rec

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor. A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

"Terrorism is war practiced by the weak."

Not an affiliation.

The Palestinian's in the Gaza Ghetto know this is their last stand as Israel drives them into the sea, all the while claiming self defense.

Violence is violence no matter who or why they are carrying it out.

But the home made rockets that carry no destructive payload are the last gasp cry for international intervention in their suffering...

seems like a similar situation, minus the Arab-Israeli war.

The residents of Grosse Pointe have not done anything that Israel has done to the Palestinians.

for their local political leadership and replace them with unelected henchmen that do things like take away their water, pensions, jobs, amongst other things. So the comparison isn't that off base. So those in Grosse Pointe are about as guilty as those who elected Netanyahu in Israel too, though at this point, the scale and gravity of the two situations are completely different and we shouldn't make the mistake of equivalencing what even the mobster leadership in Detroit is doing with some of the murderous activities that Netanyahu's gang is involved with that is rationalized by "going after terrorism".

Well said!

AND deny responsibility for everything and anything.

Some wear jackboots and some wear slippers. Both are crushing your windpipe.

The other Michigan residents didn't steal all the folks from Detroits land, giving them no voting rights, stealing their businesses, and hasn't for decades done everything possible to kill them systematically, often targeting residents, hospitals and schools and letting their most extremist friends come in and live on your land.

the winners of WW2 created israel.

Last edited Sun Jul 27, 2014, 04:39 PM - Edit history (1)

Since it has no relation whatsoever to the actual situation in the Middle East, where the facts are completely unrelated to your fantasy.

In this case, the "wealthy suburb" has put a locked gate up around your "Detroit," has cut off the people there from the flow of goods, and bombs them on a regular basis. When a crime is committed in a third district, the wealthy commence a collective punishment with an enormous, merciless bombing of "Detroit." When some homemade rockets come out of "Detroit" in response, they pretend retroactively that was the reason for their massacre in the first place. In all things, the wealthy suburbanites blame the victims for an aggression they initiated.

it's actually not a terrible comparison. what i'm trying to express is that our tolerance for groups of people suffering at the hands of others who have vastly superior lifestyles is extremely high in the u.s.

retaliation is not acceptable. if your life sucks it's because you deserve it. that's how we are.

And China doesn't "mow the lawn" in Lhasa every time the ruling Party gets in a political jam.

Tell you what, if you can stick around past the 1,000 post-mark, I'll come back and address your post line by line. Since I doubt that will be achieved, i invite you to use the search feature in the upper-right corner of your screen, to seek out my debunking of other people making the same arguments, multiple time.

Good luck on your DU career!

Like who this person is or where the photo was taken?

The person who answered replied to the whole thread, rather than to you specifically.

I don't know how you hit comments, but I use the links in the 'My Posts' tab a lot, so I might miss it when people do that.

An old man in Gaza held a placard that reads: “You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.” [1]

The old man’s message provides the proper context for the timelines on the latest episode in the savage punishment of Gaza. They are useful, but any effort to establish a “beginning” cannot help but be misleading. The crimes trace back to 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled in terror or were expelled to Gaza by conquering Israeli forces, who continued to truck them over the border for years after the official cease-fire. The persecution of Gazans took new forms when Israel conquered the Strip in 1967. From recent Israeli scholarship we learn that the goal of the government was to drive the refugees into the Sinai, and if feasible the rest of the population too.

Expulsions from Gaza were carried out under the direct orders of General Yeshayahu Gavish, commander of the Southern Command. Expulsions from the West Bank were far more extreme, and Israel resorted to devious means to prevent the return of those expelled, in direct violation of Security Council orders. The reasons were made clear in internal discussion immediately after the war. Golda Meir, later Prime Minister, informed her Labor colleagues that Israel should keep the Gaza Strip while “getting rid of its Arabs.” Defense Minister Dayan and others agreed. Prime Minister Eshkol explained that those expelled cannot be allowed to return because “We cannot increase the Arab population in Israel” — referring to the newly occupied territories, already tacitly considered part of Israel. In accord with this conception, all of Israel’s maps were changed, expunging the Green Line (the internationally recognized borders), though publication was delayed to permit UN Ambassador Abba Eban to attain what he called “favorable impasse” at the General Assembly, by concealing Israel’s intentions. [2]

The goals may remain alive, and might be a factor contributing to Egypt’s reluctance to open the border to free passage of people and goods barred by the US-backed Israeli siege.

The current upsurge of US-Israeli violence dates to January 2006, when Palestinians voted “the wrong way” in the first free election in the Arab world. Israel and the US reacted at once with harsh punishment of the miscreants, and preparation of a military coup to overthrow the elected government, routine procedure. The punishment was radically intensified in 2007, when the coup attempt was beaten back, and the elected Hamas government established full control over Gaza.

http://chomsky.info/articles/20121201.htm

(More from the Chomsky article linked in post 14, above)

Ignoring immediate Hamas offers of a truce after the 2006 election, Israel launched attacks that killed 660 Palestinians in 2006, mostly civilians, one-third minors. The escalation of attacks in 2007 killed 816 Palestinians, 360 civilians and 152 minors. The UN reports that 2879 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire from April 2006 through July 2012, along with several dozen Israelis killed by fire from Gaza. [4]

A truce in 2008 was honored by Hamas until Israel broke it in November. Ignoring further truce offers, Israel launched the murderous Cast Lead operation in December. So matters have continued, while the US and Israel also continue to reject Hamas calls for a long-term truce and a political settlement in accord with the international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US has blocked since 1976, when the US vetoed a Security Council resolution to this effect, brought by the major Arab states.

In late 2012 (UNDER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!)the US devoted extensive efforts to block a General Assembly resolution upgrading Palestine’s status to that of a “non-member observer state.” The effort failed, leaving the US in its usual international isolation on November 29, when the resolution passed overwhelmingly on the anniversary of the 1947 General Assembly vote on partition. [5] The reasons Washington frankly offered for its opposition to the resolution were revealing: Palestine might approach the International Criminal Court on Israel’s U.S.-backed crimes, which cannot be permitted judicial review for reasons that are all too obvious. A second concern, the New York Times reported, was that “the Palestinians might use the vote to seek membership in specialized agencies of the United Nations,” which could lead Washington to defund these international organizations, as it cut off financing to UNESCO in 2011 when it dared to admit Palestine as a member. The Master does not tolerate disobedience. [6]

Israel had warned that it would “go crazy” (“yishtagea”) if the resolution passed, reviving warnings from the 1950s that it would “go crazy” if crossed — not very meaningful then, much more so now. [7] And indeed, hours after the UN vote Israel announced its decision to carry forward settlement in Area E1 that connects the vastly expanded Greater Jerusalem that it annexed illegally to the town of Ma’aleh Adumim, greatly expanded under Clinton after the Oslo Accords, with lands extending virtually to Jericho, effectively bisecting the West Bank if the Area E1 corridor is closed by settlement. [8] Before Obama, US presidents had barred Israel’s efforts to expand its illegal settlements into the E1 region, so it was compelled to resort to stealth measures, like establishing a police station in the zone. Obama has been more supportive of Israeli criminal actions than his predecessors, and it remains to be seen whether he will keep to a tap on the wrist with a wink, as before.

which the thread focused on.

prior to Iron Dome? An Israeli spokesperson I saw on tv this week said that without Iron Dome we would have seen thousands of dead Israelis. That seems likely to be hyperbolic, but I do wonder what the ratio of rockets to deaths (or even injuries) used to be, pre-Iron Dome.

Almost every rocket attack lists as " no damage or injuries caused"

I am not saying Hamas is in the right. I am saying that over and over again Israel's response is extreme over kill.

They need to divide the country fairly and make it two separate countries.

I agree with your second line, and would say no one causing death or damage has clean hands here, and the amount of 'dirt' is proportional to the death and destruction created.

I don't know how they make it work, especially without contiguous boundaries. I know the US 'works' with Canada in between the mainland and Alaska, but then we haven't had a long history of violence between the two countries. I would think solely from a 'safety' standpoint, the better solution would be something like North and South Korea, where you simply pick a latitude and everything north is one country and everything south is another. But that means an awful lot of people from both sides get involuntarily relocated, which is what create a lot of the hatred in the first place.

also I found this list:

http://ifamericansknew.org/stat/deaths.html

the vast majority of rockets failed to lead to any deaths. I'd say the spokesman who claimed there would be thousands of Israeli deaths without Iron Dome was indeed being incredibly hyperbolic.

No death is good, but that shows up as pushing propaganda.

Thanks for the thread, NightWatcher.

What has been presented as facts to the world is a complete inversion of reality.
Rec

Than a person that has nothing to live for other than revenge.

Some called them savages because they were different, or because they made war on white people. Columbus both slaughtered and enslaved them, as did many of our ancestors, "discoverers" and "founders". The vast majority of the peace treaties and treaties which promised to respect their rights to their land... all broken. Their people robbed of not just their land, but their dignity, expected to live on American reservations where Americans continued to rob them, stealing their food and their money. Even that was often not enough - whole tribes slaughtered, even women and children.

Yet in our culture we have all of these films about cowboys and Indians, portraying Native Americans as villains, barbarians, vicious savages. In truth, my own ancestors were the savages, who did not respect the property or the rights of the people who were here long before them. An absolutely stunning and horrifying number of Native Americans were wiped out by disease alone - disease which my ancestors brought here from other lands.

As is often the case with such things, the conquerors make up stories, promote their own notion of their own "goodness", stretch the truth to absurdity... in order to abolish their guilt or to justify their actions. There is no justice to this. There is no truth other than that due to superior numbers or weapons, they overcame other people and took what was theirs. We can pretty it up with sweet little lies and such, but ultimately, the concept is similar to beating up someone much smaller than you - and robbing them.

We can attempt to justify it or reason it out any way we like... but what it ultimately comes down to is that the stronger force destroys the weaker. The many overcome the few. There is no justice, no nobility, no true honor in such a thing. The most noble of peoples I have read about in history have not been those who made war - but those who made peace. Those who built bridges and planted food. Those who set people free and those who bandaged their wounds.

What is happening in Gaza now... however the media portrays it, however our elected officials and the military industrial complex feel about it... it's not just injustice, not just theft or murder, but destruction for the sake of greed and ambition.

Self defense? If you slap me in the face and I shoot you with a rifle, am I acting in self defense?

continues to think they can exact peace by use of bombs, but, I also understand that Palestinians and other Muslims have and continue to assert that Israel does not have a right to exist and have continually asserted their ultimate goal of destroying Israel.
Every time moderates come close to a peaceful solution, extremists on both sides find ways to sabotage peace, either by continuing to build in what was supposed to be a buffer zone, or by shooting rockets. Both sides are at fault for the continued humanitarian crisis, both sides have responsibility to stop the negative actions which breed hatred and violence.