Israeli - Palestinian conflict through photos (pictures are worth a thousand words)

reply to post by Eliad


Some people can never accept that Israel can do sin, everything Israel does is a mistake, an accident, or a retaliation.

That being said, I leave you with this:

www.youtube.com...
Watch the whole video, OK!


Israel has nothing to gain from peace:

stirred an outburst of anger amongst Palestinians, exasperated by the stagnation of the peace process, as well as by the continuing occupation and settlement expansion.

Evidence that the violence erupted due to the continuous occupation, and continuous settlement expansion, neither one has stopped till today.

They have a right to resist.

The violent repression of Palestinian demonstrations demanding the immediate ending of the occupation killed more than 200 Palestinians in one month, of which one third was under 17 years old. To respond to this brutality, the Intifada became militarised as from the beginning of November 2000.

Evidence that Palestinians protested peacefully for a long time, and didn't gain anything by those peaceful protest, the occupation continued, the expansion of settlements continued, and their treatment got worsened.




Palestinians peacefully protested for a long time, I feel for them.

Among the many reasons for the start of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, the massive expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza must count as the most important.


The 1993 Oslo Accords signed by the PLO and Israel were meant to reconcile Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and statehood and the existence of Israel. In fact, an aggressive policy of settlement expansion and consolidation took place over the following seven years. More Arab land was taken over and more Palestinian homes were bulldozed, more exclusively Jewish roa

So you can see why the violence started right? The evidence is clear, that Israel doesn't want peace, but the agenda is, to occupy and invade the whole of Palestine, and kick all of Palestinians out to Jordon.

Palestinians have the right to resist.



In between the time of the Oslo Accord and the 2nd intifada:

When Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn in September 1993 there were about 115,000 Jewish settlers in West Bank and Gaza. By the time of the second intifada seven years later there were more than 200,000 of them. Reports suggest another 1,500 families (17,000 people) have been added to this total during 2001, more than the 400 settler families that have moved back to Israel under the impact of the intifada.

And Seriously, GAZA:

Gaza, one of the most densely populated tracts of land in the world, is home to 1,178,000 Palestinians, 33 per cent of whom live in United Nations-funded refugee camps.
Gaza is also home to 6,900 Jewish settlers. Yet the Israeli-controlled areas and settlements take up about 40 per cent of Gaza's land. Israel controls all external borders, crossing points and major roads in Gaza.

Palestinians had to fight to get Gaza back, other wise they would have been pushed to the sea.

The agenda is clear, if you refuse to see it, you have officially been blinded by the propaganda machine.

But don't worry, if people millions of miles away are getting blinded by Zionist propaganda, why shouldn't you?

[edit on 21-7-2010 by oozyism]

reply to post by oozyism


My friend, forgive me if I sound condescending, but this seems like the first time you're researching these topics..

The violence started long before the occupation, and there was never peace.
There was violence in the 50's, 60's, 70's all the way to this day.
You think they peacefully resisted until 2000? Are you kidding me? Do you think it's called the second intifada for nothing? There was one before that, and there always have been violence.

Look the point is there has always been violence on both sides.. Before 67' Gaza was under egyptian control and the west bank under jordanian control. It was only after 67' that someone in the government got this #ed up idea that we need those territories..

Our government didn't even take these territories to keep, they took them to negotiate treaties, they expected egypt and jordan to ask for them.. But they didn't come back for the Palestinian people..

Do you think it's about land?

We gave back Sinai! A piece of land 3 times the size of Israel! Are you serious?

Israel has nothing to gain from peace?!@?!? Are you kidding me?! Do you know how much money goes to protect these stupid borders?! Do you know how many lives are lost?!

And what?! For a stupid piece of land? Even the dumbest politician knows we're never going to get the west bank or Gaza.. The settlements will be removed, it's just a matter of time.

You've got to be kidding me.. Please, think before you reply. Israel has everything to gain from peace.

You want to know what happened in the Oslo accords? We gave arafat guns, and power, and everything because we wanted peace, and then what happened? They used those guns against us, it all blew in our face..
Don't talk to me about the oslo accords or arafat...

As for your last reply- No, they would not have been pushed to the sea.. The settlements might have been growing rapidly in the 70's but by now they're almost not growing at all.. You need to check your facts..

But those settlers are illegal, and shouldn't have been there in the first place, I agree..

Does this give you the right to attack the rest of Israel? Murder innocent people in the name of a holy war?
See the sad thing is this is not ideological any more, this is religious, and it's #ed up.

As for the video..
The first part is shocking.. It's sad to see what happened to these people..

I don't know.. On the one hand there's no way the army would spend an expensive rocket on a bunch of people having tea (If you look at it from a practical point of view, if you don't believe me that the army just wouldn't attack civilians), and on the other hand these people are saying they were attacked by a drone.. Am I supposed to just believe them? Why attack this family? What is there to gain?
If you could read hebrew you would see that in the soldier's testimony that they show he says (at the bottom): There were a lot of red lines- Don't shoot at mosques, don't shoot at women and children and don't shoot at schools.

Seriously, it just makes no sense. But there's nothing I can say, it's their word against my understanding, I just don't know if I can take it at face value.
There is nothing to gain from killing this family. Each one of these rockets cost thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands. Even the most brutal warlord would not shoot it on a family drinking tea.

What's worse is that they shouldn't have been there. The IDF tried to establish fighting grounds against Hamas, they let the people know that this will be a war zone, and if they don't want to risk their lives they should go.

The second part is just bull#.
Yes, there was a "next door neighbor protocol" which was outlawed, where they would go to the house next to the one they need to go to and ask one of the people in it to knock on the door of the house they do want to go to..
They did it because terrorists would just shoot through the door when they heard the Israeli soldiers speaking hebrew, and when the neighbor came they didn't shoot..
It was outlawed, it was wrong, but they weren't used as a human shield. Non of them died...

The boy tied to the front of the jeep, seriously? Like they'd drive away with that on the front? To protect them? Does it really look like this kid was used as a human shield? For a jeep? This is a photo typically taken out of context..

Then the story of the three brothers.. It's sad to hear these stories.. I can't help but wonder if they're true... There's no excuse if they were..
Some things don't add up.. Why would they burn the clothes in the middle of a fighting zone, exposing themselves (the smoke)? Also he speaks of empty tank shells.. There's no such thing.. And keeping them in camp as human shields is also not true, 3 little kids on their knees can cover maybe the lower part of one tank.. That's no a good shield. Also he says that they were surrounded by razor wire as if in a prison cell, but at the same time the soldiers were next to them and beat them when they tried to sleep.. Then on 11:41 the woman looks like she's reading from a page..
I can't justify war crimes..
You've seen here, what? A few stories? So these incidents, whether they were mistakes, misfires, intentional, or just done out of fear, are the policy of an entire army now? They talk about our precise equipment.. What about they people we didn't shoot? What about the people who weren't treated badly?
You have no idea what this war is like, you've got to stop thinking you do.
I can show you videos on what the Palestinians did.. Rigged a zoo to explode, rigging houses (with civilians in them), shooting outside schools, etc..
But they don't show those on your so called "zionist biased media" do they?

At the end of the day I wish I could take each and every soldier involved in these accidents and ask them what the # were they doing..
I hope I'd get the answers I want to hear..
Like for example those phosphorus shells? They had no idea they were shooting them at populated areas (although those areas were supposed to be empty), but in the end the soldier pulling the trigger looks like an evil monster..

This one movie is made to look as if it's covering the whole war, when it only covers a handful of cases, and tells us about others. It doesn't tell us the full story, only the bits and pieces it wants..

With respect,
Eliad.

reply to post by oozyism


By the way- All that being said (and that was a lot said..), I do believe some of these stories, and I do believe that some of the soldiers did commit war crimes..
I just don't think it should be regarded as the policy of the IDF.

Soldiers make mistakes, the IDF makes mistakes. Sometimes it's insensitive towards the Gaza people, in order to save its own soldiers' lives..
I'm not saying it's right.. I'm just not entirely sure it's wrong..

Just the other day I posted that 550 (!!!) soldiers and officers were accused by the IDF's internal investigations of illegal activities during the cast lead.. War crimes, or just misuse of their power...

I'm not saying we're always right.. But we're not animals.. We make mistakes, and misjudgments, and sometimes it saves our own children for the price of theirs..
That's a trade any general would make.. He would rather 10 Palestinians died so that one of his soldiers would live..
And again.. I don't know if that's right or wrong..
But he'd never just decide to kill 10 Palestinians for no reason..
And if you don't believe that, then really there's nothing more I can say..

And yes, I find the video to be shocking.
And I find all the stories credible, except for the one with the three brothers..

[edit on 21-7-2010 by Eliad]

reply to post by Eliad


As I said, you wouldn't agree to anything I said, and you didn't.

if you want to go all the way back, it was the European Jews who started the problem, who came from Europe, running away from European prosecution and called for Zionism in Palestine, which caused most of the tension between the two groups. Because Zionism calls for the whole ancient Israel to be ruled by Jews, and it should be only for Jews, the rest are out casts.

That was the starting ground.

Before that, there were Jews, Christians, and Muslims living happily amongst each other. I make it sound like a fantasy, but comparing to the situation now, it was happily ever after.

The European Jews should have claimed part of Germany as their nation, it was the Europeans who killed, oppressed, and torture Jews, not Palestinians.

So from the start, it was the Bullied, who became the Bully/



Once again, Israel has nothing to gain from peace, the protection aid comes from the US, the more Israel portrays itself as being at risk, the more aid the US gives it.



What is there to gain from killing innocent people? Fear, they will stay submissive, did you see the part where that mother, whose daughter got killed by an Israeli drone in front of her? And when the mother saw a plane she started running while being interviewed.

Tears came to my eyes at that part, seeing the fear in her eyes. It is called terrorism.



You think the IDF wasn't holding human shields, because non of them were killed?

Human shield is when you take a human and use him/her as a shield. Which is human shield. Which is what was shown in that video.



I'm not expecting you to understand, sometime it takes a long time to see the wrong doings of your own people, heck I never thought a Muslim could do wrong, it took time for me to absorb the information, and think, reflect, etc etc.

It is still hard for me to swallow knowing Muslims are capable of killing innocent people, but they are.

It is a reality.

See, I knew you wouldn't read the whole thing..

You should have at least read the second post..

If you still don't think we do see eye to eye on many subjects then maybe I wasn't expressing myself clearly..

The difference between you and me is this- You are confident that the Israeli people are a brutal race of racist murderers, going after the poor weaklings in the Gaza strip for their pleasure and amusement, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the defense budget, if not more, and because we want a piece of land that's, what? 5% the size of Israel? Less? After giving back a piece of land 3 times bigger than all of Israel for peace.

Did I get it right?

I on the other hand live here. I know the people, I know the mindset, I've been in the army, I've seen how it works, I know its rules, I know its soldiers, I've seen both sides, I've been to both sides, I've spoken to both sides, my girlfriend is an Arab Israeli, I condemn some of what my government does, and I condone some of it..

Believe me, I'm confused.
So you? With your basic understanding, your basic grasp of the situation, you think you can come here and figure it all out?

Watching CNN doesn't qualify you as a middle east expert.

I'll be honest with you, most Israelis don't love the Palestinians.. A lot of blood has been shed, on both sides.
But nobody wants war.
Nobody wants to exterminate them.

We just want to be let alone.

We haven't always handled it in the best of ways, I know.
But terror isn't something that's easy to deal with.

That doesn't justify anything, it just goes to show that it's not as simple as you might think it is..

Look at the west bank.. It used to be our biggest problem when it was under the leadership of Arafat. The day after he died and was replaced by Abu Mazzen the terror stopped.

Do you think anything changed on our side? No. When the leadership calls for terror, there will be terror, when it works to remove terror, it is gone.

I mean look at Gaza and look at the west bank-
No settlements in Gaza, no activity in Gaza, nothing.
And in the west bank- There's settlements, and stupid settlers, and homes are wrecked, and what not...

Which one should be producing the terror?
And which one is producing the terror?

Which one is thriving and growing?
And it's not just the blockade..
The Israeli government gives the west bank tens of millions of dollars each month, and it's out of 98% of its territories..

This struggle..
This pointless struggle..
15, 20 years ago the Palestinians would come and go into Israel as they pleased.. Before all this bull# started..

Do you really think this struggle is about human rights? Do you really think it's because we're cruel?

This starts and ends at politics.

Do you even know how Hamas treats its own people?

Do you know how well these hamas officials live? While their people starve?

This has nothing to do with human rights.

This is an ancient feud passed on from one generation to another. It's about religion, it's about politics...

It's not that I can't show you videos that tell a different story then the one you present. Videos that show you how hamas rigged houses and buildings around their own civilians, how children and women were sent with a white flag to walk down the street, spot Israeli forces, and report back to have them blown up, how children have been used to collect weapons from dead bodies, how in this whole #ed up war telling apart a terrorist from a civilian is as easy as telling apart a pepsi from a cola..
How civilians have been warned to get the hell out of the areas of conflict, so they wouldn't get hurt..

I can show you these videos..
It's just that you won't believe any of them.
You'd rather believe that the IDF uses advanced CGI to create fake videos, and planted evidence in the field..
But you've lost your ability to believe that a person might be telling a lie to the camera, that people were directed to do certain things (like running away from a balloon that's up 24/7, and can be seen from all over Gaza), or that people were told to say certain things, simply so a reporter can get a scoop..

Worse than that you watch a video on a few isolated cases with no proof other than their word, and you immediately deduce that we're a nation of animals.

Trust me, the US aid won't stop coming if we make peace, there's still syria and hizballa.
We have much to gain from peace- Stability, tourism, commerce, less money spent of defense and more on education..
You think the US money covers all that?

Trust me, killing terrorists in much more effective in creating fear than killing innocent people, any idiot knows that. Killing innocent people only creates more and more terrorist. So you're wasting a missile that costs 10K dollars, to create more terrorists?
Dead terrorist bodies are very effective at deterring people from becoming one, don't you think?

Why do you insist on picking the worst possible scenario, when there are others much more logical?

Though the truth might be somewhere in the middle I'm afraid.. But definitely not as brutal and cruel as you imagine it.

With respect,
Eliad.

P.S- Are you a muslim? Do you think your religion defines you in any way?
If Islam didn't tell you to be a good person, wouldn't you still be a good person?

[edit on 22-7-2010 by Eliad]

reply to post by Eliad


OK let's make this as simple as possible OK!!!!!!

1. Palestine is still under occupation.
2. Jewish settlements are still expanding.

Non of those secure Israel from suppose Palestinian home made fireworks.

Do you agree or not?

reply to post by oozyism


Are you reading my posts at all?..
I feel like I'm talking to a wall..

The settlers are idiots.
I also think that the settlements are illegal, and should be removed as soon as possible.. I've never said any different.
And there's no two ways about it, they WILL be removed eventually.. And I really don't get how the settlers don't see it..
But as I've said in my posts (which you really should read sometime..), they are driven by an ideology that's not better than that of Hamas..

An ideology most people in Israel don't share..
The only reason they get to do what they do is because of the orthodox lobby in the government..

Which brings me back to my point (which I made in my last post, kind of long, but a nice read, you'd enjoy it)- This is politics. It's religion.. It has nothing to do with most Israelis..

By the way they're almost not expending at all anymore..

Now that I've answered your questions (which you could have easily deduced by reading my posts to you), answer mine:

Explain to me something:
Why are people dying in Gaza?
No settlements in Gaza, no activity in Gaza, nothing.
And in the west bank- There's settlements, and stupid settlers, and homes are wrecked, and what not...

So how is it that the terror comes from Gaza?
How is it that there's war in Gaza?
How is violence the only answer they can come up with, when giving up violence is the only thing that can save them?

Why is the west bank thriving and growing and Gaza isn't?
You think it's just the blockade?
Could it have something to do with the fact that their government is not forcing them into a state of war?
That the Israeli government gives them tens of millions of dollars every month?

Seriously, read my last post, don't be a jackass.. I feel like I'm repeating myself..

Also, do you feel like your religion defines who you are?
If Islam didn't tell you to be a good person, wouldn't you still have been a goon person?

[edit on 23-7-2010 by Eliad]

reply to post by Eliad



The cancer has already begun, don't feed it, destroy all the reasons which cancer builds on, and it will be destroyed.

If you continue building reasons for the cancer to build on, then the cancer will grow, until it destroys you.

That is what is happening.

The Palestinian resistance is the cancer.

The occupation, and settlement expansions are the reasons.

The settlement activities are illegal as you say, so why is it continuing?

The occupation is also illegal, so why is it continuing?

The only reason why the settlement activities have been reduced is due to the resistance. It has been completely stopped in Gaza due to resistance, and settlements are still being build, right now, this instance in West Bank. So what if it is frozen, what is the point of freezing it, when you can continue it later? Palestine is under occupation, so Israel can freeze and continue anything they want.

Shouldn't there be a ban on settlement activities? Because it is illegal?

In 1979, at the first Camp David summit US President Jimmy Carter sought a 5-year freeze. Prime Minister Menachim Begin was only prepared to agree a 3-month halt, neglecting to say that the expansion of existing settlements would continue unhindered. By 1992, when the number of settlers had risen from 50,000 to 250,000, the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin agreed on a freeze only to insist on an allowance for ‘natural growth’. The so-called final status talks foundered in 2000, one of the reasons being Israel’s inability or unwillingness to stop settlement building. The number of settlers had then risen to 400,000.

Peaceful Demonstrations hasn't worked, violence has, because violence has brought the world's attention towards the conflict, and made the obstacle towards peace clear, that it is the Israeli policy which is the obstacle, that it is the continuation of settlement activities which is an obstacle to peace, that it is the occupation which is an obstacle to peace.




Once again, go tell you people to stop feeding the cancer, if will ultimately destroy you.