N.B. I have updated this post on the legality of the blockade as I have continued to study the question
Leave it to the Netanyahu government (and its predecessor, under Ehud Olmert) to jump off a cliff from what should have been the moral high ground–“we withdrew from Gaza, which was then taken over by an internationally condemned terrorist group that lobs missiles into our cities indiscriminately”–into a deep, deep pit of international condemnation.
The JTA reports that the Israeli encounter with the Mavi Marmara, a Comoros flagged vessel, took place 70 miles from shore. Israel, I am sorry to say, has not signed the Convention on the Law of the Sea (the United States has signed but not ratified the treaty). But if we regard the Convention as customary international law, as I think we should, it seems clear to me that leaving aside for the moment the impact of a declared blockade, under Article 110 of the Convention, Israel would have no right to board the ship on the high seas.
It may be that Israel could justify the act as a blockade in the strict sense. There is some question (discussed in the comments below) about whether the boarding was legal because it was outside of territorial waters. Still, as various Israeli commentators recognized before the raid, the problem was really a PR problem–how to avoid being cast as the British in the story of the Exodus in reverse.
Now, there seems to be little question that the supposedly peace-loving “activists” were not exactly engaged in non-violent resistance. I have no doubt that the Israeli sailors were right to defend themselves. But still, for the Israelis to put themselves in this position–sheer incompetent awfulness.
TedF
I don’t question the right of Israeli soldiers to defend themselves one on the ships, and I’m frankly surprised (maybe even a leeetle suspicious) that they would be attacked during a boarding.
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p>However, I have no earthly idea why a need was felt to board the convoy rather than interdict them at sea.
I try to remain as neutral as possible and evaluate each incident in the Israel-Arab conflict on a case by case basis. I opposed the Lebanon War for one, and oppose blocking humanitarian aid from getting to Gaza, that said for the life of me I am just shocked that so many people are getting upset over this. The ship clearly was not full of peaceful non-violent protesters, the Israeli’s had a right to board and look around the vessel and were fired upon. In my view of the people were non-violent protesters they would have allowed Israel to look through their ship, presumably finding nothing, and get on with it. I am glad the US has stuck by its friend on this point, though I worry the world will just portray this action as the knee-jerk appeasement of Israel the US usually engages in (i.e approving the Lebanon War), but in reality it is a principled stand. Obama is clearly not a pro-Israel hawk, but a good friend who will chastise them when they are wrong (on expanding settlements) and defend them when they are right (this instance). I hope the world adopts a similar policy, but I fear it has become too polarized.
and what were the circumstances? Dead civilians who were apparently on a humanitarian aid mission are bound to attract negative attention. Say it happened here- some protesters at an anti-war rally attack police with sticks, and the police shoot 10 of them to death. It would most likely raise considerable questions about excessive force, don’t you think? What if the Janjaweed massacred international aid workers in a similar fashion? A collective yawn? I doubt it.
They had guns and were smuggling weapons. I would hope my Coast Guard would lick em.
Particularly the “smuggling weapons” part? According to this report it seems like the Israelis were the aggressors, firing upon the vessel without being provoked. Of course there are competing versions of the story, but this account was from a member of the Israeli parliament (presumably the “Dennis Kucinich” of Israel, but still seemingly a somewhat credible source).
The Israeli commandos boarded the ship, which is their right since it is a blockade and they are trying to prevent weapons from getting into Hamas’ hands, and then they were fired upon by the people on board the ship. Those people were not acting in self defense since their very presence in those waters was a deliberate and provocative act to challenge the blockade.
The boat was in international waters, it had not crossed into the territorial waters of Israel (nor likely would it ever had), so even if the blockade is legal (which it isn’t), the boarding of the boat was not.
It is not clear that you are right, and I do not believe you are right, as the ships were clearly bound for Gaza. Reuters, hardly an Israel-friendly outlet, makes this point. Also, I believe that American practice in 20th century wars allowed interception of ships that were about to violate blockades while they were in international waters.
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p>TedF
We’re hardly an example, fighting two immoral, if not illegal wars – if that puts Israel into our company, that doesn’t speak well for Israel.
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p>As to whether this blockade is legal, there’s room for debate, but at 75 miles outside Israeli waters, boarding a ship and shooting folks, was an over-reaction, they had dozens of miles to go before they entered territorial waters.
I think you are probably wrong about the legality of the boarding on the high seas, but let’s say you were right. There is no question but that the ships were heading for the Gaza coast. Even if there were a legal distinction between boarding 4 miles from shore and boarding 3 miles from shore, is that an important moral point for you? I just don’t see that as the real issue. If you want a real issue, focus on the proportionality of the force used, which seems to me to be a more weighty question.
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p>TedF
It’s not a moral point between 3 and 4 miles, it’s the tactical difference between forcibly boarding a boat when there was plenty of time and miles to defuse the situation peacefully.
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p>Israel wasn’t under an imminent threat, they had hours to negotiate, intimidate and push back against these boats before they entered Israeli territorial waters. A just government would have used that time to defuse the situation, assert their legal right to enforce a blockade and come to a peaceful resolution. They didn’t.
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p>My initial comment was a two line response to jconway’s line about the provocative act of simply being in “those waters” justifying boarding and killing a bunch of people. My response to you pointed out that killing a bunch of people 75 miles out was an over reaction – so I appreciate your condescending tone, I wasn’t sure what the real issue was here.
You are confusing my positions
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p>There are two questions to ask:
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p>1) Was Israel legally able to board the ship?
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p>I would argue yes since it was within the blockade zone they and their neighbors worked out regarding Gaza
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p>2) Was it okay to fire?
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p>Yes because they were fired upon first.
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p>These are two distinct questions with distinct answers.
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p>Had the commandos boarded and randomly shot at people for no reason even if the boarding was legal the killing certainly is not. The question is who fired on whom, I saw the video and it is painfully clear that they were fired on first and were acting in self-defense.
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p>Now you could make the argument that the people on the boat had a right to defend themselves from an illegal boarding, but that undercuts the notion these were peace loving unharmed activists if they shot first and asked questions later when the Israeli’s boarded them, secondly Egypt and Israel agreed to this blockade zone which Free Gaza intentionally violated understanding full well it would invite a confrontation. If they invited the confrontation than I see no legal or moral reason to side with them.
Ignoring for now the fact that I think you’re assuming facts not in evidence (the passengers on the boat “fired first”), I take it you don’t think too much of civil disobedience in general, jconway, if you see the mere flouting of a rule one perceives to be unjust as justifying whatever happens to you. If the students at Kent State refused a legal order to disperse, or pushed back at National Guardsmen, did that justify killing them (from a moral perspective, that is)? If the sit-ins in 1960’s Alabama were technically illegal, did that fact then justify a response of fire hoses, beatings, and dogs? Demonstrators who fail to adhere to the letter of the law are “inviting confontation” and are morally culpable for whatever extreme measures are taken against them. Is this close to your position, or does your position only hold in cases where there is violent resistance (as there appears to have been here, though I’m not sure it’s been fully established who started the violence). Was the intention to break the blockade, in order to deliver food and other non-military items to Gaza, a sufficient justification for the shootings- again, from a moral perspective?
Farnkoff, on this point, I suggest watching the IDF videos of the sailors being beaten as they lowered themselves onto the ship. Now, perhaps the video was produced by an uber-secret cabal on a sound stage in Tel Aviv, but if you believe, as I do, that the clips are authentic, then it seems fairly clear who “started it.”
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p>Also, I think you’re arguing against a straw man. You seem to say that the Israelis killed the “peace activists” as punishment for attempting to run the blockade. But there’s pretty good evidence that that’s not so, namely, that no passengers on the other ships were killed. Why were passengers on the Mavi Mamara killed? I think the official explanation–because that is the ship on which the Israelis were attacked–makes a lot of sense.
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p>TedF
Journalists on board the boat are claiming that the Israeli military fired on the boat before they landed, that a photo journalist was shot through the head while merely taking pictures.
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p>Your argument rests upon the notion that a secret cabal created the video released, while that might make for a pithy blog comment, all that it takes to hide the truth would be for Israel to cut out the part prior to landing on the boat, exactly what they admit to have done. It’s time for Israel to release an unedited version of their tape and for Israel to release the unedited materials they’ve confiscated from the journalists on the boat.
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p>It could be that Israel didn’t fire first, but unless they allow for an investigation and release the unedited materials, those of us who question Israel’s motives will continue to question the actions taken here.
…it could be a great conspiracy (or a soldier acting against orders, I suppose). I tend not to give credence to Al Jazeera reporters. According to Fouad Ajami (whose politics I reject, by the way, as I think you probably do), Al Jazeera repeatedly broadcast the infamous Al Dura tape in an incendiary way:
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p>Now, it’s difficult to find a cite that everyone will agree is unbiased on the Al Dura case, but everyone can agree, I think, that a reporter who claimed that Palestinians staged the shooting for propaganda purposes and who was sued for libel in France was exonerated by a French appeals court (though I think the case may still be on appeal). So as I say, you feel free to believe your conspiracy theory and I will feel free to believe mine.
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p>The common sense point, though, to me is this: Israel knew in advance that the flotilla posed a grave PR danger. Several previous attempts to run the Gaza blockade were turned away without loss of life, as were all but one of the ships in this flotilla. Your argument seems highly unlikely, and indeed irrational, though I hold open the possibility you are right.
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p>TedF
Here, by the way, is some more from the Israeli investigation:
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p>Is the IDF making this up? Maybe, I guess.
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p>TedF
there is zero evidence to back up your assertion about guns and smuggled weapons. The Israelis are searching the ships; presumably we will hear about it if that’s the case. But I frankly doubt it – part of this is a PR war that the Free Gaza folks know they would lose if they are found to have weapons on their ships. Plus, there are much easier ways of getting weapons into Gaza than to try to bring them in by ship.
You can find them here. Now, maybe they are faked as part of some obscenely complex IDF conspiracy, but assuming they’re authentic, it appears to me that the passengers on that ship aimed to provoke a deadly confrontation and they got it. As I indicated, there is a question about the legality of the boarding of the ship. But in my mind the main problem with what happened was Israel’s ineptitude in the “information war” in which it’s engaged. And what’s particularly ironic is that the incident yesterday is almost a perfect parallel to the Exodus incident, in which the Jewish refugees fought back against the British sailors who boarded their ship in international waters off the coast of Israel.
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p>TedF
If there had been a few beatings and rough arrests, as opposed to dead bodies.
What doesn’t get enough mention here – and usually isn’t mentioned at all – is that there were SIX ships, and five were boarded, searched and released. Only on THIS ship was there a confrontation.
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p>Joe Bangert, a Brewster person, has a son on the ship and he provided this report to the Cape Cod Times. “These commandos dropped onto the ship in the cover of darkness and began firing at sleeping people,” Bangert said he was told. This attempt to pour gasoline on the fire fell flat when the video was released, but it’s interesting to think how far it would have spread had the Isralis’ not had that film.
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p>Further info:
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p>Mr. Bangert is known for his work in Vietnam Vets agaisnt the War, Soldiers for Peace, etc., and is a long time friend and political worker for Sen. Kerry. Also here is a link to a piece about the ‘Winter Soldiers’ film by Fiachra Ó Luain, the demonstrator on the ship.
The other five stopped at the quarantine line (which was set in the high seas, and is illegal). The ship that tried to run it was boarded.
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p>No heroes in this one.
… part was “…a link in a chain of premeditated folly.”
I think the legality of the boarding in international waters is questionable (see the discussion here), though in my non-expert opinion it ought to be legal insofar as it ought to be impermissible for Hamas to engage in hostilies with Israel and then hide behind the idea that the confilct between them is not a true international conflict.
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p>But while there is a question of legality of the boarding itself, I don’t think the heart of the matter is whether Israel boarded the ships on the high seas versus in its territorial waters. The real question of legality is whether the use of force on board the ship was justified.
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p>And the real question overall is not really one of legality at all. It is one of perception. The Israelis clearly and needlessly, in my view, allowed themselves to be manipulated into using deadly force, which serves the political purposes of the Free Gaza folks.
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p>TedF
While I argued above that the Israeli’s were provoked and had every right to defend themselves, this group is certainly intentionally and deliberately challenging the blockade, allowing themselves to be shot at Israeli’s and then crying blood all over the world.
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p>They are certainly setting a trap for the Israeli’s to fall into.
goading a side into overreacting is much better than engaging in terrorism (and is actually a long-standing and exceptionally successful tactic in civil disobedience). Hopefully, the Palestinians will learn from this: If they want their freedom, the answer isn’t in launching bombs or blowing up buses, it’s civil disobedience which causes the other side to overreact, then insuring your people don’t go after retribution. No guns and no bombs and eventually we’ll have peace in Israel and Palestine.
I would argue shooting at soldiers is not an act of civil disobedience, I think MG and MLK would agree with me on that one.
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p>That said I would agree with your sentiments that the Palestinians will someday adopt peaceful means of protest, I think it would be much more effective at getting people on their side, much more effective at persuading Israel to give them more power over their own welfare and security, and much better overall. Remember the struggle for Catholic civil rights in Northern Ireland owes its successes to non-violence and most of its failures to violence. The IRA disarmed so the guard towers could come down and parliament could re-open. If the Palestinians did the same thing the wall could come down, their economic activity could commence once again, and maybe just maybe the Israeli’s would feel secure enough to permanently transfer land.
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p>The biggest problem with this whole situation is that people have given up on the moderates and are voting for the extremists. Bibi depends on arch-Zionists that want to annex half of the Middle East for Israel to keep his coalition going. The PA will eventually need the cooperation of Hamas which is torturing an Israeli soldier as we speak three years running and refuses to recognize a Jewish state. Sadly we got a long way to go.
Weren’t the recent Predator drone killings by the U.S government of 23 innocent Afghan civilians a crime that is comparable if not worse than what may have occurred on the Gaza flotilla? In one case, 23 innocent people were killed. In the other, 9 people, who may or may not have been innocent, were killed.
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p>Yet, in the latter case, the entire world seems to have erupted in virulent protest, with crowds of incensed people shaking their fists at Israel, editorial writers issuing condemnations, and governments recalling their ambassadors. Where is the simiar mass protest over the killings in Afghanistan?
Israel does not have a right to defend itself according to the world community, it has to be held to a higher standard.
The thing that is striking about your comments, and makes them a powerful statement of support for the opposing point of view — presumably exactly the opposite of your intention — is that you don’t provide even a scrap of evidence to support your assertions.
an ironic way of saying that no matter what Israel does, it seems its motives will be condemned in the court of world opinion.
Sarcasm gets lost on the internet, I in fact do support Israel’s right to defend itself, and I feel this is a clear example where the world community is condemning a nation for doing what any other nation would do in its place.
of a certain type of Israel defender. It’s a hysterical right-wing point of view that can be held by folks who are otherwise liberal.
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p>JConway used to read The New Republic. If he still reads it, he’s getting this kind of pablum from uber-douche bag Marty Peretz. The mentality goes along with sayings like “A land with no people for a people with no land,” the idea of the self-hating Jew, and . Legend, myth, and wishful thinking.
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p>Bob Dylan channeled the argument more artfully in The Neighborhood Bully:
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p>With that said, I support Israel and believe we should defend and protect it. But the country needs to make peace, even unilaterally, with the Palestinians. Israel has already lost Europe’s support. It might be a generation away, but support will dwindle in America eventually. Palestinians are rapidly heading toward a majority of the population; Israel will be left with an apartheid government or a democratic take over by the Palestinians.
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Both that Marty Peretz is a douche and with the road map for peace and the clock ticking on Israel becoming an apartheid state.
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p>That said I continue to disagree about this specific incident. Whether the blockade is just or not does not alter the fact that it was set, it was defended mulilaterally by Israel and her neighbors, and these guys broke it and thus deserved to be boarded. They then fired first. The video proves it. And the Israeli’s fired back. So to me this is a clear act of self-defense. As was the war in Gaza in general. As President Obama said if rockets were reigning down on my home I would defend myself.
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p>The world community asks everything of Israel and nothing of the Palestinians. It seems to want Israel to tie its hands behind its back and get hit over and over again without forcing the Palestinians to make any concessions.
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p>Time after time they have had good deals and turned them down. In 1948 they would have had 2/3rds of the Palestinian mandate, they chose to go to war and lost and now Israel has that same 2/3’rds and occupies the last third. In 1999 Arafat could have had all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all of East Jerusalem as his capital, right of return for refugees, and 95% of what he asked for. Instead of being a good and faithful negotiator by conceding that last 5% he took his people on a suicidal (literally and figuratively) march to war with Israel that only emboldened the extremists on both sides. Now there is no longer any room for the Abbases or the Barraks and Pereses. Instead extremists have filled the void on both sides and have entrenched themselves.
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p>I am not apartchik for Israel. I think the Lebanon War was illegal, unjust, and made Israel less safe. I think the settlements do the same thing. I think the state has systemically discriminated against and oppressed the Palestinian people and punished the entire people instead of their corrupt leadership making it more difficult for moderate Palestinians to convince their people to sue for peace. I think there are a lot of right wing, neocon Israeli’s and American Jews that frankly do not want peace but want Israeli supremacy and they are wrong.
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p>I disagree with Peretz when he says the Palestinians don’t exist as a real people.
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p>But I also disagree with the kneejerk condemnation by the international community of anything Israel does to rightfully defend itself. The Gaza blockade is necessary to prevent weapons from getting into the hands of terrorists that will gladly use them to kill Jewish civilians. There are already generous exceptions for humanitarian aid on land that Israeli checkpoints allow. Allowing it on sea would completely undermine their security. Legitimate complaints may be made about reducing the blockade line to make it conform with international law. But the facts are clear, Free Gaza intentionally violated that line to force a confrontation and it did and in spite of the fact that they fired first they lost. I am only angered that this is another self-destructive decision by the Palestinians that will make peace even more distant.
You’re placing a tremendous amount of weight on an edited video released by an interested party. It will be interesting to see if Israel releases all the video is took of that event, unedited. Presumably that will make their case with even greater clarity, so they shouldn’t have any reluctance to do so.
That’s why there’s an Israel.
Israel announced an international blockade on Gaza, coordinated with Egypt, and said that it will board any and all ships attempting to violate that blockade. This flotilla did violate the blockade, knew it would be boarded, and then immediately fired upon the Israeli commando’s who came aboard the ship searching for weapons. The whole point of the blockade is to block weapons from reaching Hamas, a known terrorist organization that has intentionally targeted Israeli civilians. “Free Gaza” is a group that has financial and political ties to Hamas which gave the Israeli’s more reason to board the ships.
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p>Now we can debate all we want about whether or not the blockade is justified, but it existed at the time, was recognized by parts of the international community and Israel’s neighbors, and these ‘activists’ knew that they would be boarded if they crossed the line and fired first.
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p>I am not a knee-jerk pro-Israeli apartchik, I condemn the construction of settlements, I strongly opposed the Lebanon War, I despise Bibi for destroying the peace process and arrogantly and unilaterally isolating Israel diplomatically. I believe the Palestinians have consistently been pawns by Israel and Arab neighbors and have been abused by their governments, and I hope and pray they can get their own state and live side by side with Israel. I support Abbas and the Obama roadmap for peace. But for those that support the right of Israel to exist they have to support the right of that state to defend itself, they can’t negotiate with a group that purports to wipe them off the map and drive them into the Mediterranean. And I just think Israel always faces a double standard when it comes to defending itself.
The blockade is not about arms. It’s about starving the Palenstinians to erode support for Hamas:
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p>And about searching for arms, Haneen Zoabi, who is a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel and an MP for the National Democratic Assembly or Balad party said:
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Israel said that if the flotilla sailed to Ashdod, the goods would be sent on to Gaza after being inspected. Maybe you think that this was a false promise. But if you think it was a real commitment, then it seems to me that the flotilla’s aim wasn’t really just to deliver the goods to Gaza, but to break the blockade. And the issue then is not what was on these ships, but what will be on the next ships. I am always amazed at the kind of slack folks are willing to cut Hamas, which is as nasty a terrorist group as there is. This, incidentally, is why I think there is some force to jconway’s comment, elsewhere in this thread, that Israel is held to a higher standard. Where were the “peace activists” when Hamas was was launching hundreds of rockets into Sderot in 2007 and 2008? It was the shelling, after all, that was one of the major causes of the Gaza war and the blockade that the “peace activists” are now trying to break.
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p>TedF
…killed around a hundred times more people than the rocket attacks, probably about 750 to 1000 of whom were civilians. (The IDF’s estimates seem far too low to be credible, to me, especially given the kind of combat that was going on.)
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p>You don’t have to be “cutting Hamas slack” to point out that this was a horrifically disproportionate, unjustifiable response. You just have to believe that the Palestinians are fully human too, and that their lives and deaths matter as much as anyone else’s.
The question I posed was: where were the “peace activists” when Sderot was being shelled? The answer, I think, is that they didn’t much care about the civilians in Sderot, though they care very much about the civilians in Gaza. That’s a moral as well as a geopolitical problem.
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p>I agree with you at least so far as to say that the Israeli attack (counter-attack would be more accurate, I think) on Gaza was counterproductive. In fact I think, as I have written before, that the attacks were proportionate in the legal sense, though I have shown my bona fides by criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza when I thought criticism was due.
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p>TEdF
I also think it is important to remember who started the conflict. The UN would have made Jersualem international and given 2/3’s of the mandate to the Arabs. Instead the Arabs went to war, lost those 2/3s to Israel, and when Arafat could have accepted 1/3 of that land back for his people, with Jerusalem as its capital, he choose to launch suicide bombers and a self-destructive campaign of violence against civilians.
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p>The peace activists always complain about Palestinian civilians being killed, yet forget they are collateral damage in a war zone. Whereas the Palestinian terrorists intentionally target men, women, and children and want to kill civilians. The Israeli’s don’t, it does not serve their aim and it always embarrasses them when they do. They are very careful, far more careful than the US or any other major military power is when they go into a combat zone to avoid civilian casualties. The fact that they do occur is lamentable, but remember that Hamas intentionally puts their arms factories in civilian neighborhoods to use their own people as pawns in the game of international public opinion, so in many respects they are just as responsible for the civilian casualties as Israel. Israel follows the Geneva convention and the rules of war and engagement (except in both Lebanon wars which is why I opposed them) in Gaza but faces an enemy that does not. I admire the Israeli’s who time after time give back to a world that despises them, don’t forget they are the largest contributor of aid to Haiti next to the US, and largest in terms of personnel per capita. I admire them for consistently sharing a table with groups that have historically tried to wipe them off the face of the Earth. I do not admire right wing Israeli’s that want all the land between the Med. and the Jordan for themselves and want to wage ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. I do not admire people who think Israel does no wrong, and I actually think AIPAC is a dangerous organization with disproportionate influence on US policy.
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p>That said, I also think that time and time again the Israeli’s try their best and the world seems to be waiting for them to screw up, but the Palestinians are always praised as these poor victims when they have just as much blood on their hands. The killing is senseless on both sides, but in this instance, and in Gaza as a whole, I have to reluctantly side with the Israeli’s who are fed up with the constant barrage of attacks that have reigned down upon their civilian population.
a large political component to the “activism.” Would the Israelis have let everything through in a timely manner? Good question.
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p>I don’t think Hamas has any moral high ground, sure they’re a nasty terrorist group, but starving people in Gaza to make them reject their government, is a crappy and now ineffective way to do it.
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p>2. I agree that to the extent the purpose of the blockade were to starve people, it would be a really bad idea and perhaps illegal. On the other hand, to the extent, the purpose is to keep materiel from entering Gaza that could be used to fashion the rockets that rained on Israel before the blockade, it is not only legal but probably necessary.
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p>It’s important to separate the blockade, which regards the sea, from Israel’s control of what crosses its land border into Gaza. My own view is that Israel is too restrictive in what it lets in to Gaza. However, it’s important to note that Israel sends a lot of humanitarian aid into the territory, for instance 14,000 tons of material just weeks before the flotilla fiasco. And this to a territory ruled by its arch-enemy! So I don’t think it’s creible to say that Israel intends to starve the Gazans.
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p>TedF
… have been fluid and ca capricious about what they’ll ‘let through’ and what they wont. It’s not unreasonable to not trust the Isrealis at this point to ‘make sure that peaceable supplies get through’.
What’s their angle? They closed their border with Gaza, and strictly inspect each and every transport and person that comes in and out.
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p>So, do we not trust the Egyptians either, for being, to use your terms, “fluid and capricious”??
I don’t think much of the Egyptian government either. When’s the last time they had a legitimate election? Unless I’m out of date, it’s been a long while. Not much of a democracy, and probably not too great on human rights either.
that if we had had to board vessels bound for Cuba in 1963 to look for Russian nuclear missiles, it would have been outlawed by this treaty?
in which they wouldn’t board vessels bound for Cuba in 1963. Why? They wanted desperately to avoid escalation.
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p>http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
We were smarter than the Israelis, no question about it. On the other hand, as I noted elsewhere in the thread, Israel had offered to allow the boats to proceed to Ashdod and to transport their cargo (after a search) to Gaza. So perhaps Israel’s mistake was in not being hard-headed enough, in making too much of an effort at accommodation. (This is partly tongue-in-cheek, of course, but I just mean to illustrate the difficult choices Israel faced here).
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p>TedF
choosing not to kill people should be such a difficult choice. I’d like to level the same complaint against the United States government, ten fold.
When those people are also trying to kill you.
that does tend to happen when you do things like bulldoze neighborhoods and build walls that make people travel dozens of miles when they could travel one or two, or suck up all their water.
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p>Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning anything terrorists have done, but it’s hard to get the populace to condemn it when you do everything in your power to make them feel and be powerless. They’ll try to find hope in any place they think it exists, and if they find there to be none at all, that probably makes them even more dangerous.
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p>At some point, the Israelis need to stop escalating by factors of ten, and the Palestinians need to realize that their movement will become vastly more effective if they operate under principals of peace rather than terror.
You do realize that Israeli’s did not someday wake up and say “Hey I know a great way to start the day lets bulldoze some Arab homes and economically destroy a people”, no instead the Palestinians started a reign of terror upon the Israeli population that has killed thousands in 1999 and the Israeli’s responded by putting up the wall, bulldozing the homes of suspected terrorists (a policy I condemn by the way), and taking retaliatory and preventative measures, some certainly far too extreme and extra legal to be condoned. But that first paragraph is a direct result of the Palestinians waging aggression against the Israeli’s and being punished for it. If it was your local shopping center or gay nightclub or your kids schoolbus that was being blown up would the first question you ask yourself be “gee I wonder what economic conditions caused this person to brutally and intentionally slaughter my child?”, no you would want to make sure the people responsible were punished and measures were taken to prevent that from happening again. There was peace in the Middle East between Oslo and the Second Intifada, it was Arafat that negotiated in bad faith, he walked away, and then he led his people down a self destructive path of violence and rage. Yes the Israeli responses breed more violence and rage, but you can’t expect someone to get attacked and then lay down and take it. You expect any human being to fight back and have a right to defend themselves. Or do you deny this to the Israelis?
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p>See and this is what I meant earlier by the cognitive dissonance, you are more outraged at the manner in which Israel defends herself than you are at the acts that provoked her in the first place.
“being the target of atrocities justifies committing atrocities.”
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If I may quote Aaron Sorkin quoting Rabbi Steven Leder, “vengeance is not Jewish.”
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Perhaps the ways Israel “defends itself” are, in fact, more outrageous.
Nothing can be more outrageous than brainwashing mothers to strap explosives to themselves, putting nails and other shrapnel in those explosives, and then detonating them near schools and school buses to ensure maximum fatalities to children. That is the enemy Israel is up against and they have taken many steps, some smart (targeted assasinations) some really dumb in the long run (the wall, bulldozing homes, the Lebanon war and parts of the Gaza incursion). But if their enemy was truly committed to peace it would be non-violent in the spirit of Dr. King, and you would not see such deadly force used against a non-violent foe.
funny you should mention that. You have it in spades.
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p>First of all, you’ve got to stop this kind of BS — making crap up. Maybe if you stop putting words into other peoples’ mouths, you won’t keep saying things that are either delusional or lies. Either way, though, I’m not going to stand here and take it when you try to throw wild accusations at me or others.
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p>Israel is not always the one getting all the attention for what goes wrong, least of all in America. In fact, here in the states, their government has been treated with kid gloves for a long time. We’ve unapologetically supported them 100% of the time, no matter what they do, often while they in turn make things much harder for us as a country, seemingly without giving a care to that in the world. The media has historically been perfectly fine with this. It’s only recently the media has started to criticize the Israeli government, probably because of the degree to which Israel escalated things (largely owing to the crazies that have been put in their office) and it’s sending people like you over the edge, despite the fact that the criticism itself has still been tame, especially compared to international coverage.
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p>Furthermore, people aren’t talking about Palestinian terrorists at length in this thread (save you), because this isn’t about them. This is about an incident on a boat that was horrifically out of proportion to what should have occurred. Next time Hamas does something wrong, start a diary about it and you’ll get universal denouncements on that, too. But being that rational would require the end of your cognitive dissonance, after all, admitting that Israel has been doing some pretty damn wrong things, but refusing to denounce them for it — even defending them for it — is the epitome of cognitive dissonance.
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p>First of all, just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I go to gay nightclubs. I actually find that level of assumption offensive — are we all supposed to dress up in pretty outfits, head out to the clubs and sing “It’s Raining Men?” You need to stop assuming (and making up) practically everything.
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p>As for the content of that point… Actually, no. You don’t know me, don’t presume to think you can say what I’d do under a given situation. I’m a humanist. I don’t believe in the slaughter of anyone. I had a cousin shot to death, that didn’t and doesn’t mean I suddenly wanted the fucking asshole who did it to get the chair. In prison for decades/ever? Sure. Eye for an eye? No. At some point, people need to come to the conclusion that all human lives have value, no matter what their backgrounds are or what religion they were raised in, or even what they’ve done.
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p>Believe it or not, fighting back and escalation is not the hard thing for Israel to do. Deciding not to escalate and not to retaliate is the hard thing to do. Israel had a peace leader who wanted to go that route and who looked as though he’d finally bring peace to the Middle East. His name was Rabin. He was a hero. He was also assassinated… by one of the Jewish fringe-wingers in his state who didn’t want peace. There are actually a lot of people on both sides who feel the same way because they’re blinded by all the blood and what can only be described as a retaliation fetish.
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p>Israel needs to get back to the example set by Rabin and it needs to stand up for peace, but that’s probably only going to come from a lot of international pressure at this point. If Israel does that and refuses to give into the terrorism and hatred of groups like Hamas by escalating and retaliating, it will ‘win’ and the Palestinian people will no longer look to Hamas for leadership. And at that point, some kind of resolution can be made and the walls can come down.
I didn’t realize you were gay and the point was not in any way to be offensive towards gays, I used it as an example of how awful Palestinian terrorists are since they deliberately attack gay night clubs because they despise the tolerant stance Israel has towards homosexuals. A good friend of mine, a lesbian and a rabbi in training, knew people that were killed in that attack. This radical Islamic extremists despise Jews, despise gays, and are waging an unrelenting war against people that do not fit their theocratic vision. That is Hamas. It is not a friendly freedom fighting organization, it is a vicious anti-woman, anti-semetic, and anti-gay organization that is committed to standing against everything liberalism is supposed to stand for.
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p>I am sick and tired of America making excuses for Israel, and you are right that we handle them with kid gloves. We greenlit the disastrous war in Lebanon, we let them build settlements, and we give them no strings attached aid. I applaud this President for being the first really nuanced voice on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. I applaud him for standing up to neocons like Bibi that want to build settlements forever and are not truly committed to peace since it violates their vision of an expansionist Israeli state. I applaud him for threatening to cut off aid and for trying to bring both sides to the table. I also applaud him for standing by Israel when it does the right thing, in this case defending itself. He has also asked them to review the blockade and possibly modify it so incidents like this do not happen again, like TedF I agree the Israeli response was botched and inept, unlike you I do not think it was illegal, premeditated, or an act of cold blooded killing. It was provoked and the retaliation was justified.
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p>Lastly, my broader point is that you’re earlier statement committed the logical fallacy of ipso facto, you used the example of Israel bulldozing homes as a cause for the Palestinian terrorism when it was in fact a response to it. A response that we both agree may be extreme and unfair at many times, but a response that was triggered by Palestinian aggression. That fact is in the history books and to deny it would be to deny history. Arafat let a good deal die and committed his people to the slaughter of innocent Jews, in turn many of his people, including many innocents, were slaughtered in retaliation. But the cycle started with him, and he is directly responsible for killing thousands of Jews and indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people.
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p>Stop putting words in my mouth, or point out where I said exactly those things. Why should I continue to converse with you when you keep attributing statements to me which I’ve never said? As I’ve said before, it’s either dishonest or delusional. Stop it.
They would now be being excoriated for attempting to sink a ship full of peace activists.
Yes, I guess so.
But if Israel had done the same thing here, I don’t think the international reaction would be much different. 10 people would still be alive, though.
If Israel went through with that sort of a policy, it never would have been news to begin with. The only thing that made this newsworthy, internationally anyway, was the ten who were unjustly killed.
for the U.S. to stop pouring military aid into a volatile situation. It seems a little hollow to say that we are suspending judgment pending a thorough investigation, and then to continue to arm one side.
But I agree with this. I think Obama should play hardball diplomacy with Bibi on settlements, no more settlements or we cut aid. Suspending settlements is the only way to get Abbas back to the table, and this is one area where it is in all the parties interest, particularly Israel’s, for them to give in. Bibi is a stubborn unilateralist schooled by American neocons and I fear he is dragging his country on a path to endless war rather than peaceful disengagement. But that disengagement also requires Hamas to disarm and recognize the Jewish state, something many people on this thread and many on the left fail to recognize. The responsibility lies on both parties to start acting more mature and level headed, not just Israel. When it comes to settlements Israel has to stop appeasing its hard right wingers who want to annex the land between the Med and the Jordan.
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p>Who? Seriously, give me one example of a person on this thread who has said that they think Hamas doesn’t need to recognize Israel and that they don’t think Hamas should disarm? Just one.
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p>You are a part of the problem and don’t even realize it.
If you look up thread nobody is calling for Hamas or the Palestinian leadership to take proactive steps, the majority of the posts are calling for Israeli concessions but none are asking the same of Palestinians. I will admit it was wrong of me to generalize and make an inference that people on this thread do not want Hamas to make these things, but I think the silence on Hamas vs the endless calls upon Israel tells you something about the cognitive dissonance many on the left have about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I say this as someone who considers himself of the center-left, but Israel gets consistently criticized and attacked for not making more concessions by leftists like Chomsky and Galloway and even centrists like Carter, but no one is as vocal when it comes to the Palestinians doing their fair share.
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p>I am not militantly pro-Israel, I consider myself in favor of Israel’s right to exist and pro-Israel reasonably defending herself, but I do no side with them on every issues and recognize, unlike many Israeli’s it seems, that the creation of a Palestinian state is the only way to create lasting peace and security for Israel. That said you do not see left wing protesters in the streets of Chicago and Boston calling for Hamas to stop killing children and recognize the right of self-determination for the Jewish state. You only see the protests directed Israel’s way.
. . .we could take the aid we give to Israel and arm the Palestinians to the teeth, then we could get some left wing types to mount sporadic, or even virulent protests against Hamas. That would teach those hypocrites in Gaza City.
AKA You are full of .
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p>Seriously, jconway, if you can’t even be a tiny fraction of a percent reasonable, go away.
Up post you said that the terrorism, while you do not condone it, was a response to Israeli aggression, which in fact shows you are full of shit since you are denying that Arafat started the war. Also you have offered no realistic incentives for Hamas to give up its weapons and negotiate. I would argue the quarantine is working since Palestinians are getting fed up with their government and might elect a more reasonable one that is willing to disarm and recognize Israel. If you have an alternative that is not utopian and not solely directed at one side making all the concessions I am all ears bro.
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p>Also unlike you i think you do make reasonable comments on your own blog and elsewhere on these forums, I just happen to disagree with you here. Why can’t you treat me with the same respect? Why must people that disagree with you ‘go away’?
when the people who are alive now, waging it, weren’t even born then?
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p>As for Hamas… change is not going to come from Hamas. But it will come if Israel changes its course and stops the 10-fold escalations — and instead really tries for peace. Because if the hostilities end, it’s not going to take long until the Palestinian people stop looking to Hamas for leadership. At that point, Hamas either dies (which is most likely) or changes. The bottom line, though, is peace makes terrorism irrelevant.
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p>Since you proclaim to be such an ardent Catholic, may I suggest you reread the New Testament. You clearly have no grasp of what “turn the other cheek” means, or the power behind it.
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p>I love people who disagree with me, when they make strong arguments and interesting conversations. I can’t stand it, however, when they make up bullshit as opposed to making real arguments. When you make your points by trying to attribute things to me or others which we’ve never said, that’s not an honest or reasonable debate. BMG and communities like it are better off without those sorts of individuals. This is a reality-based community, after all.
As I have commented before, I think there is a kind of racism lurking in statements like this:
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p>It suggests to me that we think that the Palestinians are children who are going to continue throwing tantrums and blowing things up and can’t be counted on to take responsible, adult decisions. Maybe if we stopped assuming that Hamas and the Palestinians who support them are irredeemably politically immature (in fact, I would say they are quite mature and are actually acting highly politically effectively), we would be in a better place.
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p>TedF
Hamas =! Palestinians. Change is not going to come from Hamas. Change absolutely can come from Israelis and Palestinians making the right decisions. Honestly, I think the leadership on both sides are acting like children, if you want to know the truth, but that’s an aspect to almost all humanity and certainly not unique to that region. It is certainly a whole lot easier for parties to engage in violence than it is for them to engage in peace when it comes to conflicts, particularly of the national and international variety (but even at any level).
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p>In the future, you ought to think really, really, really carefully before making such wild assumptions and throwing out charges of racism. Next time I won’t respond to it as politely as I did now.
You are essentially saying Israel should turn the other cheek to terrorism and let more of its people die in the hope, the slim flimsy hope that Hamas, which is currently dedicated to killing Jews and wiping Israel off the map will suddenly change. And it does matter who started it, people in the Middle East have long memories or else the Holy Land wouldn’t be forth fighting for to either side. The temple mount, stripped of its history, is just a worthless dirt pile. But precisely because people remember the past it is worth a whole lot to both people.
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p>Listen we both agree that we want a peaceful solution, but if you look at the Northern Ireland example, or Sri Lanka, you see that peace can only be possible once terrorism is stopped. The IRA disarmed and its political wing got a seat at the table. Hamas should follow suit, and the US should do a lot more to pressure Israel to set benchmarks and concessions to make once Hamas disarms to give them an incentive. But it should not unilaterally disarm and stop defending itself. That is insane.
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p>I’m suggesting they should choose not to escalate. That is slightly different than ‘turning the other cheek,’ though close to it. Certainly, they should act on good intelligence, but they should spend more effort to minimize any casualties when acting on that intelligence. Most importantly, they shouldn’t do anything like this boat stunt again. Seriously, there was no reason on earth to kill anyone on that boat. They could have disabled it and moved it. They could have used other methods than bullet – tasers, tear gas, etc. There were other options, that wouldn’t have put fuel to the fire.
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p>The funny thing about human memories is 1) they don’t work on things that happened before they were born, and 2) Muslim and Jewish memories aren’t any better than Catholic or Agnostic memories. If Palestinians and Israelis were acting on tradition, there would be peace, for Muslims and Jewish people lived for hundreds of years peacefully. This is not a religious conflict, this is a land conflict.
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p>and that happens when people in that area get serious about wanting the terrorism to end. That’s got to come from the Palestinian side. You seem to think that inflicting as much pain on them as possible will force that to happen, I disagree with that. I think that is going to happen much quicker should Israel show Palestinians a continued sign of peace and go the Rabin route once again.
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p>Classic jconway… why bother arguing over things other people said, when he can just make shit up? Feel free to tell me where I said Israel should disarm. It’s a country surrounded by other countries which have all invaded it not so long ago, for heaven’s sake. Of course it shouldn’t disarm. Stop the knee-jerk reactions and taking everything to their extremes. It really, really doesn’t help your arguments.
When you say very generalized things without backing them up I will make inferences that maybe you did not want me to make.
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p>You are saying contradicting things. On the one hand you attacked me for saying you thought Israel killed in cold blood and impassionately argued that nowhere did you say such a thing, yet you just said right here that Israel had no reason to attack the boat and no reason to kill the people on board. Er go they had no rational reason to kill them, er go it was in cold blood. That is not me making things up that is me taking your statements to their logical conclusion, something you seem to retreat from.
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p>Similarly you attack me for accusing you of saying you want Israel to disarm, you argue it is legitimate for them to defend themselves. Yet you oppose the blockade, you oppose them attacking the terrorists back, you oppose them engaging in any way that might cause civilian casualties even though we both know Hamas intentionally puts its weapons factories in civilian neighborhoods er go Israel can’t attack those factories.
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p>SO I would argue it is classic Ryepower to say one thing, and then classic jconway for me to point that out, and then for you to retreat from it.
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p>So let me ask you, since you clearly acknowledge they have a right to defend themselves and you understand they have been invaded over and over again by their neighbors and attacked by terrorists from within their own borders, what should Israel do to defend itself?
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p>I claimed you want Israel to fight with one hand tied behind its back, I inferred this since you oppose not only the blockade but any kind of punitive action that might force Hamas to come to the negotiation table. You explicitly reject that path. So I ask you yet again what is the alternative?
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p>What limited form of self-defense is allowed to Israel and how can we force Hamas, which currently plays by no rules, to play by some rules?
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p>I am legitimately interested in your ideas since I think we are actually both quite close in our positions, I just happen to think we are both emphasizing different parts. I think the peace process can be jumpstarted only when Palestinians politically mature, recognize Israel, and agree to disarm. That is the only way Israel can start giving up land, which we both agree is the real sticking point, without worrying that this land will be used as launching pads for attacks against its people. That is my view though, explain why you think all the Israeli’s have to start this.
…I’m sorry if I hit a nerve, but here’s how I see it: everyone agrees that Israelis are responsible for the actions of their government, even though many Israelis (and many Diaspora Jews, including myself) think the government has been hijacked by the right, particularly with regard to West Bank policy and various domestic and Israel-Diaspora matters that are not really relevant to this conversation. But lots of people don’t seem willing to hold the Palestinians in Gaza responsible for their government. So we get statements like yours, which as I understand it, says that we can’t count on the Palestinian authorities to make compromises so the Israeli authorities will have to be the ones to compromise. I say that this is implicitly treating the Palestinians in Gaza as politically immature, and that we ought to say to them that they are accountable for what their government does in the same way that Israelis are accountable for what their government does.
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p>Now, you could criticize this from the right, so to speak, by denying that Hamas is really a legitimate government, that it doesn’t represent the people, and that anyone who speaks up against it is in danger of, well, death. I am not sure whether that is right or not, and I wonder what you think about it.
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p>You say you have some super-duper rejoinder to my argument that you refrained from making out of politeness, though frankly your reply was not polite at all. I say, let’s hear it!
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p>TedF
…lead us into the War of 1812 and World War I? Seems to me the result is never good.