If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
Ah, I am sorry. The murderous men and women who claim to be one unit do exist, and I am using their shorthand to save space. The relationship they claim to have does not, though.
Glad that's sorted and over with, so the thread can be derailed by somebody else into a palestinian (no such thing) Israeli (no such thing) toss up, with the winning lunatic getting to impose his fictions or shoot the losing lunatic.
Carry on then....
And for those of us who would like peace this is all terrible news. Politically even if Sharon recovers I don’t think he’ll be able to fight an election. And as for Kadima, it’s basically a one-man band and without Sharon backing it such a centrist party will disappear. So most likely Likud would succeed with Netanyahu – since Netanyahu opposed the withdrawal from Gaza and is generally very right wing he would not be willing to make the kind of compromises that I believe are required. Sharon hinted at concessions regarding the West Bank – that will not happen under Netanyahu. As for a Labor, they’d struggle to make any concessions – they don’t have the same clout as Sharon. Simply put, they’d get little done. Israel's enemies will be worse off without Sharon, they're too blinded by propaganda and lies to see that at the moment I guess.
And then you're conveniently forgetting that most of the victims of Sharon were women and children refugees and entirely defenceless. Not exactly the kind of 'target', however misguided, that groups like the PLO went for.
To deliberately allow gangs of semi-feral murderers armed with hacking knives and guns access to a refugee camp, in full knowledge of what was going to happen, and oversee the barbaric slaughter of more than a thousand women, children and elderly refugees in 24 hours is nothing short of a Crime Against Humanity. That the evil cunt hasn't rot in jail for the rest of his natural life is nothing short of a disgrace, let alone him becoming Prime Minister of Israel and being treated as a Statesman.
Even if you were to ignore his barbaric record as a PM (appalling new levels of abuse, torture and murder, erection of a Nazi-Apartheid Wall, appropriation of yet more land, etc etc etc) Ariel Sharon still stands alone as someone infinitely more murderous, bloody and despicable than anyone else in the region, Arafat included, could aspire to be.
A truly evil piece of shit on a par with Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet.
I didn't realise standing up for Israel meant mass-murder of women and children, collective punishment measures the Nazi themselves would be proud of, the flaunting of every law in the book, human rights abuses or illegal land appropriation.
If that is really what standing up for Israel means, is little surprise the Israelis find themselves targets of terrorists and militants...
Really? Most other people argue that Israel's foreign policy for the last 3 decades has been the cause of most of the terrorism there is today.
LOL.
"Here, I'll give you back 100 square miles here. By the way, don' mind me if I go and take 1,000 square miles there. There's a good boy".
If the Israeli people did the most decent thing available and voted for Labour instead for fundamentalist right wing lunatics there wouldn't be a need for Sharon and his new party, would there?
So it's statistics?
Seriously, you could not have one without the other. I am all for comdemning many of Sharon's actions but context is important so is the acceptance that people like Arafat played their part in the whole carade.
To condemn one for killing civillians (including women and children) is hypocrisy if you will not condemn the other for also killing civilians (including women and children) - it's isn't a matter of numbers.
A bizarre concept even for you Aladdin and I really hope you are not serious.
Since large swathes of Palestinian civilians support terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have murdered innocent people are they targets too? I don’t think they are. And neither do the IDF since the IDF solely targets terrorists and never innocent civilians – Palestinian terrorist organisations meanwhile that you have attempted to justify as some kind of Palestinian equivalent armed forces deliberately target Israeli civilians – Hamas has even intentionally targeted Israeli children and teenagers. I guess killing Israeli children is justified too because their parents voted Likud?
Even more so given his condemnation of Dresden and Hiroshima et al.
Arafat was as big a cunt, if not bigger cunt then Sharon!
Since you're obsessed with comparing Israel to Nazi Germany there's an interesting article on it
here which you may find interesting.
I personally find it odd that Israel’s enemies always seek to compare Israel to Nazi Germany – never say Fascist Italy or Stalinist Russia. I think it’s probably because Israel’s enemies realise how offensive a comparison it is and that since Israel’s enemies are usually although not always anti-Semitic it’s a nice comparison since it helps trivialise the Holocaust too. By all means criticise Israel for its wrongdoings, Israel is like every other country in that it is not perfect. However, please do some reading on Nazi Germany to realise that the comparison is simply not true.
You have moved into the UK as a University Student, I'm not sure how long it is before you could vote in a general election but Im sure you can vote in local elections.
The Palestinain people were there before they're land was taken though, yet they have dont seem to have any rights at all. Example: I beleive in order to get a decent job in Israel you need to have done compulsary time in the army (Something else i cant think any true democracies practice) Of course Palestinians dont do this, so are treated as second class citizens.
It was they're land before it was taken in 1948 or 1967 or whenever Israel has slowly taken over other pieces of land, they should have rights in their own homeland.
There is little chance for reconciliation- let alone lasting peace- when we're prepared to overlook the atrocities of one side (atrocities that, make no mistake, had they been committed by any other nation on earth would have caused the said nation to be bombed to fuck decades ago) and masquerade them as "legitimate defence".
As for the Palestinians and the militant/terrorist groups, the situation is a bit different is it not? They are powerless to stop the conflict. The only people capable to stop the conflict are the Isralies- since they are the ones doing the illegal occupying. And if the Israelis choose to vote for far right wing lunatics who have no intention whatsoever to return the stolen land, and moreover actually seek to steal further land, you are only inviting further trouble.
I mean, is it really not obvious to you?
Collective punishment? Check
Creation of ghettoes in concentration camp-like conditions complete with segregation walls? Check
Vilification and oppression of an entire people by means of mass displacement, illegal appropriation of land and property, treatment as second-class citizens and segregation/racist laws? Check
And the reason why many people choose to compare such measures with the Nazis is not only because they are strikingly similar, but because the Jews of all people should know full well of such horrors. I mean, some of the direct descendants of the people who were at the receiving end of the most brutal, dehumanised horrors in the history of mankind are only a generation later playing similar tricks (if at a much smaller scale needless to say) on another people.
Of all the people in the world, the Israeli government should know best that some things you don't do to others ffs! How short memories we have!
And that's why the N-word gets mentioned often. Because of the tragic irony of the situation.
The people, including the ones now known as Palestinians, lived in the land previously to the creation of Israel, yet they didn't rule it. An important point to remember.
Um perhaps – but you’re implying that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets because of who they elect.
So, to go back to my original question - in parts of the Palestinian territories where there is mass support from civilians for Islamic Jihad and Hamas would civilians be legitimate targets? I don't think they would but if that's really your position on Israelis I don't see how your view can be different with regard to Palestinians.
Whats the difference between living on and ruling it? Who ruled it beforehand then? Well, one of the colonist nations i assume but again, who was before that?
Point is, that the Arab population at the time, nor the Jews, had any sovereignity over the area or the system.
I would caution you on your assumption that any other Party than Likhud (as heinous a batch of Zionist ideologues they are) would do anything other than maintain the same longrunning status quo. Some are even more right wing and others, on the "left" (if such distinction even truly exists) hold equally as tenaciously to the Zionist ideology as their currently-ascendent counterparts.
Only when the nation of Israel disavows Zionism and its colonialist era progenitors, acknowledges its foundations in colonial conquest and terrorism, eschews notions of exceptionalistic preference for those of Jewish descent in favour of true pluralism and rights of all therein and makes restitution for its generations of crimes against the indigenous people of the land will there ever be peace.
The only just solution is a one state solution for all. That wont happen until Zionism is buried alongside all other likeminded ideologies of national, ethnic or other group exceptionalism in the graveyard of history.
Although Israel is a Jewish state it's largely secular and Palestinian Muslims/Christians have complete freedom of religion within Israel. The only religious group that I know of which is discriminated against in Israel are non-Orthodox Jews since Conservative, Reform and secular Jews don't have equal rights with Orthodox Jews on marriage and conversion. (And this is something always under attack).
There's some discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel, until recently they couldn't buy homes in certain Jewish areas likewise Jews couldn't buy homes in Arab villages. The Supreme Court ruled a few years ago though that the government could not do this.
Given that the number of Arab/Palestinian citizens in Israel since 1948 has vastly increased mainly through Arab immigration to Israel many of Israel's Arab citizens indeed chose to live in Israel - I don't see why they'd do this if they were 'second class citizens'. Arab Israelis can vote and have their own political parties represented in the Knesset. Ask gay Arab Israelis where they'd rather live...
Red herring argument once again Jacq. Lack of sovereignty by the indicenous people doesnt justify the grasping intents and efforts of Eastern European Zionist ideologues to presume themselves entitled to invade and take that land for their own.
How easily you dismiss almost 1 million persons driven out forcibly or through Israel's self-proclaimed land laws of absentee forfeiture to those who had no historic, ethnic, linguistic, cultural or legal right to be there in the first place.
Seems you fail to understand the difference between an indigenous people having "sovereignty" and those same having legal ownership of their land. Even under the Ottamans, the indigenous Palestinians and TINY minority of indigenous Jews (Arab Jews) OWNED their homes and land. Quite telling that it also mattered little if not at all to the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gangs who took such glee in their indiscriminate and widespread dispossessions and atrocities.
Thats like saying it was RIGHT for the Americans to take land away from the Native Americans. The point is that people still lived in that land and were forced out by the Israeli's be it through violence, threats or fear of attack.
It’s not really that simple. There were many Arabs as well attracted to the new areas of Jewish settlement that through the Zionist movement provided jobs. And much of the land (prior to the establishment of Israel) was bought by the Zionists legally. Much of the land now Israel was owned by absentee landlords living in Beirut and Damascus.
Indeed, through war some hostile Palestinians and some who weren't lost their land although lets remember in 1937 the Royal Peel Partition Plan and 1947 UN Partition Plan there was an offer on the table - a Jewish state and an Arab state. Twice the Yishuv accepted a Jewish and Arab state and twice the Palestinians rejected the prospect of an Arab and Jewish state.
Show me where you condemned Arafat too, in the same degree, when he actually died (given that Sharon is still breathing)... I brought the subject up to highlight the hypocrisy.
Both should be condemned, sadly some on these boards seem only happy to vilify one side of an longstanding farce whilst defending an justifying the actions of the other.
Talking of which,
Welcome back Clandestine. A thread about Israel/Palestine and [shock, horror] you appear again from the depths. You know, I'm still not convinced that you are not anti-jew... not that you care
from http://vbulletin.thesite.org.uk/showthread.php?t=72682&page=1&pp=20&highlight=arafat :
Jacqueline: If anything he has managed to ruin the Palestinian cause more than he has to help it.
Globe: MANY share that view...
Aladdin: Actually you're right about that Thanatos. The man is far from perfect.
From http://vbulletin.thesite.org.uk/showthread.php?t=73031&page=3&pp=20&highlight=arafat:
Aladdin: He was corrupt and divisive
But don't expect me to use the same harsh words on Arafat as I have and will use on Sharon, because frankly is like comparing apples and pears. One was a war criminal of phenomenal proportions. The other was a part time terrorist who wouldn't have even existed (as a terrorist anyway) if the Palestinians hadn't suffered one of the biggest and still unresolved injustices in the history of mankind.
For every cause there is a consequence, and Arafat was just one such consequence. A different league altogether from a man who is one of the causes, and a far more prolific and brutal murderer and oppressor at that.
Well, looking through the 'Arafat is dead' threads just now, I see that most people from both sides will condemn one and salute the other. Such is human nature I guess.
Many non-Zionist Jews, however, do not have such difficulty in recognising the true, un-whitewashed origins of this neverending conflict and that which has been at the forefront of its perpetuation since well before the state itself was wrongfully manipulated into existence.
As for my reappearance, no depths were involved. I post when the mood hits me.
You're right. Good point. Arafat thread
I guess it’s unfortunate that the Chinese aren’t Jewish, then maybe Clandestine would care about the Tibetans. Or if Mugabe and his cronies were all Jewish perhaps Clandestine would care about those persecuted by his vile regime.
Still by some remarkable coincidence out of all the oppressed peoples in the world the only ones that Clandestine cares about are the ones fighting Israel – which coincidentally is also the world’s only Jewish state.
It certainly is on this subject, and that's as much of a block to the solution as anything else. Opinion is divided right across the world and throughout politics.
Each element feeds the other in this conflict, to say that Arafat would not have existed without Sharon is an argument which also works the other way.
This whole conflict is not black and white, not good and evil.
It's evil and evil.
Caught up in the middle are the average Joe Palestine and Joe Israel who die in their hundreds and thousands on and annual basis, and all those in power (and we on these boards) do is argue over whose fault it is. That isn't actually relevant. The fact is that both sides continue to fuel the whole debacle and until one (and I don't really care which) backs off completely, nothing will ever change.
That's the lucky ones. Tens of thousands of others don't have a house any more to speak of, having long been destroyed by a missile or bulldozed to the ground.
And better not mention refugee camps because they make Sudan look like Beverly Hills.