Israel I'm getting a clear picture

[Ted Striker]

Siro,

Do you think the "I think the "you try and **** us and we **** you up 10 folds" is a very nice system, " can be traced to religous differences?

For example, Jews believe "an eye for an eye," is the acceptable way to handle aggression, where Christians differ (though theory is not always the same as reality) in using a "turn the other cheek," mentality.

One of the reasons many Western nations look down on Israel for its retaliations.

And what is the Muslim stance on this? Does anybody know?

[Sirotnikov]

NO, not at all religious. I'm very non-religious if anything.

I believe it for political and philosophical reasons. Or maybe because that's the kind of S.O.B I am

[Ted Striker]

No, no, my bad, I didn't mean you in particular, what I meant was the nation of Israel, which is about as religious of a state by definition as you can get, being a Jewish state.

It being a Jewish state, it is more acceptable for harsh retaliation because it a foundational belief.

[Sirotnikov]

No, Ted, I'd say that has to do with us being tough ass Jews from a national point of view.

From a pure religious point of view, we would probably be less harsh, since mostly, judaism is very non-agressive.

But then again, one word from yahweh and we'd fried some palestinian ass, so who knows?

[Bereta_Eder]

Putting my anus in direct danger,

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."
Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]


In 1953, Ariel Sharon attacked Qibya, a West Bank village, slaughtering more than 60 inhabitants. Sharon's soldiers shot "every man, woman and child they could find" and then dynamited 42 houses, a school and a mosque (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 8, 2001).

In the early 1970s, Sharon led the "pacification" of Gaza, in which large numbers of Palestinian homes were bulldozed and hundreds of Palestinians forcibly deported to neighboring countries.

In August of 1982 Sharon ordered the indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals and apartment blocs in Beirut, Lebanon. Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari wrote that Sharon told Israeli officers that Palestinian neighborhoods in Beirut should be "utterly destroyed." Leon Weiseltier, writing in the "New Republic" magazine, called Sharon's attacks on Beirut, "terror-bombing pure and simple." Some 17,000 Arab civilians were killed in Sharon's Beirut bombings (The Independent [UK], Feb. 6, 2001).


Is it fair to say that had you not the support of the US Shauron would be in front of the Hague tribunal for crimes against Humanity?

And doesn't US support qualifies it as a protector of perpetrators of humanitarian crimes?

[Bereta_Eder]

The top United Nations human rights body has adopted a resolution condemning Israel for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and has launched an investigation into the violence.

Is the UN just a commie institution and not to be bothered with?

Were these houses shelters for anything?

[Bereta_Eder]

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being summoned to a Belgian court to answer questions over his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, say Belgian media reports.
Two separate claims against Mr Sharon are being brought under a 1993 Belgian law, which allows war crimes and genocide to be tried in Belgium, even if the events took place elsewhere, and even if none of the victims was Belgian.


Is Belgium commie land and the EU too? Is anyone who doesn't comorf to US - Israeli interests served by terrorism themselves a "commie"?

[Bereta_Eder]

snip snip

[Bereta_Eder]

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced growing pressure on Sunday over a 1982 massacre of Palestinians, following efforts to bring him to trial and Slobodan Milosevic's handover to the UN war crimes tribunal.


Who is a terrorist and who is not? Who decides it?

r e a l p o l i t i c

[Bereta_Eder]

and having said that,

we should ALL be against terrorism and should ALL respect International Law.

All or none. (US, Israel, Turkey included).

[Natan]

Originally posted by Sprayber
I don't think that bulldozing houses is a good idea as simple form of retaliation. But if those house were uses as postions for terrorist, then the people there should have expected some form of response.

I agree completely. None of us here (unless Sharon is reading the forums ) know the truth, and any attempt to say for sure what happened would simply be the sum of the biases of whoever's posting it. I suppose the three possibilities are:
1) The Palestinians are right, and the Israelis just decided to knock down some houses to show they were tough.
2) The Israelis are right, and all the IDF needed was political approval to knock down these houses which had been used as bases for shooting attacks. The attack on the Israeli soldiers just outside Gaza showed that the Palestinians weren't serious about the cease fire, clearing the way for this operation.
3) Some combination of the two, either:
a) There had been shooting from the houses, but not recently.
b) There had been shooting from some of the houses, but once the Israeli soldiers got into their bulldozers, they got a bit carried away and bulldozed some extra houses.

This may sound stupid, but I had no idea that so many Israelies lived in the Gaza strip. What are the official numbers on this? I knew that some did, but from what I saw on a map, there were Israeli settlements near the Egyptian border.

About 7,000 in total. None near the Egyptian border as far as I know, so maybe your map showed all zones controlled by Israel as "settlement" areas?

One question? Can the Palastinians actually create a viable state out of what little has been set aside. I'm not asking about the merits of giving more land or taking some away. Just a simple question about the practicality of setting up a state with the land they have to work with. What exactly could they produce? Israel was barely viable with what they started out with and only after they took more land(after the Arabs attacked)were they allowed to grow.

I'm not sure "viable" has any meaning here except in the military sense, and they will never be able to successfully fight their neighbors in the event of war. So then I think the real question is not can they create a viable state, but a viable society - Singapore worked great despite its size, Zaire just hasn't taken off despite its large area.

Ted Striker: Well actually, "eye for an eye" has never been Jewish doctrine either - you got rid of it in the NT, we in the Talmud, but the net result is the same. Judaism doesn't really object to revenge. Siro can correct me if I'm wrong, but Nekama has perhaps even a bit of a positive connotation. Revenge against fellow Jews is forbidden in the same way most societies dissaprove of taking revenge on one's family (the Midrash compares it to a man who, on accidentally cutting his right hand with a knife held in the left, transfers the knife to the right hand and cuts the left in revenge) but not as anything more. Still, I don't think this really explains it, because the really religious parties (Shas, UTJ) seem to be the most disinterested in the conflict. I think that if there is any desire for revenge in Israeli society more so than in other societies (which I wouldn't take for granted, witness the people on this forum who later apologized for things said on 9/12) it is because of the regions where Israelis come from, not their religion. People from Poland and people from Iraq share at least one thing in common - long memories.
Islam is a bit conflicted on the matter. Under the Sharia, the family of a murder victim has the right to pardon the killer, and this is considered meritorious. On the other hand, as one Egyptian cleric put it, contrasting his faith with Christianity, "In Islam, if I slap your cheek you slap me back." I think both Islam and Judaism view revenge as basically good, but only if done to those actually guilty of wrongdoing, not just those of the same ethnicity.

In 1953, Ariel Sharon attacked Qibya, a West Bank village, slaughtering more than 60 inhabitants. Sharon's soldiers shot "every man, woman and child they could find" and then dynamited 42 houses, a school and a mosque (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 8, 2001).

False, the Israelis made everyone they could find leave the village and then dynamited the houses; which killed some villagers who had stayed in the houses. But I just love it how Sharon is a murderer while Arafat is our partner for peace. I just wish I could find the cartoon in which Arafat leans over a bomb while warning Peres and Barak "don't bother me, I'm working on the 'peace proccess.' "
And I bet you a hundred dollars the author isn't a real Rabbi either.

[Sirotnikov]

He asked for it

...

[Bereta_Eder]

yet another breach of international - Apolyton law!!!

[General Ludd]

Makes you wonder why he had that image lying around to edit...

[Sirotnikov]

It's not like it's porn