War Now

[geake]

Originally posted by G-Man

I'm not saying all Palestinians are terrorists. What mI did say is that all armed Palestinian groups (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Tanzim and Fatah) are terrorists.

Yes you are, and you don't even notice you're saying that. You always say that Israel never kills innocent people, always terrorists, including the children. This means that these children are terrorists, doesn't it?

Otherwise, I want to read a post from you where you write: "Israel kills innocent children".
If Palestinians and Israelians could only realize that they're both killing innocent people, I think this could be a great step for peace negociations. But I know, you just don't want to negociate because they all are terrorists...

 

[G-Man]

I never said all Palestinians are terrorists. You should learn the difference between "attacking" and "killing". Imagine a driver that lost control on his car hited a child. The driver killed the child, but he didn't attack him. It was an accident.
Israel, like any other country, did kill innocent children in accidents. But we never did it on purpose.
Also, I never said I don't wanna negotiate with the Palestinians. But negotiations take place when there's cease fire, and whenever Israel went forward towards a cease fire by stoping targeted killings and lifting closures the Palestinians used it to get more suicide bombers into Israel. Show me one thing the Palestinians did in order to promote a cease fire.

 

[Tecumseh]

"The refugee camps massacres were commited by arabs. That's a historical fact, and you can't argue with facts."

"Sharon told them, and I support him on that, that they'll do whatever they can in order to arrest terrorists, Israel will help them by any means necessary."

http://www.amnesty-usa.org/news/2001/belgium10032001.html

I guess Amnesty is runned by the arabs as well...

Further discussion in this issue will not gain anything to the truth, when people can not be intellectual honest. Not to mention the ethical level.

 

[Little Raven]

Actually, Geake, there are a great many people in the Middle East that want peace. Sadly, any time anyone gets near peace, an extremist on one side or the other will step in to make sure it doesn't happen. Because there are also a great many people on both sides that don't want peace. Hamas isn't really interested in peace with Israel, and the settlers aren't really interested in peace with the Palestinians. The extremists on both sides just want to grind the other into dust. Unfortunately, the worse the situation gets, the more power the extremists on both sides gain.

G-Man, I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "Israel never really wanted to hurt anyone..." line. Give me a break. Israel has never taken any action against the Committee for Road Safety, though they claim to be against terrorism. I guess it's only terrorism if Jews get killed, eh? Every human rights organization in the world has a list a mile long of violations by the IDF. Have you seen what the soldiers do to the Palestinians at roadblocks? International observers in Hebron had their cars stoned. Palestinian children get shot when Israeli cars get stoned. But the Israeli police declined to even detain any of the children attacking the observers cars, because "they were only kids." Israel just fired two missles into a crowded marketplace, for crying out loud. How can they claim the two children were killed as an accident? How can you expect to fire missles into a crowded civilian area and NOT kill civilians? Just because Israel didn't paint them with the targetting laser doens't make them any less culpable for their deaths. Israel made NO attempt to minimize casualties in that attack.

And finally, Israel believes in communal punishment, a practice that is both completely ineffective in the long term and a gross violation of human rights. There is no way Israel can claim the moral high ground when they practice holding an entire group responsible for the sins of an individual. I realize that Israel is very frustrated right now, and has been for a very long time. But I think Israel is moving in a very bad direction if she really wants peace. Peace is not going to come at the barrel of a gun. You'd think Israel would have learned that lesson in Lebonon...

 

[G-Man]

The Israeli police has arrested several people and is still working on it. It's harder to find a few guys that no one has any information about then to arrest the 35 people Israel told arafat to arrest. If the Palestinians will tell us who these people are we'll arrest them.
Israeli soldiers didn't fire on kids that used stones, they used rubber bullets and only if someone tryed to throw a molotov bomb on them.
The missiles were shot at a car that moved between to very populated areas and that was the only chance to shoot it not inside a crowd.
Israeli isn't using communal punishment.
In Lebanon Israel withdrew and got AT missiles on us in return, that stopped only after our F-4s attacked Syrian radar stations in Lebanon.


Tecumseh - Amnesty are urging the investigation but they didn't say if Sharon is responsible or not. They also didn't say that this act wasn't commited by arabs.

 

[Little Raven]

The Israeli police has arrested several people and is still working on it. It's harder to find a few guys that no one has any information about then to arrest the 35 people Israel told arafat to arrest. If the Palestinians will tell us who these people are we'll arrest them.

Israel made arrests? This is news to me, and I read the JPost everyday. Do you have a link?

Also, Arafat did submit a list of Jewish militants he claimed was responsible. Sharon rejected it, saying he would conduct his own investigation. Which has, to my knowledge, completely failed to turn up anything. It's funny, Israel claims to have good enough intelligence to justify assassinating people without benefit of trial or a process of review, and yet they can't seem to find a terrorist group located within Israel proper...

The missiles were shot at a car that moved between to very populated areas and that was the only chance to shoot it not inside a crowd.

Err...ok, now you just have your facts wrong. The car was located inside a Hebron marketplace. That's a pretty populated area. That why when one of the missiles missed it killed two people and wounded seven others...

Israeli isn't using communal punishment.

Do you really believe this? Do you read any newspapers at all? What on earth do you call the closures? Any action which punishes a group of people for the offences of individuals is communal punishment. Heck, I'm hard pressed to think of an example of non-communal punishment that Israel has engaged in lately.

I brought up Lebonon to illustrate that Israel is not likely to find solace in a military solution. But the way things are going, you'll likely get to see that for yourself pretty soon.

 

[Juize]

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
(..) A lot of people down the US for their tactics but they had better be glad that we didn't lose the Cold War to USSR. Imagine what they would be doing to get Osma...and there would be no reporters allowed at all.

When someone says something like this, everyone should be worried.
Why don't we just rape all women by saying that Neanderthals would
do something far worse for them, and we're justified to do it?

 

[damunzy]

[sarcasm]Since we are quoting out of context let me do the same.

Originally posted by Juize
Why don't we just rape all women

You really worry me Juicy! That is sick!
[/sacrasm]

Now back on topic. I also stated that the US has very strict RoEs and I have cannot believe that we would try to cover anything up in this day and age. I know, as an ex-soldier, that it would not let it happen. If I noticed something wrong and my commanding officer told me to keep quiet I would say "Yes Sir!" and then tell his superior officer the situation and would go higher if need. It was a my duty as a soldier to obey the rules laid out in the constitution of the US and all American laws not just the word of my commander.

 

[G-Man]

I can't find you a link, as this happened a few months ago. Also, the list Arafat gave Sharon was very strange - the attacks invovlved no more then 4 people but the Palestinians gave a list of 50 people, that most of them were at a demonstration in Jerusalem at the time. Not surprisingly Sharon didn't take that list too seriously.
The Hebron market place is a very large place. The car was destroyed in an area that officialy is a part of the market place but actualy has no stands in it.
closures aren't done as punishments, but as preventing measures. Just like security guard in the entrances to shop. They aren't there to keep the people away but to prevent suicide bombers from getting in. Israel even putted twice closures on it's own cities.
Lebanon hasn't been solved in any way. And I can't see any other solution to the Israeli-Palestinan problem except for a military one. We've tryed any diplomatic solution possible and it didn't work.

 

[Whiskey Priest]

Haven't posted here in two weeks, nice to see things haven't changed.

A few random thoughts on the middle eastern conflict:

Why do these people think that this land is so valuable? It's a f***ing desert! Just MOVE!!!!!!!! If a group of people who I hated (for the sake of impartiality I will call them lefties) built a big complex right beside where I lived I would leave. I don't particularily care if my right handed countrymen have roamed these lands for a thousand years. Thats why I'm prettty sure I'll never be an innocent casualty of war, if rediculus **** is going on I leave.

Why do you care if the land you are on is holy? If living in the birth place of your religious beleifs is a requirment for being a true beleiver then there would be no religious people outside tibet and the middle east. I assure you god sees the Halton Mosque (In my home town in Canada) as bein just as holy as the wailing wall or that dome thing (I forget what it is called). It's bloody idoit humans who proclaim these objects, these worhtless structures, as being valuable. Not God.

And if any land is holy then all land is holy, God did create it all (atheist views aside)

 

[Little Raven]

I can't find you a link, as this happened a few months ago.

Actually, I suspect you can't find a link because it never happened. You may be remembering an incident a couple of months ago in which two Jewish militants were detained for two days, but then released. As far as I know, there have been no arrests.

I realize that the list Arafat gave Sharon was very strange. But Israel regularly gives very large lists to the PA of people they want arrested, and use the fact that the PA ignores them to justify airstrikes in PA territory. After the Disco bombing, Israel submitted a list of 50 people they wanted arrested, even though only a few Palestinians were involved in the actual bombing. If Israel expects the PA to pay attention to lists it issues, shouldn't they at least have looked into Arafat's list instead of dismissing it altogether?

The Hebron market place is a very large place.

Evidently it's not too large. Again, look at the casualties. Whether Israel meant to kill those children or not, the IDF is responsible for their deaths. Two missiles were fired in an area known to contain civilians. At best, its severe negligence. If Israel really had a policy against killing civilians, there would be diciplinary action against the helicopter pilot, but I'll eat my hat if that happens. The IDF has demonstrated zero concern for dead Palestinians of any type.

closures aren't done as punishments, but as preventing measures.

*chuckle* Well, since we've discovered that the JDL was involved in a bomb plot in LA, I propose we jail every Jew in LA to make sure nobody else tries it. It won't be "communal punishment," it'll be a "preventative measure." It doesn't matter what you call it, G-Man. People who did nothing but live in the wrong place are getting punished, and that's wrong. If my neighbor kills someone, I expect the police to come arrest him, not close down my entire neighborhood.

The thing that really gets me about communal punishment is that not only is it completely unjust, it's also counter-productive. As long as Israel keeps the closures in place, no economy can develop within the occupied territories. And as long as there's no economy, people will stay very poor. Very poor people do very desperate things, like become suicide bombers. By keeping up the closures, Israel is giving the Palestinians ample reason to hate Israel, and insuring that extremists like Hamas have a large audience of people with nothing better to do than become suicide bombers.

 

[G-Man]

Israel has no choice but to put closures on. The day we lifted them 26 Israelis were killed. We can't allow this to happen every day, so we had to bring the closures back. Do you have any better idea as to what we whould've done?
And the Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorists have thousands of members and has done, in this intifada only, over 2,500 attacks on civilians. The Israeli terrorists made two attacks. So obviously the Hamas has more people then those Israeli terrorists.

 

[Little Raven]

The closures are only a short-term solution. They help dampen terrorism immediatly, but they guarantee more terrorism in the future. You're treating the symptom of the disease, not the cause. People who have something to lose very rarely become suicide bombers. But the closures serve to keep the Palestinians in a continual state of destitution. They serve the most radical groups by providing an easy example of Israeli oppression. And they unfairly target the Palestinian moderates that just want to get on with their lives. You'd think Israel would want to see more Palestinian moderates, not fewer, but Israeli policies seem designed to radicalize.

I'll freely admit that the Palestinians have more terrorists among them than the Israelis, but you have to look at the larger picture. The socio-economic outlook of an average Israeli is pretty good for an Israeli, and downright miserable if you're a Palestinian. (thanks in good part to Israeli policies) Also, Israel has the IDF to do it's dirty work for it, and you have to admit, the IDF is doing a pretty good job. (how many Palestinians have they racked up during the course of the intifada? 400? 500?)

The ironic thing was that until Israel started the assassinations, Hamas was viewed with favor by only a minority of the Palestinian population. Since Israel started it's targetted killing policy, Hamas membership has skyrocketed. Shouldn't this be seen as a sign that Israel is doing something very wrong?

 

[G-Man]

You still didn't offer any alternative. Are we supposed to let these terrorists do what they want?

 

[Little Raven]

You have to take away the popular support the terrorists enjoy. This is not going to be an overnight process, but here are some good places to start.

1) The settlements must be given up. This is probably first and foremost. Everytime a Palestinian home is bulldozed to make another settlers house, the Palestinians get a little more desperate. I really cannot see peace as long as Israel holds onto the settlements. Unfortunately, I also can't see Israel giving up the settlements. Sharon sure as heck isn't going to do it. I can't think of an Israeli PM candidate that would, actually.

2) The assassinations must stop. Sharon claims that they reduce terrorism, but this must be some new use of the word "reduce" that I was unaware of. Terrorist attacks have increased since the policy was launched. Everytime Israel assassinates someone, Hamas gets a huge popularity boost. And it really doesn't go over well in the international community. The only thing it has accomplished to create a whole bunch of radicals. Terrorists must be stopped, but they should be arrested and tried when at all possible. That way, they can be revealed as the criminals they are, not turned into the martyrs they want to be.

3) The closures must be lifted. As long as the Palestinians are destitute, you're going to see desperate acts. And they will stay poor as long as the closures are in effect. A stable economy is vital to a stable population. A stable population is very much in Israel's best interests.

I realize that there are some Palestinians who believe that Israel must be completely destroyed and will never stop attacking. But I firmly believe these people to be a very small minority. Most Palestinians probably just want what everyone wants; a chance at a decent life. They currently don't have that chance, and so they lash out at the entity they view as being responsible for this. If Israel really wants peace, she has to stop acting like the bully that Hamas makes her out to be. Obviously, Israel has the right to combat terrorism, but she's going about it all wrong. She's never going to beat the terrorists unless she convinces the Palestinian people that she is not their enemy.

 

[G-Man]

1) Israel agreed to return settlments as part of a peace treaty. Also, Palestinian buildings aren't being bulldozed in order to make room for a settler's house. that's rediculeous.
2) Arafat isn't arresting the terrorists, and when Israeli forces get into Palestinian territory and arrest them ourself he sends his troops to fight us. What choice do we have?
3) Whenever we lifted closures there was a wave of terrorism acroos Israel.
And remember that the Israeli public isn't gonna wait for Palestinian economy to rebuild itself, a process that'll take years, while Israelis are being murdered

 

[Little Raven]

1) Israel agreed to return settlments as part of a peace treaty. Also, Palestinian buildings aren't being bulldozed in order to make room for a settler's house. that's rediculeous.

No, they didn't. They've offered to return SOME of the settlements at SOME point in the future, but they have never stated that they will abandon all the settlements. Heck, they've never stopped building new ones, at any time over the last fifty years. And Palestinian homes are being bulldozed to expand settlements. It's not ridiculous, it's happening. Take a look at Efrat sometime.

2) Arafat isn't arresting the terrorists, and when Israeli forces get into Palestinian territory and arrest them ourself he sends his troops to fight us. What choice do we have?

The suicide bombers have to enter Israel in order to carry out their attacks. The Mossad is probably the best intelligence agency in the world. Use it. Intercept these people as they enter. As for the attacks that take place on the roads between the settlements, well, once the settlements are closed that will be a non-issue.

3) Whenever we lifted closures there was a wave of terrorism acroos Israel.

Back to two. You have to stop the bombers without punishing those not-involved. Otherwise, you're trying to fight the hydra by cutting off it's heads. It won't work. (as we're witnessed)

Rebuilding the Palestinian economy will take years. A good reason why Israel should help. None of this is going to be easy. But what alternative does Israel have? Do you really think Sharon has been effective at reducing terrorism?

 

[G-Man]

1) Barak offered them to return 97% of the areas they wanted immedietly.
2) The targeted killings aren't against the suicide bombers sut against those who train and arm them. These are the me,bers that were there for a while. A suicide bomber is being kept in isolation and then sent to Israel. We have almost no chance of stoping him.
3) The fact is that there are bombings whenver we lift closures and that the Israeli public would rather get rid of Arafat and the PA then to live years under the threat of terrorism

 

[chainsawkiller]

Originally posted by G-Man
1) Barak offered them to return 97% of the areas they wanted immedietly.
2) The targeted killings aren't against the suicide bombers sut against those who train and arm them. These are the me,bers that were there for a while. A suicide bomber is being kept in isolation and then sent to Israel. We have almost no chance of stoping him.
3) The fact is that there are bombings whenver we lift closures and that the Israeli public would rather get rid of Arafat and the PA then to live years under the threat of terrorism

In responses to
1) That was very nice of him, but Sharon's in power now, and isn't returning any land.
2) How can they go around assasinating people without a fair trial? That goes against justice and law. They're not even under their authority.
3) The fact is that there are bombings because you make closures, causing civilians to get angry and take up arms, and that the Palestinian public would rather get rid of Sharon and the Israeli government than to live years under the threat of oppresion, callous killing of civilians and disruption of the economy.

 

[joespaniel]

2) How can they go around assasinating people without a fair trial? That goes against justice and law. They're not even under their authority.

That would hold true in a criminal act. This is an act of war. Different rules apply, mainly that there are no rules.

As far as closures are concerned, I would wager they will be kept up for quite some time now.

I dont see any way out of this conflict anymore. And this probably wont end when the current terrorists are dead either. I for one do not claim to have a solution, but I would hunt down and destroy the ring-leaders of this murder group without hesitation, if only to protect more innocent teenagers from being blown apart.

At times like this I think I understand why the US was neutral and isolationist for so long. But we cant go back now, its a smaller world and were stuck holding the bag.

Bush will never help this situation, we will have to hope the next president (Daschal???) will be able to do something constructive. I believe because America has backed Isreal for so long, we are obliged to do something.

What exactly, I dont have a clue yet.