Oh dear, I'm late to the party, but I thought I'd reply to the OP.
Originally posted by mikesingh
It’s beyond belief that so many threads and so many posters here on ATS are anti Israel.
Why, when Israeli forces kill roughly a hundred Palestinian civilians for each of their own fatalities? This kind of collective punishment happened
in Nazi-occupied Europe, in Vietnam, and in Iraq. It's disgusting, whoever does it.
And by extension, pro Islamic Jihad...
No, no, no. That "by extension" doesn't cut it. It's entirely possible to be appalled by both, which I am. To imply that there's some sort of
logical link between one and the other is the most egregious mistake. It's that whole "if you're not with us, you're against us" nonsense.
...that the terrorist groups like the Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, LeT etc are waging not only against Israel but Afghanistan, Iraq, India and
many other nations...
Here you're just lumping together a whole bunch of people with disparate aims simply because they're all Islamic. This is oversimplification.
...with the ultimate aim of establishing a World Muslim Caliphate that would encompass the entire civilized world and enact Sharia laws akin
to what the Taliban did in Afghanistan not too long ago. Whether they succeed or not is another question.
And sorry, Mike, but that just looks like paranoid frothing to me. Not that there aren't people out there who'd love to see a Caliphate... but to
imply that those people are completely coextensive with those you name above is a pretty big claim and I don't see any evidence for it. And for my
money, their chances of success are close to zero.
Why is there a barrage of blood-and-gore videos (Mostly the same recycled stuff) showing injured and some dead Palestinians due to alleged
Israeli air strikes?
ALLEGED Israeli air strikes? Who else is doing it? China? Peru? Barbados? Get a grip. And I'd suggest that the fact that the Palestinian death
toll
has passed 530 might have something to do with the abundance of blood-and-gore videos.
The total injured is over 2,500 and the Israeli's aren't letting in the ICRC, let alone the Red Crescent.
Why aren’t these posters saying anything about the thousands of innocent women and children killed by suicide bombers – Islamic terrorists
- in Iraq, Afghanistan and lately Mumbai, India?
First, perhaps because it's not terribly relevant. Also, again you're oversimplifying. Iraq and Afghanistan have been invaded by the US as you may
have noticed and the suicide bombings there often are aimed at the occupying forces or their Quislings. There's also the likelihood that some of
those bombings are false flag ops. No, people see Israel targeting civilians and then denying them food, water and medical aid, and it makes them
lose sympathy for Israel.
Second, it's uncontroversial. No-one is standing up for the Mumbai terrorists on this forum (ok, that's kind of a guess, I haven't been here for a
long time, and looking at the general level of argument I'm remembering why) but there are plenty of people who are happy to go along with Israel's
fascistic behaviour.
Is it only the Palestinians that count in this world? How about the Israelis themselves who are fighting for their own survival in a hostile
environment, ringed by countries that encourage, abet and provide massive military assistance in the form of deadly rockets in their thousands to the
terror outfits operating in Gaza, West bank and Lebanon?
Yeah, poor Israel... propped up by a multitrillion dollar subsidy from Uncle Sam, they're the only nuclear power in the region and have the
best-equipped military in the region... even if you don't want to get involved in the history, which I understand (it's long and difficult and
everyone's got a different POV), you're still stuck with the fact that the Israelis have all the power, and they're perfectly prepared to commit
atrocities as a result. You use the word "deadly" about the rockets that are being fired from the Gaza side, but from what I can see, most of them
don't seem to cause fatalities.
Some 40 rockets had rained down on Israeli communities by midday on Monday, including a Katyusha rocket that slammed into the Israeli coastal city
of Ashkelon, killing one person and injuring at least seven others, the army said.
source
If it takes 40 rockets to cause one fatality, that doesn't seem particularly "deadly" to me. In fact if I were trying to kill lots of people and
that was my success rate, I'd be pretty ticked off. And similarly, I'd describe the multitrillion dollar subsidy that Israel gets from the US as
"massive" military assistance. It CERTAINLY dwarfs any assistance the Palestinians are getting - and the kill rates reflect that.
When I was a kid I was brought up on the whole "plucky little Israel" bit - but as I found out more about what was going on, I realised that this
was a convenient PR myth.
Killing innocent civilians is unacceptable wherever they may be.
At last! We agree on something!...
But in a war situation some collateral damage is bound to occur.
... but not for long, though. Firstly, I have to say that "collateral damage" is one of the most utterly revolting euphemisms I know. It's used
by sociopathic politicians to justify civilian killings, and anyone who uses it is cutting themselves off from their own humanity.
Secondly, this is not "a war situation". (Is there any difference between "a war situation" and "a war"? I'd say not, but Mike, if you can
tell the difference, please enlighten us.) A more apt description might be "a police action" but then that choice of words brings us up against the
lack of proportion in Israel's actions. I liked the analogy another poster used about taking out swathes of LA to deal with the Bloods and Crips.
But if it
were a war, then Israel would certainly be committing war crimes under the
Geneva Convention:
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in
mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance
activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held
responsible for any resistance activity that took place there.
Is it any wonder that many people looking at what's gong on now can't help seeing the parallels, and are disgusted with the Israeli government (and
those citizens who support its actions)?
And the Hamas and other terror organizations count on this macabre strategy to generate world opinion against the Israelis. What better way to
instigate them than firing rockets into Israel to force them to retaliate?
This just doesn't make any sense. It's akin to me going up to a heavily-armed psychopath and slapping him round the face knowing that when I'm
dying in the gutter (because he'll have chased off the ambulance) I'll at least have the sympathy of people who are too far away to help.
As for David Hatuel, he has my sympathy, but there are about a hundred Palestinian victims for each Israeli and so my sympathies are rather more with
them. Plus, before the tragedy struck, I doubt that he was bullied by an occupying army, starved of food and denied water, prevented from travelling
to work, or any of the myriad indignities (to put it mildly) that Palestinians suffer every day.
