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Israel/hamas -- Weighted Criticism - Where The Hell Do You Find It?


JaiRai
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How many rockets must be stored in a school before the name reverts from school to weapons storage area? Infinity? Same for mosques and hospitals. Palestinians have little regard for their own children. What parent would send their child to a school knowing weapons are stored there? Pencils, books and chalkboards normally don't cause massive, secondary explosions -- a dead giveaway.

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Jai Rai posted long portions of the original article - but the actual article is even longer - and it is the best, and most balanced summary of the situation that I have ever read - anywhere.

 

Jai Rai did not post the full article, and the final two paragraphs of the full article are profound, and worth reviewing:

 

What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.

 

This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet.

 

If you have 38 minutes to spare, and you want to see the "manifesto" of what the emergaing Caliphate have in store for every place they conquer, take a look at this video (the first 16 minutes are boring - the following 22 minutes are chilling):

 

http://www.livingsco...ch.php?v=MzU2Mw

 

Keep in mind - the brutality that you are seeing in the video is being inflicted by Muslims, upon other Muslims who are just a different "flavor" of Muslim. Think about that, and ponder how they would treat YOU.

 

Israel and Gaza are a flashpoint - and everyone sees what they prefer to see. After trying to look at both sides of the argument, here is what I see and believe:

 

1. Isreal would like nothing better than a peaceful, prosperous Gaza - which Israel could help turn into a showplace success for the Islamic world. This would be a disaster for the Islamic fundamentalists, so they will NEVER let this happen.

 

2. To Hamas, Gaza is nothing more than a large firing position. The inhabitants of Gaza are useful ONLY as human shields, and as sacriificial corpses to be used to vilify Israel. Not some, not most, but ALL (that is each and every) Hamas rocket launching position is located near, in, or adjancent to a school, mosque, hospital or children's playground. This is by doctine.

 

3. Hamas has created an immense tunnel system under Gaza - with much early-stage work done by Palestinian children who died in the process. Despite this, there are none - ZERO -shelters available for Gaza's civilians, during Israeli shelling of Gaza. This is by Hamas design - they want to absolutely maximize civilian casualties at every turn. When Isreal drops leaflets urging Gazans to leave a weapons-infested area, in advance of an Israeli attack, any Gazans who attempt to relocate arre brutally beaten back, and forced to remain in their Human shield positions.

 

4. There have been some attempts by groups of Gaza civilialns to hold protests against the Hamas rocket-launching activities. Protesters have been immediately rounded up and summarily executed by Hamas operatives.

 

5. Any calls for "cease fire" are meaningless as long as ANY Hamas BARBARIANS remain. Hamas does not want an end to fighting in any way. All they want is for Israel to be blocked from fighting back.

 

I support Israel as the only civilized society in the Middle East. Here is another good article, from the perspective of a friont-line Israeli officer (Captain): http://www.americant..._of_heroes.html

 

Israel is imperfect - but much preferable to any alternative in that part of the world. Since 1946, they have accomplished more, starting with less, than any other country. Japan, Germany, and South Korea were all rebuilt by America after their wars (and much of the UK, as well). Israel turned barren land into a highly productive area.

 

Cheers!

SS

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Jai Rai posted long portions of the original article - but the actual article is even longer - and it is the best, and most balanced summary of the situation that I have ever read - anywhere.

 

Jai Rai did not post the full article, and the final two paragraphs of the full article are profound, and worth reviewing:

 

 

 

If you have 38 minutes to spare, and you want to see the "manifesto" of what the emergaing Caliphate have in store for every place they conquer, take a look at this video (the first 16 minutes are boring - the following 22 minutes are chilling):

 

http://www.livingsco...ch.php?v=MzU2Mw

 

Keep in mind - the brutality that you are seeing in the video is being inflicted by Muslims, upon other Muslims who are just a different "flavor" of Muslim. Think about that, and ponder how they would treat YOU.

 

Israel and Gaza are a flashpoint - and everyone sees what they prefer to see. After trying to look at both sides of the argument, here is what I see and believe:

 

1. Isreal would like nothing better than a peaceful, prosperous Gaza - which Israel could help turn into a showplace success for the Islamic world. This would be a disaster for the Islamic fundamentalists, so they will NEVER let this happen.

 

2. To Hamas, Gaza is nothing more than a large firing position. The inhabitants of Gaza are useful ONLY as human shields, and as sacriificial corpses to be used to vilify Israel. Not some, not most, but ALL (that is each and every) Hamas rocket launching position is located near, in, or adjancent to a school, mosque, hospital or children's playground. This is by doctine.

 

3. Hamas has created an immense tunnel system under Gaza - with much early-stage work done by Palestinian children who died in the process. Despite this, there are none - ZERO -shelters available for Gaza's civilians, during Israeli shelling of Gaza. This is by Hamas design - they want to absolutely maximize civilian casualties at every turn. When Isreal drops leaflets urging Gazans to leave a weapons-infested area, in advance of an Israeli attack, any Gazans who attempt to relocate arre brutally beaten back, and forced to remain in their Human shield positions.

 

4. There have been some attempts by groups of Gaza civilialns to hold protests against the Hamas rocket-launching activities. Protesters have been immediately rounded up and summarily executed by Hamas operatives.

 

5. Any calls for "cease fire" are meaningless as long as ANY Hamas BARBARIANS remain. Hamas does not want an end to fighting in any way. All they want is for Israel to be blocked from fighting back.

 

I support Israel as the only civilized society in the Middle East. Here is another good article, from the perspective of a friont-line Israeli officer (Captain): http://www.americant..._of_heroes.html

 

Israel is imperfect - but much preferable to any alternative in that part of the world. Since 1946, they have accomplished more, starting with less, than any other country. Japan, Germany, and South Korea were all rebuilt by America after their wars (and much of the UK, as well). Israel turned barren land into a highly productive area.

 

Cheers!

SS

 

What a load of Israeli apologist cliches and tripe.

 

I suggest you learn a bit more about the background to the conflict at http://www.palestineremembered.com/

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How many rockets must be stored in a school before the name reverts from school to weapons storage area? Infinity? Same for mosques and hospitals. Palestinians have little regard for their own children. What parent would send their child to a school knowing weapons are stored there? Pencils, books and chalkboards normally don't cause massive, secondary explosions -- a dead giveaway.

 

Hamas fighters certainly get around ..

 

They hid in the thousands of houses damaged or destroyed.

 

They hid in 84 schools and 23 medical facilities.

 

They hid in a cafe, where Gazans were watching the World Cup.

 

They hid in the ambulances trying to retrieve the injured.

 

They hid themselves in 24 corpses, buried under rubble.

 

They hid themselves in a young woman in pink household slippers, sprawled on the pavement, taken down while fleeing.

 

They hid themselves in two brothers, eight and four, lying in the intensive burn care unit in Al-Shifa.

 

They hid themselves in the little boy whose parts were carried away by his father in a plastic shopping bag.

 

They hid themselves in the “incomparable chaos of bodies†arriving at Gaza hospitals.

 

They hid themselves in an elderly woman, lying in a pool of blood on a stone floor.

 

They hid themselves in a UN school where civilians were sheltering from our shells and bombs.

 

and last night they hid themselves amongst sleeping children in a refugee centre for 3000 people instructed by IDF to escape to this safe haven, whose coordinates had been given to the IDF 17 times.

 

...couldn't for once Israel admit that it makes mistakes or has been reckless in firing missiles and tank shells in such a built up area,, where the likelihood of killing innocent civilians is almost 100%.

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Palestinians have been caught fabricating casualties over and over again. Western media and liberal bleeding hearts largely forgive this because they are as agenda -driven as the Palestinians.

 

I would never agree to negotiate with someone shelling me. Never.

 

And before you go all CNN on me (didja see the CNN garbage today about American Christians supporting Israel?) I'm an atheist. CNN has really lost all modicum of respectability. It's worse than even BBC now.

 

try the Daily Mail then...usually an ardent supporter of Israel

 

I've always loved Israel but this brutality breaks my heart

By MAX HASTINGS

 

Were the world’s attention not overwhelmingly fixed on the fate of Flight MH17, it would have more to say about that of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. Bombed and battered by Israeli air and firepower, they are dying in scores, victims alike of their own leadership and Israeli ruthlessness.

Some of the dead are Hamas fighters. But many others are women, children, the helpless old. Israel is exacting vengeance at its usual tariff for Hamas rocketing, and the murder of three Israeli students by terrorists. For each Israeli killed, the lives of many times that number of Palestinians are forfeit.

Israel says: they started it; we have a right to retribution. But much of the world says: the Jewish people have been historic standard-bearers for civilisation. Does Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign in Gaza represent that — or instead barbarism?

 

A Palestinian man, in clothes stained with the blood of his father, who medics said was killed by Israeli shelling, mourns at a hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday as Israel's attack continued

Israel’s tragedy is that the only democracy in the Middle East has fallen prey to a succession of Right-wing governments, which derive much of their electoral strength from Russian emigres and extremist religious parties.

 

A historian friend, himself a Jew and an uncommonly astute observer of the world, said to me a while back: ‘Consciously or unconsciously, Israel has decided that it prefers a state of permanent war to making the concessions to the Palestinians that would be indispensable to any chance of peace.’

Israel has become more inward-looking, less receptive to foreign opinion, than at any time in its history. Its economy is booming. Tel Aviv boasts a thrillingly buzzy café culture. Barack Obama, the only recent U.S. president to try to persuade Jerusalem to moderate its policies, has been thwarted by Netanyahu and his friends in the U.S. Congress.

Few Israelis seem to show much concern for world discomfort about the bombardment of Gaza, and indeed about their policies towards the Palestinians.

Yet even so, many other Jews are deeply dismayed. Three years ago, a team of Israeli documentary-makers produced a brilliant film about the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank entitled The Gatekeepers. For this, they persuaded five former heads of the Shin Bet, the nation’s security service, to be interviewed on camera.

The outcome was fascinating, and devastating. Each chief in turn described the ruthless policies he had enforced to sustain Israeli dominance. Most agreed that repression had been counter-productive.

Part of the explanation, they said, was that since the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fanatic back in 1995, no Jerusalem government has pursued a serious political strategy for peace.

The security forces have simply been left to impose varying degrees of repression, while Jewish settlers grab ever-larger areas of the West Bank and Jerusalem. In a remarkable moment of frankness, one former Shin Bet chief said: ‘Occupation has made us a cruel people.’

 

I still felt the same in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War when Israel reeled before a devastating Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack. From amid the Israelis’ camp fires, as a correspondent I wrote expressing my admiration for the nation, for what it had created from a near-wasteland: ‘They are a very great people, who have come closer to destruction than blind Europe seems willing to recognise.’ The veteran journalist James Cameron, who had known Israel since its inception, wrote me a generous note after that piece was published, saying: ‘It is quite impossible to work in combat with the Israeli army without this response, if you have any sense of history and drama.’

But then he added reflectively: ‘I have sometimes wondered over the past few years whether this irresistible military mesmerism hasn’t clouded for us some of the political falsities.’

Some 40 years on, I have become sure that Jimmy Cameron was right. Too many of us allowed ourselves to become blinded by military success to the huge injustice done to the Palestinians.

Israelis, confident that they can defeat any Arab military threat, bolstered by almost unqualified U.S. support, assume that they can persist indefinitely with the creeping annexation of the West Bank, and the subjection of Gaza.

 

But I have also watched the soldiers of the Israeli Army that I once loved disport themselves among the Palestinians like other arrogant occupiers through the ages, displaying at best casual rudeness, at worst murderous brutality.

Israel aspires to exploit its military dominance to create irreversible facts on the ground in the West Bank and Jerusalem, heedless of Palestinian rights.

Ahron Bregman, the Israeli whose history of the Occupation I mentioned above, now lives and works in London rather than in his homeland. He ends his book by saying that all successful imperialist powers have sought to persuade subject peoples to work with them, allowing them to gain some advantage despite being conquered.

 

Israel has never felt a need to offer this, says the author. Instead, it treats the Palestinians merely as tiresome blots on a landscape that many Israelis believe is rightfully Jewish anyway. For those who loved what we thought Israel used to be, it is heartbreaking to see what it has become today.

That the current crisis is giving rise to some ugly displays of anti-semitism in parts of Europe is utterly contemptible.

But it is also contemptible that some apologists hurl charges of anti-semitism at all Israel’s critics — many of whom are admirers of so much that this great nation has achieved.

Most of us merely attack Israeli excesses as we do those of Russia, Burma, China, Syria, the U.S. or any other government that deploys disproportionate violence against those at its mercy.

Israel’s people deserve a less unworthy leader than Benjamin Netanyahu, and a higher vision than that of reducing Gaza to rubble. This can breed only a new generation of alienated, embittered Palestinian radicals, who will sustain their desperate struggle through decades to come.

 

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2703531/MAX-HASTINGS-Ive-loved-Israel-brutality-breaks-heart.html#ixzz391u3tlW3

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Well, the Gaza civilians know what is really going on, and they are pointing out to the Israalli troops where the rockets and tunnel entrances are hidden, and where the Hamas terrorists are hiding. With a bit of luck, the Hamas criminals will be wiped out, and the Gazans might have a chance at experiencinmg at least a bit of peace.

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Here is an interesting list of questions for foreign media representatives reporting from Gaza - actually addressed to them by name:

 

Eyeless in Gaza: 40 questions for the media

Professor David Bernstein posts the “40 questions for the international media in Gaza†posed by Saul O. at Harry’s Place. Professor Bernstein writes for the Volokh Conspiracy, now hosted by the Washington Post. The questions posted by Bernstein are properly addressed to the Washington Post itself, as well as to the Wall Street Journal, FOX News and CNN and the rest of the American media.

In the case of the Washington Post, the questions would be addressed to Sudarsan Raghavan et al. In the case of the Journal, the questions would be addressed to Nick Casey and Tamer El-Ghobashy. At FOX News they would be addressed to Conor Powell. At CNN they would be addressed to Karl Penhaul. Each of these gentlemen reports from Gaza. But the questions apply equally to the Post’s and the Journal’s editors and the anchors/producers/management of CNN and FOX. They are all aware of the facts and the issues and, so far as I am aware, have said nothing, as though there is no issue.

Some of the questions are predicated on assumptions that may be arguable, but most of the questions are based on solidly sourced reports and deserving of answers. Here are the questions posed in their entirety verbatim:

1. Have you or any of your colleagues been intimidated by Hamas?

2. Do you feel restricted in your ability to ‘say what you see’ in Gaza?

3. How do you feel about the Spanish journalist who said Hamas would kill any journalist if they filmed rocket fire?

4. Has Hamas pressured you to delete anything you have published?

5. Has Hamas ever threatened to take your phone, laptop or camera?

6. Has Hamas ever taken the phone, laptop or camera of a colleague in Gaza?

7. Have you seen Hamas fighters in Gaza?

8. If yes, why have you not directly reported Hamas fighting activity when you are eye-witnesses in Gaza, but rather indirectly reported about what the IDF says they Hamas has done?

9. Are you scared to publish photos of Hamas operatives on your Twitter page, or broadcast images of Hamas fighting and aggression on your news channel?

10. Have you published any photos of terrorists launching rockets in Gaza? If so, are these images being turned down by your newspaper or broadcaster?

11. Have you thought of interviewing the traumatised residents of southern Israel?

12. When Israeli authorities say that most of the dead in Gaza are terrorists, and Hamas says most of the dead in Gaza are civilians, how do you differentiate?

13. When Hamas Health Ministry statistics contradict Hamas’ own propaganda and reveal that mostly men of fighting age have died so far in Gaza, does it give you pause for thought?

14. Is an underage armed terrorist still counted as a terrorist or a child when killed? Or both? Do you explain to your readers how this is possible?

15. Have you put to Hamas spokespersons that firing rockets from civilian areas in a war situation will draw return fire and lead to the death of civilians?

16. Nick Casey of the Wall Street Journal tweeted: “you have to wonder with the shelling, how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.†Never mind wondering; did you ask any patients how they feel?

17. And how do you feel about the fact that Casey subsequently deleted his tweet?

18. Russia Today journalist Harry Fear mentioned rocket-launching sites near his hotel. Have you noticed any terrorists or terror bases near your hotel?

19. How do you feel about Fear’s expulsion from Gaza, for tweeting about the rocket launches from civilian areas? Are you worried that you might also be expelled from Gaza?

20. Did you see any Hamas terror personnel inside Al-Shifa hospital?

21. Have you interviewed a Hamas spokesperson inside Al-Shifa?

22. Have you seen any rocket-launching sites in or around the vicinity of a hospital?

23. Have you interviewed hospital staff or patients as to how they feel about their buildings being used for terror activity?

24. Hamas’ command and control bunker is underneath Al Shifa hospital. Is this worth reporting? Have you asked to gain access to it, so you can interview Hamas commanders?

25. French newspaper Liberation reported that Hamas’ Al Qassam offices are next to the emergency room at Shifa hospital, before deleting the article. Was the reporter right to delete the article, and will the information appear in the media at some point still?

26. When the missile hit Al-Shati hospital where children were killed, did you see Hamas operatives collecting the debris of the fallen Palestinian rocket, as Gabriel Barbati reported? Did Barbati pick up on something you missed?

27. Barbati prefaced his tweet by writing “Out of Gaza, far from Hamas retaliation.†Will you also report differently about Gaza when you are out of Gaza, far from Hamas retaliation?

28. Can live journalism by reporters who are scared of retaliation from the authorities they are reporting about really count as pure journalism, or is journalism in that context fundamentally compromised?

29. Have you seen or heard evidence of Hamas using civilians as human shields, by forcing or “encouraging†them to stay inside or enter into a building that has received a knock on the roof?

30. Have you seen or heard evidence of Hamas storing weapons inside schools, houses, flats, mosques or hospitals?

31. Have you interviewed Gazan residents to find out if they have – or know someone who has – a tunnel dug underneath their house? How do they feel about this?

32. Have you tried to interview any of the parents of the 160 Palestinian children who died building the terror tunnels?

33. Have you asked Hamas spokespersons why they are setting out to murder children by firing rockets towards civilian populations?

34. Have you interviewed any UNRWA officials about why Hamas are storing weapons in their schools, and how the weapons got there?

35. Are you currently investigating how Hamas rockets ended up in UNRWA schools?

36. Are you currently investigating why UNRWA returned rockets to Hamas and their police force?

37. When Hamas breaks a ceasefire with Israel – as it has done 6 times – how easy is it to report on this from Gaza?

38. Is there any anti-Hamas sentiment in Gaza, and how is it expressed?

39. Were you aware that Hamas chose to execute dozens of anti-war protesters in Gaza, and did you not consider this to be worth reporting?

40. Is international media reporting from Gaza free from pressure and intimidation, or is there a real problem – and if so, how will you address it?

Interested observers await the answers to these questions.

 

Source: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/08/eyeless-in-gaza-40-questions-for-the-media.php

 

I encourage Palestinian apologists to post answers to the questions, by the nmaed journalists to whom they were addressed.

 

Cheers!

SS

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