Israel pounds Gaza, death toll well over 100 and climbing

[no color]

Would you advocate Israel nuking Gaza until all 1.5 million residents have been vaporized in response to militant rocket attacks which hadn't killed a single Israeli?

Rocket attacks by Hamas terrorists in 2008 have killed eight people, six of them civilians.

I don't think anyone would argue that Israel has no right to defend itself. But I personally believe Israel's response must be proportional to the threat.

Proportional to the threat? Here is the threat ... a group of terrorists by the name of Hamas deliberately targetting innocent civilians with it's rocket attacks. Here is the response by Israel ... going after the terrorists wherever they may be hiding.

I bet you never looked at this from the side of the people on the recieving end, so let's flip this around.

Yes, lets look at it from the receiving end shall we. These folks had elected a terrorist based government. I guess they must know something we don't as we are right in the middle of the global war against terror and when you hunt down terrorists, there are no borders.

Israel violated the "truce" repeatedly. The rockets fired from Gaza were always in response to an act of violence committed by Israel. Israel also violated the "truce" by refusing to allow food and medicine into Gaza.

3,000 rockets and mortars were launched from Gaza into Israel in 2008 alone!

What should Hamas do in response to Israel's violence and mass starvation of 1.5 million Gazans? Their complaints about Israel's truce violations aren't considered newsworthy and have been ignored by the UN. In 60 years of war and occupation, Israel has never been held accountable for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they commit against Palestinians.

What should Hamas do? How could you even ask such a question? Hamas is our enemy, Canada and the US have both tagged it officially as a terrorist group, and as such they are irrelevant. How can anyone take complaints by a terrorist group seriously?

Should Gazans just shut up and starve in the dark?

They should ask for international help in rounding up anyone affiliated with Hamas in any way so they can rid their area of terrorists. If you want help, don't associate yourself with terrorists and don't elect any terrorist based government.

 

[einmensch]

Risus you are not educated you are indoctrinated.

 

[Zzarchov]

Risus you are not educated you are indoctrinated.

I normally wouldn't mind the pot calling the kettle black and would get a good laugh , but in your case I'm worried that would be a prelude to a burning cross on the kettles lawn.

 

[earth_as_one]

Pretty sad when people no longer have compassion or care about the suffering of others. I'm sure many Germans felt the same way about their Jewish neighbors during the 1930s. It the same way the world felt about Rwanda and feels about Darfur.

Gazans dig bodies from rubble as cease-fire begins
By IBRAHIM BARZAK and ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU – 3 hours ago

JEBALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) — For Palestinians searching the rubble of this devastated refugee camp, the mounds of concrete and metal hid all they desperately wanted and needed: the bodies of dead relatives, belongings and — bitterly — scraps of bombs now valuable enough to sell as recycled aluminum.

Destruction was everywhere on Sunday, in churned up farmland, dangling electricity poles, charred bodies of cars abandoned on pulverized roads, and broken pipes overflowing with sewage. The stench of rotting corpses, both human and animal, hung in the air.

For three weeks, Israeli airstrikes targeted Hamas militants who have been firing missiles at Israel for the last eight years, smashing much of Gaza's already shabby infrastructure and turning neighborhoods into battle zones.
The fragile cease-fire and first troops withdrawals on Sunday allowed families and medics to intensify the search for bodies — with more than 100 dead recovered Sunday, according to Palestinian health officials. The number of Palestinian dead now stood at more than 1,250, half of those civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fighting....

The Associated Press: Gazans dig bodies from rubble as cease-fire begins

Maybe this video might make you realize we are talking about people, not numbers.

YouTube - Gaza doctors tragedy caught on Israeli TV

YouTube - Gaza doctors tragedy caught on Israeli TV

The Palestinian doctor worked in Israeli hospitals on Israeli patients. He was a regular on Israeli television news. He was just going on the air with an Israeli news station when he got word his home had been destroyed killing three daughters and a niece....

At least the Israeli host showed something some people here on this forum lack.... compassion.

Here is how Canada's leaders view Israel:

Facilitating a turkey shoot
Dec 30, 2008

Linda McQuaig

On Israel's 60th anniversary last April, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised Canada's "unshakable" support for Israel.

At the time, this struck me as odd. It would be understandable for a prime minister to offer Canada's "unshakable" support for principles – democracy, the rule of law, human rights, etc. But for a country? A country is led by a government, and a government is always fallible. Why would Canada promise its unqualified support for any country?

Such unqualified support is particularly problematic when the country is locked in a bitter struggle with millions of people whose land it has held under military occupation for more than forty years....

TheStar.com | Opinion | Facilitating a turkey shoot

Not even Israel deliberately killing Canadian citizens or soldiers can shake Harper's support for Israel.

Harper stands by his comment on Israel's 'measured' response
MIKE BLANCHFIELD, CanWest News Service; PC contributed to this report; Reuters
Published: Tuesday, July 18 2006

Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered brief condolences yesterday to the families of Canadians killed in Lebanon, but has not asked Israel for an explanation for their deaths.

And while he offered more details, Harper did not back down from his comment that Israel's bombing of Lebanon was a "measured" response to Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers...

Harper stands by his comment on Israel's 'measured' response

Still no answers on bombing of UN post
Feb 21, 2008
Thomas Walkom

Politically, every Canadian death in Afghanistan is tragic. Supporters as well as opponents of the war mourn those killed. The dead acquire heroic status.

But Canadian Forces Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was not lucky enough to die in Afghanistan. Politically, his death two years ago in Lebanon is – to Ottawa at least – more embarrassing than tragic.

For Hess-von Kruedener was not killed by Canada's Taliban enemies. His mistake was to be killed by friends. A Canadian Forces board of inquiry has concluded that he and three non-Canadians attached to a United Nations monitoring mission were killed by a 500 kilogram Israeli smart bomb.

This wasn't your classic case of friendly fire, where a pilot makes a split-second decision and mistakenly attacks his own. As the board of inquiry points out, the bomb that killed Hess-von Kruedener was part of a seven-hour attack on July 25, 2006, that saw Israel lob 14 aerial bombs and 19 artillery rounds at the clearly marked UN post.

It also concluded that the lethal bomb was deployed after repeated UN pleas to the Israelis that they cease fire. At one point, the report says, a senior UN commander told his Israeli counterpart: "You are killing my people."

The board noted that Israel has acknowledged receiving these warnings; most notably one sent 40 minutes prior to the fatal bombing....

TheStar.com | Columnist | Still no answers on bombing of UN post

Here's a solution:

Arms embargo vital as Gaza civilian toll mounts

As the civilian casualty mounts amid continuing Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip, Amnesty International is calling for an immediate arms embargo to prevent more foreign weaponry and other military equipment being used to fuel the fighting....

Arms embargo vital as Gaza civilian toll mounts | Amnesty International

I agree with Canada's decision not to help Hamas. But we shouldn't help Israel kill Canadian citizens, soldiers and thousands of innocent civilians either.

 

[Cannuck]

At least the Israeli host something people here on this forum lack.... compassion.

I can't recall speaking to anybody on this forum that lacks compassion. I think you are misunderstanding their position.

 

[earth_as_one]

I should have quoted this first:

TenPenny
You're right, and quite frankly, I don't know why the North American press bothers to cover this at all.I don't care anymore, because there's little desire on either side to end this in any reasonable way. Yawn - Irsael and the Palestinians are killing each other. Is it 1977, or 2009? Dunno, don't care, doesn't matter, because it's not going to stop, and nothing we say or do will make any difference.

Yup! I can't figure out why so many on here have their panties all in a knot either.

 

[einmensch]

I normally wouldn't mind the pot calling the kettle black and would get a good laugh , but in your case I'm worried that would be a prelude to a burning cross on the kettles lawn.

You sound like a brain dead old lady reciting her senile mother's words. An open mind to you is unimaginable.

The poor people-they did not choose to live in no man's land --they were born there--

 

[Cannuck]

I should have quoted this first:

Doesn't sound like a lack of compassion to me...more like frustration.

 

[einmensch]

OUT of ten dead IDF
Israel says just five soldiers died in fighting, while four others were killed by friendly fire. Israeli soldiers are almost as effective as Hamas.

Gaza still has one Israeli captive, Lebannon still has both Israeli captives. Up until the last minute before Israel declared its cease-fire, Hamas was firing rockets.
GREAT victory Israel. The world sees you as a Rabbi in shining armour slaughtering women and children and grandfathers .

First Published 2009-01-17


How to Sell 'Ethical Warfare'

Claim moral superiority, intimidate enemies and crush dissent – Israel's media management is not just impressive, it's terrifying, notes Neve Gordon.

One of my students was arrested yesterday and spent the night in a prison cell. R's offence was protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza. He joins over 700 other Israelis who have been detained since the beginning of Israel's ruthless war on Gaza: an estimated 230 of whom are still behind bars. Within the Israeli context, this strategy of quelling protest and stifling resistance is unprecedented, and it is quite disturbing that the international media has failed to comment on it. Simultaneously, the Israeli media has been towing the government line to such a degree that no criticism of the war has been voiced on any of the three local television stations. Indeed, the situation has become so absurd that reporters and anchors are currently less critical of the war than the military spokespeople. In the absence of any critical analysis, it is not so surprising that 78% of Israelis, or about 98% of all Jewish Israelis, support the war.


But eliding critical voices is not the only way that public support has been secured. Support has also been manufactured through ostensibly logical argumentation. One of the ways the media, military and government have been convincing Israelis to rally behind the assault is by claiming that Israel is carrying out a moral military campaign against Hamas. The logic, as Eyal Weizman has cogently observed in his groundbreaking book Hollow Land, is one of restraint.
The Israeli media continuously emphasises Israel's restraint by underscoring the gap between what the military forces could do to the Palestinians and what they actually do. Here are a few examples of the refrains Israelis hear daily while listening to the news:
• Israel could bomb houses from the air without warning, but it has military personnel contact – by phone no less – the residents 10 minutes in advance of an attack to alert them that their house is about to be destroyed. The military, so the subtext goes, could demolish houses without such forewarnings, but it does not do so because it values human life.
• Israel deploys teaser bombs – ones that do not actually ruin houses – a few minutes before it fires lethal missiles; again, to show that it could kill more Palestinians but chooses not to do so.
• Israel knows that Hamas leaders are hiding in al-Shifa hospital. The intimation is that it does not raze the medical centre to the ground even though it has the capacity to do so.
• Due to the humanitarian crisis the Israeli military stops its attacks for a few hours each day and allows humanitarian convoys to enter the Gaza Strip. Again, the unspoken claim is that it could have barred these convoys from entering.
The message Israel conveys through these refrains has two different meanings depending on the target audience.
To the Palestinians, the message is one that carries a clear threat: Israel's restraint could end and there is always the possibility of further escalation. Regardless of how lethal Israel's military attacks are now, the idea is to intimidate the Palestinian population by underscoring that the violence can always become more deadly and brutal. This guarantees that violence, both when it is and when it is not deployed, remains an ever-looming threat.
The message to the Israelis is a moral one. The subtext is that the Israeli military could indiscriminately unleash its vast arsenal of violence, but chooses not to, because its forces, unlike Hamas, respect human life.
This latter claim appears to have considerable resonance among Israelis, and, yet, it is based on a moral fallacy. The fact that one could be more brutal but chooses to use restraint does not in any way entail that one is moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have razed the entire Gaza Strip, but instead destroyed only 15% of the buildings does not make its actions moral. The fact that the Israeli military could have killed thousands of Palestinian children during this campaign, and, due to restraint, killed "only" 300, does not make Operation Cast Lead ethical.
Ultimately, the moral claims the Israeli government uses to support its actions during this war are empty. They actually reveal Israel's unwillingness to confront the original source of the current violence, which is not Hamas, but rather the occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. My student, R, and the other Israeli protesters seem to have understood this truism; in order to stop them from voicing it, Israel has stomped on their civil liberties by arresting them.
Neve Gordon teaches in the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and is the author of Israel's Occupation, University of California Press, 2008. His website is israelsoccupation.info

 

[einmensch]

The initiative, approved at the Beirut Arab summit in 2002, calls for the normalisation of Arab ties with Israel in exchange for a total pullout of the Arab territories occupied in the 1967 war.

But Israel wants land not peace!

 

[Zzarchov]

The initiative, approved at the Beirut Arab summit in 2002, calls for the normalisation of Arab ties with Israel in exchange for a total pullout of the Arab territories occupied in the 1967 war.

But Israel wants land not peace!

Thats right, how peaceful were Israels neighbours in 1966? thats right.

If Israel wanted land not peace, It wouldn't have given away HALF of its land to Egypt (including oil fields) for peace.

History refutes you.

 

[einmensch]

Zz-I forwarded a map from 1918--Israel had already mapped out the land areas it now occupies. Israel refused peace so that it could continue to obtain Lebensraum for Jews only. Israel turned down recognition by all Arab states. Plain as your nose Zz.

 

[earth_as_one]

Doesn't sound like a lack of compassion to me...more like frustration.

A yawn is a sign of frustration? Explain please.

 

[Zzarchov]

Zz-I forwarded a map from 1918--Israel had already mapped out the land areas it now occupies. Israel refused peace so that it could continue to obtain Lebensraum for Jews only. Israel turned down recognition by all Arab states. Plain as your nose Zz.

Uh huh, well its recognized by Egypt and Jordan, both Arab states. Egypt even has a similar history, a colonial people (arab) pushing out the native inhabitants (coptics).

But its always the Jews fault isn't it Eichman?

 

[tracy]

A yawn is a sign of frustration? Explain please.

Have you ever heard the term compassion fatigue? I don't know if it's even a real term, but my friends use it. It's when you get so overwhelmed being exposed to suffering that your response is to detach. It's a coping strategy, because how much empathy can you spend before you are completely depleted, especially when you are completely powerless to help? Blaming the victim a bit has the added psychological benefit of letting people off the hook for helping. Think of a battered woman for instance. Some will say it's her fault a bit because she lets him hit her so that means they don't have to feel that bad or try to help.

According to my ex-boyfriend it's also the reason I would tell him to stop whining about stupid things because I didn't care.

 

[einmensch]

Born in 1886 as David Green (Gruen) changed his name to Ben Gurion Ben-Gurion "had a dream" to annex southern Lebanon to the "Jewish state", and to establish a Christian state north of the Litani River. At the beginning of the 1948 war, ------
What's ironic that this "awful" idea was precisely executed thirty later by Manahem Bagin and Ariel Sharon during the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon between 1982-2000.

Ironically, a Jew with Jabotinsky's caliber used Adolf Hitler as precedent to "transfer" the Palestinian people out of their homes. It should be noted that the atrocity of forcible expulsion ("transfer") was among the charges against Adolf Eichmann, one the architects of the Nazi Holocaust. The questions which begs to be asked is:
Isn't it anti-Semitism if a non-Jew (Goyim) uses Hitler as an example to make a point?

It should be NOTED, that when a "Jewish majority" in Palestine was not attainable based on Jewish immigration and natural population growth, Zionists advocated the use of force to ethnically cleanse and dispossess the Palestinian people. Click here if you wish to learn more about the subject.

Now Zzarchov go sit in front of your Baruch Goldstein shrine and admire your hero.

 

[earth_as_one]

Have you ever heard the term compassion fatigue? I don't know if it's even a real term, but my friends use it. It's when you get so overwhelmed being exposed to suffering that your response is to detach. It's a coping strategy, because how much empathy can you spend before you are completely depleted, especially when you are completely powerless to help? Blaming the victim a bit has the added psychological benefit of letting people off the hook for helping. Think of a battered woman for instance. Some will say it's her fault a bit because she lets him hit her so that means they don't have to feel that bad or try to help.

According to my ex-boyfriend it's also the reason I would tell him to stop whining about stupid things because I didn't care.

I'm sure compassion fatigue is real. I understand and accept your explanation.

Just being aware of human suffering is enough. For example, being aware of spousal abuse leads support spouse abuse shelters.

Being aware of what's going on in Gaza, and our leader's stand on this issue, tells you something about their character. I'm truly disappointed by Harper and Ignatieff.

I suspect Obama has been quiet on Israel for a good reason which will become clear when he makes his first speech. All I expect is that he acknowledge the facts and nothing more.

 

[Cannuck]

A yawn is a sign of frustration? Explain please.

One of the simplest ways of dealing with frustration is disassociation. I don't really want to get into a psychology discussion here. If you are interested, start a thread.

 

[Stretch]

I've been asked

I've been asked to keep my israel threads confind to the other israel threads that are on this forum, rather than start a new thread...thats all well than good.....I apologise if I appear anti israel or whatever, but I can assure you that if gaza was doing this to israel, I'd be on gazas arse!!
its not a jew thing or semite thing...to me anyway, its a humanitarian thing.....doctors are alarmed at the number of children they are working on with bullet wounds to the head.....coincidence?
will be interesteing to see who breaks this ceasefire...........
Anyway, if I find a news item on israel or gaza, it goes in the news forum...afterall, it is news!

I'm not racist, I hate everyone equally :lol:

 

[darkbeaver]

I hate you and everybody else too.:smile: