’)I’m really annoyed by the people on the right who simply accept everything Israel has said and done without a hint of skepticism. I’m equally annoyed by people on the left side who excuse away Hamas’ actions and pile on Israel.
But then, I’m on the disengage with the Middle east faction, so maybe I see things differently.
Israel has the right to defend itself but it annoys me that people don’t
say what this is.
It’s a MASSACRE and not defense.
It also annoys me that Cynthia Mckinney & Dennis Kucinich are treated as a joke
when they are the only ones worth anything.
disengaged is a good place to be when it comes to the I-P conflict. You piss off both sides, but that’s a good thing, IMO.
These kids need to be stuck into a UFC octagon and we all just walk away, leaving the cams running. Let’em duke it out, but don’t bother sticking around to watch–they’re not worth that much…
Again O-dub, this is such a myopic statement. Sure, it’d be nice to wash our hands of the conflict, but the United States gives billions of tax dollars to Israel every year, and has for decades. IMO, both the Israeli government and Hamas are idiots who actually prefer the status quo of violence to any long-term movement towards peace, but to say “Aw heck let’s just ignore it all” is, I hate to say it, incredibly ignorant.
But please, start a letter writing campaign to get your local congress-critters to stop all funding for Israel. I’m sure you’ll soon realize that both Dems and Republicans aren’t about to do that, for various complex reasons.
“Sure, it’d be nice to wash our hands of the conflict, but the United States gives billions of tax dollars to Israel every year, and has for decades.”
“But please, start a letter writing campaign to get your local congress-critters to stop all funding for Israel.”
Except we also fund Hamas through oil revenues generated by states hostile to Israel.
Maybe if the United States gave aid to Palestine in the form of roads, schools, hospitals, etc., then the Palestinians would have enough to live for that they would be unwilling to start fights they know they can’t win. However, I think it is the responsibility of the Arab world to do that.
Funny how they don’t seem to care about the plight of the Palestinians enough to help them find jobs.
What a mess. Has been a mess. And will continue to be a mess because
neither group wants to hear they are wrong. I suppose we have to continue
to give the peace process for these nightmares a chance. Will they listen,
will it last? Probably not. In the end they will just try to annihilate each
other because one has been marginalized and the other feels like they are constantly threatened. Neither are wrong I suppose, but all of it is magnificently tragic.
magnificently tragic.
Now that’s a good way to put it.
Oliver, I’m with you. It’s hard for me to have an opinion. Both sides have a right to exist and both sides are being huge children about it. Neither side is right or wrong. They all just need to chill the fuck out.
I was talking with an acquaintance “on the right” yesterday, and I mentioned that this is a really tough situation, with the outcome difficult to predict. His response was that the answer is in scripture. I assume that what he meant is the whole “Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ” thing.
So in the end there is no logic involved, just an invisible guy theory.
The conflict itself seems intractable and there’s plenty of blame to go around.
What chafes me is the amount of barnyard hokum that gets shoveled by stateside observers in the service of a political agenda.
Take, for example, the bogus story circulated by confused or dishonest commentors on the right this week that Israel is providing humanitarian aid to Gaza while Israel’s Arab neighbors sit on their hands.
Ahem:
It seems the popular version of the story has the facts exactly backwards. The aid is being provided by Israel’s neighbors, not the Israeli government.
Note: in an earlier thread, I wrote that the aid was coming from Jordan and Syria. That should be: Jordan and Turkey. Regrets.
To be clear, I’m no fan of Hamas. Not at all. But I’m not sure where this notion that we can “disengage” comes from, given the fact that the US gives billions in aid to a)Israel b) Egypt and c)Saudi Arabia, in the form of our desperate hunger for oil.
Not to mention Iraq, where we’ve basically established an Iranian/pro-Shia puppet state.
This is what eight years of a Republican administration will do to you.
Brutally messy. I’d rather the US didn’t pick sides, and possibly made an honest effort at mediation.
Material conquest 101. Prime real estate for the victors and ghettos for the losers. Now, if you offer reparations to Palestinians their corrupt leadership will likely confiscate it for their own nefarious purposes. Wealthy Muslims, like the sheikhs of Dubai, wont lend a hand by hiring them for any of their grandiose projects, and nobody else will take them in. Meanwhile 1.5 million Gazan descendants of war refugees remain fenced into 140 square miles of desert ghetto trying to eke out a living – that’s if they’re “normal/healthy” folks. If not, they live in fear, depressed poverty or join gangs and terror outfits. What a mess.
Why the hell are we involved again?
“Why the hell are we involved again?”
Because we spend billions each year to prop up Israel, among other things. And I think Israel has a place, but not without some sort of oversight.
Again, it’s pretty ignorant to assume we can just “let go” of a situation that we’ve pretty much estalished, for better or worse, over the past three decades (speaking as an American).
Israel is also on the forefront of Homeland Security tech, of which we are a big importer.
Page 552, The Shock Doctrine
“Homeland Security tech”
Fat dudes who didn’t graduate high school asking me to take off my shoes at the airport?
I keed. But only a little.
“Material conquest 101. Prime real estate for the victors and ghettos for the losers. Now, if you offer reparations to Palestinians their corrupt leadership will likely confiscate it for their own nefarious purposes. Wealthy Muslims, like the sheikhs of Dubai, wont lend a hand by hiring them for any of their grandiose projects, and nobody else will take them in. Meanwhile 1.5 million Gazan descendants of war refugees remain fenced into 140 square miles of desert ghetto trying to eke out a living – that’s if they’re “normal/healthy” folks. If not, they live in fear, depressed poverty or join gangs and terror outfits. What a mess.”
I think this problem would be solved by the end of the year if the Arab nations took some of their oil revenue and invested it in improving the lives of the Palestinians. Build roads, hospitals, schools that teach more than Antisemitism, gave them hope for the future. Hell, just hire Palestinians to do manual labour instead of importing virtual slaves from Southeast Asia.
However, if they did that, they would have to do the same for their citizens, and that would mean giving up their third gold-plated Bentley.
One of the lesson’s Israel learned from its failed war against Hezbollah in 2006 is that you do not allowed a well-armed militia in a neighboring state to develop independently of the government. Having seen Hamas take the first step in basically severing ties with the Palestinian Authority, Israel did not want to see a threat to its south like the one it faces to its north.
Now, they learned the lesson, but they forgot what happened last time they tried a pure military, and more to the point, pure air power approach. No terrorist group in history was ever defeated through air power alone. It takes a hard-fought ground campaign. When the surge started in Iraq, the U.S. casualty count shot up dramatically the first six months of 2007. But it did manage to achieve its limited aims. But Israel seems unwilling to do that – so they rely on highly inaccurate bombing campaigns instead.
I think this problem would be solved by the end of the year if the Arab nations took some of their oil revenue and invested it in improving the lives of the Palestinians. Build roads, hospitals, schools that teach more than Antisemitism, gave them hope for the future.
It would be wonderful if the Arab world did more to relieve the plight of the Palestinians. But why is it their special responsibility? Because the Palestinians happen to be Arab and (largely) Muslim? That seems tantamount to racism.
You could argue that it is a regional problem and must be solved regionally. Okay, but isn’t Israel also part of the region? And what of Israel’s legal and moral responsibility towards the people it occupies? Granted, Gaza is no longer technically occupied, but it has also been completely isolated by Israel since the settlements were dismantled. And one can’t really talk about conditions in Gaza without also considering the West Bank, since the Palestinians consider themselves one people, and any two-state solution (as unlikely as it seems these days) will have to ultimately unite Gaza and the West Bank.
Again, I don’t disagree that, in an ideal world, Arab governments should be more democratic and open, and their wealth used for the benefit of all of their citizens. But that would hardly absolve Israel of it’s own responsibilities and problems with regards to the Palestinians.