Absence of Concern

[his holiness nb]

Fine. Why is the killing of "just" 20 Israelis not condemned?

I have no idea Hardy, I cant answer for what Fisk didnt write, just what he did write.
You can jump to conclusions as to why you think he didnt condemn them in this article all you like.

How would people here react if I said "just" thirteen people were killed on Bloody Sunday?

Badly I suspect, but if the response to bloody sunday was the killing of 300 or so people, I dont think many would have a problem with anyone pointing out the figures to suggest an overeaction.

Why are Hamas murders of civilians sanitised as "rocket attacks"? I haven't seen them called murder anywhere here.

It clear they were murder Hardy, but there have been different types of murder from the Palestians, rocket attacks, suidide bombings, shootings etc. This Iraeli offensive is in response to the rocket attacks in particular, so it makes perfect sense to single out these murders are "rocket attacks" when totting up the death count.

Incidentally, I'm suprised you havent taken offence to Fisks refusal to call the Israeli offensive as "murder" in his article. See, I can nit pick too.

Whay were there no protest marches outside embassies when Palestinian suicide bombers murdered (sorry, "attacked") innocent Israeli children?

I think rather than me, that question would be best directed at somebody who has been involved at protests outside the Israeli embassy Hardy, I certainly wouldnt be qualified to answer that one.

[Hardy]

Sorry I must have missed the bit were Fisk condones the Hamas killings. Care to point it out, preferably in the context of the original article?

What am I to make of the statement "Hamas's homemade rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years" in this context other than that it's being presented in contrast to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in some sort of ghoulish scoring system? If the implication is anything other than that the Israeli death toll is negligible, it's passed me by. Otherwise I don't understand the use of the word "just". Maybe you can interpret it for me?

[Hardy]

SO let's cut to the chase lads - (1) who else believes that it's justifiable for Hamas to murder Israeli civilians, but not vice versa and (2) who can explain the rush to condemnation when one side slaughters innocents while we hear very little to nothing at all  when the other side does it? That's the nub of my involvement in this thread. We can all highlight little passages and take each other to task about the use of language (I've certainly been guilty of it), but what about the two simple questions above?

[Donagh]

Here we are again, only two years after they killed over 1000 people in Lebanon, the Isrealis turn their attentions to the Palestinians by bumping off another few hundred while the West are obliviously tucking into their turkey dinners.

Also, let's not fotget that their has been a fair peace offer on the table from the Arab states which would secure peace in return for withdrawal to lands it unlawfully occupied during its "pre-emptive" strikes against it's neighbours in 1967.

Make no doubt about it, Isreal is a terrorist state but so long as the Yanks continue to favour it as their only ally in the region and the Arab states continue care more about their oil income than the Palestinians, then the Isrealis will continue to murder and maim at will.  

[Hardy]

That's a fine speech Donagh. I hope you won't be disappointed to learn that I agree with every word of it. Now - what about (forgive me - but I'll defend its use here) the murder of innocent Israelis and what can Fisk have meant by highlighting the fact that it's "just" 20 dead Israelis?

[Donagh]

What am I to make of the statement "Hamas's homemade rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years" in this context other than that it's being presented in contrast to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in some sort of ghoulish scoring system? If the implication is anything other than that the Israeli death toll is negligible, it's passed me by. Otherwise I don't understand the use of the word "just". Maybe you can interpret it for me?

So in others works Fisk does not condone the Hamas attacks and your problem is with the word "just"? In the context of the Isreali death toll over the same period, 20 deaths by the rockets are negligible but not having read the article I would still suspect that Fisk doesn't even go as far as I would in that. Pretty weak attempt to justify your obvious dislike for the "odious t**ser".

[Donagh]

That's a fine speech Donagh. I hope you won't be disappointed to learn that I agree with every word of it. Now - what about (forgive me - but I'll defend its use here) the murder of innocent Israelis and what can Fisk have meant by highlighting the fact that it's "just" 20 dead Israelis?

Not having read the article, I can't comment - that's why I asked you for the context, but I suspect it was a figure of speech which helps illustrate the vast difference between the death rates of both sides. I've read quite at lot of Fisk's stuff I know he's no cheerleader for Hamas or for the killing of civilians.

[his holiness nb]

SO let's cut to the chase lads - (1) who else believes that it's justifiable for Hamas to murder Israeli civilians,
but not vice versa

Not me.

(2) who can explain the rush to condemnation when one side slaughters innocents while we hear very little to nothing at all  when the other side does it?

While both are wrong, the killing of 300 people is quite obviously going to get more attention, therefore more condemnation, than the killing of one person Hardy. Its nothing to do with what side the killings are coming from. If one Palestinian was killed and they reacted by killing 300 Israelis, the condemnation would be just as audible.

Whether you like it or not Hardy (and its clear you dont) the killing of hundreds of people at a time will always draw more attention and comment than single killings. Nothing to do with which side you favour, more so with the scale of the atrocity.

Its not all a big anti Israeli conspiracy Hardy, just common sense.

[Zapatista]

I don't want you to say anything other than what you believe. You've said the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are justified. You've now admitted that that implies the killing (no, let's be clear - murder) of innocent civilians.

I just don't understand the mentality that condones the murder of one set of innocent civilians while being outraged at another set. If I said it was OK to murder black people, but not white people you'd call me a racist and rightly. However you say it's "justifiable" for Palestinian soldiers to murder Israeli civilians, but not vice versa. Why? Is it that the side you perceive to be right is allowed to use murder but the other is not? Isn't that the oldest fallacy in human conflict - the "God on our side" argument?

That is far from clear. You can pretend to youself that all killing is wrong and no action should be taken if it results in a death but I won't. I know that the action of rocket attacks are needed to prevent the silent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. You can pretend that there is no war going on so you do not need to think about who is right and who is wrong an create a situation were you can condemn both sides and have a clear conscience. I won't do that. I will be honest with myself and say yes, innocent people die. I have looked at the situation and I believe that Israel are the aggressors. The loss of Innocent life of Israelis is largely due to Israeli actions.

Just like in Iraq, you can blame Iraqis for killing Innocent people in Iraq but the bottom line is that the invaders created the situation and are largely responsible for the deaths. The invaders have made victims of all Iraqis and not just those involved in the war. For this reason I have more sympathy for the death of innocent Iraqis than I do for the death of the invaders. I do not have the luxury of taking it on a case by case basis so I am commenting generally. I will not use the fact that I can't take it on a case by case basis to condemn everyone. That would only be making excuses for myself.

The same applies to the Palestinians and the Israelis. I make no apology for it nor do I need to lie to myself to accept were my sympathy lies.

[under the bar]

Ariel Sharon has a lot to answer for.

[bennydorano]

Ariel Sharon has a lot to answer for.

An excerpt taken from Portillo's column in yesterday's times:

Indeed, the issue has been dogged by weak leadership in America, in Israel and among the Palestinians. Since Clinton left the White House the brightest moment of hope came when Ariel Shar-on, an extraordinarily powerful Israeli prime minister, unilaterally handed Gaza back to the Palestinians and even sent the bulldozers to remove Israeli settlements on land seized in 1967. His determination and energy were so great that when Likud, his party, withdrew its support he abandoned it and created a new one, Kadima. What he single-handedly might have achieved, had illness not struck him down, must be one of the great "might-have-beens".

What do you actually think Sharon did? Or are you getting your leaders mixed up?

[bennydorano]

Portillo's article in full:

From The Sunday Times
December 28, 2008

Holy Land tops pile in the in-tray from hell
Michael Portillo

Barack Obama was said to have the in-tray from hell even before the conflict between Hamas and Israel resulted in substantial loss of life in Gaza, as the Israelis took revenge on the terrorist organisation for its recent rocket attacks. If Obama harboured any idea of allowing the Arab-Israeli conflict to fall down towards the bottom of his agenda as he dealt with the economic slump or Iran or Afghanistan, he will by now have been disabused.

Able politicians do not fear inheriting what appears to be an impossibly complex agenda: they relish it. A significant moment during the US presidential campaign came when John McCain broke off electioneering to deal with the credit crunch. Obama was quick to point out that a president needed to be able to manage more than one challenge at a time. He will certainly now be tested on that very point.

The presidential election draws the clearest possible line between the past and the future: between what Obama will represent as all the failures of the Bush administration and all the possibilities of his own incumbency. Anything that he does to improve the situation at home or abroad will mark the contrast between old and new ways of doing business.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is, in a way, an attractive issue for Obama and his team. It has been evident for decades that matters cannot be resolved without the closest involvement of the United States. Yet George Bush decided to hold aloof for most of his time in the White House, turning to it only in his last months and setting out impossible deadlines for progress. The issue was not ripe for settlement and Bush was an increasingly lame duck. Even so, the resumption of the process has been useful.

Bush's reluctance to get involved stemmed largely from his recollection of how Bill Clinton had failed to reach a resolution despite investing a huge amount of personal prestige and political capital in negotiations during the final days of his presidency. Bush did not want to suffer a similar rebuff although in the event he did, being forced to take up the issue too late, as Clinton had, and hoping like his predecessor that a deal there could polish a tarnished legacy.

The Clintons probably see it differently. They know that in those last days of the administration they came achingly close to achieving a breakthrough. In frenetic negotiations, Israel was induced to pile up concessions on the table. It was an interesting strategy: to move away from the gradualistic approach that had characterised earlier peace processes and instead to move at one go to an overall settlement. Clinton's disappointment must be all the more poignant because having come close to agreement, the failure of the talks led to a hardening of positions on both sides, the unleashing of the inti-fada and the opening of an era of Israeli repression of the Palestinians.
The conflict between the Palestinians and Israel is intriguing because for some time most of the world has known how it should end and has agreed to a solution. Most of the Arab world has now acquiesced in agreeing that there must be an Israeli state and a Palestinian one existing side by side, that the borders preceding the 1967 war provide the basis of the new boundaries but that land will have to be traded around that template, and that Jerusalem will require special arrangements to allow the Palestinians to have their capital there and to allow freedom for all religious groups to access their holy sites.

Of course, behind that outline lie many complications, but this conflict is unusual in that the eventual peace deal is understood and accepted by much of the world and most interested parties. It is not the destination but the journey that is most problematic. Clinton attempted to arrive without travelling and nearly succeeded. The problem was that Yasser Arafat lacked the authority, the support and the imagination to be able to sell it to his constituency.

Indeed, the issue has been dogged by weak leadership in America, in Israel and among the Palestinians. Since Clinton left the White House the brightest moment of hope came when Ariel Shar-on, an extraordinarily powerful Israeli prime minister, unilaterally handed Gaza back to the Palestinians and even sent the bulldozers to remove Israeli settlements on land seized in 1967. His determination and energy were so great that when Likud, his party, withdrew its support he abandoned it and created a new one, Kadima. What he single-handedly might have achieved, had illness not struck him down, must be one of the great "might-have-beens".

Hamas does not accept the proposed solution and the situation has been complicated still further by the split between Gaza, where Hamas won the elections, and the West Bank where the Fatah party administration led by Mah-moud Abbas would accept two states.
Obama and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, are likely to take the view that the election of Hamas has not been well handled by Israel or the United States. The democratic world has not devised a way to deal with election results that it does not like. The Palestinians of Gaza have been treated as pariahs since they made their choice at the ballot box. That has solidified their resistance and, of course, dislodged Israel and the West from the moral high ground.

It is true that Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as once did those countries in the region, such as Egypt, with which Israel has now enjoyed decades of peaceful coexistence. In diplomacy you have to be imaginative and see that your opponents are capable of changing their positions. Without that insight we would still be in turmoil in Northern Ireland. The wise old men of Israeli politics such as Shimon Peres used to say that the only way to negotiate was to begin with the idea of peace, to want it more than anything and to create in your imagination a peace that had somehow been achieved. That way you created the will to overcome apparently insuperable obstacles.

Unfortunately, that thinking does not prevail at the moment. As the foreign minister Tzipi Livni, under the Kadima banner, battles the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, representing Likud, to lead Israel's next government after the elections in February, the campaign rhetoric is unsurprisingly bellicose. In the West Bank, elections will be held next month. Obama's inauguration will coincide with further political upheaval in the region.

What is clear is that neither Obama nor Hillary Clinton unquestioningly takes Israel's side in the way that the Bush administration did. Even Israelis should welcome that. The hope of a more peaceful future that Obama has engendered around the world arises because even the enemies of Israel, and of the United States, believe he will be more evenhanded between Jew and Muslim and between Christian and Muslim than any predecessor.

It could be that for once the Palestini-an-Israeli problem will receive the full attention of an American presidency at the outset, at the moment of its greatest prestige and when its mandate is strongest. Elections in Israel and the West Bank complicate matters just now, but new mandates could also enhance the authority of the leaders and improve the prospect for progress.

From what we have seen of Obama so far he will not be despondent to discover that yet another crisis will demand his attention after January 20. The conflict has simmered throughout the uneasy ceasefire, but the clamour from the Palestinians in Gaza could not be ignored for much longer. The severity of Israel's response – typical of its actions during election campaigns – places the issue on Obama's desk and demands prompt action from him. In that respect these exchanges of violence, although painfully familiar to us, could prove unusually significant.

[PadraicHenryPearse]

bennydorano  please read some more information on sharon before making a comment like you did. This man killed more innocent Palestinians proabably then any other Israeli.

some info

DOCUMENTATION

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Ariel Sharon: Profile of an
Unrepentant War Criminal
by Jeffrey Steinberg


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Editor's Note: This introductory article appeared in the May 17, 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. The following supporting material is drawn from previously published reports:

Ariel Sharon and the West Bank `Landscam' (March 1986)
Make Ariel Sharon Answer to Charges of Genocide (November 1990)

Ariel Sharon: Profile of a British Tool (March 1994)
Sharon Appointment in Israel Makes Death of Oslo Accords Official (October 1998)
Ariel Sharon Ignites New Middle East War (October 2000)
Darbyism in Israel: Ariel Sharon (December 2000)
Mideast War, Sooner Rather Than Later (January 2001)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, is currently facing possible war crime prosecutions for two massacres that occurred 20 years apart: the September 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, and the April 2002 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) mass killings in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

Sharon is, without doubt, guilty of these crimes against humanity, and others. He is also unrepentant. For him, these mass killings are merely necessary steps on the path toward his objective of a "Final Solution" to the "Palestinian problem," through the mass expulsion and/or extermination of the more than 3 million Palestinians and Arabs now living in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. Under various labels, Sharon and a rogues gallery of collaborators inside Israel, Britain, and the United States, are now moving toward the final phase of their "mass transfer" plans for the Palestinians and Arabs.

EIR has "written the book" on Sharon's blood-soaked career for over 30 years. (See 1994 Profile.) As a service to the current worldwide debate on his government's fascist actions, we provide this summary dossier on the Israeli mass murderer. This summary is linked to a compendium of earlier exposés of Sharon and his partners in crime.

The Sharon File
Sharon was born in Kfar Malal in 1928. At the age of 14, he joined the Haganah, and at 20, headed an infantry company in the Alexandroni Brigade during the 1948 War of Independence, during which the Israeli forces drove an estimated 300,000 Palestinians from their land, using some of the same genocidal methods against unarmed civilian populations that were used in the recent IDF invasion of the Palestinian Authority's Area A territory.

In 1953, Sharon founded "Unit 101," a secret death squad within the IDF that committed several mass murders of civilians. In October 1953, Sharon's "Unit 101" massacred 66 innocent civilians during a cross-border raid into the Jordanian West Bank village of Qibya. Under intense machine-gun fire, local residents were driven into their homes, which were then blown up around them, killing the occupants by burying them alive in piles of rubble. The April 2002 IDF massacre at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin was, in fact, modeled on Sharon's "Unit 101" operations at Qibya.

On Oct. 18, 1953, the U.S. State Department issued a bulletin denouncing the Qibya massacre, demanding that those responsible be "brought to account." Instead, Sharon was rewarded for his war crimes by having his "Unit 101" absorbed into the Israeli paratroop corps. By 1956, Sharon had been appointed paratroop brigade commander.

Between Feb. 28, 1955 and Oct. 10, 1956, a Sharon-led paratrooper brigade conducted similar cross-border invasions into Gaza, Egypt, and the West Bank in Jordan. At the West Bank village of Qalqilya, Sharon's death squad killed 83 people

[bennydorano]

Merely thought 'Ariel Sharon has a lot to answer for' seemed strange in this context as thou he ordered the operation or something. 

Not a fan of the Israelis, but I'm not that fond of partial reporting either.

[PadraicHenryPearse]

did seem a bit odd of a comment alright, but suggesting he didn´t do anything to contribute is a much worst statement.

Sharon if you look back actually helped Hamas begin as they saw Hamas as a way to Split the Palestinians into differnet grouping therefore making them weaker, particularly the PA or what was then the PLO or Fatah.

Sharon was the reason for the 2nd intifada, when he visited the temple mount therefore stirring tension and Allowing Hamas to show how many Martyrs it had ready to die for the Palestinian cause.

and probably the worst thing he did was the Withdrawal from Gaza and the removal of the settlements. Not beacuse this was the wrong thing to do but because it broke away from the road map to Peace (last chance saloon i suppose, probably wont have worked either) and as it was done without talking to the Palestinians, Hamas could claim that their rocket fire had forced Israel to back down and leave (settlements that were illegal the withdrawal should not have been praised but questions as why it took so long should have been asked). Hamas then went on to win fair elections before the big four turned their back again on the Palestinians and would not accept the results.