The Middle East part 2

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

Wopsss... duble post (sort of)

[Bernadotte 0]

I'd have no problems with that  

...Because you are Jewish or because you would enjoy living in a refugee camp?

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

no and no

[Tamme 0]

I thought that the peace plan was going to work. Both sides seemed to be willing for peace, but then that goddamn hamas started bombing again.....morons....

If the Palestinian government would start to do something about hamas then maybe Israel would agree to negotiate with the Palestinians? Of course I don't know if the Palestinian people would like it too much if Arafat and his friends start to fight against their own people.

[miles teg 1]

So called "bystanders" that is  

If you all want to get an idea of the enviornment that breeds these suicide bombers, I STRONGLY recommend that you all go and talk to a Palestinian who has lived in Gaza or the West Bank. I know a few who lived in the Jenin refugee camp as well as several Catholic relief workers and the stories they tell about life there are just mindblowing. The media doesn't tell the half of what's going on there. I also recommend that you watch the film, "Jenin, Jenin". That film I think is quite powerful, yet very tastefully done without showing dead bodies and stuff like that. Of coarse it only shows the Palestinian side of the issue, but nevertheless it helps to understand their mentality and why they have so much bitterness and hatred towards the Israelies.

Groups like Hamas unfortunately throw religion into it and the struggle gets misinterpreted as Jihad by some of the extremist elements of Islam that somehow twist words of the Quoran and Hadith into somehow supporting suicide bombing when the Quoran clearly states that suicide is not acceptable and that the killing of innocent women and chldren is wrong.

But then the extremists start saying, "oh but no Jewish zionist is innocent." in order to justify their attrocities.

The really complicated part is that you have some Palistinians who do just want to settle down with what land they have and just want peace and an end to occupation, while you have the extremists in Hamas that will continue to attack until every Jew is driven from Israel.... something that simply is not going to happen unless they nuke Israel (which of coarse would probably kill themselves also) or surrounding Arab nations develop much more powerful armies to successfully invade Israel and commit genocide...which would probably cause a swift American retaliation and invasion.

So much trouble over such a little chunk of land....

Sometimes I think the US should threat to nuke both the Israelies and Palistinians if they don't settle for peace.

Right now the US gets sucked into in a big way because we supply Israel with most of their advanced weaponry like the Apache gunships, Cobra gunships, and F16 fighters as well as their M16/M4 rifles and military aid (billions of dollars) to help Israel make their own weapons like the powerful Merkava MK3 tank and the Zelda APC.

So the Palistinians blame America for indirectly killing Palistinians. While they haven't attacked the United States, other Islamic extremist groups that sympathize with the Palistinian cause and who hate America and American allies for other reasons, are happy to use the US military assistance to Israel as part of of their reasons for committing terrorism against the United States and attacking our troops... one reason for example why so many Arab volunteers are streaming into Iraq to go take potshots at American Troops.

Also some Iraqi's really hate the US and British presence in Iraq as well. The latest violence in which those British troops were killed was especially gruesome with 4 of the British troops cornered in a police station by a mob and brutally murdered.

Some countries I don't think are ready for democracy and need a brutal dictator to keep religious fanatics from running rampant like the Taliban in Afghanistan did.

But now we've let the cat out of the bag in Iraq and that country is probably more volatile and dangerous to America then it was under Saddam Hussein.

If the violence there continues I think we should ask Uday Hussein to take control, reinstall the old Baath party and Republican Guard as long as they promise to stop sending money to Palistinian terrorist groups and to keep US inspectors there to make sure they don't start up any WMD programs. They we can say, "Cya, you can have your old government back."

Right now we're only creating a breeding ground for Islamic fanatics with Iraq a prime recruiting ground for groups like Al-Qaeda now that the Middle East is making comparisons of United States occupation in Iraq to Israeli occupation of the Palistinian territories.

It is better for an Iraqi to stamp out resistance brutally then the US and Britain, because if we do it that will just give the fanatics in the Arab world more reasons to commit terrorism attacks against the US and the UK, and to get more and more volunteers to commit such terrorist attacks.

All we've done with this invasion is just stir up a hive of angry bees.

Personally I hope the US pulls out and just lets the UN take over peacekeeping. Maybe the UN will have more success in stabilizing things.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[bn880 5]

I thought that the peace plan was going to work. Both sides seemed to be willing for peace, but then that goddamn hamas started bombing again.....morons....

What? What happened to break the peace process is a terrorist attack on a car in a populated area, using United States gunships manned by Israeli Terrorist Forces men.

Hamas attacks were retaliation...

Quote[/b] ]If the Palestinian government would start to do something about hamas then maybe Israel would agree to negotiate with the Palestinians? Of course I don't know if the Palestinian people would like it too much if Arafat and his friends start to fight against their own people.

Maybe they would, but the Israeli Terrorist Forces already destroyed the Palestinian insfrastructure including it's policing power.

[Bernadotte 0]

If you all want to get an idea of the enviornment that breeds these suicide bombers, I STRONGLY recommend that you all go and talk to a Palestinian who has lived in Gaza or the West Bank.  I know a few who lived in the Jenin refugee camp as well as several Catholic relief workers and the stories they tell about life there are just mindblowing.  The media doesn't tell the half of what's going on there.   I also recommend that you watch the film, "Jenin, Jenin".   That film I think is quite powerful, yet very tastefully done without showing dead bodies and stuff like that.   Of coarse it only shows the Palestinian side of the issue, but nevertheless it helps to understand their mentality and why they have so much bitterness and hatred towards the Israelies.

Is there any mention of Israeli settlement* construction in the occupied territories?

* The number of settlements has nearly doubled since this 1997 map was published.

[PitViper 0]

Hamas funding..

[Die Alive 0]

From a few days back.

-=Die Alive=-

[Bernadotte 0]

Hamas funding..

Israeli funding...

[Die Alive 0]

Hamas, Islamic Jihad OK 3 Month Truce With Israel

-=Die Alive=-

[Bernadotte 0]

Hamas, Islamic Jihad OK 3 Month Truce With Israel

-=Die Alive=-

Quote[/b] ]Shortly after word of the cease-fire, Israel sent helicopters to carry out an airstrike against a squad of militants from the Islamic group Hamas that Israel said was preparing to carry out a rocket attack. Palestinian officials said two people were killed.

Israel dismissed the truce as an internal Palestinian deal of no consequence.

According to Reuters:

Quote[/b] ]Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles into two cars in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing two Palestinians including a woman and wounding 16 people, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said. They said the air attack in the village of Abassan east of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza had apparently targeted Mohammed Seyam, a member of the Islamic militant group Hamas, who was wounded in the leg.

[Die Alive 0]

Hamas, Islamic Jihad OK 3 Month Truce With Israel

-=Die Alive=-

Quote[/b] ]Also Wednesday, Israeli police said they captured two Palestinians en route to setting off explosives in an Israeli city.

Acting on an intelligence tip, police went on high alert and set up roadblocks in central Israel, apprehending the Palestinians in the Israeli Arab town of Kafr Kassem near the line with the West Bank, about 12 miles northeast of Tel Aviv. There was no immediate claim of responsibility from militant groups.

Police detonated the explosives safely, in a blast could be heard for miles around.

Area police commander Yehuda Bachar said that "a large attack which would of had a lot of victims" was averted.

-=Die Alive=-

[Bernadotte 0]

Quote of the month:

Quote[/b] ]Israel is too strong to defeat and the Palestinians have no choice but to live with the Jewish state in peace.  Let us be frank. We cannot destroy Israel. The practical solution is for us to have a state alongside Israel.

-- Senior Hamas leader Abu Shanab

   

[bn880 5]

As much as I hate this phrase: No shit! (Sherlock)

[FSPilot 0]

Harnu

Quote[/b] ]You keep throwing land to everyone who comes by, you're not going to have a place to stand on.

Good point. I think they should use the original land laid out in the first UN resolution as a line in the sand. Without looking at the logistics or anything it seems reasonable.

Bernadotte

Quote[/b] ]On average, 3 innocent Palestinian bystanders are killed by Israeli forces along with every Hamas militant assassinated by Israeli forces.

Let me get this straight, Israel is targetting terrorists but accidentally kills an innocent every once in a while. Hamas on the other hand is explicitly targetting civilians and makes every attempt to kill as many of them as possible.

And you're getting on Israel's case for civilian casualties? Talk about your double-standards.

[ralphwiggum 6]

I thought that the peace plan was going to work. Both sides seemed to be willing for peace, but then that goddamn hamas started bombing again.....morons....

What?  What happened to break the peace process is a terrorist attack on a car in a populated area, using United States gunships manned by Israeli Terrorist Forces men.  

Hamas attacks were retaliation...

If you ask me, when Abbas and Sharon seriously started peace talk, Hamas attacking a bus was what caused Israel's retailiation that you mention.

Anyway, Hamas reportedly agreed to a 3 month ceasefire. can you say, "recuperation"?

[Major Fubar 0]

Bernadotte

Quote[/b] ]On average, 3 innocent Palestinian bystanders are killed by Israeli forces along with every Hamas militant assassinated by Israeli forces.

Let me get this straight, Israel is targetting terrorists but accidentally kills an innocent every once in a while.  Hamas on the other hand is explicitly targetting civilians and makes every attempt to kill as many of them as possible.

And you're getting on Israel's case for civilian casualties?  Talk about your double-standards.

But it does make it apparent that it isn't as clear cut as "good guys" vs "bad guys"...Hamas aren't the only ones causing civilian deaths. There have been plenty of cases of families and children being wiped out in IDF planned "surgical strikes". Does this make Hamas good guys, or excuse what they are doing? Of course not...

[Bernadotte 0]

Bernadotte

Quote[/b] ]On average, 3 innocent Palestinian bystanders are killed by Israeli forces along with every Hamas militant assassinated by Israeli forces.

Let me get this straight, Israel is targetting terrorists but accidentally kills an innocent every once in a while.  Hamas on the other hand is explicitly targetting civilians and makes every attempt to kill as many of them as possible.

And you're getting on Israel's case for civilian casualties?  Talk about your double-standards.

Deliberately misquoting me and then putting words in my mouth is flame-baiting.  How many more PR's are you planning to collect for this before you will figure out how to participate in an intelligent discussion?

My original comment was:

Quote[/b] ]I've just read two interesting statistics.

For every Hamas militant that Israel assassinates, 3 more join.

For every Hamas militant that Israel assassinates, 3 innocent bystanders are killed.

Killing 3 innocents for every militant is a shitload more than "every once in a while."  But I don't pay US taxes like you do, FS, so none of that innocent Palestinian blood is on my hands.  Perhaps we should talk about your double standard.

[Bernadotte 0]

If you ask me, when Abbas and Sharon seriously started peace talk, Hamas attacking a bus was what caused Israel's retailiation that you mention.

Nope.

The bus attack happened after Israel carried out the fifth or sixth militant assassination.  The first 2 were actually being undertaken by the IDF on the last day of the Aqaba summit.  More than a dozen Palestinian bystanders were killed between Aqaba and when the bus was bombed.  Israeli helicopters were even on there way to yet another assassination at the time the bus exploded.  Among the innocent victims of that IDF assassination was a baby girl who died of her burns hours later in hospital.

[bn880 5]

I thought that the peace plan was going to work. Both sides seemed to be willing for peace, but then that goddamn hamas started bombing again.....morons....

What? What happened to break the peace process is a terrorist attack on a car in a populated area, using United States gunships manned by Israeli Terrorist Forces men.

Hamas attacks were retaliation...

If you ask me, when Abbas and Sharon seriously started peace talk, Hamas attacking a bus was what caused Israel's retailiation that you mention.

Anyway, Hamas reportedly agreed to a 3 month ceasefire. can you say, "recuperation"?

Ok, here is the point anyway, the Israeli leadership needs to stop acting like a bunch of buffoons.

There is definately a disproportion of force and bad decisions, and Israel is much more responsible for keeping the fire raging. Exponentially. No question about it, occupation, forced relocation, settlements etc. There is actually no point delibberating this, there are hard facts of wrong doing, there simply is complete injustice, truth and justice means squat to anyone defending Israel here.

Adios

[ralphwiggum 6]

so let me guess... Israel is ALWAYS wrong?

that's why I agreed with Friedman's article sometime ago which i forgot to post here.. but basically it said Israel and Abbas should not get hung with militant attacks, and should steadfastly go with peace process.

found a short part of leading paragraphs.

Quote[/b] ]The Reality Principle

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NYT) 834 words

Late Edition - Final , Section 4 , Page 13 , Column 1

LEAD PARAGRAPH - Have you noticed how often Israel kills a Hamas activist and the victim is described by Israelis as ''a senior Hamas official'' or a ''key operative''? This has led me to wonder: How many senior Hamas officials could there be? We're not talking about I.B.M. here. We're talking about a ragtag terrorist group. By now Israel should have killed off the entire Hamas leadership twice. Unless what is happening is something else, something I call Palestinian math: Israel kills one Hamas operative and three others volunteer to take his place, in which case what Israel is doing is actually self-destructive.

Self-destructive is, in fact, a useful term to describe Israelis and Palestinians today. ''Both sides,'' notes the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi, ''have crossed the line where self-defense has turned into self-destruction. When self-defense becomes self-destruction, only an external force can bring people back to their senses. And that force is President Bush. I think he is the only reality principle left that either side might listen to, and I hope he understands that.''

another friedman article criticising post-war failure

Quote[/b] ]President Bush is sure lucky no weapons of mass destruction have been found yet in Iraq.

Because had we found these weapons our entire focus today would be on the real issue: why the Bush team ?which wanted this war so badly and had telegraphed it for so long ?was so poorly prepared for postwar Iraq.

I still believe that with the right effort Iraq can be made a decent place. But that task has been made much harder because of the Pentagon's poor planning for postwar Iraq. If the Pentagon's lapses can be overcome ?and I hope they will be ?then we should learn from them for future wars. If they can't be overcome, then they will be grist for next year's who-lost-Iraq debate.

Let's start with the biggest analytical failure. The Bush Pentagon went into this war assuming that it could decapitate the Iraqi army, bureaucracy and police force, remove the Saddam loyalists and then basically run Iraq through the rump army, bureaucracy and police.

Wrong. What happened instead was that they all collapsed, leaving a security and administrative vacuum, which the U.S. military was utterly unprepared to fill. The U.S. forces arrived in Iraq with far too few military police and civilian affairs officers to run the country. As a result, the only way U.S. troops could stop the massive looting was by doing the only thing they knew how: shooting people. Since they didn't want to do that, and since Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to believe that a little looting was O.K., so that Iraqis could let off steam ("stuff happens"), Iraqi government infrastructure, oil equipment and even nuclear research sites were just stripped bare. As a result, we are not just starting at zero in Iraq. We are starting below zero. (How the Pentagon could have failed to secure the known nuclear sites is unbelievable.)

Anyone familiar with NATO operations in Bosnia and Kosovo should have understood that we needed two armies for this invasion. The first was the fighting force that would kill Saddam's regime, and the second, following right behind it, a force of military police, civilian affairs officers, aid groups and public affairs teams to get our message across. The Pentagon brilliantly prepared the first force, but not the second.

So, you get incidents like the one last week, where hungry Iraqi soldiers, protesting for back pay, get shot at by U.S. troops ?a great way to win friends ?because our troops are unprepared for crowd control, a job for M.P.'s. Most of the police and M.P.'s we send into nation-building are reserves, and there was already a shortage ?something the Pentagon should have seen and rectified by reconfiguring our force structure.

Because we did not have enough soldiers, police or M.P.'s in Iraq, we could not seal the Syrian or Iranian borders or protect oil pipelines from sabotage. As a result, Arab fighters have slipped in via Syria to join the battle against us and Iranian activists have crossed from their side. Oil pipelines are being blown up daily.

As for the missing W.M.D., Bush officials keep saying that Iraq is the size of California and hard to search. True, but Saddam's inner circle is the size of an N.F.L. team ?and we've captured more than half of them. I find it incomprehensible that none of them have had anything revealing to say, one way or another, about the missing W.M.D. A tarot card reader could have discovered more from these people than the Pentagon has so far. A Western diplomat tells me Centcom has not managed the interrogations well and they are now in the hands of the C.I.A.

Because the Pentagon had no coherent postwar plan for reconstituting Iraq politically, it made it up as it went along. Instead of a firm U.S. hand guiding things from the top, the Pentagon initially appointed the hapless Gen. Jay Garner to run Iraq. He's been replaced by the more deft L. Paul Bremer, but important time has been lost in which Muslim clerics have filled the vacuum in many areas. We must establish an Iraqi secular authority ?soon.

A successful U.S. rebuilding of Iraq is the key to America's standing in the world right now. But Mssrs. Bush and Rumsfeld seem to be treating it like some lab test in which they can see how much nation-building they can buy with as little investment as possible.

As one Marine officer said to me: There is something to be said for doing war on the cheap, but if you want to do war on the cheap, "pick a country that doesn't matter."

[FSPilot 0]

MajorFubar

Quote[/b] ]But it does make it apparent that it isn't as clear cut as "good guys" vs "bad guys"...Hamas aren't the only ones causing civilian deaths. There have been plenty of cases of families and children being wiped out in IDF planned "surgical strikes". Does this make Hamas good guys, or excuse what they are doing? Of course not...

I'm looking at intentions mainly. Both Israel and Hamas have blood on their hands. But Israel is trying to protect their own civilians while Hamas is trying to kill them. I don't understand how an accident puts Israel on the same level as Hamas.

Bernadotte

Quote[/b] ]Deliberately misquoting me and then putting words in my mouth is flame-baiting. How many more PR's are you planning to collect for this before you will figure out how to participate in an intelligent discussion?

My original comment was:

Quote[/b] ]I've just read two interesting statistics.

For every Hamas militant that Israel assassinates, 3 more join.

For every Hamas militant that Israel assassinates, 3 innocent bystanders are killed.

Uh, no. You said this

Quote[/b] ]On average, 3 innocent Palestinian bystanders are killed by Israeli forces along with every Hamas militant assassinated by Israeli forces.

I responded with that paragraph.

Quote[/b] ]Killing 3 innocents for every militant is a shitload more than "every once in a while." But I don't pay US taxes like you do, FS, so none of that innocent Palestinian blood is on my hands. Perhaps we should talk about your double standard.

First off, I'd like to see your source for that. And don't give me plo.org or something like that.

Second, Israel does not target innocent civilians. Hamas does. Now you're trying to tell me with a straight face that Israel is guilty of killing innocent people and Hamas isn't?

[Major Fubar 0]

MajorFubar

Quote[/b] ]But it does make it apparent that it isn't as clear cut as "good guys" vs "bad guys"...Hamas aren't the only ones causing civilian deaths. There have been plenty of cases of families and children being wiped out in IDF planned "surgical strikes". Does this make Hamas good guys, or excuse what they are doing? Of course not...

I'm looking at intentions mainly.  Both Israel and Hamas have blood on their hands.  But Israel is trying to protect their own civilians while Hamas is trying to kill them.  I don't understand how an accident puts Israel on the same level as Hamas.

Well, for starters "good guys" are a little more careful about collateral damage. To give a weird example: a "good" cop will carefully check a situation before firing at a perp in a public area, a "bad" cop will just fire a spray of bullets and hope none hit any innocent people.

But I do see your point - yes, most Hamas attacks are aimed at civlians, whereas most Israeli kills of civilians are incidental, not deliberate.

Perhaps if the someone could furnish Hamas with state of the art weaponry, attack choppers, and tanks, they could stick to military targets and avoid more civilians, not having to rely on the tactic of suicide bombers...

[USSoldier11B 0]

Quote[/b] ]Well, for starters "good guys" are a little more careful about collateral damage. To give a weird example: a "good" cop will carefully check a situation before firing at a perp in a public area, a "bad" cop will just fire a spray of bullets and hope none hit any innocent people.

I fully agree. You will never catch an American law enforcement officer with FMJ rounds in his gun. In fact, it's against the law, but common sense none-the-less due to overpenetration. Although they do make the mistake of OCing a suspect in front if a large crowd, but that just makes for some freaked out blind bystanders.

Such recklessness in the U.S. would put cops behind bars or at home with no job.