.

Being from each country would def. skew ones point of view.

[dave87]

But that is the point, no matter what the political outlook of the person spouting it, the debate differing point of views promote enables the greater understanding of a particular topic, and ultimately, an appreciation of some of the viewpoints of the opposing side.

I've got to say, being "British English" skews my perspective on many things, but that doesn't make my opinions/arguments any less valid.

And I will say again, the race/ethnicity/religion of those involved in the debate is not a point which can be attacked in the course of the debate. Comprende?

[shadowmaster]

EDIT: Never mind, I'm tired and and I need to go to sleep

[360bhp]

Of course it does. A Jewish person/Israeli is more likely to defend their countries actions and make excuses. I'm not saying that all Israelis support what their government are doing, but a good chunk do I should think.

A good chunk minus a few who think for themselves.

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/

http://www.nkusa.org/

The Jewish rabbi the Zionist "Jews" hate..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9OIqy6md9w
(May suprise you)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqBJTBIUtM8

[Singh400]

And I will say again, the race/ethnicity/religion of those involved in the debate is not a point which can be attacked in the course of the debate. Comprende?

Calm down dear. No one is attacking anybody. Take your mod hat off

[dave87]

Calm down dear. No one is attacking anybody. Take your mod hat off

Was on the first page matey and we ended up dealing with it. All I would like to prevent is us having to bin the thread because it decends to bickering...

[JPreston]

Frankly, no.

In 'Religious' Bill Maher muses that in religious disputes while all sides are wrong in equal measure, you can pretty much guarantee who is going to issue the first death threat. Just an observation.

What I mean is, aren't Jews a religious rather than an ethnic/racial group?

The question is contentious because while it has roots going back throughout the history of Jews in Europe, the most significant attempts to legally define Jews as a race were in fascist Germany; otherwise jewish individuals could simply have converted to catholicism and so presumably be welcomed into the Third Reich.

You can find Jews who will tell you either way, but really it's a religion. There are no real definable physical characteristics that set them aside from other semitic races (as Peter Griffin observed in Family Guy), and hey we are all part of the one continuous spectrum that is the human race anyway. Uniquely among abrahamic religions it is non-evangelical and so has tended to be passed down within families as opposed to being spread by missions or the sword, which acts to conflate it with race.

In 1000 years when everyone on Earth is a scientologist, maybe we will be able to put all this trouble behind us. How much of the world is reduced to radioactive wasteland before then is really in the hands of the abrahamic religions, rather terrifyingly.

[format]

In 'Religious' Bill Maher muses that in religious disputes while all sides are wrong in equal measure, you can pretty much guarantee who is going to issue the first death threat. Just an observation.

Well that's just relative to the date really - I'm sure I don't have to point out all the atrocities committed by religions other than Islam in the past.

[JPreston]

Well that's just relative to the date really - I'm sure I don't have to point out all the atrocities committed by religions other than Islam in the past.

That's certainly true, and I'm the last person to defend any religion. I've heard it said that there is nothing wrong with Islam that an Enlightenment and a Reformation couldn't fix, but disagree on the basis that while the 'Christian West' is no longer in its Dark Ages there is still plenty wrong with Christianity - witness the US's support for the state of Israel on the basis that it must exist to bring about the final victory of Good over Evil when they will be physically lifted from their SUVs and float bodily into heaven.

We are talking about the situation today though, aren't we?

[format]

That's certainly true, and I'm the last person to defend any religion. I've heard it said that there is nothing wrong with Islam that an Enlightenment and a Reformation couldn't fix, but disagree on the basis that while the 'Christian West' is no longer in its Dark Ages there is still plenty wrong with Christianity - witness the US's support for the state of Israel on the basis that it must exist to bring about the final victory of Good over Evil when they will be physically lifted from their SUVs and float bodily into heaven.

We are talking about the situation today though, aren't we?

Yep, you're right, and tbh I'm the same, I dislike all religions equally and will argue against any religion, particularly if it's followers think that their one is better

[Brucelles]

Hold on here, who are you supporting?

Earlier you are supporting Israel, now you dislike Israel? Make your bloody mind up.

Sorry Mate. I guess not everyone is familiar with my sarcastic style as I am.

My initial, and badly misunderstood, post was sarcasm. Our government refused to condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and wouldn't vote for a ceasefire. This infuriates me. I was just pointing out that Israel has institutionalised race hate to the point where the current government has a senior leader (Leiberman) with a stated aim of genocide against the Palestinians.

When a country's soldiers run around with T-shirts glorifying the murder of pregnant women and children you know that they are getting that message from higher up the chain of command. That would never happen in the British forces.

People need to be aware of what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown support, and what they have supported in the name of Britain, in our name, for the last 10 years or so. They say a people get the government they deserve, but I cannot believe that Britain deserves a government that refuses to condemn a massacre like the one in Lebanon in 2006 or the recent one in the Gaza Strip where 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were slaughtered by the Israeli Defence Force.

Slaughter is the correct word. Despite press claims that Israel suffered 13 casualties to Gaza's 1,400, in fact 4 of the dead Israelis were friendly fire victims.

When an army kills 1,400 people in a ground war at a loss of only 9 people to the defenders you know that the conflict was totally unequal. 175 Palestinians to each Israeli killed.

Now those soldiers are glorifying the slaughter with sick humour.

That's why my sarcasm was so black that I didn't realise that anyone would not get it. One would have to be a psychopath or a half-wit to support Israel in these circumstances, and I am neither.

[Brucelles]

But impossible with regards to the whole Palestine/Israel thing. I've never seen a debate that doesn't descend into bickering, usually before page 2, page 4 if you are lucky. There is no possible way of debating without heavy moderation. There's always emotive language, unsubstantiated claims, counter claim, religion, politics, racism, bigotry, idealism etc on both sides.

Well, we can try can't we?

1,400 people is a small fry in the "world of killing people" - "massacre" - use of language noted, your language already compromises you (see above).

Do you really not equate a kill ratio of over 175/1 as a massacre? over 300 children were killed, and if you read the link to the Guardian article you would see that "The offensive left 16 medics dead. Nearly all of them were killed by Israeli fire while trying to save lives, and many more were wounded. According to the World Health Organisation, more than half of Gaza's 27 hospitals were damaged by Israeli bombs. Two clinics were completely destroyed and 44 others received damage."

Whilst there is obvious debate about the numbers and what percentage of civilians made up the final toll, it's clear that deaths from security and military personnel were substantial so unless these forces were killed in cold blood then the word "massacre" is innapropriate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati...ead#Casualties

Well, Israel has prevented access to Gaza to most of the press and UN inspectors, so numbers will always be in doubt, but there is no doubt about the 300 children, mostly shot, and many in the head. Even counting only the children that's a kill ratio of about 38 : 1; 38 children to each trained soldier killed. So which part of the word 'massacre' is inappropriate?

WHO estimates 200,000 dead in Darfur, Sudan in 5 years. That's 40,000 a year - 28.5 times as many as in Palestine. Crappy isn't it? Plenty of publicity about that too, but sweet FA done about it. Iirc Sudan's president has been indited for "war crimes".

True, but our government doesn't support that massacre.

Roughly 3000 people die each year on Britain's roads.

But our government doesn't support that, the drivers don't wear T-shirts proudly explaining how much harder it is to hit a child, and there is no stated intent by drivers to drive out or kill the other drivers and pedestrians.

The question you have to ask is why is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict given more/less/same coverage as those I've linked above.

Why?

But anyway the answer is pretty obvious to me: firstly people hate the hypocrisy of Israel demonising those that they are destroying, and secondly Israel is just across the Mediterranean. Murder in your own back yard is always more a concern that it is over a bunch of invisible foreigners. It's human nature, and a necessary survival trait.

Secondly, what are the criteria for acting diplomatically or physically with regard to these conflicts? Which countries should do what?

Now that's a good question. Here's my take on it.

Israel is stealing Palestinian land by stealth and by force of arms. They treat the Palestinians as forgotten prisoners unless they are directly at war with them. If you are uncertain who is currently, and for the last 60 years responsible for the worst of the inhumanity have a look at the B'TSelem website, not the front page, the details; look at the site map.

It's kind of pointless to go back to before 1967 really. Arabs and Jews were fighting each other since before WWII, Jews more efficiently, as they had been trained in some pretty dreadful methods by Orde Wingate, a British Officer. Both sides had been trained and armed by the British, but Wingate was responsible for creating the Special Night Sqauds, of infamy. Both sides were fighting though, and neither was right, as such, though the Arabs had a prior claim to that of the immigrant Jews. But that's just history; two bunches of dickheads fighting.

The point really, is that no sane person wants Israel wiped of the map, but no moral person can support the evil methods Israel is using to dislocate the Palestinians from their land. I don't know if you are familiar with the UN definition of terms like "War crime", "genocide" and "Crimes against humanity" but Israel is well within the bounds of all three, and has been for decades. It is the present that needs to be changed, not the past.

Whatever anyone here says, ask any Palestinian and what the majority want is their land back, a chance to build a better life for their families and security. The problem is that some want all of the land back, and others want the right of return to the land they were pushed out of by the death squads in 1948. Those demands are impossible. Israel is not going to allow the influx of a load of Arabs upsetting the demographics and switching the balance of power from a Jewish state to a secular one, and Israel is not going to roll over and die.

So the simplest possible solution is a two-state one. In order for that to be possible, both practically and emotionally, the pre-1967 borders must be recreated. Obviously this would leave Israel with the same problems it had in 1967, except that it is even more militarily superior now, but it has built an agricultural sector based upon water drawn from the Jordan, and underwater supplies inside the West bank. In fact Israel takes 90% of the available water for itself, which is partly why Palestinian agriculture is such a mess (the others being Israeli attacks on Palestinian farmers, and blockades of vegetables being transported to markets), so Israel would need a guarantee of water, which would need to be guaranteed by Jordan. It would also need to be able to protect itself, but it would be little harder to do than it as at the moment, but with less provocation.

However the reason this doesn't happen is obvious; Israel doesn't want to give back the Occupied Territories.

I know it's likely to provoke attack, but the fact is that the Israelis are probably the only nation since the Romans to consistently *vote* for a policy of a war of extermination for decades, even under the Nazis, Germany didn't actually vote for genocide. Israelis do. It's how you get elected in Israel. There have been soft-liners, but they never get elected in by saying "We need to make peace". They get elected in by saying that they will never give away the settlements but are willing to try to talk sense to the Palestinians, with the threat of power if they won't see sense.

When the overwhelming majority of a nation would rather seek genocide than peace it's hard to see what their victims can do.

Israel needs to make a change. Ariel Sharon, mainly by accident, actually started the process, by handing back Gaza and making the thought real for Israelis, but it will need a real Israeli "man of peace" to make the next step, and there are precious few of those, especially in the new right-wing pro-genocide government.

There is little the Palestinians can do about it. If they don't resist they lose more land to settlements and the Wall, if they do resist they lose more land to settlements and the Wall. Whoever has been in power in Israel, building settlements has never stopped. It slowed sometimes, but always continued as soon as the rest of the world stopped looking so hard.

Israel has the power to stop this, Palestinians don't. That's the practicality of the possible solutions. So it's primarily Israel's job to do something. And I would prefer it if it were not more genocide.

Israel has recently elected the most right wing, rabidly racist government in years and they will restart the "expatriation" of Palestinians soon. When that starts there will be more slaughter and with luck that will push the balance in the USA from kindly forgiveness of any atrocity so long as it's committed by the Israelis to a balanced effort to develop a peaceful solution, by the only world power to support Israel. America gives Iarael around $5 - 8 Bn per year, in gifts, loans that are never collected and loan guarantees that are as good as cash. It also provides military hardware.

A little pressure from the USA would go a long way. If Gordon would stop being such a toady towards the USA that might help the situation too, but at least Britain should raise it's voice over the one-sided slaughters we have stood by watching for decades.

Thirdly, given all the conflict and death in the world and who does what to whom, why does this particular conflict get people all worked up? What is special about this one rather than any other?

Same as the first question really. Same answer anyway.

[Salazaar]

A little pressure from the USA would go a long way. If Gordon would stop being such a toady towards the USA that might help the situation too, but at least Britain should raise it's voice over the one-sided slaughters we have stood by watching for decades.

The trouble is that the US political system is so inherently corrupt and the (largely pro-Israel) Jewish vote is large enough that few US politician want to touch it.

You'd think that with our own government's experience with Northern Ireland we could bring something constructive to the table regarding Israel & Palestine. It's disheartening to see how little we've done.

[Andeh13]

Do you really not equate a kill ratio of over 175/1 as a massacre? over 300 children were killed, and if you read the link to the Guardian article you would see that "The offensive left 16 medics dead. Nearly all of them were killed by Israeli fire while trying to save lives, and many more were wounded. According to the World Health Organisation, more than half of Gaza's 27 hospitals were damaged by Israeli bombs. Two clinics were completely destroyed and 44 others received damage."

Well, Israel has prevented access to Gaza to most of the press and UN inspectors, so numbers will always be in doubt, but there is no doubt about the 300 children, mostly shot, and many in the head. Even counting only the children that's a kill ratio of about 38 : 1; 38 children to each trained soldier killed. So which part of the word 'massacre' is inappropriate?

Where do you get these numbers from? AFAIK reporters werent allowed in this conflict area, so im curious as to your source.

[chrism]

Sorry Mate. I guess not everyone is familiar with my sarcastic style as I am.

Actually, I thought the sarcasm in the original post was blatantly obvious. Was a bit surprised to read some of the comments following it.

My initial, and badly misunderstood, post was sarcasm. Our government refused to condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and wouldn't vote for a ceasefire.

It's the reason I have so little faith in politicians - the Lebanon war in 2006 as well, where Blair refused to condemn Israeli airstrikes but was happy enough to allow UK airports to play host to US stop-over flights bearing arms for Israel, and well, just straightforward selling them arms direct.