Anyone noticed there is a war going on?

I am quite surprised that not a single TT soul has posted about this. If it had been the Israelis waging war against the palestinians the pinko liberal sympathisers would have been all over this. Replace the Israelis with Hamas militia and no one says a word. They kill off all the resistance in Gaza, parade around in balaclavas (obviously they don't have the ball to stand behind their actions in public) and act like a bunch of barbarians.

Is TT sooooo biased? What will the apologisers say about this now?

No but Hamas were elected democratically to the Palestinean cabinet and now the US will only provide aid when there is a cabinet excluding Hamas. Is that the way it is supposed to work... are we only democratic when they elect the people we want...

The EU supports this as well and quite frankly I think it is illegal. How many countries would not be in existence today but for the actions of so called terrorists?

OG I certainly have noticed this story. My take on it is how it fits into the Americans' war plans for the wider Middle East. I still say watch out each new moon. Actually the date of this conflict is just at the present new moon if you didnt know.

Anyway I think this is an OG windup; the fighting between Fatah and Hamas is basically a civil war and I think if you really follow the news it was precipitated by Fatah after Hamas won the elections in 2006. The US is just against Hamas because it's ideaology is Islamic.

Well the French Indian war was bunch of crap also IMHO.

Lame troll, OG. Hamas has never changed their position ("There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad") and is still a terrorist organisation in the eyes of the US, EU, Canada and Japan. They're banned in the neighbouring country of Jordan as well as Australia and the UK. Go read up on them and find me something defensible about them, because so far all I've seen is their suicide bombing, their attempts to build another theocracy, their Mickey Mouse rip-off which tells kids every morning how great it is to kill Jews and other infidels, and their calls to attack Israel's allies, including the US and UK.

woof.

OG, I can't really be arsed attempting to debate with (mostly) a bunch of IT geeks who couldn't distinguish between their arses and their elbows... and besides, I'm going to be mostly offline for the next week at an exhibition (just off to the fit-up now). I can't truthfully claim I'm going to miss the 'I'm-alright'-Jack' or the 'It's-all-a-one-sided-equation' bores. So, fuck it. I'll continue following the news from as many angles as possible, and you wallow in your safe European home. Enjoy.

(From here, my bold). This 'civil war' is made in America.

Another quote, this time from former UN Middle East Co-ordinator Alvaro de Soto's leaked end of mission report to the UN Secretary General (before the US-backed Fatah faction fighting Hamas was defeated):


Link (PDF), my bold.

Does this mean that when all the Palestinians are dead we can call it a holocaust, or has the trademark already been taken?

Not much time before I leave now, but has anybody been following the ton of stories relating to the anniversary of the USS Liberty 'incident'?

According to Ynetnews, the Israeli company supplying fuel has stopped selling in Gaza except to the power station, and border crossings have been closed. Link.

Collective punishment, we've heard of it.

One of my favorite quotes of late from Danny Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the UN: "We live in a world where when Christians kill Muslims, it's a crusade. When Jews kill Muslims, it's a massacre. When Muslims kill Muslims, it's the weather channel. Nobody cares."

Well, you have to acknowledge Gillerman's abilities. Somebody who could pass off as much bullshit as he can to the institution he attempts to constantly undermine and get away with it with his target audience should be commended. However, let's get back to that nasty little "D" word - Democracy. Like them or not, Hamas are the democratically elected government. Whatever anybody else does to prevent them taking that role, the fact that they won a clear majority in an election means that they are the democratically elected government, and as the democratically elected government, one of their roles should be to protect their sovereign nation - Palestine, and one of the first things they have to protect it against is definitely internal - Fatah, a totally useless puppet. However, I suspect that certain outside parties will do anything they can to stop that, no matter how much more blood they bathe in. I told you before Genie, you can keep up the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth crap for as long as you want. It won't bring any peace, and let's face it, it takes two to tango. Israel claiming innocence in all this is less and less tangible to more and more people. There's even talk started in the USA that AIPAC sponsorship of any candidate could become the kiss of death to their political aspirations in 2008. Your time playing this nasty game is fast ending. Time to let Palestinians determine their own democracy. Time to withdraw back to the pre-67 borders. Time to sue for a peace. And by the way, you are not wearing any clothes.

Until Friday.

You have a very flexible definition of democracy then, Sin. I guess anything will do as long as the right culprits, which with you is always and no matter what Israel, can be blamed with whatever the Palis are doing to each other.

I don't find opening war with a minority party very democratic, even if you have won the elections. Even if you think that they're "totally useless puppets" (an empty statement you can't even start backing up with facts). I don't find throwing captured prisoners of war off of tall buildings very democratic, even if were, by chance, a legal war against people who aren't part of a security force of your own aspiring country. I don't find organized ransacking of the parliament building in Gaza, nor looting of Muhammad Dahlan's mother's house and houses of other Fatah members and their families, nor use of hospitals as military bases, denying citizens access to them, nor killing people on the streets because of how they look (no beard = not islamic => death sentence on the spot) - all of those I do not find very democratic.

Living in this country, I'd expect you to know the difference between being elected in a democratic process and being democratic. Should I clarify the difference for you?

But for people like you I guess all the details don't really matter. It's Israel to blame, even if it hadn't fired a single shot in this inner war. It's just fall back to the old cliches. Eye for an eye? What are you talking about? Even Olmert isn't stupid enough not to know that intervening in this civil war is not a smart thing to do. But you can't think beyond the regular boxes you're used to.

It indeed takes two to tango. But if one makes it clear, in words and in deeds, that once you're in his arms he'll do anything, stomp on your feet, kick your shin, slam his knee into your balls, judo-flip you on the ground, whatever he can to send you home from the disco, that doesn't make two. I'm sure if it were your political party governing Israel, you would sell your soul to a terror organization whose ultimate goal is the destruction of the your own state, and who is not very picky about how he does that. If the Palestinians have chosen a representation which does not want peace with Israel, because it does not want Israel to exist, who are we supposed to make peace with? Or are we just supposed to reward Hamas for getting into power? Jesus. Two to tango. What are you talking about? Hamas had made every effort possible to convince Israel that disengagement with the Gaza strip and withdrawing to the 67 cease-fire lines in the strip was a big mistake. And now you suggest we do the same thing in the West Bank? So they could shoot their missiles into Tel-Aviv? Why don't we just sell them Scuds instead?

Time to get your facts right. Time to know the sides involved. Time to talk peace with people who want to talk peace with you. And by the way, you're using empty saying as if they make you sound smart.

Hamas lost my support when they started jumping up and down with joy at news of the two planes flying into the Twin Trade Towers. What is happening now in Gaza could be a good thing if it isolates Hamas more. Maybe Israel forces could even ally themselves with the Wset Bank Fatah to work against Hamas leading to a comprehensive security plan for the region.

Do you blame them? After all the pain and suffering they have experienced over the years from American backed and funded Israel, to get one back like this would no doubt cause these people some excitement.

Yes. I don't gloat or do the happy dance when anyone innocent dies, no matter who they are or where they're from.

If a group are democratically elected, and then torture and murder all their opponents, strip the country of assets, rape all the camels, and snub the USA they were still democratically elected. I don't know what tree Genie is barking up, the distasteful things Hamas has done changes in no way the fact that they were democratically elected in free and fair elections.

This all makes a joke of the US line. We love democracy, we'll support deomocracy in the Middle East. Which really means. We'll support the right democrats. If you elect the wrong people we'll make you pariahs while continuing to cosy up to despicable dictatorships becauase we like them, and they sell us oil.

Of course Hamas are a dangerous bunch of religous fanatics. However Fatah that they replaced while maybe not being religous lunatics, are super corrupt, even by some impressive yard sticks of corruption, and its their sickening corruption that drove the Pealestinians into the arms of Hamas. Hamas is many things but is admired for its low level of corruption. Sometimes religion has its uses.

Its really sad for the Palestinians that they have to choose between assholes, and jerks.

EDIT
I did a happy dance when Saddam died. While it may be distasteful to see people dancing after 911, Americans seem incapable of understanding the deep resentment their policies, in particular the right kind of democracy policy generates. Maybe some agent orange deformed children were dancing in Vietnam. I certainly wouldn't criticise them for that.

You reap what you sow, and frankly America has sowed so much shit along the lines of "He's a bastard but he's our bastard" that hatred from unfairly treated populations is to be expected.

Can you please point out where there is a contradiction? So many people seem to think there is 'hypocrisy' on the side of the US/Israel for this, but that is only due to their underlying assumptions and not the actual facts.

There is no contradiction to believing that any group of people should have free choice for their representation and still believing that your government should have free choice with regard to whom they conduct their affairs. In other words, Democracy is fine, the Palestinians are free to elect who they want, and the US is free to not conduct business with an elected government if they want. There is no contradiction between the two points. People who think there is only think so because they believe the US is required to engage with all governments... this is not the case.

In other words, I'm perfectly free to boycott a particular company, but that doesn't mean I believe Capitalism is defunct.

See the difference?


Do you honestly not understand the difference? I’m being serious here now... can you truly not understand the difference between being pleased at the death of someone who personally committed unspeakable acts and murders, versus the death of 3,000 civilians going to work?

Seriously, are you really trying to compare the two? In your mind they are the same?

I didn't. Killing is wrong. Period.

It is not America per say but Jewish Americans you are talking about here. Just like Robert Maxwell giving to Israel all his wealth and the pensions of the UK Daily Mirror employees. The Irish Americans were also the ones funding the IRA, this only stopped when the Oklahoma bombing happened. Gerry Adams was on a fund raising tour of the US at the time of the explosion. He had to curtail the trip fast when listeners to radio stations that he was visiting phoned in to ask if this is the sort of thing the money is being used for.

Maybe it is the American government if this site is true.
http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm

Exactly. I'm sure there are a lot of private Jewish American citizens donating to Israel, and probably a lot of Christian organizations too who believe that "god" gave the Jews the land so it belongs to them regardless, but the US government itself funds Israel with a lot of money each year. It gives them more money than it gives almost any other country, which is strange when you consider Israel is meant to be a first world country.

So why is the American goverment giving one third of its foreign aid to Israel?
Is America being controlled by the Jews?

Israel is America's watchdog state in the Middle East.

It isn't a Jewish lobby in the USA, it's a Zionist lobby.
Zionists like to keep the two terms mixed so they can handily accuse anone who is anti Zionist of being anti-Semitic.

Yes, it's the Jews that control the media, and meet together in secret to coordinate all Jews together to control the world. Read more here.

EDIT:
Yes, a lot of anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. At its heart, anti-Zionism is the view that the Jews are not a people, and they do not deserve a homeland in which to realize their national aspirations. This view makes them different than any other people in the world, hence I think this is racially biased and therefore anti-Semitic.

Publicly extolling the virtues of democracy, organising coups against elected governments, refusing to deal with others and supporting non-democratic governments looks pretty hypocritical when it's all done by the same country within a couple of years.

Also missing from your absurdly reductionist analysis is the fact that the US isn't simply refusing to engage with the Hamas government, it's actively punishing the people who voted them in by trying to starve them into submission.

So if someone would just do everyone a favor and eradicate Israel, Hamas and Fatah would be dancing in the streets together like shiny happy people. You learn something new everyday...

EDIT: When you think about it for a second, actually they would, but it would make things a little harder as they wouldn't have someone else to blame for their own problems.

All this stuff seems believable especially when one sees the control the Jewish have over the film industry. But then if they control the world why could they not prevent or stop the Holocaust?

I agree with your first sentiment , I take issue with the second - deserve should have nothing to do with it. I also don't think that Jews or any other race should have a fundamental right to any particular country - for example I think Sharia law is an abomination - just because some idiots think that its a "Jewish/Arab/Christian" country does not mean that citzens must obey the religious creed of that land.

Israel is tiny also - it's about 1/4 the size of Ireland - to be perfectly plain I think that the Jews made more of a go of Israel than anyone else ever could have. They should get it on merit alone.

parnell - if as you say 'deserve' has nothing to do with it, then how does 'merit'?

I think nationalism is bollocks but I support peoples' right to self-determination.
But that isn't the raison d'etre of Israel.
Zionism represented in the past certainly a minority opinion amongst Jews and I think it is pushed now as a phoilosophy
to bolster imperialsm and the interests of certain political classes.

If people have a "right" to a homeland and state, when is Israel going to stop hindering the creation of a viable soverign Palestine?

@hams

Deserve should have nothing to do with it from a racial point of view , however as a collective bunch of people (and I believe Israel allows its Arab citzens to vote so the Arabs there deserve some credit too) they have more than earned their right to stay.

I have a close friend - Palestinian/Canadian Christian - she's very anti-Israel too - I understand that - they have used very heavy tactics - they should certainly be made to account for their actions - even war trials should be considered - but if so then the Arab leaders must be treated likewise.

the one thing I find really confusing is the idea that the U.S. should go along with another government simply on the basis that it has been elected democratically. If people democratically elect something that goes against U.S. policy then I think they have every right to not support the country.

I wouldn't say I support the U.S. government and all of their policies however I don't think all Americans do either. However they are dealing with the consequences of democracy and so are the people in Palestine. I think the lesson to be learned is think before you vote.

The US are backing a coup by a group which was rejected by the Palestinian electorate. This isn't just not supporting democracy, it's actively subverting it. Coming from the same government which attempted to portray the invasion of Iraq as part of a general policy of encouraging democracy in the Middle East, it's hypocritical in the extreme.

It's actually supporting the coup?

@ Wheel

If I may ask you a question - if say Lebanon were electing a government from a party which had one simple platform - the extermination of Israel - should it be accepted as being legitimate if elected democratically?

While your last argument is no doubt correct , democratic murderers are still murderers ( I include Mr. Sharon within this).

Parties advocating the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from Israel/Palestine have been involved in governments of Israel. These policies if enacted would break international law. Yet the governments were still recognised by the international community.


Link, my bold.

Are you sure the coup was started by Fatah? I think it was the other way around. And again, the fact that you were voted by a majority does not give you the right to open attacks on the minority party, this is against any notion of democracy I know, i.e. representation of minorities etc. I think you have your definitions wrong.

Seriously, that is laughable.

So the Tourism Minister of one country advocates moving a population...

and that, in your mind, is morally equivalent to:

The majority party in one government advocating the death of all citizens of a country.

No wonder these debates are useless.

Although I find Eilon and his bunch of lunatics deplorable and would never even consider sitting with him at the same table, forcible expulsion is not their agenda. They are advocating some kind of expulsion by will. A dodgy notion on any account, but it's not loading people on trucks at gunpoint, as your own quote seems to make clear.

In my book Jews are not a people...it's a religion with people from many nationalities following the bollocks.


And I agree with this, they deserve a homeland no more than buddhists or christians do.

@ thefirelane

OK, show me where Hamas advocates the death of all citizens of Israel. Let's not forget what forcible expulsion is: it means that [some] people who refuse to go will be killed.

@ Genie

That was the first reference I could find quickly. There are other parties who have had members of the Knesset and/or ministers who've been less coy.

Sorry, I must have missed the part where the rockets they fired at civilians were filled with puppies and bubble gum. What exactly do you think Hamas means by ‘the obliteration of Israel’?


No genius, look at the word. It means if you don't go, then they force you to. You don't get a choice... you are picked up and moved. You might note they 'forcibly expelled' Israelis recently... There were people who resisted and were not simply killed.

For all the apologies I hear about the Palestinian conflict… to me it comes down to one simple question: What would life look like for the Palestinians if there were a Palestinian Ghandi?

from article 7 of the Hamas convenant:

"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O slaves of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

Were the election results in the Palestinian territories ever contested as being unfair, biased, manipulated or anything that suggested the elections were anything other than a reflection of the attitudes of the people there openly asked for and freely given? This BBC article is a pretty simple summary of Hamas' aims:


So, they're not nice but they were elected. Can we be surprised that Hamas followers are pissed off if the West then only deals with someone who wasn't elected?

having big differences with israel and zionism does not of course equal being allied with funadentalist racist nutters like Hamas.

Source?

FYI Israel is a nation state. It could be dissolved without a single death. Example: Czechoslovakia no longer exists, in its place there are two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.


I've edited my comment to be more accurate. Many people would die if the policy was enacted.

it says so in the Hamas covenant. Try reading it, you might learn something.

wheel.

http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

(nope, it is not from the daily mail)

As I posted above:


Calling for the obliteration of Israel is not the same as

Sorry wheel, your nitpicking just doesn’t hold up. It is simply dishonest to draw out possible political interpretations of possible solutions that comply with Hamas’s stated goals… while simultaneously ignoring the massive amount of hate filled anti-Semitic propaganda they flood the general population with.

Also, what about my second point… that it is beyond stupid to compare a tourism minister with a majority party?

On second thought… don’t reply. This ‘debate’ is useless, I’m leaving (edit: this thread). Have fun kids, the weather is too nice outside. (even though I’m stuck inside )

My point is still valid: If there were a Palestinian equivalent of Ghandi advocating peaceful resistance... there would be a Palestinian state in no time. Why isn't there? Who is really causing the problems in the region?