Sorry, but my tank got stuck on the Golan Heights.
But let’s get serious now: why haven’t I written anything yet on the skirmish between Israel and Gaza? There are two reasons.
First, I had been on holiday, and when I don’t have at least a few hours every day to read and analyze the news, then I prefer not to write at all. But then I notice that other commentators are less slow and immediately have a full understanding of everything as soon as they have seen a photo of a dead child (which might well have been killed in a completely different conflict).
Second, I don’t expect any meaningful debate. The same arguments like two years, five years or ten years ago will be exchanged. Two firmly hardened camps will attack each other with the same slogans that I have heard in all other discussions on Israel and Palestine since 1948. The particularly dim-witted one will seek attention by making Nazi comparisons. Nobody will change their mind just because they learn new facts. Nobody will pause and think.
Most of the current debates are so intellectually undemanding and unsatisfying, that war might indeed seem as the better alternative to settle disputes. At least there will be a victor in the end, and then there will be calm for another two years again.
These short Gaza wars are really only useful for one purpose: thanks to them, it’s easy to tell whom you don’t need to take seriously as a conversationalist, journalist or Middle East expert anymore. If someone ignores that a few hundred missiles have been fired from Gaza into Israel since mid-June 2014 but then screams “genocide” and “war crimes” upon the first response by Israel, he is a very selective pacifist. If someone ignores that Hamas hide their missiles in school and private houses and that Palestinians remain in their houses after the Israeli air force asked them to leave, she can’t very credibly discuss the responsibility for killed civilians. Those who use any normal military conflict to start a tirade against “Zionism” put themselves in the far right corner. And I still wait for the person who will provide me with the historical example of a state who didn’t try to defend itself militarily against a continuing missile barrage on its civilian population.
The Happy Hermit 
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You have a point but Israel seems to be losing the International PR war, over 1000 dead Palestinians in the last few weeks, 200 of them children but not a single Jew unless you count an elderly lady that had a heart attack which was probably brought on by natural causes.
The West is increasingly criticising Israel for it’s ever so ‘efficient’ response… it seems that being Israel the ‘Jewish’ State is no longer carte blanche to react or overreact as it likes.
Most voters in America and Europe are shocked by the numbers… This may override the feelings of guilt that the West has for WW2 and cost Israel dearly… we will see.
1. There have been more than one Israeli civilian casualties.
2. I never understand why Israel gets blamed when it has a better organized and more sophisticated defense system than Gaza has. Unlike Hamas in Gaza, Israel doesn’t want to have “martyrs” to display on the evening news, but it wants to protect its civilians and citizens.
3. I think it’s misplaced (not only) in this context to refer to the Israeli population as “Jews”. This is not a religious conflict. Between 15 and 20 % of the Israeli population are not Jewish. The Israeli Muslims, Christians, Bahai and atheists are threatened by Palestinian missiles as well, because Hamas deliberately seeks to strike civilian targets (like the international airport).
4. I don’t think there has ever been a “carte blanche” and again I don’t see what this has to do with religion. But which other country in the history of the world has been criticized for defending itself against hundreds of missiles being fired into its territory? The missiles from Gaza came first.
5. A response in war is efficient and justified if it stops the enemy’s attack. Nothing less needs to be accepted as an objective. As far as I know, Israel is the only country trying to warn the civilian population in Gaza of impeding air strikes, sometimes even sending text messages to the inhabitants of the houses to be hit. If Palestinians then put a lot of children as “human shields” into exactly these houses, they are to blame.
6. Would a war be better if the number of victims was even? There were also many more Soviet victims in World War II. This had nothing to do with who was right or who was wrong, but with the way the Soviet Union fought and with the (low) regard they had for their own people. We see something similar here.
7. I don’t think that many voters today have a “feeling of guilt” for World War II. Most of the people who started World War II are already dead. And again, I am not sure I see any connection.
“The missiles from Gaza came first”
Well, I think more we have a chicken egg problem. What came first? Missiles? Occupation? Jewish insurgency? British? The knights?
Whoever mentions only one of those things is biased and sees the conflict to easy black and white.
1. There have been more than one Israeli civilian casualties.
If Israel did not hold nearly six million Palestinians imprisoned under the most brutal and murderous military occupation by any so-called developed nation in modern history, there would be no Israeli civilian casualties.
Having said that, as an occupier there are no Israeli civilians – everyone is considered to be a part of the military force.
2. I never understand why Israel gets blamed when it has a better organized and more sophisticated defense system than Gaza has. Unlike Hamas in Gaza, Israel doesn’t want to have “martyrs” to display on the evening news, but it wants to protect its civilians and citizens.
This would be laughable if it were not so ridiculous. You do not understand why Israel, the occupier and coloniser armed with massive modern weaponry gets blamed for having a sophisticated defence system than Gaza???? Gaza is a concentration camp. It is a prison where nearly two million Palestinians live. They are the descendants of Palestinians driven from their homes and land by European Zionist colonists in 1947!
Gaza is a concentration camp. Concentration camps do not have sophisticated defence systems because, well, they are concentration camps.
Hamas is a political party with members inside the Gaza concentration camp. However, most members of Hamas and other Palestinian political parties are in Israeli gaols, generally without charge or trial.
Israel wants to protect its illegal and immoral occupation, colonisation and apartheid. Israel uses violence to maintain injustice, major, massive violence and the Palestinians use minimal violence to fight for justice.
3. I think it’s misplaced (not only) in this context to refer to the Israeli population as “Jews”. This is not a religious conflict. Between 15 and 20 % of the Israeli population are not Jewish. The Israeli Muslims, Christians, Bahai and atheists are threatened by Palestinian missiles as well, because Hamas deliberately seeks to strike civilian targets (like the international airport).
It is not misplaced in that Jewish Israelis rule both UN mandated Israel and Occupied Palestine. Non-Jewish Israelis are second-class citizens in an apartheid State. Your comment about the airport is an utter farce. I presume you eventually found out how wrong you were.
4. I don’t think there has ever been a “carte blanche” and again I don’t see what this has to do with religion. But which other country in the history of the world has been criticized for defending itself against hundreds of missiles being fired into its territory? The missiles from Gaza came first.
What it has to do with religion is the fact that Zionist Israelis believe Jews are superior and demand a Jewish majority. That is why they refuse justice to the Palestinians.
By the way, the missiles are being fired into Palestinian territory. The only potentially legal borders for Israel remain the UN mandate and that has never been tested in a court of law.
The missiles did not come from the Gaza concentration camp first. Israel has broken every cease-fire. I refer you to B’Tselem and Israeli human rights groups for the data on that reality.
5. A response in war is efficient and justified if it stops the enemy’s attack. Nothing less needs to be accepted as an objective. As far as I know, Israel is the only country trying to warn the civilian population in Gaza of impeding air strikes, sometimes even sending text messages to the inhabitants of the houses to be hit. If Palestinians then put a lot of children as “human shields” into exactly these houses, they are to blame.
What a terrible, sick, tragic joke. Israel has locked two million people into a concentration camp where there is absolutely no place to run or hide and then it warns people who cannot escape it is about to bomb them and their children. Utterly debased.
Children in these homes as human shields??? How did you become so brainwashed? These kids are living in their homes in the world’s biggest open-air prison. And human shields? Take a look at the Breaking the Silence website for statements from ex-IDF personnel detailing the use of Palestinian children as human shields.
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
6. Would a war be better if the number of victims was even? There were also many more Soviet victims in World War II. This had nothing to do with who was right or who was wrong, but with the way the Soviet Union fought and with the (low) regard they had for their own people. We see something similar here.
This was not a war. This was slaughter by a massively armed military against helpless imprisoned civilians. A quarter of those who died were children. You may have missed it but the world at large saw limbless, headless babies and children – a father cradling a toddler with the back of its head blown off; mothers cradling children with their intestines hanging out…. this was slaughter. And it was slaughter done in the name of Israeli occupation, colonisation and apartheid. Those children were dismembered to punish their parents for resisting Israeli military rule.
I am wondering if in all your travels you have been to UN mandated Israel and Occupied Palestine. Let’s hope that travel does ‘broaden you mind’ because your position on Israel lacks conscience, integrity and common human decency.
This is simply not true, and it sounds quite judaeophobic. Why is it so important that Jews die within this conflict?
Up to now, there were few Israeli civilian deaths (including the three boys) but
1. this is not to the credit of hamas; if someone tries to shoot me, it’s not to his credit if he is a bad shooter.
2. Additionally, it is simply a states duty to save its citizens/inhabitants from violence from inside (by police) and outside the state (by military); this is simply what a state is made for, not for the leader’s glory. A state which does not care about its citizens’ safety is no better than a criminal gang, and a king, president or whatever at the top of it is no better than a gangster boss. This is clearly not what Israel and its government want to be, and the consequence is priority A for Israeli citizen’s safety even before that of enemy civilians. Any state which deseves this name whould act like this rather than waiting for “enough” own dead civilians. I am convinced the US would prefer attacking, let alone Russia which responded an alleged Chechen terror attack with a bloody war without making anyone attack Russians in Europe.
28 Jews dieing from rocket/mortar attacks in the last ten years is a fact not an opinion
This comment rather confirms than disproves mine, for there is an obvoious and big difference between “28 Jews” or “not a single Jew unless you count an elderly lady that had a heart attack”. By writing the former is a fact, you automatically write the latter is clearly false and this is just what I wrote.
So we talk about 28 victims – civilian victims – which is 28 too many.
It was in the context of the latest recent attacks that no Jews have been killed compared to 1000 Palestinians including 200 children. 28 Jews over the last ten years is still a fact.
The imbalance was my point….
This is not a competition like a football (for the Americans: soccer) worldcup. It’s a war. “Balance” has no high priority in such a case. For a state which deserves this name, its own citizens’ safety comes first, it will not wait until “enough” of them have been killed, abducted, raped or whatever before it reacts. Enemy civilians are to save as well, but this has prio B.
No one would criticize or even condemn any other state for acting like this.
I found the article where I read that an old lady had died of a heart attack during a rocket attack, fact not an opinion.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.604437
I did not claim that the story about the elderly lady dying from a heart attack were false, but the claim that not a single Jew except of the lady remains false.
You are right of course but the rules seem to be changing. The PR War has different weapons. http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/07/24/israel-labelled-these-little-girls-terrorists-their-beautiful-response-made-me-cry/
Another battle won on the PR Battlefield…
“Total Israel fatalities over a ten year period of 28 compared to more than 200 Palestinian deaths in the last 2-3 week. (M. Ch. GR Editor)” (Now reads as 1000 Palestinian deaths).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-many-people-have-died-from-gaza-rockets-into-israel/5391457
That’s a weird PR battle where the side with the most fatalities wins. Such a view is inviting suicide bombers or the use of human shields.
I believe there has been a ‘soft spot’ for Israel, mainly due to Jewish influence in American/Western politics but the rules seem to be changing quite quickly….
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Candidly-Speaking-Obama-is-abandoning-Israel-369100
I think that’s completely wrong, and surely in most Western democracies there are far more Muslims than Jews, so that wouldn’t make sense.
If at all, there is a “soft spot” for Israel because it is a stable democracy with a free press, the rule of law, a free market economy and thus something which is quite rare in the Middle East. In fact, it’s the only one. We just have much more in common with Israel than we have with anti-Semitic and radical terrorists like Hamas.
As an occupier, coloniser and apartheid State Israel is neither stable nor a democracy. The press is no free and rule of law discriminates against non-Jews. Israel is one of the most corrupt nations and therefore does not have a free market economy.
But is “defending itself” a full and accurate statement of what Israel is doing? At what point does this imbalance in military power between the two come into play in deciding how one huge army can defend itself against a much lesser force.
Also, “defending itself” implies that what caused this situation is Hamas rocket launches, and Israel’s actions are secondary and responsive. But it’s not that simple. What caused the rocket launches? What about the part played by the conditions Palestinians live in effectively under Israeli rule? Can they say they’re defending themselves (ineffectively) and their right to decent standards of living?
Just as you say anyone who talks about Zionism displays their bias, one could say the same of anyone who reduces Israel’s part in the conflict to “defending themselves”.
1. There is no Israeli rule in Gaza. Israel left (and even forced all its civilians to leave as well) in 2005.
2. No, rockets against civilian targets in another country are NO self-defense against some standard of living. Seriously, can you tell me one other situation in the world where you would suggest that? Maybe Mexicans firing rockets into the USA? Or the Chinese on Taiwan? Or Mississippi on New York?
3. Looking at the timeline of events, it is obvious that Palestinians from Gaza (Hamas or other groups, but definitely somebody well-armed) started this conflict with hundreds of missiles being fired on Israeli civilian targets. Just because this was not that widely reported in the news as the Israeli defense, doesn’t mean that it can’t quickly be researched.
4. Self-defense does not need to be restricted just because one side is stronger. Self-defense may be carried out until the threat has been removed. I don’t think that referring to self-defense suggests any bias, because it is after all one of the fundamental principles in international law. No country can be forced to wait with its reaction until something more terrible happens. In fact, many other countries have defended themselves at far earlier stages than Israel has done this time.
“started this conflict with hundreds of missiles being fired”
This conflict did not START this year, or last year, or ten years ago. This is an ongoing conflict for many generations!
Again we are in a sad situation. When I see the news it makes me think ‘Israel, show mercy and fix it’. Maybe it’s time to change the Warden and prison staff at what’s been called the “World’s biggest open air prison”… Ken Livingston when he was London Mayor… I think.
With borders closed on both sides the prisoners are rioting. they claim the rockets are in self defence.
I see them as a ‘call for help’. They do have a human right to life and family. Only the hand that fires or helps to fire a weapon is guilty. South Africa became very ‘unpopular’ just before the end of Apartheid, I remember this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeDk6ZeGNnU
You know of any other country where people are “calling for help” by firing missiles into another country just because there is a border that they cannot cross without a visa or a permit (which is something quite normal outside of the EU)?
And what do you make of all the missiles being directed at Israel and none at Egypt, although Egypt closed the border to Gaza as well? That suggests that general hatred of Israel or anti-Semitism are the real reasons why Palestinians in Gaza started this war, not some kind of “civil unrest” (which by the way would have to be directed at Hamas itself).
Do you know of any other open air prison?
I know of many countries whose borders are closed, yes. In fact, it’s quite normal that country A doesn’t allow citizens of country B to cross the border into country A without a visa. I would say this pertains to the largest part of the world.
Well, your answer just shows your bias and ignorance and it seems it is not worth it to discuss is further. I am sure you know the difference between a normally closed border and an open air jail but you do not want to know about the difference.
If you do not expect any meaningful debate why are you starting it here? Why are you changing the year 1917 to 1948? Maybe you do not want to debate the Jewish insurgency in Palestine?
Such a debate is in fact very “intellectually undemanding and unsatisfying” as you correctly said.
As much the few hundred missiles must not be ignored it must not be ignored who is occupying land and is yearly building more and more settlements in that occupied land.
Who ignores those illegal occupations, the terrorist methods used 1917-1948 cannot be a credible discussion partner.
The problem is as soon someone wants to discuss ALL aspects of the conflict that someone is right away put in a war right corner.
I still wait for the person who will provide me with the historical example of a state who didn’t try to defend itself against a continuing occupation and settlement on its land.
There is no Israeli occupation and no Israeli settlement in Gaza and there hasn’t been since 2005.
An you really think the conflict is just about Gaza?
Nobody has been firing missiles from the West Bank.
According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israel remains an occupying power under international law. The United Nations has stated that under resolutions of both the General Assembly and the Security Council it regards Gaza to be part of the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”.
Israel withdrew all troops and even all civilians from Gaza in August 2005. I am sure you remember that.
If you quote “international law” on a lawyer’s blog, it would be nice to quote the relevant article of the relevant treaty, so that we could have a meaningful debate, although even I as a lawyer think that the legal aspect is the least relevant aspect in international politics.
In 2005 it was turned into a Palestinian concentration camp. Israel established and controls the Gaza prison.
On the night of 6 July, an Israeli strike killed seven Hamas militants. In response, Hamas’ militants increased rocket attacks on Israel
If you “increase” something, it must have been going on before.
I wish to speak about two warrying parties, called A nd B. A is a democracy with a conservative head of the government who is said to be a hawk. At the other hand, B is a dictatorship ruled by a movement whith a terrorist character and extreme Jew-hating attitides. They are at war with each other, B wanting to erase A.
But it can’t, because, at this point of time, A is militarily much stronger than B which ohnly leaves B to fire rockets towards A from which just a little part reaches its target and cause limited damage to material and men. A, at the other hand, bombs B massively causing a huge number of casualities including many civilians. It also prepares for invading B.
Not alone but together with its allies. I was indeed not talking about June 2014 and Israel and the Gaza Strip but about late 1944 and UK and the German Reich.
I have since met a nice South African or two…
Is it me or is there a reluctance to give any value or worth to the number of Palestinian, mainly civilian, dead now at 1200 (recent conflict for any hair splitters…) The numbers don’t lie.
If you think that there is not enough discussion about 1,200 dead Palestinians, you should go to a newsstand – any newsstand – and get a newspaper – any newspaper.
Numbers do lie, or at least those using them. For example do numbers conceal how may of these alleged civilians always end up at Hamas missile launch sites. They also don’t address the issue why Palestinians are rushing to sites whose bombing the Israeli Air Force announces in due time (with the goal of clearing these sites from civilians).
And still, I don’t see how numbers are relevant in war. Proportionality in war is a legal issue, not a mathematical issue. This is not a sports match in which a score has to be kept. Nobody would judge World War I or World War II or the War of Independence or the Korean War or the troubles in Northern Ireland by how many people on which side were killed. I bet nobody even knows these numbers without looking them up, and yet we all have a far better understanding of these conflicts than of the Israel-Gaza one.
Of course logic should prevail over emotion but no matter what the offence I find the death penalty rather too final. A multiple death penalty even more so. The numbers stop me in my tracks. The three teenage boys and then one other and now this. Vendetta always comes with tears. The numbers count the bodies of dead people…. I see dead people when I see the numbers but most of the Western media seem to think that it’s been justifiable homicide… that is changing, the numbers will see to that. I always have wondered about the imbalance in the numbers when it came to prisoner exchanges or releases in the past, one Gilad Shalit is worth 1027 prisoners. Why are 1027 worth less? Is it because they were convicted prisoners and Gilad was a free man? Big numbers again.
The British have fixed NI at least for now, looking back I felt strange and very angry even as a lapsed Catholic when all the IRA bombs were going off in London and NI.
The meme ‘Not in my name’ came to mind often in those days.
The prisoner exchange was 1 to 1027 because Palestinians had only 1 Israeli prisoner and because they demanded 1027 people in return. Again you are reading too much into numbers. It has nothing to do with “worth” or proportionality or mathematical relations, it was the outcome of a (lengthy multi-year) negotiation, not some moral judgement about the value of people.
How convenient that Israelis and their supporters continue to overlook the foundation of this conflict – the imposition of a European colony on Palestine. If Zionist European colonists had not occupied and colonised Palestine there would have been no wars.
If those European colonists had done what the US, Canada, Australia and every other nation founded through colonisation has done, i.e. create one state with equal rights for all, there would have been no continuation of this conflict.
But Israel was founded illegally and immorally, just like any other colony, on someone else’s land and the indigenous Palestinians have been dispossessed, murdered and brutalised for nearly seventy years in the name of a colony which believes members of Judaism are superior and must maintain superior rights to non-jews.
The Gaza concentration camp holds nearly two million Palestinians, give or take the culling which the Israeli military tastelessly calls ‘mowing the lawn’ and another nearly four million indigenous Palestinians are imprisoned in bantustans separated by Jew-only roads to Jew-only settlements and Israelis see nothing wrong with this atrocity, this apartheid, and wonder why the world at large is horrified at the human rights abuses carried out by Israel in the name of religious bigotry.
The Palestinians are prisoners. They are akin to the American and Canadian Indians in centuries past! The Gaza concentration camp is the world’s biggest open-air prison and equates with the Warsaw Ghetto where a massively powerful occupier is resisted by any means possible.
This is not about peace, this is about justice and this is a colonial war waged by European colonists against indigenous Palestinians purely because non-Jews are considered to be inferior and in the case of Palestinian non-Jews, even more disgracefully, sub-human.
No-one of integrity, intelligence or conscience can support such an abuse of rule of law, democratic principles, human rights and common human decency and that is why most people in the world utterly reject Israel as coloniser, occupier and apartheid State and support BDS and a one-state solution will be imposed on Israel within a few years as its economy is crippled as South Africa’s was.
p.s. I came across this while researching Albania.
This is a mixture of multiple arguments none of them is unchallengeable, so it is apt to respond to each of them by another comment.
There is really only one argument and that is the UN had no right to partition Palestine against the will of the people living there and European colonists had no right to establish their own state by force, on Palestine. Everything began and ends with that injustice.
Back in the time, this was all part of the Roman Empire. Everything after was illegal.
(Feel free to pick any other point in time that you want to be the only relevant one. This also works with most other countries.)
…by which of the European countries? The supposed ‘governor of European Palestine’ subject to which European government?
Colonisers do not have to come from a country. The colonisers were mainly Europeans although now many are American but the state was Israel was originally founded by colonists from Europe. Ergo, a European colony on Palestinian land in the name of a religion sourced in religious bigotry which held that Jews were superior to non-Jews and that meant indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians were to be forever held in subjugation as inferiors.
The entire concept of the foundation of Israel was sourced in religious bigotry.
p.s. the Zionist ploy that colonists must come from a country which is the coloniser does not hold water. And never did. African tribes have wandered around that continent for thousands of years, colonising (and killing) as they went. This is why you have pockets of groups in northern and middle Africa whose origins are in the south.
Colonisation is the imposition by a group on someone else’s country, i.e. the taking of land which belongs to someone else. Colonisation has been the way of the world and no doubt for good reasons, however, in recent history the wrongs of colonisation have been recognised.
Israel is the last nation founded in through colonisation and in 1947 people should have known better. We accept that nations like the US, Canada, Australia etc., founded between two and three hundred years ago, were founded in wrong and that the rights of the indigenous people were ignored. Apologies have been given, redress made and most importantly, equal rights as citizens given.
Israel must and will do the same. The only reason Israel has not done the same is because of the backward belief that members of Judaism are superior and must remain in control with all non-Jews subject to their rule. Such a position is untenable in a modern, civilized world.
Sie hier, Herr Todenhöfer?
Oh you are German. Yes, a lot of German colonists went to Palestine. In fact the Zionists worked with the Nazis to send a ship full of them to Palestine.
There were some Zionists (like Stern from Lechi) who had the unrealistic hope that they could move the Nazis to send the Jews to Palestine rather than killing them.
At another side, al-Husseini (a man who is still regarded as a Palestinian leader and hero by many Arab-Palestinians like Abbas) did not just move to Nazi Germany but became member of the SS in the rank of a lieutenant general. In 1943, he moved Himmler to cancel an exchange of 20000 German POWs and 5000 Jewish children, thus sentencing them to death. This collaboration is much closer than Sterns.
This is false in both directions:
1. Neither the US Indians nor the Australian aborigines had equal rights shortly after the independence of the states they lived in.
2. Arabs who are Israeli citizens have civil rights, up to being judges in the supreme court or being MK (member of Knesset).
The US was founded 300 years ago before such rights were given to even the working classes. Australia 200 years ago and ditto. Israel was founded as a colonial enterprise on Palestine barely 70 years ago when such rights had been recognised.
And in fact the UN resolution, illegal as it may have been, to partition Palestine, recognised those rights.
And for what it is worth when the English claimed Australia, Aborigines were from that moment, English citizens with whatever rights they had – not many for the poorer classes but they had them all the same.
Arab is a culture so if you want to talk Arab then talk Europeans for Israelis. If you want to talk Israelis then talk Palestinians. Palestinians who have taken Israeli citizenship are second-class citizens with inferior rights to Jewish Israelis. Don’t believe me. Check the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Amnesty International to find out what Israelis who are not Jewish cannot do. There is quite a lot beyond the tokenism of supreme court and Knesset where non-Jewish Israelis are vastly underrepresented, akin to apartheid South Africa – mere tokenism.
I cannot really judge how little or great is the discrimination of Arab Israelis but I do not take any of it face value. As anti-Semites claim that Jews were lyers, I don not believe that anti-Semites are lyers – I know it. The Nazis were the most prominent example for it but there are many others, e.g. the journalists in the Tuvia Grossman case.
Let me be very clear. I have nothing against followers of Judaism, nothing against any nationality per se: including Israeli, and the only thing I am anti is occupation, colonisation and apartheid. I don’t care who does it, Christian as happened in South Africa or Jewish as happens in Palestine or Zionist as happens in Palestine, I reject it utterly.
That applies to most people in the world of integrity and conscience.
When I reject Israel’s occupation, colonisation and apartheid and its appalling human rights abuses that does not reflect on Jews since most Jews do not live in Israel, never did and never will and Israel does not represent Jews or Judaism.
Your blathering about anti-Semitism is nothing more than Zionist propaganda, utterly without substance.
I read some words which gave me a different impression. “Israel was founded illegally” reads like “Israel shouldn’t be there”. This is not compatible with not having anything against Israeli nationality.
BTW: If this were a competition in being impolite, I have to congratulate you because, at latest by using the word “blathering”, you won it.
But this is not a competition in being impolite and in rejecting the opponents arguments as utterly meaningless.
Israel was founded illegally in the same way others have been founded, illegally and immorally – by stealing someone else’s country.
No, that does not mean Israel should not be there anymore than it means Canada or the US should not be there.
What it means is Israel should say sorry to the indigenous Palestinians, make redress and pay compensation, and do what every other coloniser has done, create one democratic state with equal rights for all.
Israel has no right to Palestine but it has a right to continue to exist, just not as occupier, coloniser and apartheid State. It will never have that right because that denies justice to the indigenous people of the land it has stolen.
I can condemn and do, the US for its illegal and immoral wars of invasion and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan but that does not mean I have anything against American nationality.
Equally, I utterly condemn Israel as occupier, coloniser and apartheid state but that does not mean I have anything against Israeli nationality.
p.s. only a fool would think that all members of a religion, race, nationality or any group are liars.
This is not true. Zionism is not a movement Jewish supremacism but against Goyish (may it be Christian or Islamic) supremacism. The followers oft Mufti (and later SS-Gruppenfuehrer, i.e. leutenant general) al-Husseini were, in the best case, ready to tolerate Jews under Dhimma, i.e. as a kind of better Helots who would have had to pay a kind danegeld for not being slaughtered, and they were also very ready to slaughter, mutilate and rape Jews just for being Jews. They were and they still are, as they showed in Europe, especially in France.
If Zionism is not about Jewish supremacism then what is the reasoning behind Israel’s demand that Jews are a majority and remain in control? That is supremacism. If you don’t believe in Jewish superiority then you create one state with equal rights for all.
The rest of your comment is meaningless. Followers of Judaism are not under threat and even during the Second World War most lived safely outside of Europe.
Easy to answer: In societies with non-Jewish majority, Jews were very often discriminated and sometimes persecuted. Even dhimma (still discriminating) did not guarantee that Jews could stay (a) there and (b) Jewish because it could be abolished unilaterally, e.g. under the Almohads in Spain which Maimonides thus had to flee. The sword of damocles of possible pogroms never really vanished among Goyish societies.
This even holds for modern societies where equal rights were guaranteed. Germany is one of the best example for it. Here it took less than a decade to turn free citizens to a kind of Helots without any rights, including the right to even live.
This makes your comment irrelevant because it is quarter-true at best. The 1929 Hebron massacre, for example, was before Nazism and outside Europe so the argument that Arab-Palestinians were completely innocent and payed for the German sins don’t hold. Additionally, today France is a dangerous place for Jews. Some are killed, some robbed and raped, uncountable are bullied and threatened just because they are Jews.
Tough. Many religious minorities are discriminated against. Muslims and Christians in India for example. That does not give them a right to steal someone else’s country to set up their own State.
And since more Jews live in the US than UN mandated Israel or Occupied Palestine, it is pretty clear they have no issues. Neither do Jews in the UK, Australia, Canada, Iran, and dozens of countries around the world.
Religions do not get land rights.
Ironic really, Palestinians are bullied, raped, killed, robbed and denied justice because they are not Jews and you expect people to accept a sob story about a few Jews having a hard time.
You say Israel’s religious bigotry is justified because some Jews, sometimes were discriminated against?
Ridiculous. All religions have been discriminated against. It should make people more aware that it is wrong. No group has a right to treat others badly because some members of their group were treated badly.
The bigotry these days is against Muslims but that gives them no right to treat others badly.
The history of any religion is pointless. What matters is now.
Bollocks France is dangerous for Jews. Zionist propaganda.
The rest of your comment is meaningless. Followers of Judaism are not under threat and even during the Second World War most lived safely outside of Europe.
And even if it were true that does not give Jews in UN mandated Israel and occupied Palestine the right to commit war crimes and human rights atrocities.
I never justified bigotry, I justified that Jews wanted to found and want to preserve a Jewish state where it is guaranteed that, as long as it exists, you will never be persecuted because you are Jewish.
Of course, there are many countries where you are neither persecuted but, as interwar Germany shows, this is not guaranteed.
Tell it to French Jews who were already attacked for being Jewish. Tell them that what their suffering was just “Zionist propaganda”. Why shouldn’t I reject any of your arguments in a similar manner, just calling it “anti-Zionist propaganda” or “meaningless”, instead of arguing at all?
A Jewish state is a theocracy. It is backward. And the problem is not necessarily a religious state for Jews the problem is you have no right to force one onto Palestine.
Jews live safely around the world as citizens of dozens of countries, including by the way Iran. And they always have done.
The experience of some Jews under the Nazis gives the religion no right to persecute others and to steal someone else’s country.
At the latest, one should stop even reading he comment here. It’s a common strategy in the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish warfare to equalize Israel to Nazi Germany; it’s very popular among German Jew-haters who search a way to trivialize or even justify the shoah. And, of course, it has nothing to do with truth.
In a concentration camp, there were not “prisoners” who can leave it whenever they want, perhaps to another state the are citizens of at the same time, like Hamas leader Mashaal. Furthermore, concentration camps did and do not provide the possibility to terrorize their neighbourhood by some rockets or mortars which do kill civilians however imprecise they still might be.
Israel is associated with Nazism because Zionism is fascism like Nazism and it considers people inferior because of their religion.
No-one justifies the atrocities committed by the Germans or Japanese in WWII but no-one justifies the atrocities committed by Israel over the past 70 years either.
Many Jewish Israelis are bigots. Not only do they consider non-Jews inferior they consider Palestinian non-Jews to be sub-human. The Nazis thought the Poles and Romanies were sub-human and you wonder why people associate Zionism with Nazism.
This is the face of Israel:
https://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/good-jews-roam-through-jerusalem-attacking-palestinians-screaming-death-to-arabs/
The link leads to a fiercely anti-Israeli site. Why should it be more trustworthy than the Liberatión and the Associated Press in 2000 when a young American beaten up by an Arab mob because he was Jewish and protected by an Israeli policeman was mistaken for a young Palestinian beaten up by the policeman? I don’t trust it. Of course, they might be telling the truth or, more exactly spoken, a part of it.
For any Jew screaming “death to Arabs”, there are at least ten Arabs screaming “death to Jews”, and this will hardly be mentioned by the site you posted the link of.
Many people are fiercely anti occupier, coloniser, apartheid Israel just as they were fiercely anti the Nazis. For the same reasons.
You can hardly blame the Palestinians for being upset with the people who have stolen their land and who hold them imprisoned denying their rights.
Jewish Israelis wanting to kill Palestinians are condoning violence in the name of occupation, colonisation and apartheid.
The English invented concentration camps. It is where civilians are concentrated and imprisoned by military forces. Ergo, Gaza is a concentration camp. And why should Palestinians leave their own country even if it is a prison?
There are many Jews who say what I say and even a few Israelis. Nothing to do with Germans.
The rockets are fired for the same reason Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto attacked their occupiers! It is a fight to defend themselves and free themselves.
You also should mention Turkey, also founded by colonization as the Ottoman empire. To be fair, during the longest time of Ottoman Empire, religious or ethnic minorities had as many (or few, respectively) rights but Turkish-Islamic predominance however was sacrosanct. During the foundation of the Turkish Republic, many Greeks who had always lived in Anatolia did not get the same civil rights but simply had to leave.
Any state founded by colonization did so? No, it’s not true. The Maya are still marginalized in parts of Latin America, and so are the non-Muslim minorities in now Muslim-ruled countries of Africa. Israel, on the other hand, is said to have equal rights which unfortunately does not mean that there were no discrimination in everyday life or also by authorities (as it happens in many countries including Germany, let alone US where you are more likely to be shot by a policeman if you are black). Arab Israelis can and do serve in Courts or in the Knesset. Some – as you do – might call it tokenism and claim that Israel were a pure apartheid state but there are so many lies about Israel that I have a good reason to doubt it.
I simply do not believe it. I already don’t believe Arab Israelis really don’t have equal rights, but even if so, those equal rights would not calm down fierce anti-Zionism as long as Jews have equal rights.
@ Andreas,
The Roman Empire is irrelevant. Actually the past is irrelevant. We can only deal with the now.
The imposition of a European colony on Palestine was wrong but here is where we are at. We now recognise colonisation as a wrong and recognise the rights of indigenous people.
The only reason that an issue remains is that Israel has refused to create one state with equal rights for all as everyone else has done, and has set up an apartheid state which denies justice to the indigenous Palestinians and ruthlessly kills them if they resist.
That cannot and will not be allowed to continue. Israel can remain but not as an apartheid State. The Palestinians will be free and since Israel made two states utterly impossible, that means it has to become a democracy and share the land between coloniser and indigenous with equal rights for all.
If Israel does not do this willingly, like South Africa it will be forced to do it. World opinion quite rightly is on the side of the Palestinians because theirs is the side o justice.
It is untenable that any nation should so subjugate its indigenous people just because it considers them inferior in the name of religious bigotry.
@4 October 2015 at 17:02
The Warsaw Ghetto was a bolted part of a city with miserable living conditions but still not a concentration camp. But if we temporarily accept this argument, we have to note some differences:
# The Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants did not attack the “Aryan” part of Warsaw. All they fought against were the German SS troops who had come into the Ghetto to take them into the real concentration camps. They wanted to survive or at least sell their lives as expensively as possible rather than give them away for nothing. In contrast, those who fired rockets on Israel simply want to kill as many Israelis as possible, regardless who they are.
# When Non-Jews entered the Ghetto before its destruction in 1943, this was more dangerous for the Jews because the enterers had come with a view to mistreat or kill some of the Jews. In contrast, we will not see Israeli gangs visiting the Gaza strip to kill Gazans for the lullz.
This is the “human rights” agenda of political Islam:
http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5098.htm