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Gotta call bull on that.
What happened after Israel abandoned Gaza in 2005? Before the blockade? What was radicalizing the population then?
What is it you Hamas sympathizers want Israel to do?
Ask Isreal.
I have some guesses that hold merit, but I cannot claim them as fact. I already stated a couple possibilities.
Do you think I'm a mind reader or something? Get real.
Gotta call bull on that.
What happened after Israel abandoned Gaza in 2005? Before the blockade? What was radicalizing the population then?
What is it you Hamas sympathizers want Israel to do?
No kidding.
things were far better for Gaza when Israel was there.
why the is tha tso hard to believe, to be honest its common sense.
When Israel is the one denying basic aid and the main oppressor, its going to be seen as worse than hamaas. Mostly because Israel always does everything in the most oppressive violent manner possible.
But that means nothing to you, I bet you think they've never faulted even once towards the palest. And we know how impossible that is for any nation.
I have a strong question for these adament supporters, are you getting paid to spread this propaganda bs and pretend you're buying into it?
Because right now Israel is a leach. Its not a two way relationship, we're the only ones giving and its hurting us right now.
To stand behind something hurting us to this extend only shows disloyalty towards ones own nation.
You know, I can't honestly say that their blockade has been successful, but I do think their biggest mistake was leaving Gaza in the first place.
You two speak for Israel like theyre something more than what they actually are.
There is nothing special about Israel. The only remarkable thing about Israel is that it has incredibly disproportionate influence with the world's only superpower.
Beyond that, nothing to report. It is not a beacon of...anything. Its just another nation in a world littered with 3rd world Nothings. Israel could be gone tomorrow and you wouldnt know the damn difference.
Here's a link for DR, who thinks Israel contributes nothing to the world.
http://www.imninalu.net/Israel-Arabs.htm
I've also read somewhere that the GDP of entire Arab world is about equal to the GDP of Spain.
I must have missed where DR said that Israel contributes less than Arab countries.Here's a link for DR, who thinks Israel contributes nothing to the world.
http://www.imninalu.net/Israel-Arabs.htm
I've also read somewhere that the GDP of entire Arab world is about equal to the GDP of Spain.
I would actually think he feels the exact same way about Arab countries as he does about Israel... but I'm sure he will let you know either way.
I'm still missing where he mentions Arabs at all...
the point of the Darrins troll is not to question its logic.
7 Questions for Defenders of Israel's Inhumane Siege of Gaza
The Gaza blockade has nothing to do with Israel defending itself.
June 7, 2010 |
Apologists for the brutal siege of Gaza base their defense largely on a single, spectacularly dishonest argument: that Israel is only trying to keep arms out of Gaza -- arms that Hamas might use against Israeli civilians.
It’s a red herring of monstrous proportions, made more pernicious by the brutal effects of the blockade it supports. It’s dishonest because people around the world are not outraged by the idea of Israel keeping weapons out of the hands of Hamas. The entire world (perhaps aside from the United States and Israel) is appalled by the gradual strangulation of the people of Gaza -- young and old, innocent and guilty-- under an intentional man-made humanitarian crisis.
It’s imperative that people of good conscience not let Israel’s defenders get away with this bait-and switch. Israel’s “right to defend itself” has nothing to do with the moral outrage caused by the blockade. But it is nonetheless becoming the center of the debate.
In order to keep the focus on the real issue, here are seven questions for those who continue to claim the siege is about Israel’s security. If you encounter such an argument, just concede the point that Israel has every right in the world to check incoming containers for weapons, at least for the sake of argument, and then launch right into these Columbo-style questions. They’re impossible to answer. (Unless otherwise noted, this is the source for the following info).
Impossible-to-Answer Question #1: What’s the connection between a hungry Palestinian population and keeping weapons out of the hands of Hamas? I know Israel says it’s letting in enough food in to prevent a humanitarian crisis, but UN officials have called the situation "grim," "deteriorating" and a "medieval siege." A bare minimum of 400 truckloads of goods needs to enter Gaza per week, and an average of 171 get in. According to the World Health Organization, one in 10 Gazans suffer from “chronic malnutrition,” and the UN says six in 10 Gaza households are "food insecure."
Question #2: What changed? I mean, the Gaza strip has been under Israeli occupation since 1978, and in that time Israel has always prohibited the importation of weapons. Hamas has been around since 1978, and has always been an armed enemy. So if it’s all about security, why is it that Israel started preventing 75 percent of all manner of imported goods coming into Gaza only after the election of Hamas, a result rejected by Israel and the international community?
Question #3: Is Israel afraid of some sort of deadly sweet-and-savory weapon? Because I know it has, at various times, prevented chocolate, jam, sage and coriander from coming into Gaza. Just wondering what Israel’s security has to do with Gazans’ flavoring options, you know? Or are you saying that people who don’t have access to French fries, dried fruit -- or fabric, notebooks or toys for that matter -- are less likely to become terrorists?
Question #4: Israel attacked Gaza’s main power plant in 2006, and it won’t let the Gazans bring in the parts needed to restore its output to the previous levels. The majority of houses in Gaza experience power outages of at least eight hours per day, but some have no juice for as much as 12 hours a day. So, you know: Is Israel worried about rechargeable weapons of some sort?
Question #5: So, Israel “has not permitted supplies into the Gaza Strip to rebuild the sewage system,” and Amnesty International says that up to 95 percent of the water in Gaza isn’t healthy for human consumption. There isn’t enough power to run the desalination and sewage facilities, so significant amounts of sewage are seeping into Gaza's coastal aquifer, the population’s main source of water. Help me understand what Israel is defending against, here? Some sort of frozen ice-missile technology?
Question #6: How does barring the export of allgoods from Gaza keep weapons out of Gaza? Am I not getting what the words “out” and “in” mean? The World Health Organization says, "In the Gaza Strip, private enterprise is practically at a standstill as a consequence of the blockade. 98 percent of industrial operations have been shut down.” Not sure how further impoverishing Gaza’s already poor population makes Israel more secure -- help me understand?
Question #7: If it’s about keeping weapons out of Gaza, then why won’t Israel allow in medical equipment, spare parts and the building materials necessary to rebuild the health-care infrastructure that was devastated in the 2008 war? The World Health Organization says the blockade has "accelerated the degeneration" of Gaza’s health system. Is the idea that keeping the health-care system down will make people too weak and infirm to pick up a weapon?
These questions are unanswerable because the blockade of Gaza is about keeping goods from flowing in and out of Gaza. Push them on their answers. Are they saying it enhances Israel’s security because people who are jobless, hungry, poor and in bad health may have less will to resist? That’s the definition of collective punishment, a serious crime since World War II, when the world reacted with revulsion to the collective punishments meted out by the Axis powers to the populations of the territories they occupied.
The argument that Israel is only keeping weapons out of the hands of terrorists is not a minor distraction. As I wrote last week, the Israeli government is an occupying power that exercises “effective control” over Gaza. Some have argued that Gaza is an independent en y at war with Israel, and the Israeli Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Israel “had no commitment 'to deal with the welfare of the residents of the Gaza Strip or to allow unlimited amounts of goods and merchandise' to pass through, but only vital and humanitarian goods."
But outside of Israel it’s not a serious claim. According to the United Nations, “Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem [are designated] as Occupied Palestinian Territory… that definition hasn't changed." The United States government, Israel’s closest ally, says unambiguously: “West Bank and Gaza Strip are Israeli-occupied with current status subject to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement… permanent status to be determined through further negotiation; Israel removed settlers and military personnel from the Gaza Strip in August 2005.”
As an occupying power, Israel does have the right to keep weapons out of Gaza. But it also has a legal responsibility to safeguard the well-being of the civilian population. This is why the whole narrative of keeping rockets out is such a insidious lie.
The suffering in Gaza doesn't make Israel any safer. As the progressive pro-Israel group J Street noted, “Israel is a world leader in the monitoring and border control technology necessary to ensure weapons are not moved across the border into Gaza.” It added: “with fewer soldiers and resources assigned to enforcing the current blockade on non-military items, Israel could more effectively devote its energies to detecting and closing the tunnels through which Hamas is currently shipping arms.” Israel claims that just about any aid could be "diverted" to Hamas, but as the BBC notes, aid groups working in Gaza "have stringent monitoring systems in place."
For supporters of the siege, the value of the defense argument is simple to grasp. Intercepting weapons is a military objective. In international law, an occupying power has broad leeway in the use of force to accomplish military objectives. The siege of Gaza is, and always was, meant to crush Gaza’s economy, impose severe suffering on the population and ultimately make it impossible for Hamas to govern. The Israeli government has not hidden this fact. As J Street put it, "Israeli officials have repeatedly characterized their blockade policy in the following terms: ‘No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.’" When the siege was first imposed, Dov Weisglass, an adviser to then Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert, explained, "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."
The blockade’s objective is political, not military. It’s a collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza (approximately half of whom are under 18 years of age). It is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. It’s a serious crime. And the world is calling for Israel to bring it to an end, not to stop intercepting weapons.
People who know what has happened to Gaza over the past 3.5 years consider the weapons argument a kind of tragic joke. As Lindsey Hilsum, the international editor for Britain’s Channel 4 put it, “Somewhere in Gaza, someone may once have tried to fashion a missile from a chicken hatchery, a goat, a bunch of coriander and a fishing rod stuck together with jam.” Israel’s kept all of those goods out of Gaza, with the intended result of making the people miserable. Strangling the Gazan economy, making eight out of 10 people dependent on international aid groups and making sure the residents can’t get their hands on tea and coffee isn’t making Israel one bit more secure.
Hey dumbass, did you read his questions on notice that they're no questions at all, but either make no sense or already awnsered. Nevertheless, this guy has not demonstrated he's any sort of weapon's expert and he's wanting to buy his case at whole value as to why Israel is blockading goods.
Does this guy not believe that HAMAS is a terrorist organization and that Israel has good legitimate reasons to inspect weapons because the country is ran by a .. .. Terrorist organization. It's not as if it's the Baath party.
Also for the simple fact that he commits a logical fallacy by trying to appeal to authority by citing the UN's oppinion who is very much as political in it's declarations as any sovereign state.
And his question about if it's really about weapons inspections why don't the Israelis build clinics. That's like asking if you're all about abstaining from alcohol why don't you cut out swearing.
But nm, you never were a serious thinker here, nothing but the biggest butthurt forum nanny.
Oren said Hamas has rejected the "snack foods" and other items that were moved to the acceptable list. Guess they don't see the same value of crayons that CD does.
Maybe Hamas was inspired by Obama's health regulations.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177989
Some highlights:
Hamas could insure the full opening of the Gaza crossings by releasing Gilad Schalit, the captive soldier’s father, Noam, told visiting Latin American and European parliamentarians in Jerusalem on Wednesday...Noam Schalit told the parliamentarians that a German-brokered proposal to swap 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails for his son has gathered dust for six months, because Hamas has refused to approve it.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza could be relieved in a few days if Hamas would approve the deal,” he said...He charged that Hamas has held his son in violation of international law and ignored calls set out in the UN’s Goldstone Report on Gaza, which stated that Gilad should be free and that pending this release, he should be allowed visits by the International Red Cross...The European Parliament this year called on Hamas to release him and a similar resolution is likely to be passed by the United States Senate, he said. Germany has been heavily involved in trying to mediate a deal, Noam added.
Still, “We are not sufficiently satisfied” by the international community’s reaction to his son’s kidnapping,” he said.
Factoid one: Hamas is a former client of Israel.
Factoid two: The USA insisted the political ban on Hamas be lifted, Israel reluctantly lifted the ban, to promote "free elections" and what happened?
Oops, Hamas won.
So what do we do?
Recognize the the winner of a fair, free election?
No. We refuse to recognize it..
Last edited by Winehole23; 06-10-2010 at 02:43 AM.
Then Hamas shoots off a double-assload of very inaccurate rockets, killing a few people.
Then Israel kicks the out of them, after failing miserably yet, inflicting considerable pain, in Lebanon, and decides to punish Gaza indiscriminately with a blockade covering all manner of non-military and frankly essential goods. The which between states would be an act of war, but which in an occupied territory is merely a security operation in which 1200-1400 Gazans probably perished, about half of them known hostiles (to err on the liberal side.)
Last edited by Winehole23; 06-10-2010 at 03:25 AM.
Free elections in the occupied territories and Egypt ain't a good idea, y'all. It wasn't all that good an idea in Iraq.
OTOH, we might be well advised to let Afghanistan pick its own now. We've ed it up monumentally, even if we win, whatever that means..
In Iraq we frankly got down too hard on the Sunnis, extirpated them diligently from government, and allowed the Iranian based DAWA and SCIRI parties to take over.
We should have let *some* of them continue to run the government in Iraq under our tutelage, without Saddam, instead of letting it be brazenly looted by the people, within the more or less plain sight of US troops.
JMO.
Time to GTFO of Iraq and Afghanistan.
With utmost celerity, IMO.
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