The question of the day is asked by Crimson Politics: “Israel has once again attacked Gaza, and once again the media frenzy is jumping all over it. Displaying videos of dead Palestinians, interviews with Palestinians who experience the bombings, investigations of Israeli videos. My question is why isn’t there as much attention to the Qassam rockets being fired by Palestine, or if it’s not news worthy, then why is the Israeli attack on Gaza news worthy?”
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The answer is, much like our movie driven society we like watching star wars, but how much fun would it be to watch a guy shoot a couple rockets when you can watch thousands of pounds of weapons.
I’m trying… trying… to give media the benefit of the doubt that they are not siding with terrorists.
I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the news stations.
However, the reason for the apparent ’siding with terrorists’ may be because of the condition Gaza is in, with its shortages of food, medical supplies, poor infrastructure and services. Gaza is a pity story, even though their government really is the cause of this whole conflict.
But with the way the media is covering the story, I’m not surprised at all of the protests occurring all over the world. I listen, however, to the voice of reason which states that Hamas caused it and I shall not pity them for their losses too much.
The media is siding with the Palestinians? What are you crazy? All I’ve heard for the last few weeks is about the rocket attacks. Yet a few as 5 or 6 Isrealis have died during this current fight. And over 230 Palestinians have died.
That’s right 5 versus 230. And those 230 were killed by a modern army and by a country. The 5 were killed by a faction of Palestinians. NOT by a government and certainly not by a modern army.
The ONLY way wars end is for your enemy to decide to stop hating you. You can do this by pulverizing your enemy, or you can do that by honorable negotiations. But making your enemy hate you more, will only make more enemies.
1) 200 of them out of 230 were indeed Palestinian Hamas Security forces. Civilian casualties exist, but unlike Hamas which targets civilian locations, Israel’s target is Hamas not the Palestinian people. Because they know that Israel killing civilians hurts Israel alone.
2) Hamas is the government, so technically those terrorist attacks, which were committed by Hamas, were an act of war.
3) 5 versus 230. Well in 9/11, only 3000 Americans died, but in Afghanistan around 3700-5000 Afghani CIVILIANS were also killed by US bombings. Does that mean you are against the Afghanistan war too?
That was news as well btw, the Afghanistan War, the difference is, no one condemned the US. Everyone condemned Bin Laden, the root cause of the problem.
Same with Israel-Hamas, Hamas is the main root cause of the problem, if there was no Hamas, there would be no conflict.
4) You’re right about one thing, you can either pulverize your enemy, or negotiations. War is a negotiation. When a child disobeys their parent, the parent punishes, the child will probably do it again, the parent disciplines once more, the child may do it several times, but will eventually realize that he is the problem and will stop hating the parent.
Eventually the Palestinian people will realize that the terrorism IS the problem and that the only way they can survive is by stopping the violence. This begins by getting rid of their own violent gangs such as Hamas.
Very interesting analogy between the parents and Israel Crimson Politics. But i’m afraid this analogy is neither appropriate nor moraly decent in this case. One would have to assume the existence of a maternal love on the Israelis’ part towards Palestinians, and an incapacity to make their own decisions on what’s good or bad for themselves on the Palestinians’ one.
I hope Crimson Politics and every reader can see here the tragic lack of human empathy in such a reasoning. The various numbers,statistics and calculus when it comes to the human toll, speaks volume about one’s emotional state of mind when dealing with this region’s crisis.
I certainly do not agree that my first nor only option with my kid disobeying me is physical violence, be it a simple light slap on the hand. One would be well advised, in my opinion to reconnect with one’s inner child to better understand one’s kids, and find alternative courses of action first, before relying too heavily on physical confrontation as suggested by Crimson Politics!
But to achieve just that, each party involved needs to reconnect with its own sense of human dignity and humanity. And i’m not sure that any party yielding any substantial power leverage in this region is able nor willing to do just that.
And to go back to your analogy Crimson Politics, unfortunately kids do end up sometimes hating their parents, and too often for justifiable reasons. Ask lawyers and judges at juvenile courts.
Terrorism is indeed one of the root causes of the crisis we’ve been facing in the Middle East for decades. I’m just sorry to see a fellow Republican being so partial to the definition of terror. A Qassam rocket falling on a civilian’s house is terror indeed. But having nothing to eat,nor medicine,no roof nor protector is also terror to Palestinians.
The analogy of a “child vs parent” relation is in my opinion a bit arrogant as I fail to see why would Israel have the pretentious title of being the “parent” of a Palestine “child”.
I would have prefered a “neighbor vs neighbor” relation in this particular case.
Now try to picture this: Mustafa is living on a land that his grand-parents bought a long time ago, then a new neighbour shows up on the land next door. His name is David. Now David has expansionist ideas and sends his children onto Mustafa’s land and year after year, David’s children move Mustafa’s fence in order to reduce Mustafa’s land to the point where Mustafa is told by the settlers that he and his family have to move out because they don’t even own the house no more. What should Mustafa do ? Mustafa tried to complain to David but David’s reply was that the land in question has been given to him by God !!!
Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkmm0Ag4S5w&feature=related
So, again, what should Mustafa do ?
What would YOU do ?
Robert look at the map of Europe.
Germans were forcefully expelled in their millions from Poland and Czechoslovakia after WW2. They fought, they lost, they were kicked out.
While it is unfortunate that this happened, nobody in Germany insisted in refusing them a new home and keeping them in refugee camps on the promise that their lands would be reconquered.
The Palestinians have repeatedly fought and lost wars against the Israelis. Why should they be treated any different from the Sudetenland Germans? Why should Mustapha get privileges that Dieter doesn’t get?
The root of the problem as you explained Robert is Jerusalem which is considered holy by all holy religions. Palestinians defending the land they were living in all along turning into a terrorist fight is another story though.
Nothing is more important or holy than an innocent human’s life. Land wars are all over history and this is very natural (I am not saying right though) because we are human beings. However when you turn this defense into offense, you are as guilty as the attacker. It is no longer important who started this first but just the continous loss of innocent lives remains.
I am not defending any side here and loss of civilians is my only concern (either from Jewish or Palestinian side, either 5 or 230).
There will always be land wars, it is up to the leaders (or so called leaders like Hamas in this case) to minimize collateral damage. Israel attacking civilians will never give Hamas the right or the excuse to continue to use human shield in the name of God. This has nothing to do with God or Islam. This is barely clash of powers, who will control the region. What Israel does can never justify Hamas’ actions.
Islam allows us to deny our religion when we are in threat of losing our lives. What does this tell you? It is very simple for me. Nothing is more important than a human being’s life, either Jerusalem or any other piece of land (as holy as they may be). These so called Muslim leaders using religion as their excuse to increase their presense in the region will always cause more harm than good. This is not how you defend your land.
@Bruno, nowhere did I say physical punishment, I said punishment. Obviously, when grounding doesn’t work, when talking doesn’t work (both of which are tried by Israel, economic punishment and negotiations, both of which refused by Palestine), then it becomes physical force.
If your child thinks drugs are cool because of his friends and you try to teach him that drugs are bad, and it still doesn’t work, he keeps doing drugs, what do you do? Send him to military school probably? Punish him more heavily? You’re going to escalate. The child will hate you more, but eventually he will realize he was wrong, whether it is in 20 years or 1.
@Robert
Neighbor vs neighbor is incorrect. The Palestinian land is not their land, it became “their land” when they conquered it from the Ottomans during the Arab revolts, and it was British territory because they consented to British rule helping them fight the Ottomans, even though the Ottomans treated Palestinians with tolerance, their greed got in the way.
Now Israel conquered the land. It is not Palestinian land anymore unless they win a war. Continuing a lost war is worthless they will only make the starvation, war, and suffering worse. No one will do anything, they need to understand that there is no hope in recovering their land. And from defeat they must realize that they have to do exactly what Israel wants to survive.
While war is tragic, the Palestinians are not innocent. Just like they slaughtered the Ottomans to take the land, they have been slaughtered by someone more powerful that took their land, a land which Israelis lived there for many years before the Ottomans and the Palestinians (they were kicked out too remember?).
The correct way to determine who owns the land is through war, and obviously now we know Israel is the new owner.
Hamas is pure evil, they torture and kill their own Palestinians, they use them as shields. Anyone who defends Hamas or condemns Israel for defending itself has 0 knowledge of what is going on in the region.
And hey, I am not even Israeli so that goes to show you that I am not just biased.
To Crimson Politics:
Starvation and thirst is physical punishment. Not to mention lack of medical attention and electricity, especially in these cold winter days. (in some army field’s books around the world food deprivation and subjection to extreme temperature is called torture or interrogation under duress as you please). In my book and i think in any decent human being’s mind this is physical punishment. Furthermore, punishing civilians for the deeds of a few is called collective punishment. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions (not sure in the turmoil we face in Gaza what is the relationship between the people of Gaza and the armed faction of Hamas, and neither does anyone of us here i guess). In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.
Furthermore, you persist with the parents-child analogy so allow me to be blunt: Israel is not the Parent and Palestinians are not children (no matter what one think of their political maturity or lack of, or their grasping of geopolitics).
I would also argue that your knowledge of the region’s history lacks the subtleties of the Middle Eastern culture and environment when you say: “The Palestinian land is not their land, it became “their land” when they conquered it from the Ottomans during the Arab revolts” .
I won’t go into details but at one point there was in this region a consensual Caliphate (the more culturally appropriate term for what here in the west we call the “Ottoman Empire”) to which Palestine ( Philistine in the biblical scriptures) was a full and willing member until it decided to split when the last Caliph lost its moral and political grounding in the eyes of the muslim world community it lead. It’s very often what happens when an empire departs from the principles and creed that often brought them to power and becomes corrupt. And this revolt for independence happens with the help of a great man, Lawrence of Arabia, that believed in the promises made by the then British Government to give the Palestinians a free state called Palestine . Anyhow, this is not meant to be a lesson of history but rather a cultural and historical clarification necessary for the understanding of the region’s predicament. So this Holy Land to so many people on Earth went through the many wars and battles of succession.
You do have a point indeed: “Now Israel conquered the land”. I find your choice of word very insightful as to your mind set and approach on the conflict: it is deliberately belligerent and warlike. And i agree with you that if one embraces this perspective, Israel is this land’s rightful owner for the time being. And the suffering brought upon its own people,by Hamas or Fatah, is a sin on which the Palestinians ought to ponder.
But let’s not forget once more the many lessons of history: David and Goliath, the British or Soviet defeats in Afghanistan, or the US one in Vietnam to name just a few recent ones. Many a war has been lost by the most powerful and mighty contender. Call it the Hand of God or else, it is a lesson taught in every military academy around the world. And i’m afraid that with your mind set and rhetoric, the wars and atrocities will go on. Unless we decide to take into consideration both peoples’ humanity and quest for dignity and respect.
Because if Israel is today’s winner, it’s certainly not the battles on the airwaves nor the birth rate among people in the region that will guaranty them long term victory or survival.The Jewish people is over 5,000 years old. Israel is only 60 today. Short term vision has never benefited any nation.
Furthermore taking sides the way you and too many people in the west do Crimson Politics, and allowing ourselves to be dragged in this region’s emotional dysfunction and imbalance is not helping them, is not helping us.