8 Children Killed in Israeli Attack

[CyberGnu]

Ned,

But, from this point of view, Jews and Arabs had equal rights to the land in Palestine because both were historical and current occupants of the land.

Does this mean Sweden have equal rights to Germany with the germans? We owned part os it for a hundred years or so, plus we conquered the whole thing in the 17'th century.

I think this is a spurious argument. The palestinians have lived there for hundreds of years. It is their land. Basing your claim on 2000 year old history is just bull.

Rogan, we, meaning the liberal Infidel West, have a common enemy with Israel in her fight for survival.

Nope. It was wrong to let Israel steal the land in the first place, and it is certainly wrong to let Israel carry on with their aggression now.

The liberal west has an obligation to treat the muslim world justly, so the moderate elements in that world has a chance to see that civilization is the better choice. By supporting Israel we only say that might gives right, and effectively kills whatever moral high ground we once had.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Israeli apologists

I don't like this expression at all. Please refrain from using it in the future.
I don't throw insults at you so I think you should behave likewise.

Originally posted by CyberGnu
See, now this is where the whole thing breaks down. Somehow Israeli apologists around the world expect us to take the line 'the germans were bad to us therefore we should be allowed to take the palestinians land from them' at face value. that it doesn't make logical or moral sense is as usual not important. Theft is theft, regardless of justification.

No, I think there is justification for the Jews to have a national home in Israel since our national history and our religion, which are the two things that bond us together as a nation, are based in Israel.
This is just as justified as saying "we own this land, even though we didn't use it at all before the Jews arrived and we sold some of it off to them, and they're the ones who actually turned it out of swamplands and wilderness to successful agricultural settlements and cities".
Other than that, please keep in mind that the Othoman empire took this land by force in the first place, so why shouldn't we do the same?

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Partly lie. The palestinians rejected it, but so did the zionists.

I researched this again and you turned out to be right. However there was another proposition which proposed much less than half for the Jewish state and you refused it as well.

Originally posted by CyberGnu
They lobbied quite fiercly

Wouldn't you have lobbied fiercly if you were in their shoes?

Originally posted by CyberGnu
especially with the US,

Are you trying to prove some Jewish-American conspiracy here?
There are many Jews who migrated to America seeking jobs, opportunities and refuge from prosecution in Europe. The Zionist movement were using them as a powerbase, just like any other diplomat would. What are you trying to prove here?

Originally posted by CyberGnu
and cried loudly

This specific choice of words makes the leaders of the Zionist organizations look like babies. Mind you, but they were professors, journalists and other learned men and women.
I suspect you were using these specific words to mock the Zionist movement. If you didn't, please accept my sincere apologies. If you did, then again, please refrain from using insults. I am not impressed by such techniques nor to I believe they contribute to this discussion.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
*carefully ignoring the hundreds of thousands of palestinians who fled their homes thinking they would get killed by Israelis*

This is something that always intrigued me: why did they think Israelis were going to kill them?
I mean AFAIK there were no incidents where Jews attacked Palestinians, except for maybe minor incidents which were not documented and therefore weren't brought to my knowledge.

As for your last remark, I wasn't ommitting these facts on purpose. Honest. Oh, what the heck, you'd still think I'm a dirty liar.

[CyberGnu]

I don't like this expression at all. Please refrain from using it in the future.
I don't throw insults at you so I think you should behave likewise.

You have a point, since you haven't called anyone here anti-semite or nazi. This is pretty much standard fare for the pro-israelis on this site, however...

No, I think there is justification for the Jews to have a national home in Israel since our national history and our religion, which are the two things that bond us together as a nation, are based in Israel.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't matter. Hitler used the same justification to annex sudeten etc. And to use a less inflammatory example, it doesn't give the US right to attack Europe, even though much of their culture comes from the 'old country'.

The palestinians have lived there for hundreds of years. It is not their fault that jewish culture didn't let go of an area they left 2000 years ago.

This is just as justified as saying "we own this land, even though we didn't use it at all before the Jews arrived and we sold some of it off to them, and they're the ones who actually turned it out of swamplands and wilderness to successful agricultural settlements and cities".

I'm sorry, but this is just not the case. Take a look at the british white papers. One of them states quite bkuntly that 'there is no more room for jewish settlers without signifcantly lowering the quality of life of the current population. Immigration to palestine should thus be curtailed'.

If there were plently of room, this wouldn't have been the case.

Other than that, please keep in mind that the Othoman empire took this land by force in the first place, so why shouldn't we do the same?

Because we are fighting for civilization, not might by arms.

edit: forgot a 0 in '2000'

[Pavlov]

*eagerly awaits cybergnus answer*

edit: aaand my reply is already outdated

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Ahh, yes, much like how the bomb in Hiroshima hadn't killed anyone if the entire town had gone to a picnic that day.



AFAIK, the hamas-leaders wife and children WEREN"T home that day, as he lived alone (under an assumed name, no less). The other people killed were people living in the same building.



Well, since an army spokesman is on record saying 'we had to use an F-16 because an apache missile can;t take out a two story building' they obviously knew that there were more than one apartment.

Israel had to use a 1kg bomb because we needed to assure the kill.
The bomb is very accurate and the blast radius is fairly small considering the size (yes, I researched), which is why we dropped it without fearing that nearby apartment buildings would not be damaged, which eventually turned out to be true, as they weren't. Not substantially anyway.
Those innocents who were killed were people who were living in improvised housings in the spaces between the target's apartment and the nearby apartments (this is where the intelligence failed: it did not alert the decision makers of the existence of such improvised housings). Most of them were killed when remains of the house collapsed on them.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: btw, the target's wife and children *were* at home and they were killed with him (2nd intelligence screw up: their report said they were not at home so the decision makers had no idea of that).
To sum up, the actual officers who made the decision to conduct the operation thought they were going to kill noone but the target, therefore they cannot be blamed for intentionally killing innocent Palestinians or any of that bull.

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by Shiber
WARNING! Long post ahead (well, duh...).

AFAIK all of this is true, correct me wherever you find I was wrong / deceptive:

- Jews are prosecuted around the world just for the fact that they are jews for nearly two thousand years. They are randomly massacred, they get very little rights if any, they are often disallowed to celebrate their holidays and act according to their traditions and they have to pay protection taxes to the authorities, if they're lucky.

- Roughly a hundred years ago: Jews get sick of it all, decide that it's impossible to fight off antisemity and/or live safely within other nationalities, as Jews are the only nationality which are scattered throughout Europe rather than have a territory of their own and therefore are considered a plague by most Europeans and are mistreated. Jews collect money, mostly from donations as most Jews were very poor that time, buy lands from the Turkish empire (yes, buy, not steal) which the Turks never wanted or had any use for anyway (completely uninhabited lands, most of which were on or near swamplands) and begin to build villages and an agricultural infrastructure.
Jews are treated unfairly by the authorities, which did nothing to prevent attacks from raiders and pirates and charged the Jews for a lot of bribe money to get anywhere. Despite all this, the Jews were persistant, as this was better than returning to Europe.

- Slowly, more Jews migrate to Israel/Palestine mostly due to the harsh conditions they had to endure in Europe and due to Zionist ideology, according to which the Jews must establish a national home of undefined borders in Israel (not for all Jews to live in, but as a place Jews can relate to) so they will cease to be an anomal nation.
Lands are bought from the Turks mostly thanks to donations.
Current tennants see the Jews settling in their precious completely uninhabited swamplands and desertlands and decide they don't like this one bit, so they continually harass Jewish villages and towns and the Jews just barely manage to defend themselves. Wherever Jewish defenses fail, innocent women and children are horribly massacred by the arabs.

- The Brits take over Israel after WWI and soon thereafter limit Jewish immigration to very small numbers. Now illegal immigrants are sent back to Europe back to their oppressors, and after WWII began straight to the hands of the Nazis, which transferred them to work or death camps.
Jews respond by conducting acts of resistance without actually killing Brit soldiers (excluding the Etzel group which did, but they were extremists and were condemned by most of the Jewish population both for using illegitimate measures and for harming the cause, which was to enable Jews to migrate to Israel/Palestine), e.g. sinking patrol ships, blowing up radar devices, derailing slow army supply trains etc' (all of which didn't result in any British casualties, as mentioned above).

Dear Shiber,

I do not like insults and being rude but this post of you contains so many factual errors that it would be almost impossible to correct them all.

For the moment I will mention only three points:

• Jews were systematically persecuted by Christians and other Europeans, hardly ever by Muslims
• The Orthodox majority of Jews actually living in Palestine opposed a Zionist state
• The Zionist leadership did virtually nothing to save/rescue/help Jews during the Nazi period; on the contrary, on several occasions they collaborated with fascist regimes

"Between 1880 and 1900 more than a million Jews reached the United States. A fraction of that number, most of them with strong religious and nationalist feelings about Eretz Yisrael , immigrated to Palestine."

"The Orthodox Jewish pietists of the Old Yishuv, living on haluka, predominated in Palestine until after World War I, when Zionist-sponsored immigration created a majority of the New Yishuv. Whenever they arrived, Jewish immigrants were not met with an easy life in Palestine. Between 1881 and 1914 as many as 50,000, one of two, left Palestine for the West."

"The ultra-Orthodox community... ..rejected secular Zionism but after the riots of 1920 and 1921 did nothing to oppose it."

"In 1922 a government census recorded some 84,000 Jews in Palestine; that population doubled by 1931, bringing the New Yishuv to 175,000."
(source: T.A.Idinopulos: 'Weathered by Miracles', 1998)

The Jews did not prefer to migrate to Palestine; they were manipulated by the Zionist leadership. Some of them will have had relatives in Palestine, but there were far more Jewish relatives living in the USA.
Nor will a true refugee care about his refuge; his priority is to save his life!

Some points to consider:

• Why should the Muslim world pay for Europe's crimes?
• Are secular, European Jews superior to Arab Orthodox Jews (the Sephardim)?
• What is/was more important: saving Jews or conquering Palestine?

Sincerely,

S.Kroeze

[CyberGnu]

I researched this again and you turned out to be right. However there was another proposition which proposed much less than half for the Jewish state and you refused it as well.

With 'you', do you mean the palestinians? I'm a blond, blue-eyed atheist swede...

Are you trying to prove some Jewish-American conspiracy here?

No conspiracy. The US president was the strongest proponent of the new Israeli state. Which I think makes it even worse that he wouldn;t have the moral courage to suggest a just solution, like give away Arizona or New Mexico to a jewish state.

My point is that your telling of the story makes it seem like the zionists were just trying to do the right thing, while the arabs were screaming fanatics. History shows that the opposite is much more true.

Wouldn't you have lobbied fiercly if you were in their shoes?

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean it is right. It would just mean I'd put my own interest over right and wrong.

This specific choice of words makes the leaders of the Zionist organizations look like babies. Mind you, but they were professors, journalists and other learned men and women.
I suspect you were using these specific words to mock the Zionist movement. If you didn't, please accept my sincere apologies. If you did, then again, please refrain from using insults. I am not impressed by such techniques nor to I believe they contribute to this discussion.

Not exactly an insult, but not particularly flattering either. Is there a flattering way of saying 'they expressed their dismay over an offer that gave 25%
of the population only 50% of the land'?

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Edit:missed the timeline.

The small influx of jewish settlers were encouraged by the palestinian population, as they brought new farming techniques and hard currency in with them.

Then why did they torch barns and houses and destroyed crops?

Originally posted by CyberGnu
In 1920 the zionists declared that the jews had no intention of sharing the land with anyone, however, and the troubles began.

They did not. There was a faction within the Zionist movement which declared so but they were rejected by the leading members.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
You seem to have your timeline screwed up, as you placed Brits taking over after this part.

Palestinian resistance to Jewish settlement, expressed in the forms of armed attacks on Jewish settlements and the destruction of Jewish property began before the Brits took over.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Finally, the UN had no legal right to give away the palestinian land. They were only caretakers of the region, not owners. The arabs had the legal right to veto the suggestion.

But then you say Israel should comply with U.N. resolutions 242 and 646. So does the U.N. have the right to decide what land belongs to who or does it not?

[CyberGnu]

Israel had to use a 1kg bomb because we needed to assure the kill.

Umm, you do know that the bomb weighed 1000kg, right?

The problem here is that it is not a defense. Yes, a 1000kg bomb might have been needed to kill him, but
A) these assassinations are acts of barbary
B) the army knew very well that civilians would die in the attack but carried on anyway.

[CyberGnu]

The bomb is very accurate and the blast radius is fairly small considering the size (yes, I researched), which is why we dropped it without fearing that nearby apartment buildings would not be damaged, which eventually turned out to be true, as they weren't. Not substantially anyway.

Have you seen pictures from the area? Walls of neighbouring houses are caved in, there is debris everywhere. Over 140 wounded.

Quite frankly, there is no such thing as a 'surgical strike'.

Those innocents who were killed were people who were living in improvised housings in the spaces between the target's apartment and the nearby apartments (this is where the intelligence failed: it did not alert the decision makers of the existence of such improvised housings). Most of them were killed when remains of the house collapsed on them.

actually, I was wrong. The house wasn't two stories, it was three. That means at least two more famillies lived there. These are also the civilians that were killed...

From

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/international/middleeast/23GAZA.html

His [the sheiks] wife and three of his daughters were initially reported killed this morning, but hospital officials later said they had survived.

from LAtimes:

Most of the dead were Shehada's neighbors, whose apartments were leveled or badly damaged when a missile from a U.S.-made F-16 hit the building where Shehada was visiting his wife and 14-year-old daughter.

The force of the blast sent shrapnel and broken concrete flying a block or more. Five apartment buildings of two to four stories sustained heavy damage.

[CyberGnu]

What it comes down to is that the military has no respect for palestinian lives. they knew very well people would get killed, and they did it anyway.

Or let me put it this way: Even bush condemned the attack. If there were even the slightest chnace of dending an Israeli atrocity, Bush would take it. But even his administration couldn't find one this time.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
Dear Shiber,

I do not like insults and being rude but this post of you contains so many factual errors that it would be almost impossible to correct them all.

Please try anyway, if you can find the time. I wish to learn from my mistakes, if I've made any.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze [*]Jews were systematically persecuted by Christians and other Europeans, hardly ever by Muslims

They were persecuted in Israel from a certain point in time, but not in other Othoman states. Which part of my post said they were?
You probably misunderstood something I said.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze [*]The Orthodox majority of Jews actually living in Palestine opposed a Zionist state

And they still do until this very day, because they say salvation in the form of a Jewish state should come from the heavens, and that god should decide when the Jews shall return to their homeland, not man, so it's pretty irrelevant whether they objected or not, IMHO.
Of course you had no way of knowing this since you never studied the Orthodox people as much as I have. I understand.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze [*]The Zionist leadership did virtually nothing to save/rescue/help Jews during the Nazi period;

Creating a safe haven for them in Israel and fighting to allow them to migrate to Israel isn't a form of help then?
Other than that, there was nothing they could do. The leaders who lived in Germany, Poland, France etc' soon found themselves in ghettos or camps where there was nothing they could do and the rest (e.g. the one who lived in Britain) had nothing to do (as there was no point in "saving" British Jews, they weren't in danger from the Nazis. I guess if they realized that Britain was about to fall to the Germans they would run away to North America and use some of their money to help poor Jews fund the trip and get green cards).

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
on the contrary, on several occasions they collaborated with fascist regimes[/list]

That's a very serious blame, but it means nothing without examples.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
"Between 1880 and 1900 more than a million Jews reached the United States. A fraction of that number, most of them with strong religious and nationalist feelings about Eretz Yisrael , immigrated to Palestine."

Yeah, well I figure it's not very fun leaving the comfort of America and struggle to set up a self-providing society in Israel, where you had high chances to die of plagues or in the hands of pirates.
Many Jews preferred to send donations. Some others rejected the idea of setting up a national home in Israel for several reasons, and it's their right not to accept the idea.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
"The Orthodox Jewish pietists of the Old Yishuv, living on haluka, predominated in Palestine until after World War I, when Zionist-sponsored immigration created a majority of the New Yishuv. Whenever they arrived, Jewish immigrants were not met with an easy life in Palestine. Between 1881 and 1914 as many as 50,000, one of two, left Palestine for the West."

Yes, many found they couldn't cope with the difficulty of life in the New Yishuv (it was difficult. Remember they were pioneers in swamplands, and many had very little knowledge of agriculture), or they saw their friends die one by one from various plagues.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
"The ultra-Orthodox community... ..rejected secular Zionism but after the riots of 1920 and 1921 did nothing to oppose it."

I'm sorry, I don't understand how this is relevant or where you're going with that.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
"In 1922 a government census recorded some 84,000 Jews in Palestine; that population doubled by 1931, bringing the New Yishuv to 175,000."
(source: T.A.Idinopulos: 'Weathered by Miracles', 1998)

Ditto as response to previous comment.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze The Jews did not prefer to migrate to Palestine; they were manipulated by the Zionist leadership. Some of them will have had relatives in Palestine, but there were far more Jewish relatives living in the USA.
Nor will a true refugee care about his refuge; his priority is to save his life!

Manipulated? What does that mean?
Care to provide examples?
As for the fact that most Jews did not prefer to migrate to Palestine: true, they preferred to migrate to N. America or Australia, where conditions were far better and Jews were rarely persecuted, but keep in mind that some couldn't bear the trip, mostly due to financial reasons. For many of those, Israel was the only solution.
The Zionist movement however made their efforts so that the Jews will have a state of their own if one day they are persecuted again and have nowhere to run.

Originally posted by S. Kroeze Some points to consider:

• Why should the Muslim world pay for Europe's crimes?
  

• It shouldn't. But they could allow the Jews some national home in Israel since the Jewish common history and religion, the two things that bound them together as a nation, are based there.
  I never gave that as a reason for why the Muslim world should give up parts of Palestine. I see now that some of the things I said could have implied that I see things this way, but I don't. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
  
  

  Originally posted by S. Kroeze

• Are secular, European Jews superior to Arab Orthodox Jews (the Sephardim)?