Israeli Air Strike

[oldoldman]

Okay, so what you're telling me is that the US attacks its targets even while the targets are among a large civilian population?

...

[Brill Weave]

Have you not been paying attention since 2003? How many reports do we see of "collateral damage" resulting in civilian casualties? If you really believe that it was just the military getting something so simple as a few coordinates wrong and they just "happen" to hit a civilian home or school you're one of the most naive people I've spoken to.

[Kuya]

I'm sure you don't want to compare an area like Gaza to Afghanistan.

[Brill Weave]

No, they are not the same. But to believe they so extremely different is foolish at best. As well as the belief that the U.S. won't kill a foreign civilian population to reach their objectives.

[Kuya]

Have you not been paying attention since 2003? How many reports do we see of "collateral damage" resulting in civilian casualties? If you really believe that it was just the military getting something so simple as a few coordinates wrong and they just "happen" to hit a civilian home or school you're one of the most naive people I've spoken to.

It's been 11 days since Israel attacked Gaza. It's been how long since the US attacked Iraq? Find the numbers of civilians killed by US forces in the span of over 5 years in Iraq, and while you're doing that, i want you to learn geography and compare Iraq to Gaza.

[Kuya]

No, they are not the same. But to believe they so extremely different is foolish at best. As well as the belief that the U.S. won't kill a foreign civilian population to reach their objectives.

So, wait, how similar is it then? Care to quantify that?

What you're saying is at best a given. Are you trying to say because the US might do it that it's okay to do? Obviously not, so your "argument" was just pointless filler.

[Elvis]

I understand that Kuya. I'm mentioning how the United States and allied forces are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan in their neverending hunt for extremists. How many civilians have they killed with drone missile strikes. Search and seizures of suspected militants. But we get a slap on the wrist from governments who are against what we are doing. Which is essentially what Israel is doing right now. They're just copying off of big brother.

I should have made my point a bit more clear I reread the post and can see the confusion, my bad.

Hamas is the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. The insurgency is not. The terrorists like Al Qaeda, are not democratically elected.

Now, I can't decide on what to call Hamas. I think their intentional targeting of civilians is condemnable - obviously - however, they are an official government.

Other governments engage in terror but say otherwise.

This entire notion of terrorism is entirely abstract. For the US to deem a group or entity a 'terrorist organization' is as much a politically motivated act as it may be a morally motivated act.

In the case of the latter, I'm giving our government and other powerful governments a lot of slack.

I think there should be definitive criteria. When Israel bombs a densely populated civilian sector to get at a group of terrorists who make up a fraction of the people within this area, they end up killing tons of innocent people.

The end result is no different from an outright terrorist act. In fact, you create more anger and rage by indiscriminately killing people like this.

As to the comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan - again, we need to examine this conflict in it's entirety.

This is not about terrorism and counter-terrorism. It's the last case of colonization in the world. Any population that is being colonized is going to fight back. Will they use terrorist tactics? Yes.

Is it excusable? No. I understand them though. I can do that and not agree.

To conflate Hamas with Al Qaeda is simply wrong. There are plenty of reasons, the most prominent being the one I listed above - that Hamas is a democratically elected government.

Furthermore, when you examine the history of colonialism, this behavior from the Palestinians is not controversial at all.

Recall what we called the Native Americans - savages.

They were brutal. They scalped people and blah blah. They earned that title of 'savage'. Now, does this mean the colonists were saints? No. They did horrible things as well. In fact, if the 'savages' had 'won' then I'm sure there's a chance that the tables would be turned in terms of perception.

To use a more recent example, which I always bring up, recall the South African National Congress. Led by Nelson Mandela.

During the 80s, the US supported the white South Africans - the Afrikaners. We put the South African National Congress and Nelson Mandela on our terrorist list. We kept them on this list until this past summer.

Nelson Mandela went on to become the first black President of South Africa and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I think we label people terrorists because they are terrorists, but it's also a political and rhetorical device.

It's like how people (not anyone here, except that one guy from before who most won't remember except maybe Kuya) in the MSM react to criticism of Israel. They call dissenters antisemitic. It happened to Jimmy Carter.

Or how we, and the MSM, use the Nazi holocaust or Hitler as an ideological weapon to condemn people in the present time. We called Saddam Hitler. We called Kaddafi(sp), Hitler. We call Ahmedinejad, Hitler. So on and so forth.

These labels begin to lose their meaning. So I don't prescribe to these terrorists lists. They aren't absolute. That's not to say I think Al Qaeda is a as harmless as the Backstreet Boys, but I think we should maintain a healthy amount of skepticism.

Still not done with my original post. :\

[oldoldman]

All Gaza is is one large civilian population. How many rockets does Hamas have to fire before Israel is allowed to fight back?

[Elvis]

All Gaza is is one large civilian population. How many rockets does Hamas have to fire before Israel is allowed to fight back?

I hope people ignore this comment^^. No offense to you personally Oldoldman. It's just that what you said is completely superficial. Fuck, still writing. Wait for it...

[Zilong]

Well, retaliation is kinda what you should expect from illegal occupation.

[Kuya]

I'm still sort of jaded with the comparisons. Iraq, a place that was attacked under false pretenses and where the US faced a multitude of forces ranging from Al Quaeda to Shia and Sunni insurgents, some even with ties to Iran. Afghanistan, a population suffering at the hands of its tyrannical government and having no choice but to choose between Al Quaeda or the tyrant government, while the US idiotiquely supports the government there. And we have Gaza, a strangled territory, both territorially and strangled of resources by Israel under constant poverty and nightmarish conditions due to its political instability as well as the factors mentioned before. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world where airstrykes are assured to kill far too many, and it's being compared to Iraq and Afghanistan, two "sovereign" nations.

I could laugh my heart out.

[oldoldman]

Hamas will never see Israel existing as legal, no matter how much land they give them. The official stance of Hamas is that Israel should not exist period. Not matter how much land Isreal gives to Hamas it won't be enough. "Illegal occupation" in that area of the world is so fucking relative it's ridiculous.

[Elvis]

I think this conflating of Hamas with Al Qaeda and blah blah, has to do with coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, in general.

The coverage has never been honest.

We all have shit to do other than sit around debating this stuff. So imagine, the average guy, going to work/school/maybe cos-plays as Sailor Moon in a nearby forest with friends on the weekend, coming home after a long day and then turning on the television.

A lot of the time, it's just about exposure. Like, we have our daily life and then we will come across the coverage of these world events in our free time. Television is the best way for this exposure.

I recall some study saying that print media is dying and is being replaced by blogging and the internet medium. Makes sense.

More people are becoming tech savvy and getting their news elsewhere. I think that's good. If you're only exposed to American television media, you won't get the whole picture. You will only get one perspective.

[Elvis]

Hamas will never see Israel existing as legal, no matter how much land they give them. The official stance of Hamas is that Israel should not exist period. Not matter how much land Isreal gives to Hamas it won't be enough. "Illegal occupation" in that area of the world is so fucking relative it's ridiculous.

"So fucking relative."

I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

It is true that Hamas has a crazy charter. I don't know if they've changed it but it doesn't matter.

I'll be a snob right now (as if I haven't been before) and say you don't know what happened at the Camp David accords or at Taba - the peace agreements.

The entire Arab league are fully supporting a peace agreement. Despite what these crazy charters say, Hamas WANTS peace. They WANTED to extend the truce.

Your simplification is just that, a simplification. Rooted in ignorance of the facts. It's not a complicated conflict but it - like any other historical occurrence - has lots of dimensions and there's a lot of material to go through.

[Elvis]

Ok. Finally done with part of my long post which everyone will tl;dr.

We've gone on several tangents but the last two pages were explicitly pertinent to the discussion : the breaking of the cease-fire/the nature of the cease-fire and a general overview of this lead-up to war.

These issues are integral to understand what is happening right now and most importantly, WHY it is happening.

Now, we have data on the truce from when it began to when it ended. However, when it ended is a matter of debate. Israel insists the truce ends on December 21st or 22nd. How do they present this conclusion?

In the following report, the Embassy of Israel states:

The current escalation is a continuation of the series of events that began with the prevention of an abduction attack on November 4th, leading to a significant erosion of the lull arrangement. In the past month-and-a-half (as of December 22), 242 rockets and 152 mortar shells have been fired by the Palestinian terrorist organizations into Israel, accompanied by other kinds of attacks, including abductions, IEDs, and sniper fire. Beginning November 4th, the lull arrangement has been eroded by the terrorist organizations to the point at which it exists only on paper.

First let’s examine the obvious bias here:
• Israel characterizes the bombing of Palestinian tunnels as a ‘prevention’ of an ‘abduction attack’.

We are not given any evidence as to how/why Hamas was planning to abduct Israeli soldiers or citizens. Furthermore, the case against such a notion is far stronger but I will get to that later. My main point of contention here is that there is no evidence to support this claim that Hamas was going to abduct someone. Based on what I’ve read, neither substantiated evidence or rhetorical evidence is provided.

Israel then proceeds to state that following their bombing of the tunnels, there was an ‘erosion’ of the cease-fire agreement. We have to ask ourselves why they choose to call it an ‘erosion’? A cease-fire is quite definitive in meaning, isn’t it? It means a suspension of hostilities by the parties involved. However, the terms of the cease-fire were not met in absolute terms, by either side.

The main terms proposed to Hamas was to stop all rocket fire.

The main terms proposed to Israel was to ‘ease’ the blockade.

Right off the bat, there is an unfair expectation of Hamas. They are told to stop all rocket fire. Now this is only unfair in a relative sense (comparison to Israel’s terms). It’s entirely reasonable in and of itself, to expect someone to stop trying to kill you. But again, in the context of a mutual agreement, this expectation of Hamas is not fair.

Israel on the other hand, has to ‘ease’ the blockade. Not stop (absolute), but ease (subjective).

So Israel can ease the blockade to the extent it sees fit. The UN (specifically, the UNWRA) and the Red Cross – among many others – have condemned Israel’s blockade. They were quite passionate in their condemnation. From their point of view, Israel’s ‘easing’ of the blockade was not sufficient – to say the least.

But if these groups can be so easily dismissed (as they always are) by powerful entities, whether it be governments or whatever, then who gets to decide what was a sufficient ‘easing’ of the blockade?

Israel does. Israel gets to decide whether it met it’s own terms. And that’s why this truce was not fair. I mean, it’s not fair in some other ways as well. The blockade was affecting 1.5 million Palestinians – mostly civilians. The conditions in Gaza were deemed a humanitarian crisis by international organizations like the UN, the Red Cross, etc. etc.

And yet, Israel can basically dismiss all of these groups because they have no political clout.

More later..

[Elvis]

Moving, on let’s try to establish some parameters to this truce. There are some gray areas.

It is a fact that the truce began on June 19th, 2008. It is my opinion that it ended on November 4th, 2008. I will try to explain why I believe so.

Here is the graph of monthly rocket fire from the report compiled by the Embassy of Israel:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...Rocketfire.jpg

The data presented by Israel does not differentiate between the number of rockets fired by Hamas before the bombing of the tunnels on November 4th with those fired after.

Suffice it to say, Israel believes that after their November 4th attack, the cease-fired ‘eroded’ and came to a full-stop on December 21st or 22nd.

It is very convenient for Israel to use this sort of language. Saying the cease-fire ‘eroded’ extends this time period where they can keep counting the number of rockets Hamas fires while technically - in their opinion -under the truce.

This is an entirely petty semantic argument employed by Israel for political reasons. The intent is to draw out a response from Hamas (by the tunnel bombings), while continuing to play the victim. Israel turns around and points the finger at Hamas saying, ‘Look, they are firing at us still even though we’re in a cease-fire!’ (Which is exactly what happened with Israeli politicians and the full PR campaign in full-swing blaming Hamas for the collapse of the truce.)

Hamas would naturally escalate the rocket fire back to typical frequency (average of 197 a month) after such an attack by Israel. So for political reasons, it appears as though Hamas broke the ‘thrust’ of the cease-fire agreement.

More later..

[oldoldman]

Read the whole thing, thanks for being clear with your stance.

[archibaldcrane]

Elvis and I are pretty much on the same page. Arguing that the truce was in effect until late december is...just...strange. Even if you think "IT'S ALL HAMAS' FAULT!"...the rocket fire was restored to pre-truce levels in early november, after the tunnel bombing - saying "oh, we have a cease-fire" while rockets are falling all around is just a bullshit PR move trying to inflate the aggression of Hamas.

[Kuya]

Oh God, watching the BBC grill the Israeli ambassador for the UK was priceless. Wish the US media was this scathing about these sort of things.

[Deftscythe]

Oh God, watching the BBC grill the Israeli ambassador for the UK was priceless. Wish the US media was this scathing about these sort of things.

Is there a place I can watch this?