kenneal - lagger wrote:You don't have to refrain from posting on the topic, just be a little more civil in your comments. You're not the one who I have had to edit.
I too believe that the Israelis are giving the Palestinians a very hard, murderously hard, time. Those who's very existence in Palestine is based on the Holocaust are visiting on the Palestinians a similar experience. (OK, they are not using gas!) If what the Jews had done to them in Europe, the deportation to camps and ghettos, the blockading and the killing, was wrong then what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, the deportation to camps and ghettos, the blockading and the killing, is also wrong. It is even more wrong because the Jews suffered that treatment themselves, they know what it is like and they complained about it to the world and asked for help.
But the Palestinians, or rather Hamas, are not exactly helping themselves either. The Palestinians did vote for Hamas although since then Hamas has gone about removing their political rivals, Fatah, in an extremely efficient and ruthless way. If the Israelis could keep their fight with Hamas and not blitz whole areas to rubble killing indiscriminatingly as they go I might have more sympathy with their cause. Hamas are sending rockets into Israel which is very annoying and the only reason that the are not killing people is that the Israelis have superior technology, paid for by the USA. These rocket attacks are pin pricks or insect bites but the Israelis are replying with a sledgehammer and that response will do the Israelis more harm than the Palestinians in the long term. Yes, Hamas are using Palestinians as human shields but blitzing whole neighbourhoods cannot be justified, in my opinion.
Hamas is what you get when people have nothing left to lose.
"Human shields" is what you get when god knows how many people are forced into living literally on top of one other in one of the most, if not the most densely populated patch of land on the planet. Hamas are among the people because there is
nowhere else for them to be. This liberal western argument that Hamas should only fight away from civilian areas is ridiculous and is ignorant of the reality on the ground there.
I'm sick to my stomach with the English, liberal, BBC-esque reflexive tendency to maintain "balance" with "one the one hand but on the other hand". There is no "on the other hand".
Israel is criminal state whose very existence is based on a crime and which is committing slow-motion genocide on the Palestinians. No more excuses, no more appeasements, no more apologetics for Israeli murderers.
No more excusing the USA, without whom Israel would not be able get away with any of this.
Anyone who argues that the Palestinians should just give up the ghost and walk away needs to say where they think these people are going to go. Will they put them up in
their home country? Also, in arguing for the "might is right" principle, such people often become somewhat more reticent about it if they think such a principle might be applied to
them, surprise surprise. All of the above said, whilst I completely disagree with such a position, it is at least
arguable. Though, I am bound to say, it is
not an argument I am prepared to entertain if it is proposed by the perpetrators themselves or by their backers.
However, to be absolutely clear about this, anyone who is prepared to morally defend the USA policy specifically vis a vis Israel's genocidal behaviour towards the Palestinians or, even more despicably, blame the Palestinians for fighting back, however hopeless their fight may be, are either ignorant fools or are scum.
These words were carefully considered by me and I meant every one of them.
