The Palestine thread

[Eamonnca1]

Well the good news is that Israeli owl that was injured by a Hamas rocket is now recovering.

This is not an Onion article, the Israeli media have actually taken the trouble to report this. No joke.

[foxcommander]

Well the good news is that Israeli owl that was injured by a Hamas rocket is now recovering.

This is not an Onion article, the Israeli media have actually taken the trouble to report this. No joke.

If he was a member of Hamas or Owl Qaeda you wouldn't hear about it in the news.

[give her dixie]

Well worth reading:

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israeli-army-deliberately-kill-its-own-captured-soldier-and-destroy-gaza

[J OGorman]

Great turn out in Derry today despite the Irish summer weather
The Protestant coalition calling out their supporters to stop the big March in Belfast next Sunday. What goes through these people's head?! The mind boggles trying to understand their thinking. 

[foxcommander]

Great turn out in Derry today despite the Irish summer weather
The Protestant coalition calling out their supporters to stop the big March in Belfast next Sunday. What goes through these people's head?! The mind boggles trying to understand their thinking.

I'm not quite sure you will ever understand how their tiny minds work. My enemy's enemy is my friend mentality - that's unionist logic for you.

Clearly aligning themselves with Israel will mean some sort of morale boost for their britishness cause?

[Eamonnca1]

USA - built on a land-grab that displaced a native population - supports Israel
Northern Unionists - a state built on a land-grab that displaced a native population - supports Israel

The Afrikaners in Apartheid South Africa sided with Israel too.

Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria

"This is just like the Afrikaners of apartheid South Africa, who also had the biblical notion that the land was their God-given right. Like the Zionists who claimed that Palestine in the 1940s was 'a land without people for a people without land', so the Afrikaner settlers spread the myth that there were no black people in South Africa when they first settled in the 17th century. They conquered by force of arms and terror and the provocation of a series of bloody colonial wars of conquest."

...

By the 1980s, Israel and South Africa echoed each other in justifying the domination of other peoples. Both said that their own peoples faced annihilation from external forces - in South Africa by black African governments and communism; in Israel, by Arab states and Islam. But each eventually faced popular uprisings - Soweto in 1976, the Palestinian intifada in 1987 - that were internal, spontaneous and radically altered the nature of the conflicts.

It's a long article, but very eye-opening. From 2006 too.

One of the things I find very interesting about talking to pro-Israeli people or unionists or American right-wingers is that their timeline always begins after the initial conquest. They don't process the story of how these states came to be in the first place. They are mentally incapable of even thinking about the inconvenient truth of the historic ethnic cleansing that underpins the existence of these modern states. In the case of Palestine the evidence is staring us in the face in the form of the Palestinian refugees living in refugee camps in neighbouring countries and denied the right to return, but hardly anybody in America is even aware of their existence because the pro-Israel media will not talk about it.

[glens abu]

Great turn out in Derry today despite the Irish summer weather
The Protestant coalition calling out their supporters to stop the big March in Belfast next Sunday. What goes through these people's head?! The mind boggles trying to understand their thinking.

Don't think the march next Sunday has anything to do with Gaza,it's a dissie March againist internment

[whitey]

USA - built on a land-grab that displaced a native population - supports Israel
Northern Unionists - a state built on a land-grab that displaced a native population - supports Israel

The Afrikaners in Apartheid South Africa sided with Israel too.

Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria

"This is just like the Afrikaners of apartheid South Africa, who also had the biblical notion that the land was their God-given right. Like the Zionists who claimed that Palestine in the 1940s was 'a land without people for a people without land', so the Afrikaner settlers spread the myth that there were no black people in South Africa when they first settled in the 17th century. They conquered by force of arms and terror and the provocation of a series of bloody colonial wars of conquest."

...

By the 1980s, Israel and South Africa echoed each other in justifying the domination of other peoples. Both said that their own peoples faced annihilation from external forces - in South Africa by black African governments and communism; in Israel, by Arab states and Islam. But each eventually faced popular uprisings - Soweto in 1976, the Palestinian intifada in 1987 - that were internal, spontaneous and radically altered the nature of the conflicts.

It's a long article, but very eye-opening. From 2006 too.

One of the things I find very interesting about talking to pro-Israeli people or unionists or American right-wingers is that their timeline always begins after the initial conquest. They don't process the story of how these states came to be in the first place. They are mentally incapable of even thinking about the inconvenient truth of the historic ethnic cleansing that underpins the existence of these modern states. In the case of Palestine the evidence is staring us in the face in the form of the Palestinian refugees living in refugee camps in neighbouring countries and denied the right to return, but hardly anybody in America is even aware of their existence because the pro-Israel media will not talk about it.

Eamonnca1....I think you will find that pretty much every nation on earth was founded on some type of conflict.  I think if you go far enough back some tribe of Native Americans probably knocked seven bells out of some other tribe.

The situation in the Middle East is born out of the events of WWII much as WWII was born out of the events of WWI.  The conflict in the middle east was then fueled for decades by the subsequent Cold War where the Soviets backed the Arabs and the Americans backed the Israelis (even though they would probably have backed them anyway even if there wasn't a Cold War)

Sprinkle in various factions of Islam and you have a tinder box of epic proportions that will exist into perpetuity...just look at whats happening in Syria.....where Muslim on Muslim violence has killed 150,000 people in the last 18 months (might be 100,000 depending on who you believe).

I like your phrase "historic ethnic cleansing that underpins these states". Keep in mind that some of the worst cases of ethnic cleansing have had nothing to do with colonialism.

[give her dixie]

Another UN school has been hit by an Israeli attack 10 minutes ago. 10 people have been killed and scores injured.
There were 3,000 displaced Palestinians seeking shelter in the school.

Rafah has been under a serious assault since Friday morning, and nearly 200 people have been killed so far.

Israel are on a murderous rampage through the area, and nowhere is safe right now.

Almost 1,800 have been killed and over 9,000 injured in less than a month.

This is GENOCIDE, sponsored and supported by the USA and the EU

[theskull1]

Whitey
In answer to your reply to Eamonnca1

You're correct of course but you forgot to make any comment about the understandable anger felt by societies who are so cruelly treated by oppressive dictators. Would you be a "terrorist" if you lived in Palestine?

Pro Israel supporters in general don't want to go down those paths

[whitey]

Whitey
In answer to your reply to Eamonnca1

You're correct of course but you forgot to make any comment about the understandable anger felt by societies who are so cruelly treated by oppressive dictators. Would you be a "terrorist" if you lived in Palestine?

Pro Israel supporters in general don't want to go down those paths

Would there be peace in Ireland if the IRA was still engaged in armed resistance?

No...the Republican movement realized that they just couldn't militarily defeat the British Army, so they agreed to a compromise that in prior years would have been unconscionable.

At some point, the Palestinians need to be able to find a way to reach some type of similar compromise.

The 2 problems I see is (1) The Israelis wont move and could care less about public opinion (2) Hamas are Muslim extremists and subscribe to a dogma thats incompatible with a democratic process.

Pressure is going to have come on both sides to reach an accomadation.

[general_lee]

The Palestinians have been compromising for quite some time now whitey.

[glens abu]

Great to see the Palestine ambassador at today's Hunger Strike rally in Derrylin.So sad listening to him but also so proud when he talks about the great support from Ireland.

[Arthur_Friend]

The Palestinians have been compromising for quite some time now whitey.

The formation of the Palestinian Unity Government is thought by some to be the reason behind the latest Israeli murder spree.

[whitey]

The Palestinians have been compromising for quite some time now whitey.

The formation of the Palestinian Unity Government is thought by some to be the reason behind the latest Israeli murder spree.

You know what.....you might be onto something. For the first time in a long time Hamas has lost its traditional supporters in the Muslim world. Israel possibly viewed this as an opportunity to inflict some serious body blows without having to worry about looking over their shoulder. The more I read about the Israelis the more I dislike the. ( I just dislike Hamas a whole lot more)