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Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

arstechnica.com

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Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#161

Post by youngtaff »

fusiongyro wrote: post #66
skrebbel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there's people who do this, but I doubt there are many of them in this thread. The fact of the matter is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians consistently commit horrible crimes, in the name of some perceived God-declared right to a strip of desert. On individual cases, you can't blame Israel for defending against hand-made rockets flying over the Gaza strip border. Similarly, you can't blame your ave…

I'm not going to say Israel is a font of ethical behavior or that your analysis is, in broad strokes, wrong, but there are a few facts that should get clarified. First, the settlers aren't settling in Gaza, they're settling in the West Bank. This makes the idea of rockets-as-retribution a bit strange, since relations with the West Bank are decent and they obviously undergo a lot more daily molestation than Gazans do…

No but you can think of Gaza as a giant prison camp and the rockets as the equivalent of throwing rocks over the wall

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#162

Post by cema »

xenophanes wrote: post #130
mkhattab wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, it's well known that the settlements are illegal under international law. This is acknowledged by many academics and intellectuals such as Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

you think saying your position being right is "well known" and that Noam Chomsky agrees is an objective, rational argument that will persuade people who don't already agree with you...?

The position is indeed well known, and it is also well known to be poorly supported by facts or legal reasoning, and rather supported by fringe figures like the parental post mentioned.

But we will not get anywhere in this discussion: if someone's mind is closed, it is hard to deal with that.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#163

Post by azth »

earlyresort wrote: post #20
confluence wrote: post #5

Holy shit! What the fuck are they doing? This is absolutely insane! What better way to create more terrorists than by laughing in their faces, publishing military operations on Twitter as if they were trivial events, showing military kill strikes on YouTube and using game like graphics stating their leaders have been "eliminated". Do you want to enrage your enemy into more violence or do you want to win? Do your mili…

The Arab world is already awash in antisemitic propaganda. This Twitter account isn't going to move the needle there. No, this account is aimed at Americans. It shares short, simple, true messages: Hamas is a terrorist organization, Hamas launches hundreds of rockets into Israel, Israel is defending itself, and Israel is rather good at defending itself. The messages are designed to be shared with friends, in order to…

> The Arab world is already awash in antisemitic propaganda.

Funny how the word 'antisemitic' gets thrown around; Arabs are Semites too.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#164

Post by davidkatz »

youngtaff wrote: post #160
philwelch wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really a de facto Palestinian state to recognize, unfortunately. In the dying days of the Clinton administration Barak offered Arafat a recognized Palestinian state, but Arafat didn't agree to the terms. Maybe the terms were unreasonable, but most sources agree that Arafat didn't even bother with a counteroffer. Sharon made enough concessions to the Palestinians to alienate his own party. Even Netanyahu a…

The offer Barak made to Arafat apparently carved the West Bank up into little Palestinian enclaves that could not function as a whole due to the settlements and settlers only roads that went through it.

By now it's pretty established that this is just wrong. Here's two maps that Dennis Ross published in his book 'The Missing Piece' that illustrate the issue:

http://cl.ly/image/10350b3Q052P

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#165

Post by davidkatz »

ominds wrote: post #150
philwelch wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you support suicide bombing and rocket strikes against civilian targets?

Check the numbers. In 2009 Israel killed 1034, Palestinians killed... 9!!! That's around 115 for each one Israeli killed. That's genocide, not retaliation. And it's done with US military jet fighters and tanks, that Palestinians don't have (talk about terrorism!) Let's look at it simply, Israel has the land, settlements in Palestinian territory, denying right of return and controlling East Jerusalem. All of which are…

Genocide? I'm sorry, but that holds no water at all and is plain insulting to the intelligence of this community. A genocide is the deliberate destruction of at least a significant part of a people. Your numbers (if they are even true, I see no sources) do not in the slightest support that.

You really do the Palestinian position no favours by claiming absurdities.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#166

Post by hkrr »

davidkatz wrote: post #164
youngtaff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The offer Barak made to Arafat apparently carved the West Bank up into little Palestinian enclaves that could not function as a whole due to the settlements and settlers only roads that went through it.

By now it's pretty established that this is just wrong. Here's two maps that Dennis Ross published in his book 'The Missing Piece' that illustrate the issue: http://cl.ly/image/10350b3Q052P

So what ?

Why would Palestinian Authorities accept any borders except the ones from 1967, which is already very generous ?

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#167

Post by davidkatz »

hkrr wrote: post #166
davidkatz wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now it's pretty established that this is just wrong. Here's two maps that Dennis Ross published in his book 'The Missing Piece' that illustrate the issue: http://cl.ly/image/10350b3Q052P

So what ? Why would Palestinian Authorities accept any borders except the ones from 1967, which is already very generous ?

So false facts shouldn't be claimed, and that should be enough to not respond with snark. If there's another point to make, by all means, but be civil about it.

As for accepting borders - there are many reasons, but first and foremost pragmatism. Some Israeli cities in the West Bank will never be moved, and insisting on their evacuation is just an excuse to not make peace. These large inhabited areas are practically suburbs of large Israeli cities which are not in the West Bank, and wouldn't inhibit Palestinian life in any way. A land swap is the reasonable thing to do.

For comparison, up until the 40s the Israeli government (to be) accepted pretty much any proposal that would just let them get on with it and build a state (Peel Comission 1930s, UN Partition Plan 1940s). They too had endless justifications for why they should get more than they were offered, and how unjust it would be to settle for less, but ultimately they chose the future over the past.

Palestinians can cling to their version of a just solution for another hundred years and go nowhere, or accept the perfectly reasonable framework that was already put on the table by Clinton in 2000 and accepted by Israel:

* Over 95% of 1967 territory, with the rest made up for in land swaps * Full control over East Jerusalem * Billions of dollars in aid to resettle all refugees in Palestine

Many countries have defensible grievances over which pieces of territory should or should not be under their control, but still get on with their lives and live peacefully with their neighbours. Palestinians don't, and we should ask ourselves why.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#168

Post by ubermammal »

kbenson wrote: post #158
ubermammal wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What I don't understand is the need to persecute one already existing set of people to accommodate another set of people who just got persecuted. But they weren't persecuted - they were paid off. In 1917, at the end of WW1, Britain was given the mandate of administering Palestine - at the time a chunk of the recently-defeated-and-defunct Ottoman Empire. Part of this mandate was the Balfour Declaration, which basica…

How does that relate to governance? Depending on the laws of the nation, property ownership and residence may not imply voting rights (or any sort of say in governance, voting or otherwise). I truly have no idea of the laws regarding this in that part of the world, but a simple argument of land purchase without addressing those issues doesn't really sway me too far one way or the other.

One of the things it took me a while to get my head around was that there kinda was no overarching nation at the time in question - at least not in the way we think of it today. The Ottoman Empire was defunct; nominally there were laws of the nation, but it was in no position to enforce them, and many of them hadn't been popular anyway (as they were secularizing).

In practice the people in the area operated as 'millets' - micronations unified by religious belief, governing themselves according to religious law. When the British took over administration of the region in 1917, they didn't try to change this.

So for the most part, the landowners that the Jewish Agency was buying from were the governance. The trade wasn't like one citizen of a nation selling to another citizen of the nation; it was like one country selling land to another country (and so moving its borders).

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#169

Post by fusiongyro »

youngtaff wrote: post #161
fusiongyro wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to say Israel is a font of ethical behavior or that your analysis is, in broad strokes, wrong, but there are a few facts that should get clarified. First, the settlers aren't settling in Gaza, they're settling in the West Bank. This makes the idea of rockets-as-retribution a bit strange, since relations with the West Bank are decent and they obviously undergo a lot more daily molestation than Gazans do…

No but you can think of Gaza as a giant prison camp and the rockets as the equivalent of throwing rocks over the wall

Not really. Rockets are rockets. You'd be an imbecile to think you could fire nearly a thousand into the country across the border without experiencing military repercussions. If you live in one of the densest places on earth, you're not just a moron, you're also endangering hundreds of innocent bystanders by doing it. If you've seen the results of this antagonism in the past and you do it anyway, you're maliciously insane. If you launch your rockets from your apartment building, your kid's school, you must know what's going to happen as a result. Israel hasn't summarily executed six people in the street for being "Palestinian conspirators" during this mess, but Hamas has. Ten percent of rockets fired by Gazans land in Gaza, destroying their own buildings, infrastructure and killing their own people.

Who's holding the gate closed to this giant prison camp? Nobody, as it turns out, except Gaza itself. Look at questions 14 and 15 on this poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion:

http://www.pcpo.ps/polls/poll171.htm

80% of Palestinians won't give up on right of return, and they won't accept a cash buyout either. The former is as likely as America peacably returning the land to the Native Americans. The latter is an actual possibility, but what's the point if they don't want it. The Palestinian Authority doesn't want a large migration rate out, because it hurts their appeal for statehood and the argument for right of return. Hamas is responsible for turning Gaza into a prison camp, not Israel. Compare to the situation in the West Bank, where you could legitimately say there is too much Israeli interference, yet there is peace. If Gaza wants peace, they should show Hamas the door and elect Fatah. It worked for one half.

Israel has a fundamental responsibility to its citizens to guarantee their safety, and that responsibility has precedence over protecting the lives of innocent bystanders living in an enemy territory surrounded by agents who are actively attacking them. As far as this particular Gaza expedition goes, their hands are clean. This one's on Gaza.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#170

Post by youngtaff »

davidkatz wrote: post #164
youngtaff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The offer Barak made to Arafat apparently carved the West Bank up into little Palestinian enclaves that could not function as a whole due to the settlements and settlers only roads that went through it.

By now it's pretty established that this is just wrong. Here's two maps that Dennis Ross published in his book 'The Missing Piece' that illustrate the issue: http://cl.ly/image/10350b3Q052P

Interesting thanks, shame the map as drawn was never presented at the talks...
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