Israel

[Uncle Albert]

I agree.

There are women in the Israeli army too.

The thread title is the best part about this thread.

[davieG]

Perhaps we should change it to boyos that would confuse them. Although bozos is probably more appropriate.

[Head Honcho]

I would put good money on Ultra having a George Galloway poster adorning his bedsit wall...

Nah! My money would be on Annie Lennox.

[Guest Bilo]

I agree.

There are women in the Israeli army too.

Too right there are.....

[Finnegan]

The thread title is the best part about this thread.

[Uncle Albert]

The thread title is the best thing I find about the thread.

[Mickyblueeyes]

Israel loves to be the victim, its a shame they cant play that card this time!

One of the most sophisticated armies in the world attacks a strip of land and kills 500 most of which are civilians and these are the good guys in some peoples eyes....seriously???

Hamas are not the terrorists this time and the IDF are pushing their luck entering Gaza against some of the most notorious guerilla fighters in the world.

Personally, I hope the IDF have their arses handed to them after what they've done to those civilians that they have killed.

[Head Honcho]

Israel loves to be the victim, its a shame they cant play that card this time!

One of the most sophisticated armies in the world attacks a strip of land and kills 500 most of which are civilians and these are the good guys in some peoples eyes....seriously???

Hamas are not the terrorists this time and the IDF are pushing their luck entering Gaza against some of the most notorious gorrila fighters in the world.

Personally, I hope the IDF have their arses handed to them after what they've done to those civilians that they have killed.

[Bryn]

I don't really understand the conflict (why it isn't taught in schools I don't know) but I don't get how a supposedly legitimate nation like Israel, supported by "our" countries can get away with bombing the living shit out of a load of civilians?

[Guest Bilo]

Israel loves to be the victim, its a shame they cant play that card this time!

One of the most sophisticated armies in the world attacks a strip of land and kills 500 most of which are civilians and these are the good guys in some peoples eyes....seriously???

Hamas are not the terrorists this time and the IDF are pushing their luck entering Gaza against some of the most notorious guerilla fighters in the world.

Personally, I hope the IDF have their arses handed to them after what they've done to those civilians that they have killed.

[Webbo]

Are you denying that the Israelis are responsible for human rights violations over the last few decades? Are you saying that, if the Scots had you penned into some spithole corner of your traditional land, sponsored by America et all, you'd not be acting in defiance?

I'm not denying anything and I'm not getting involved in arguing hypotheticals.

The fact is Hamas were voted in democratically by people who knew what they were like. If you vote in warmongers you can't complain if you get involved in a war.

[Head Honcho]

I don't really understand the conflict (why it isn't taught in schools I don't know) but I don't get how a supposedly legitimate nation like Israel, supported by "our" countries can get away with bombing the living shit out of a load of civilians?

Would that be the same civillians that allow Hamas to position rocket launchers in schools and hospitals?

Whatever side of the fence you sit on there are no winners in this conflict but I'm sure Israel have had enough of Hamas agreeing to a ceasefire only for them to use the ceasefire to re-arm and continue their indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.

[Guest Bilo]

I'm not denying anything and I'm not getting involved in arguing hypotheticals.

The fact is Hamas were voted in democratically by people who knew what they were like. If you vote in warmongers you can't complain if you get involved in a war.

Would that be the same civillians that allow Hamas to position rocket launchers in schools and hospitals?

Whatever side of the fence you sit on there are no winners in this conflict but I'm sure Israel have had enough of Hamas agreeing to a ceasefire only for them to use the ceasefire to re-arm and continue their indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.

1. Approved

2. Approved

[l444ry]

QUOTE FROM THE HAMAS CHARTER

Rejection of a negotiated peace settlement:

"[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13)

[Guest Bilo]

QUOTE FROM THE HAMAS CHARTER

Rejection of a negotiated peace settlement:

"[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13)

This is why people saying that Israel should negotiate with them are so misguided. Hamas will NEVER give in until they or Israel are destroyed so negotiation is, as Hamas themselves say, 'an exercise in futility.'

[samuel]

Ultra will come along soon and tell us all how it is.....

Deluded

[Guest Bilo]

Watch this on YouTube for a brief, but accurate, insight into the conflict. While I disagree with the narrator's views on the Islamic faith wholeheartedly, his description of Hamas is spot on.

Link

[Thracian]

I love how everyone questions the motives of the Iraq war, assumes our own government are a bunch of lying, profiteering warmongers and that the state-funded media are covering for them - yet we all sit and blindly believe that the Palestinians are all baseless, evil terrorists and the valiant Israelis are just begrudgingly defending their poor, victimized people because they say so.

Despite the fact that Tony Blair took us into the Iraq War by deception (lying in effect) and never had what I ever considered to be a lawful mandate, and despite the fact that the BBC has long been seen as little more than apologists for this and previous socialist administrations, I don't actually believe that at all or even really care.

What I care about is what is happening to people and families out in Palestine while various vested interests use them as pawns in a political game.

The seemingly endless tragedy of Israel/Palestine needs solutions not more emotive and opportunist bullshit from those who eagerly fan the flames.

To have any chance of solutions you have to first find a basis for dialogue/negotiated progress and you are not going to do that if every ceasefire is just used to restock weaponry before Hamas simply starts provoking the Israelis again in its nagging and never ending quest to further its own wider ambitions both by terror and propaganda.

As for the constant depiction of the Palestinians as eternal victims it is utterly pathetic. Worse than that it is not helpful because it is the innocent Palestinian non-combatants (and not all of them are innocent by any means) who are likely to find themselves killed for little more than the calculated convenience of Hamas.

[Mort]

The Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are wrong. But they do not compare with the onslaughts that Israel have regularly launched upon the Palestinians and others.

If Israel were being terrorists they'd do what the Russians did to Grozny and flattern Gaza from the air and from ground based rocket sites, killing untold thousands of Palestinian civilians... the only reason Israel is invading is because (unlike Russia) Israel feels it is morally unacceptable for to massacre the people living in Gaza.

The most telling fact in all this, is that while Israeli is reoccupying Gaza, Hamas, rather than fighting the 'Zionist hordes' is settling scores with the rival Fatah faction.

Frankly it's a bloody mess and anyone who wades into the debate by saying 'Israel are terrorists' or 'the Palestinians deserve everything they get' is guilty of the worst kind of distortion and oversimplification.

[Mort]

Just realised that I took the bait and got involved in an argument about the middle east!

…lock the thread, coz if the past eighty years of Prime Ministers, Foreign Sectaries, Presidents, Dictators, Emperors, Kings, Freedom Fights, Terrorists, Nobel Prize Winners, Well Meaning Musicians, Unsuspecting Olympic Athletes, Lefty Academics, Righty Academics etc… couldn’t work this one out then how the heck are we?

[Ultra]

Israel feels it is morally unacceptable to massacre the people living in Gaza.

The evidence of countless news bulletins during recent days suggests otherwise..

Frankly it's a bloody mess and anyone who wades into the debate by saying 'Israel are terrorists' or 'the Palestinians deserve everything they get' is guilty of the worst kind of distortion and oversimplification.

The words "pot" and "kettle" spring to mind.

[Ultra]

I'm not denying anything and I'm not getting involved in arguing hypotheticals.

The fact is Hamas were voted in democratically by people who knew what they were like. If you vote in warmongers you can't complain if you get involved in a war.

The same argument applies equally to Israel.

[Guest Bilo]

Group

[Ross-Kemp]

I don't care whose to blame, they should stop it. NOW.

[Ultra]

You'll never aspire to being a diplomatic heavyweight given such naivity.

Irrespective of the historical background which can be argued about forever, Hamas have shown - as any credible literature on the subject will confirm - that you cannot have meaningful negotiations with them because everything they might agree on the surface is simply a means to an end.

So unlike the ever-reasonable Israelis and their long-held respect for international law, which British service personnel on duty in the Middle East during the 1940s (and their descendents) know only too well....

It is written and in the plainest language.

And in this case that means taking time out to re-arm, which is clearly what they've done.

And would any other state, faced with the same circumstances, do anything different?

If any organisation were lobbing missiles into our country like a holidaymaker skimming stones into the sea we would respond and so would anyone else with any capability.

...as we would if thieves repeatedly raided our property, and continued to do so for many decades..

Reaction was inevitable. Hamas well knew that, yet have ignored the consequences to the Palestinian people you might have thought they would care for, in favour of pursuing what they see as the greater agenda.

They crave martyrdom - and the Israelis are only too keen to give it to them, irrespective on how this may be viewed in Iran, Syria and the rest of the Middle East. If the Israelis hadn't done their utmost to undermine moderate alternatives to Hamas at every opportunity, their rise could easily have been prevented.

Like so many other conflicts which fester and flame the world over in the name of Islam, the West makes the mistake of thinking that their own way of thinking applies to the opposition. It doesn't. And it is damned silly to think that it does.

By "the West", you really mean the USA, whose apparent "way of thinking" (based on power, self-interest and greed) is passionately opposed in many parts of the planet, and not just by Muslims. Bush's period of office, now thankfully just days from its end, has hardly portrayed his country in a favourable light. And I can't believe that you'll mourn his departure.

Peaceful solutions get harder by the day, frankly, because all the West's responses in the Middle East so far seem to have been been woefully misguided.

No argument from me on that one..

Two years ago, on this forum, I said the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both unjustified anyway despite your political support for one of the perpetrators, would be protracted and worthless. I said we needed to win the battle for minds. The propaganda war

.

The Afghanistan War was an emotional spasm based on Bush's need to respond to 9/11. Most UK residents now accept that it's been a mistake.

As for the Iraq war, I along with millions of others marched in London in an attempt to prevent it, yet the government (and most of the Tory opposition) went along with it anyway. The fact that I'm a Labour Party member doesn't mean I'm an unconditional backer of Tony Blair (as you VERY well know..)

We've not done that partly because socialists like yourself represent their own sometimes seriously misguided agenda just like any fanatical religion.

I'm sure there are occasions when socialists can call things wrong. The Iraq war isn't one of them, though. We forecast that it could become another Vietnam-style bloodbath - and so it has proved.