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Posts
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So and on behalf of the Palestinians, you are still whingeing Mr B about how unfair it all was and how the poor old Palestinians have been treated. Never mind that they fought (and are still fighting) a terrorist war and to date have totally and utterly lost.
There is absolutely nothing at all to prevent the ”orange farmers” just getting on with their farming and so on. The only thing that is getting in the way of the Palestinian people making any sort of progress is their constant wish to fight last Century’s fight when it is obvious to all that they lost it back then.
The Hamas terrorists still think that they can take on the Israeli people and their Army and win. It hasn’t dawned on them that they have no chance at all. Yet still they spend their resources on buying ever more outdated arms – I mean what good is a 20 year old second hand AK-47 with low velocity ammo against a tank ffs??? In any sort of serious conflict, how well do you suppose a rag tag bunch of badly trained terrorists are going to do against a well trained, well equipped professional army???
They parade around in front of the world’s press cameras trying their best to look hard with bazookas on their shoulders and balaclava helmets on ffs. Haven’t they worked out yet that a one shot obsolete ballistic weapon is about as much use against modern armour as a mosquito trying to sting a Crocodile’s tail.
Every silly little bomb they make; every bullet they buy; every rocket they fire takes food from their own people’s mouths to pay for it. They can’t even pay their own Police force much less their civil service or public utility employees and yet they still come begging with their hands out for ever more cash – cash which they spend on buying arms or which is stolen from them by their own corrupt leadership.
They might have had some sort of chance if they could only agree within themselves – but no they can’t even manage that. There are more warring factions, groups, cells, committees, etc etc within Fatah / Hamas / and assorted Popular Fronts for the Liberation of Something or Other (if only we could remember what it was), than a mangy old dog has fleas.
So forget the so-called history….. they lost, game set & match and not even their own Arab brotherhood has a good word to say for them.
You’re just ignoring the facts and basing your opinions on how you think the situation should be, not on how it is. You say that there’s nothing to stop an orange farmer from maintaining his business when his orchard is taken from him but how exactly do you grow oranges without an orchard?
You’re just not being realistic. You say that the fighting should just stop by itself, but that’s never going to happen. It’s naive to expect people to surrender all their rights and live under foreign rule. Your analysis of palestinian finances and political groups was way off the mark too with no basis in fact.
If you look at the end of the colonial era in many parts of the world, even though the people living under foreign rule were completely outgunned they still took up arms against their oppressors. It happened in Kenya, Yemen, Indochina, Algeria, South Africa, zimbabwe, and many other places. This is no different. The ANC used questionable tactics at times. SWAPO had the maxim of “one settler one bullet”. The bottom-line is that you can’t murder, torture and persecute people and not expect a violent backlash. Give me an example of where a nation was persecuted but there was no form of resistance and the population accepted a life of subservience? If you can’t then it proves that your argument is severely flawed.
You can even look at the example of Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. They were no match for the Israeli military but they persisted in their armed campaign until the Israelis finally withdrew from Lebanon. You could also say that it was due to Hamas that Israel decided it was no longer worth staying in Gaza. People will always fight for freedom no matter where they are in the world. The tactics may not always be ethical but as long as you have colonial rule you will have armed resistance. That’s the way it is like it or not.
Well hey Mr B. Thanks also for the guided tour of world anti-colonial revolutionary movements. Sadly it comes across in the manner of a Marxist university common room left-wing bore – but I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way.
But you know all this ”people’s resistance”, ”freedom fighters” stuff is soooo 70’s and 80’s. These arguments have been comprehensively beaten to death by far more clever people than you and I. Che Guevara is long since dead and Fidel Castro won’t be with us for too much longer either, and so it goes. Even the 90’s style arguments about denial of human rights etc is getting to sound a bit tired now. Time to change the record eh?
There is absolutely nothing to stop Palestinian fishermen from fishing, Palestinian farmers from farming and so on – other than a willingness on their part to stop attacking Israel with rockets, suicide bombers, cross border raids etc. If they desist with their attacks then there would be no need for an Israeli retaliation, and surprise surprise… peace would break out.
Just think of that….. the terrorists could stop killing people (including each other) and devote their energies to growing their economy. They could spend all their cash on helping their own society instead of spending it on even more arms and explosives. Wow… what a change THAT would make eh? Who knows, they might even be able to pay their Police force and their Civil Service.
All the time that they persist in carrying out terrorist atrocities, they will bear the full weight of Israeli retaliation. Negotiation is simply not an option as the Palestinian terrorists will simply treat this as a form of surrender in other terms. Nobody in the world will negotiate with terrorism.
Remember that Hamas is a confirmed terrorist organisation and is totally committed to the absolute destruction of Israel by any means. All the political window dressing in the world won’t change that fact.
You’re off in cloud cuckoo land. First of all, the points I made about national liberation were all valid and germane to this situation. Secondly you keep saying that there’s nothing to stop farmers from farming and fishermen from fishing when obviously there is. You’re in a state of denial. You’re so convinced that your point of view is right that you block out any facts or evidence that contradict your view.
It’s not the farmers and fishermen that are carrying out attacks and even if there were no attacks at all it would not stop their land from being taken or their movement being restricted. When the Oslo peace accords were signed, settlement activity was supposed to cease leading to a removal of the settlements, instead the settlements continued to grow. The taking of land to build settlements is unconnected to any violence. So your far-fetched idea that the farmers could continue farming if there was an end to violence is very naive.
Once again if we follow your argument to its logical conclusion it ends up in nonsense. You say that there can be no negotiation with terrorists and that governments are entitled to do whatever they want in retaliation to terrorist attacks. Thereby you are effectively justifying the attempted genocide in Kosovo. The Serbs were being attacked by the KLA and Milosevic sent in the troops to wipe out the KLA and exact retribution. Applying your logic to this situation then genocide and other war crimes are ok if you were subjected to terrorist attacks. Just like you justify atrocities against the palestinian population because of terrorist attacks, Milosevic justified atrocities against the Kosovar albanian population. You see, your argument is fatally flawed because your reasoning is absurd. If everyone else thought like you we’d be back in the dark ages.
That’s a double edged sword, though, Biggy. You yourself use the same arguments to explain, and even verge on excuse, the genocide of Israelis by Palestinians that you do to denounce the genocide of Palestinians by Israelis.
The whole point is, I reckon, that the Palestinians cannot hope to obtain the outcomes they seek by force of arms. They’ll get fucked in the arse again and things will get worse. I think Sun Tzu would agree with me in the truth that one should only fight battles one can win. He might have even thought of it himself. Therefore the Palestinians are best served by a campaign of universal, non-violent civil non co-operation against Israel, a la Gandhi’s campaign against British rule.
The trouble is, it takes a lot more balls and sense of national struggle than strapping explosives to impressionable young martyrs and sending them out to die in order to make it work.
Most eloquently put Pikey, if I may say so. You see the thing is Mr B, there appear to be two main types of Palestinian. There is the non-violent type who simply want to get on with their lives, feed their families, that sort of thing. Then there are the militant revolutionary Jihad types who seem hell bent on pursuing a course of violence no matter what. Any form of killing suits their agenda and they seem not to be too fussy who they kill – including their own countrymen.
If the Palestinians focussed on the ‘peaceful’ types and got on with sorting out their country, they’d all be a lot better off. But they seem to insist in throwing themselves into the grinder, getting comprehensively minced up every time, then moaning to everybody about how unfair it all is.
I read in today’s papers that the lovely Abu Jendal who is a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, has come up with a real winner this time. He has ”hundreds” of martyrs ready and willing to die by throwing themselves under Israeli tanks with explosives strapped to their bodies. What a total waste of time (and life) that is. Still I suppose they will all be given the regulation 70 virgins after they have committed suicide.
These sorts of utterly futile terrorist tactics serve no useful purpose other than to gain a bit of cheap publicity in the world’s press or at least that part of it that sympathises with extreme left wing terrorism. Bottom line is that nobody really believes their idle threats any more, it’s all just a lot of hot air and posturing for the ”home” audience.
Perhaps Abu Jendal should put his money where his mouth is and be the first to blow himself up??? Mind you I expect that he’d try to claim that his human rights had been infringed and bottle out of it. What about the human rights of all those virgins ????? Don’t they have a say in who is going to deflower them???
Once again you make the mistake of calling all military action by Palestinians terrorism. If a suicide bomber targets a military target then it’s not an act of terrorism. The Palestinians have the right to self-defence and so if Israelis invade their land and attack them they are perfectly entitled to take up arms to resist the Israeli state (excluding civilians). You also seem to forget that the militants are just ordinary people who have had enough of living a life of oppression. You keep saying that the Palestinians should just get on with their lives, but you did not answer how someone can continue farming when their farm gets taken from them so that a settlement can be expanded. What is your answer? How can a farmer farm with no land?
I have never condoned attacks on Israeli civilians but unlike others here I see no difference in the value of an Israeli life compared to a Palestinian life. Killing any civilian is wrong and the fact remains that the Israelis are guilty of killing more civilians than the Palestinians are. So why is it that it’s the Palestinians that get all the blame? The Israeli government has ripped up the Geneva Conventions in the occupied territories and civilians are denied the rights and protections they are entitled to under international law. Yet it’s always the Palestinians who are demonized. The victims of a brutal military annexation of their land are portrayed as the bad guys and the oppressors are portrayed as the good guys.
As for non-violent protest, it hasn’t worked. Non-violent protests get dealt with brutally by use of tear gas, baton charges and live ammo. Even the 1st intifada was supposed to be a form of low-intensity violence. The arabs decided that in the face of overwhelming firepower they would not go toe-to-toe with the Israelis, they decided to throw stones as a protest. To the Israeli soldiers in their armour-plated vehicles there was little danger to them but it was a clear sign of defiance and protest by the Palestinians. Initially, the Israelis didn’t know how to react to the stone-throwing but then the government told the army to go in and start breaking limbs and cracking skulls. Now its commonplace for a stone-thrower of any age to be shot with live ammunition even when there is absolutley no risk to the Israeli soldiers.
It’s easy to sit in the comfort of England and criticize the decision of young men and women to become suicide bombers against Israel but every human being has his or her limit before they will break. It’s unacceptable that Israeli civilians should be killed but these things will happen when you subject people to persecution. There will always be a violent backlash against the oppressor. Our dislike of the violence is irrelevant because the violence is inevitable. If you create a combustible environment then at some point there will be a fire. It’s human nature and it’s inevitable. Push any man far enough and he will become a killer. The only way to stop it is to remove the combustible environment and that can only happen via negotiations and dialogue.
We all know how this situation will play out. There will be carnage on both sides which will lead to the USA pulling its finger out and deciding that something needs to be done and eventually we will see negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian government. So why not just cut out the bloodshed, rhetoric and all the other bullsh1t and just go straight to the negotiations?
@Mr Bigstuff wrote:
Once again you make the mistake of calling all military action by Palestinians terrorism. If a suicide bomber targets a military target then it’s not an act of terrorism.
….. and if a suicide bomber targets a civilian target (like a cafe, or restuarant or bus station or market etc etc) then it IS an act of terrorism. Hey Mr B – guess where the vast majority of Hamas suicide bombers do their thing???
@Mr B wrote:
The Palestinians have the right to self-defence and so if Israelis invade their land and attack them they are perfectly entitled to take up arms to resist the Israeli state (excluding civilians).
…. and equally the Israelis have the right of self-defence, so if Palestinian terrorists invade their land and attack them (as happened only last week for example) then the Israelis are perfectly entitled to retaliate…. according to your own logic.
@Mr B wrote:
You also seem to forget that the militants are just ordinary people who have had enough of living a life of oppression.
I suspect that you have a left wing idealists viewpoint on terrorists/militants. No they are NOT simply ordinary people, they are highly motivated and highly trained (in the military sense) and have usually been indoctrinated over a number of years by their terrorist controllers. Disaffected youths, criminals, the unemployable etc etc are all ‘cannon fodder’ for specialist terrorist recruiters who scour the Middle East and Europe looking for such volunteers. These conflicts attract ”freedom fighters” (surely a contradiction in terms) from all over the world. Assuming them all to be ”oppressed Palestinians” is at best naive and at worst utterly disingenuous.
@Mr B wrote:
I have never condoned attacks on Israeli civilians but unlike others here I see no difference in the value of an Israeli life compared to a Palestinian life. Killing any civilian is wrong ………
What a pity that Hamas terrorists don’t share your view. You’d think that all the zealous support you see fit to give them would be repaid by their desisting from all their bombing and cross border rocket attacks – all of which are specifically targeted at civilians. But hey, they are just a bunch of balaclava wearing terrorists – all they know is killing, so what do you expect???
@Mr B wrote:
It’s easy to sit in the comfort of England and criticize the decision of young men and women to become suicide bombers against Israel but every human being has his or her limit before they will break……
….. and I guess that you could deploy this same justification in favour of the guys that let off bombs on the London Underground and killed a load of innocent civilians. Problem is that once you take the view that it’s OK to murder civilians from one country because you are allegedly oppressed, and use this as justification for practically anything, the way is open to murder anybody with whom you have a disagreement. But then this is the way of extremists the world over isn’t it? Yes we can kill them and their women and their children because…………. (insert this year’s fashionable justification)
@Mr B wrote:
…………….. eventually we will see negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian government. So why not just cut out the bloodshed, rhetoric and all the other bullsh1t and just go straight to the negotiations?
The bottom line here Mr B is that NOBODY will negotiate with terrorists. Dress them up how you will, provide them with a whole selection of excuses ranging from the quasi-historical grievance, to the outright grab for power. At the end of the day they murder anybody who gets in their way. Given the worldwide condemnation of terrorism, Hamas has as much chance of sitting round a conference table with anyone as……. (insert your own simile).
On a final point Mr B – I was listening to Margaret Beckett, our fearless Foerign Secretary give an interview today. She made the interesting point that the cross border attack was deliberately staged by the Military Wing of Hamas to destabilise the peace talks beteween Israel and Fatah. Given the enmity between Fatah and Hamas this point found a certain resonance with the interviewer. Certainly sending 8 terrorists under the border in an attack with extremely limited military objectives can only have served to infuriate the Israelis and provoke a response – as is the case.
I wish someone could tell me how Palestinians are supposed to defend themselves, from military columns, they have no army, or air force, a few guns in the hands of untrained men, stones for those that haven’t,
What kind of a person can open fire on people throwing stones, these Israelis are animals, inhuman scum, and that applies to those who try to make excuses for them,
Don’t forget you’re supporting terrorists who murdered British soldiers, to attain their ends, so what kind of a traitor does that make you.
Ok I don’t agree with the suicide bombers, what few there are, but if some punches you your don’t murder everyone in the town where he lives.
1 You said attacking a tank was an act of terrorism. You were wrong.
2 Of course if there are clashes between the IDF and militants then the IDF are entitled to shoot enemy combatants.
3 Members of Palestinian militant groups are Palestinian. They are not born to carry out terrorism they are just ordinary people whose frustration with life under brutal occupation drives them into the hands of the hardliners. They are a product of their environment. There are also militant groups who recognize the state of Israel but oppose the occupation.
4 My objection to your posts is that you don’t seem to care about the killing of Palestinian civilians. You actually condone the killing of palestinian civilians while condemning the deaths of Israelis which is both illogical and hypocritical.
5 I never mentioned London and I didn’t justify killing civilians, so you’re way off the mark as usual. They are 2 completely different scenarios anyway.
6 You say nobody negotiates with terrorists which of course is utter nonsense. It happens all the time but on the quiet. Britain did it with the IRA and Israel has done it with Arab terrorist groups. So you’re being a bit naive.
7 The thing to remember about the cross-border attack is that the militants could have attacked a civilian area but chose a military target. Also it’s not as if Israel has not been carrying out acts of violence before, during and after the cross-border raid.The bottom line is that international law requires Israel to leave all the land it took in 1967. All Israeli settlements outside of the state of Israel are illegal as is any part of their wall that is not built on Israeli soil. The 4th Geneva convention also places requirements on Israel with regard to its treatment of non-combatants, requirements that Israel has flagrantly violated for decades. These violations have often amounted to war crimes. International law also prohibits collective punishment so your justification of attacks on palestinian civilians is not valid. You might reject the concept of international law but what is terrorism if not a rejection of international law?
The suicide bombings on civilians are violations of international law too but obviously the lion’s share of the blame for this conflict has to lie with Israel because it has placed itself in direct conflict with its neighbours. It is Israel that has gone beyond its borders not the Palestinians. There is no occupation or annexation of Israeli land by the arabs. The PLO recognized Israel and along with the Arab league offered Israel a comprehensive peace deal but Israel was the one that rejected it. Israel has never offered the Palestinians a complete end to the occupation and it has not accepted the Road-Map in its entirety without pre-conditions.
The annexation of palestinian land, the war crimes, the violations of fundamental human rights and the refusal to negotiate with moderates leaves me in no doubt that Israel must take the majority of the blame for this conflict.
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