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You Israel sympathizers are nuts.
Hamas (Arabic: حماس Ḥamās, "enthusiasm", an acronym of حركة المقاومة الاسلامية Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni Islamic[7] organization, with an associated military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,[8] in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Middle East including Qatar.[
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told The Daily Beast on Sunday that after finding the rockets on July 17 in a vacant UNRWA school in Gaza, the organization contacted the local police bomb squad, which came and took the rockets away. Gunness said he didn’t see an issue with the handover, because the local authorities who took control of the rockets reported to the Palestinian government in Ramallah, not to Hamas, which heads the government and runs the police force in Gaza.
“According to longstanding UN practice in UN humanitarian operations worldwide, incidents involving unexploded ordnance that could endanger beneficiaries and staff are referred to the local authorities,” Gunness told The Daily Beast in a statement. “Local authorities fall under the government of national consensus in Ramallah. They pledged to pass a message to all parties not to violate UNRWA neutrality.” ....
...Reached by phone in Barcelona, Spain, Gunness insisted that the local authorities in Gaza report to the Palestinian government in Ramallah, not to Hamas.
“As far as we are concerned, the government that we are dealing with now is the government of national consensus and they have authority over the organization that we dealt with for getting rid of these rockets from our school,” he said. “We handed them over to the relevant authorities, and that organization, as it were, the experts that came and did it, are under the government of national consensus in Ramallah.”
HAMAS IS NOT GAINING POLITICAL GROUND FROM THE CRISIS
Most striking, and contrary to common misperception, Hamas is not gaining politically from the kidnapping. Asked who should be the president of Palestine in the next two years, a solid plurality in both the West Bank and Gaza named Abbas (30%) or other Fatah-affiliated leaders: Marwan Barghouti (12%), Muhammad Dahlan (10%), Rami Hamdallah (6%), Mustafa Barghouti (4%), Salam Fayyad (2%), or Mahmoud al-Aloul (1%). These findings strongly suggest that the Palestinian public as a whole has little or no desire to carry out any threats to "dissolve" the Palestinian Authority.
In stark contrast, Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal rated a combined total of just 9% support in the West Bank and 15% in Gaza. Another intriguing finding is that Dahlan has significant popular support among Gazans, at 20%. Also notable is that not one of the other old-guard Fatah figures, such as Abu Ala, Nabil Shaath, or Jibril Rajoub, attracted even 1% support in either the West Bank or Gaza.
Just what the hell do you expect an unarmed group to do in the face of armed gunmen demanding their rockets back?
Attacks have been carried out by all Palestinian armed groups,[19] and, prior to the 2008–2009 Gaza War, were consistently supported by most Palestinians,[20][21][22][23] although the stated goals have been mixed. The attacks, widely condemned for targeting civilians, have been described as terrorism by United Nations, European Union and Israeli officials, and are defined as war crimes by human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian structures that do not discriminate between civilians and military targets are illegal under international law.[2
34% – Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Al Quds) 22% – Hamas (Qassam) 8% – Fatah (Kafah) 6% – Popular Resistance Committees (al Nasser) 30% – unknown
What Israel is doing is very immoral and disgusting. The fact that there are so many people willing to defend it using blatant lies is distressing.
he roots of the modern Arab–Israeli conflict are bound in the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century. Territory regarded by the Jewish people as their historical homeland is also regarded by the Pan-Arab movement as historically and presently belonging to the Palestinian Arabs,[9] and in the Pan-Islamic context, as Muslim lands
originally posted by: FlySolo
a reply to: neo96
Who gives a flying F about all that other crap. That is there and this is now. Show me, show one goddamn kid with a Hamas t-shirt on sporting a rifle? Go on, show me!!
originally posted by: VashKonnor
a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14
People like you justify war crimes on the part of Israel, trying to create a false equivalency between 40 mostly Israeli soldiers dying and 1000 mostly Palestinian civilians die.
I don't justify war crimes. If they are being committed, then there are plenty of organizations that could bring Israel up to court. It's not my place to judge that.
Regarding the casualties, the only reason why so few Israelis die is due to their effort to defense, which has become increasingly better through time, culminating in them having rocket defense systems and all that.
What kids like you don't remember are things like suicide bombings and constant bus bombings. Not so long ago, you couldn't travel inside Israel without the doubt of "is this today this bus is going to blow up?".
You moan about strawman arguments, but all you do all day long is to appeal to this emotional and humane side of the subject, so that you can disguise reason and logic with emotional crap.
Israel grew tired of giving Palestine political leaders their chances. They got rough with time. I don't support it, but I don't pretend I don't understand it. I would demand the same thing if my country was constantly attacked by people who want nothing with peace.
Besides, Palestinians die because it's handy for several groups that they die. Gives their propaganda strength, the same propaganda people like yourself munch on all day long. Not a single arab nation tries to give them shelter or support them, yet they paint themselves as these great friends of Palestine, especially during their own elections.
Doesn't take make you question "why?"? Doesn't that raise doubts in your mind? How nobody gives a f# about Palestine yet everyone is interested in judging Israel?
Doesn't it make you question how Palestine is aided by their arab peers just enough so that they can exist, but never enough so they can defend themselves?...
Palestine is a sacrificial lamb for the leaders that pray on the Palestine cause as a means to attack Israel and the West. These are the same people who tell their youth that it's "okay" to strap a bomb across your chest and blow yourself up in revenge.
You think they care to send the whole Palestine into the path of Israeli bombs? You are delusional if you do...
You are the old guard.
I'm neither old nor a guard.
You are the outdated conservative colonial thinkers who can justify or sheepishly go along with mass murder and justify it because it is some dehumanized out group, or because the media told you it is okay.
Huh... I hate colonial philosophies, and it's exactly colonial thinking that started this whole mess. You would know what I mean if you knew about the history of the creation of Israel.
But you don't, so it's pointless.
Other than that, you are just putting insults together, trying to hit a nerve. You fail miserably.
This is all studied in social psychology studies.
Now you are a psychology expert? If it amounts to the same expertise you had with the "1967 war" then it's pretty much hot-air.
I am not going to continue to debate with you because you can't even admit that the original post was a complete straw man and manipulative tactic
You aren't going to continue because you can't keep up. And I won't admit to something that you just made up and keep parroting because you see more intelligent members saying those things.
It's quite sad to see you use an expression without understanding the meaning of it.
You also are trying to use the ancient victimhood argument in order to justify massive civilian deaths on the part of the Palestinians.
I'm not the one portraying as victims the same people who can't keep their own cease-fires.
Funny how 100,000+ Syrians can seek refuge in other parts of the Middle East but 1000 Palestinians can't leave Gaza.
Why don't you wonder about that instead of trying to come up with cute forum comebacks?
This isn't war. This is war crimes.
Of course not. Hamas couldn't handle a conventional war. They need to use Palestinians as cannon meat and tunnels as weapons. Can you imagine how many shelters and houses for Palestinians they could build using the same materials they so eagerly used to make tunnels? Let's not even mention the man power that was put into attacking Israel, that was never used to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians.
War crimes are what they have been doing for decades. And they still do it. In case you don't know, storing ammunition and weapons inside a neutral-ground is a war crime. As it is many of the things Hamas has been doing...
But I guess you and your enlighten pals aren't going to go after that.
You are so concerned with making Israel the bad boy, that you don't even care about what happens inside Palestine. Actually, nobody gives a crap about Palestine. And that is what saddens me the most, right after the ignorance of people like you.
Jews have been the victim of oppression in the past. Jews don't = Israel. Right now Israel is oppressing the Palestinians.
They have been victims of oppression for thousands of years. And you know why "Jews don't = Israel" ? Because the state of Israel is actually open to people from all religions. Care to guess the one's that aren't?
originally posted by: Corruption Exposed
a reply to: neo96
Do you agree 17 times or however many times it took?
Tons of children dies and you are making false stats left right and center domestically and internationally, what is your problem with human beings? LOL!
Cheers you pretend Texas inhabitant...
So it's a god damn joke that the IDF fired upon sleeping children taking refuge in a UN building because their homes have bee destroyed by the IDF causing them, and over 100,000 others, to be displaced with literally no where to go? Where's the joke? Do you think it's funny? Are you laughing? Why is it okay for the IDF to bomb UN buildings? Especially ones that do not have Hamas storing or firing weapons from?
originally posted by: buster2010
originally posted by: combatmaster
a reply to: buster2010
What is sad is that some people still believe the "Israel tries to not kill civilians" BS.
What is sad is that some people fail to distinguish genocide from war.
If Israel wanted genocide, there wouldn't be any palestinians left alive today!
Do you honestly believe that this is a genocidal attempt?
I see you have no clue as to what the word genocide means do you?
gen·o·cide
noun
noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
Over a thousand people have been killed in Gaza so far and most of them are civilians. So how many people there have to die before you consider it genocide?