Israeli invasion of Gaza

[Jovial Monk]

No mantra, this was AFTER the UN had voted for partition and the state of Israel and the various Islamic shitholes started pushing their Jewish inhabitants out.

[TomB]

If the USA care so much for Israel give them California.

Actually, The Jews have always considered the "Land of Israel" to be their promised land and they would never accept somewhere else as a permanent home.


The big mistake in all of this, which can never be undone, was actually moving the Arabs out to make room for them. They should simply have said "There, there is your promised land. Go live in it, in peace with your neighbours, and if we hear a peep out of either of you we will smite you with a pestilence such as you have never seen".

[mantra.]

They should simply have said "There, there is your promised land. Go live in it, in peace with your neighbours, and if we hear a peep out of either of you we will smite you with a pestilence such as you have never seen".

I couldn't argue with that Tom - although I can't imagine it working. It's always about religion. There were some letters in one of the online papers yesterday that were funny. Some christians were commenting on the right of atheists to advertise on buses.

"What values guide the atheistic slogans to "sleep in on Sunday mornings" and "celebrate reason", and how does rationality justify indolence and ignorance? As to the latter slogan, I seem to recall that the French embraced a similar slogan before embarking on the worst atrocities of the Revolution.

Atheism was also central to the philosophies of Nazism and Stalinism"

Ho hum....

[Rainbow Moonlight]

Actually seems to me it was more the Brits than the Americans who encouraged the Jews in the notion of a homeland in this region- and in part due to a distinct prejudice against accepting them into their own community in large numbers.

However it is the US who speaks big for and supports Israel so openly so much of the time. On D and R today someone posted a story about Bush refusing to provide Israel with bunker buster bombs for Israel to go after Iran last year - odd story. Maybe he was just overcommitted militarily already. Or possibly didn't want to go down in history as the president that started a nuclear war.

[mantra.]

That's exactly right Rainbow, but once the first Israeli PM was appointed - all agreements, resolutions etc. with the UK, EU & UN went out the door. And it is only as the neo-conservatives gained more and more power in Washington that the US brought in the big guns for Israel. There are some powerful people with global influence mentioned in this 2003 extract. Judge for yourself how moral and reputable many of these men are.

The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel.

The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.

Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots – odd as it seems – in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard – edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) – acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html

Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.

[crazychemist]

Thinking about the root cause of the middle east and why everyone gives a shit.. is modern day terrorism & oil.
Geo-location is less significant due to modern tech.. ie planes etc etc..
The continued backing of oppressive regimes in these countries over the last 7 decades or so can be argued, is what brought us here.. increasing islamic fundamentalism, far spread human rights abuse and ultimately clash of civilizations "or whatever you want to call it".
I agree with the previous comments.

"The big mistake in all of this, which can never be undone, was actually moving the Arabs out to make room for them. They should simply have said "There, there is your promised land. Go live in it, in peace with your neighbours, and if we hear a peep out of either of you we will smite you with a pestilence such as you have never seen".

I would like to add. Making it a even playing field. i.e. no $3 bn per levels of military aid, and bugger all to the palestinians.. (after all they werent always the enemy, they helped britain prevail over the ottoman empire).
That particular point, is what created suicide bombing (and dont give me this bul***it, argument about suicide bombers can target military establishments rather than civilians, because anybody who has been to these countries will know that you cannot even take a photograph of the facility yet get close enough to cause damage.) furthermore the incompetence of the arab regimes, pushed people into no other alternatives, at least in their views.

Hamas, al qaeda etc etc were born out of those frustrations not to mention being backed by the U.S. of A.. Yes that is right Hamas was initially backed by the U.S. ie sheikh ahmed yasseen. and here we have it present day mess..Nothing can be solved without addressing root problems.

Until there is a shift from crazy evangelical southern christianity that belive the messiah will not return untill the land of david spreads from the nile to euphrates, and thereby there support. The islamic fundamentalist will always have grounds to recruit jihadis around the world, making this world a more dangerous place.. this crap will never stop.

What our governments can do, is to stop backing/supporting of oppressive regimes albeit, israel, saudi, tunisia (the guy that rules it is a frickin psycho), libya , & morrocca. (of course the list can continue) then moderate slices of these societies may have a chance to flourish, and provide us with more mediterranean countries to go on holidays for.

[JW Frogen]

Hamas has not only chosen war with Israel they are attempting to transform Gaza into a Talaban type horror, recently voting to legalise crucifixion as a punishment for those who “weaken the spirit of the people.”

Who in their right mind wants to see this group prevail either against Israel or even in their struggle with Fatah?

It only reveals the nihilism infecting much of the Western democratic world when they are confused as to who they should be supporting here, democratic Israel, attacked by Hamas or a feudal Hamas that not only openly wishes to exterminate an entire nation but seeks to send her own people back into the dark ages.

[mantra.]

Hamas has not only chosen war with Israel they are attempting to transform Gaza into a Talaban type horror, recently voting to legalise crucifixion as a punishment for those who “weaken the spirit of the people.”

I'll do a DT here Frogen. Can you please provide one credible site where this information is available? I wouldn't have thought Hamas had time to legislate anything at Xmas.

Why would they need to legalise crucifixion - maybe to legalise their slaughter by Israel? Hmmmm.

[Jovial Monk]

Apparently a sharia ruling re the crucifixion has been passed, but my google mainly brought up Hamas-hating blogs.

[Jovial Monk]

E.g. this one.