The Middle East part 2

[Longinius 1]

Seems to be a quite normal skirmish. One side rolls out with tanks and APC's to take out enemy units with mortars and explosives. Defending militia engage APC's and tanks, eight people die.

War is hell, I guess.

[Acecombat 0]

Conveniently rufusmac forgot this pic

At least eight Palestinians have been killed in clashes during an Israeli army raid on the Gaza Strip - the deadliest incursion for weeks.

Palestinian militants opened fire as tanks went into Gaza City's al-Zeitoun area, witnesses said.

The fighting came hours before Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei had talks with United States Middle East envoy, John Wolf.

Mr Qurei told reporters the killings had been raised in their discussions.

He said he had called for an end to what he described as "this continuous aggression against our people".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3436561.stm

[turms 0]

The picture that discusts rufusmac: there are two bodyguards, one pushing the old man in wheelchair, and one at the right side of the picture. Then there are childrens in the picture. Does i t differ a lot from Sharon being escorted by bodyguards and kids coming to greet him? I bet I cab find many pictures with Shraon, bodyguards, and kids.

[Acecombat 0]

The picture that discusts rufusmac: there are two bodyguards, one pushing the old man in wheelchair, and one at the right side of the picture. Then there are childrens in the picture. Does i t differ a lot from Sharon being escorted by bodyguards and kids coming to greet him? I bet I cab find many pictures with Shraon, bodyguards, and kids.

No it wont i dont think so i mean Sharon is such a slim trim smart man how could he look disgusting?

[Guest]

How ironic then , here you are trying to say that P authorites blasphemised casualty reports and you dont have the evidence to back up your claim .... ah well everyones jumping on the BUSHie way to prove things i guess just like those WMD claims  

NO.  I am saying that the amount of "unarmed palestinians" killed in the conflict is really a misleading statistic for two reasons.

1:  They hang around the "armed ones"

2:  When the armed ones are hit, they pick up their gun, and poof, another civilian casualty.

Let me ask you something, if you were on a patrol, and you saw that group of palestinians in the first picture, what would you do?  Its a simple question really...  What about if you a gunner in a tank and you saw that guy loading the RPG?  What would you do?

And what evidence are you looking for?  Can I prove that every palestinian killed was in the vicinity of a gunfight?  Of course not, thats why I posted that picture.  It gives a clear indication of a TYPICAL encounter the israeli soldier faces when on a raid.  I culled those pictures from one source in about 20 minutes.  A more thorough search will find hundreds more just like it...

EDIT:

Quote[/b] ]Conveniently rufusmac forgot this pic

You clearly did not get the gist of my post... A tank in a combat zone?! Heaven forbid, call amnesty international!!

[Guest]

The picture that discusts rufusmac: there are two bodyguards, one pushing the old man in wheelchair, and one at the right side of the picture. Then there are childrens in the picture. Does i t differ a lot from Sharon being escorted by bodyguards and kids coming to greet him? I bet I cab find many pictures with Shraon, bodyguards, and kids.

yeh, its clear who the "official" bodygaurds are. Read up on how Salah Shehada was killed in july 2002...

I'm not condoning the attack, but I'm condoning his area of operations.

[turms 0]

The picture that discusts rufusmac: there are two bodyguards, one pushing the old man in wheelchair, and one at the right side of the picture. Then there are childrens in the picture. Does i t differ a lot from Sharon being escorted by bodyguards and kids coming to greet him? I bet I cab find many pictures with Shraon, bodyguards, and kids.

yeh, its clear who the "official" bodygaurds are.  Read up on how Salah Shehada was killed in july 2002...

I'm not condoning the attack, but I'm condoning his area of operations.

Well its aparrent that the guy is on a area of habitation, and you cant just magically disperse all the people around him.

And if the guy has Israelis promise to kill him, what would you exept to do? go in a hole somewhere desert and die there?

[Guest]

The picture that discusts rufusmac: there are two bodyguards, one pushing the old man in wheelchair, and one at the right side of the picture. Then there are childrens in the picture. Does i t differ a lot from Sharon being escorted by bodyguards and kids coming to greet him? I bet I cab find many pictures with Shraon, bodyguards, and kids.

yeh, its clear who the "official" bodygaurds are.  Read up on how Salah Shehada was killed in july 2002...

I'm not condoning the attack, but I'm condoning his area of operations.

Well its aparrent that the guy is on a area of habitation, and you cant just magically disperse all the people around him.

And if the guy has Israelis promise to kill him, what would you exept to do? go in a hole somewhere desert and die there?

no, your right!  Hide behind children.  Thats it!

[turms 0]

Is Sharon hiding behind childrens when hes visiting a school for example?

EDIT: I understand the point of yours, but i just dont agree that that is the case in here, this is only 1 picture...dig it?

EDIT2: I dont see the pattern that was the word i was looking ;)

[Guest]

I see where you are going with this...  the point is Yassin and other Hamas regulars surround themselves with children "in high risk situations".  Sharon surrounds himself with soldiers...  I've met sharon on two seperate occasions, and both times, I counted more than 100 men and women in his security detail.  At the time (2000), I was young civilian (18); did I think that I was providing extra protection to him against would be assasins?

Whether or not Yassin or those gunmen in those pictures surround themselves with bystanders on purpose (which i think they do), it still sheds light on the statistics of palestinians killed in this conflict.  If palestinian mothers really believed all the things they say about Israeli soldiers being ruthless killers, why do they allow their children to run around LIVE COMBAT ZONES.

EDIT: Posted as you were editing...

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]If palestinian mothers really believed all the things they say about Israeli soldiers being ruthless killers, why do they allow their children to run around LIVE COMBAT ZONES.

Because they live in these combat zones?

[Guest]

Quote[/b] ]If palestinian mothers really believed all the things they say about Israeli soldiers being ruthless killers, why do they allow their children to run around LIVE COMBAT ZONES.

Because they live in these combat zones?

two words: Stay home...

These kids got days off from school (in '87 and even last year) to throw rocks at israeli soldiers.

[theavonlady 2]

These kids got days off from school (in '87 and even last year) to throw rocks at israeli soldiers.

Yeh but it's still so tempting.

[Guest]

These kids got days off from school (in '87 and even last year) to throw rocks at israeli soldiers.

Yeh but it's still so tempting.

Quote[/b] ]"The stone in their hand turns into a rifle..."

what good is throwing a rifle?

[OmniMax 0]

http://www.pmw.org.il/

Oh no.

Did the soldiers shoot the children?

[theavonlady 2]

http://www.pmw.org.il/

Oooooooooooh! It's an Israeli URL! How terrible!

Go ahead. Ignore the content. Typical.

Here's their video index page.

[denoir 0]

Well, while my heart bleeds for the poor guys in the tanks who have a difficult time separating civilians from combatants, that's not the issue.

The issue is not either children playing in the streets by their homes. The issue is the questionable wisdom of sending in tanks in an area where there are children playing.

[denoir 0]

http://www.pmw.org.il/

Oooooooooooh! It's an Israeli URL! How terrible!

A right-wing semi-extremist Israeli site might not be the most impartial source of information. For each clip video clip they show there are at least ten that show the opposite.

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]two words: Stay home...

Do you say the same to Israeli kids that get blown up on buses? After all, if they stay home, they wouldnt get hurt.

You cant expect people to never leave their homes just because there is a war raging, especially not with this kind of war.

[Guest]

Quote[/b] ]two words:  Stay home...

Do you say the same to Israeli kids that get blown up on buses? After all, if they stay home, they wouldnt get hurt.

You cant expect people to never leave their homes just because there is a war raging, especially not with this kind of war.

sigh...

These kids are not on their way to work or school.  They are not living "life as usual"... they are standing in a clearly defined combat zone, and they don't look like they are running to escape it...

[miles teg 1]

...Nobody is talking about reuniting both sides as one nation.

LOL... Perhaps you thought it was my idea.

Quote[/b] ]Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian prime minister, warned yesterday that he would seek a single state of Jews and Arabs if Ariel Sharon unilaterally annexed parts of the West Bank and imposed borders on Palestine.  Mr Qureia, in an interview with Reuters, said his administration would abandon trying for an independent country and campaign for equal rights for Palestinians in a bi-national state incorporating the occupied territories into Israel.

Most Israelis strongly oppose unification because the number of Arabs is expected to overtake the Jewish majority in a few years. There are about 4.7m Arabs and 5.5m Jews in Israel and the occupied territories.

In Washington, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said separation, not integration, was the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I believe that's the only solution that will work: a state for the Palestinian people called Palestine and a Jewish state, state of Israel, which exists."

-- Guardian, 9 Jan 2004

If that happens then Israel would have no choice but to establish Palestinian Bantustans, turning Israel into a carbon copy of apartheid South Africa with all the eventual trade embargos that went with it.

It doesn't matter who's idea it is that Israel should be one state.  The fact of the matter is that IT WON'T HAPPEN short of bloody genocide.   To allow Palestinians to become citizens of Israel would mean THE END OF ISRAEL as a Jewish nation period.    That goes against everything the state of Israel is founded upon which is why it won't happen anytime soon unless the Arabs already living in Israel (NOT THE PALISTINIAN TERRITORIES) side by side with Jewish Israelies surpass the Jewish population.  Then there will be trouble, but hopefully a change to a democratic, non-religious state.... or there will be bloody ethnic cleansing pushing those arabs out back amongst the Palistinians in their own state or in neighboring countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan.

You can throw up all the maps in the world and the Palistinian leadership can scream and cry all they want to the world for a unified Jewish/Palistinian country, but it won't change a damn thing unless they, with help from Islamic countries militarily wipe out all Jews in Israel (as MANY Palestinians want to do) or very, very gradually, they learn to live next to each other in peace and gradually merge into one state.  That's actually the most realistic way that is going to happen but it's not something that will happen overnight and is likely to take years.  Zimbabwe is an example of majority rule gone bad with all those white farmers thrown off their land and killed.  With the tremendous hatred most Palistinians have of Jews, how merciful do you really expect them to be if they took power in Israel?  Do you think they'd settle for an aparteid system living under a Jewish government?  Hell no they won't.  They will use every means possible to take power.   However if the Palistinians get their homeland, Israeli occupation ends, and the suicide bombings end then their is real hope of renewed economic ties, trade, and hopefully a gradual merging of people and cultures with Jews moving to the Palestinian state and Arabs moving into Israel as laws relax on immigration over a few decades.... or maybe not and they just remain seperate countries.   Who cares as long as they both have peace and the freedom to run their own affairs

What matters right now is a settlement over borders.  If the Palestinians instead demand one nation, then it will just be back to fighting.  There is no other realistic option short of some miracle.  

Again if you still disagree, please tell me how one nation could possibly succeed without Jews losing control of Israel?  

If you don't have even a rough plan on how to achieve such a goal, then the debate is over on that issue unless you just like arguing over a fantasy.

It is arguements like yours that in fact many European nations use which is why their is such intense distrust of Europe by many Israelies.  Some of it is paranoia, but some of it is justified paranoia in my opinion.

On the other side of the coin I am sickened and disgusted by the opression of Palestinians by the Israeli military and the Sharon government.  But even members of the IAF and IDF are sickened by that.  Sadly civilian casualities are part of war, and sadly there are some soldiers who will kill Palestinian civilians without mercy and quite purposefully.  Examples include Israeli snipers shooting civilians, journalists (with TV clearly written on their flack vests in big white letters), and recently one war protester shot quite methodically and carefully.

But most civilian deaths seem to be from airstrikes, the usage of explosives for blowing open doors during raids, and from gunfights where Palistinian militants are firing amidst crowds of civlians (some of whom where just caught in the crossfire and some of whom were there on purpose).    

But right now there is a real opportunity for peace that nobody is taking advantage of.  

Arguements for one nation like you propose are simply not productive.  Those involved in the peace process who believe as you do and who are thick-headed and stubborn about it don't help anyone in that region.  It only distracts people's attentions from realistic solutions that stand a good chance of being achieved.  

As far as Bantustans go, yes there is indeed a risk of this however in this case, the international community seems more then willing to recognize a Palistinian state for the most part (aside perhaps from a few Arab countries).  

This is also why VERY careful negotiations of boundaries need to be done so that the Palestinians are given enough land to grow on for quite some time.  With solid international support, a Palestinian state can become successful.  The Bantustans had no international support.  Also it segregation there was along racial lines and not religious and did not have the highly sensitive religious context that makes the Israeli/Palistinian conflict a highly dangerous flashpoint for the entire world.

In anthropology one of the biggest mistakes researchers make is to try to apply situations from one culture or nation to those in entirely different cultures with an often entirely different set of variables effecting them.   That often happens in applied anthropology and it often is a recipe for disaster unless the new set of variables is accounted for and the successful programs in the other country modified to suit the needs of the population of the country or community they are currently dealing with.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Guest]

well said Chris G, well said...

[Acecombat 0]

@rufusmac:

Quote[/b] ]You clearly did not get the gist of my post... A tank in a combat zone?! Heaven forbid, call amnesty international!!

I got your posts gist's and it disgusted me no end to see how double standardized you are to palestinians , so now a neighbour a normal civilian street is a combat zone? Did the IDF came and politely tell everyone : ' Hey were coming in step aside '?

Those people there are resisting IDF's invasivness in their neighbourhood. I dont want a tank crawling outside my window knowing my son/daughter might wanna go outside and (god forbid) like a normal avrage life like every othr human being on earth. Why the **** was the tank sent in their ? Do you need to fight terrorists with Sabot rounds? He throws a bullet you pummel him with a Sabot or a Hellfire missle in a civilian area?

Quote[/b] ]These kids are not on their way to work or school. They are not living "life as usual"... they are standing in a clearly defined combat zone, and they don't look like they are running to escape it...

Who knows why they are their?

Maybe there trapped by tanks and IDF movement if they try to head towards their homes they might get levelled by a Sabot round falsely brought down as a 'terrorist'. If a tank came up with soldiers who are 'known' to be gungho and hav little or no value for my brethrens live i'd be doing the sam sticking with people who have the means to defend themselves. I dont wanna spend my life in a jail picked up by IDF on unknown charges of being a terrorist.

If you know where each and everyone of them lives and what his motives are then you must be one heck of a mystical person.

As i said your double standards are disgusting me no end and show why peace never is a possibility for the region in th interim because everyone has two sides one for themselves and the other labelled for the other. My fellowmate dies then its against human rights or something your fellowmate dies then 'war is hell' or some other bullshit ...typical two facedness and i hate it.

You can hav every luxury life can afford you and can live a normal free life while people on the other hand have to deal with such insecurity's , sickens me literally.

[Guest]

Quote[/b] ]I got your posts gist's and it disgusted me no end to see how double standardized you are to palestinians , so now a neighbour a normal civilian street is a combat zone? Did the IDF came and politely tell everyone : ' Hey were coming in step aside

Actually, sometimes they do.

For the last time, I am not saying that every palestinian killed by Israel "deserved" it.  Read the history of my posts to get a better picture of my "double standard" approach to the palestinians.  What I am decrying here is the LACK of a double standard.  The palestinian militants know that they can hide amongst their own people and when Israel attacks them, the civilians who inevitably die as a result only further enrage pal public opinion against israel, NOT the militants or terrorists who operate in civilian areas, like is shown in the picture.  There are no uniforms, half of them are wearing kuffiyehs and Baclava's even though they don't have guns.  They run around and throw rocks in the middle of a gun battle.  Then they complain that they were shot at...

Am I sorry for what happened to someone like Mohhamed Al' Dura?  Yes, because he was knowingly in the wrong place and tried to leave it.  Am I sorry for every last palestinian or peace activist who doesn't realize the TRUE dangers of a low intensity conflict and gets themselves shot?  Yes again, but only in the way I feel sorry for some poor fool who doesn't look both ways before he crosses the street.

For the FEW isolated incidents where Israeli soldiers targeted non combatants, I have no justification. For the majority of the casualties though; I see a malicious and morally inept tactic of the militants to draw international and local ire against Israel for shooting "at" civilians...

And @ Denoir

Quote[/b] ]The issue is not either children playing in the streets by their homes. The issue is the questionable wisdom of sending in tanks in an area where there are children playing.

Quote[/b] ]"When asked why he robbed banks, bandit Willie Sutton gave his famous reply, “Because that’s where the money is.â€

This is a chicken and egg argument.  The tanks go there, because "thats where the enemy is".  

Similar to the conflict over the Yalu river during the Korean War, where the mig hunters routinely violated Chinese airspace to shoot down enemy migs. Israel has no other way or place to attack these terrorists than in the villages and camps they hide in. Just on the fact that Israel sends in infantry and doesn't rely on a "shock and awe" air campaign says something about the value they place on human life. Even of the enemy.

[Bernadotte 0]

It doesn't matter who's idea it is that Israel should be one state.  The fact of the matter is that IT WON'T HAPPEN short of bloody genocide.   To allow Palestinians to become citizens of Israel would mean THE END OF ISRAEL as a Jewish nation period.    That goes against everything the state of Israel is founded upon which is why it won't happen anytime soon unless the Arabs already living in Israel (NOT THE PALISTINIAN TERRITORIES) side by side with Jewish Israelies surpass the Jewish population.  Then there will be trouble...

Calm down, Miles. (Section 3. §6)

I have not denounced a 2-state solution.  I've only tried to point out that the ultimate solution can not be dictated by Israel because the Palestinians still have a strong demographic advantage in doing nothing, while making more babies.  That's all.

I'm not sure where you get this notion that anyone is screaming and crying for a unified Jewish/Palistinian country.  I've only said that Sharon's unilateralism could indeed devolve to become similar to apartheid South Africa.  Otherwise, Israel would lose its Jewish majority.  You seem to agree with this, so I don't see the problem.  What the Palestinian Prime Minister said was merely in response to Sharon's threat to invoke a settlement on Israel's terms.

Arguements for one nation like you propose are simply not productive.  Those involved in the peace process who believe as you do and who are thick-headed and stubborn about it don't help anyone in that region.  It only distracts people's attentions from realistic solutions that stand a good chance of being achieved.

Calm down, Miles.

Did I call you thick-headed and stubborn when you insisted that Israel and Palestine are already 2 countries?  

(Even rufusmac knows they are not.)

Now please either show me where I've proposed or argued for a one-nation solution or stop putting words in my mouth.

The Bantustans had no international support.  Also it segregation there was along racial lines and not religious and did not have the highly sensitive religious context that makes the Israeli/Palistinian conflict a highly dangerous flashpoint for the entire world.

Would Palestinian bantustans have international support?

Would the problem be solved if every Palestinian converted to Judaism, tomorrow?