Catching up on all... responding to Matt's posts...
Ron, if I may, I will step in and quickly respond to some of these comments you have made to Matt Canning’s distasteful gimmick. Ideally, I would like to reply in a more structured, professional manner, with full citing of sources. However, it's a laborious task with this layout, I can't figure out the hyperlink tab here, and it’s also the weekend and my head is killing me, so forgive me for spewing out a wall of text.
Firstly, let's start with an important reminder: no one here, as far as I can tell, supports Hamas. What they did was disgusting and worthy of worldwide condemnation. I have lost close friends to Islamic extremism, and my principal concern is in thinking about how we may prevent a recrudescence of it in the UK. What Israel is doing will ensure further generations of terrorists, and make the world less safe for all of us. You, as Jewish American, are supporting Israel, and it is therefore important that you focus on Israel's actions. And on that point, I am sorry, but your arguments to justify the response do not survive scrutiny.
Firstly, you seem to be conveniently forgetting history, and the fact that there's a very long and brutal one documenting Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. It’s rather telling that you wrote 'take a quote from a few out of 9 million and pretend it is relevant'.
All of the quotes provided from Israeli politicians precede Hamas, and they elucidate clearly the fundamental issues at the heart of this which created the conditions for an entity like Hamas to emerge from. If you think that these are irrelevant, then your plea for people to 'stop reading one side and read all sides to learn' is as empty as the big tub of orange chicken next to you.
Secondly, I would like to point out that not every critique of the Israeli state can be dismissed as propaganda. If you listened to the words of many contemporary Jewish public intellectuals, you'd be hard-pressed to dismiss them as 'racist' or self-loathing in their condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state.
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There is also nothing outlandish or propagandistic about pointing out the strength of the Israel lobby. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two eminent US political scientists, wrote an entire book on the topic in 2007. It was expectedly controversial in that it ignited predictable cries of anti-Semitism from the usual figures, and the extent to which their thesis accurately weighed US strategic-economic interests in determining policy in the Middle East is up for debate. What isn't really debatable, however, is that certain interest groups will go to extreme lengths to ensure unyielding support for Israel.
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It is
because of the lobbying that you're now under the misapprehension that Israel is the well-intentioned victim of a Palestinian zero-sum approach to this issue. Netanyahu himself recently told members of the Israeli parliament that it should 'crush' Palestinian aspirations for statehood. He is now in a far-right coalition with some of Israel’s most extreme Zionists, who openly support terrorism against the Palestinians, and who have been brazen in their provocations of violence.
"Netanyahu has never wanted a Palestinian state," said Dr. Alon Liel, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "He has always believed that Israel could withstand any pressure on the matter, and until now he has played this card very well".
https://themedialine.org/by-region/netanyahu-israel-should-crush-palestinian-statehood-hopes/If I may say one thing that is controversial, I do not believe that it is possible for at least a few individuals in Israel to have not known about the imminence of this most recent attack. Their intelligence network is simply too strong.
With regard to Hamas, I have no wish to defend them, I hate them, and yes, the Hamas charter, as it was first written in 1988, was terrible. It was written by a handful of infuriated men while Israel was violently attacking Gaza. Hamas has stated multiple times that it does not apply, it has been reformed since, and you can read it in full. What you were quoting IS irrelevant. As to your point regarding their intentions, may I present you with the following articles:
16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
37. Hamas believes in cooperating with all states that support the rights of the Palestinian people. It opposes intervention in the internal affairs of any country. It also refuses to be drawn into disputes and conflicts that take place among different countries. Hamas adopts the policy of opening up to different states in the world, especially the Arab and Islamic states. It endeavors to establish balanced relations on the basis of combining the requirements of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people’s interests on the one hand with the interests of the Ummah, its renaissance and its security on the other.https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-fullTo falsely put the blame on Hamas alone for breaking ceasefires and violating the terms of various agreements is to simply indulge in utter fantasy. Israel played a divide and rule game in Palestine for a long time, and they are partly responsible for the rise of Hamas.
Former Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, is on record stating that he had helped fund the movement to counteract the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah's dominance (See: Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. Shipler, D. 2015). Well, we know how that tactic played out with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, among other examples.
Turning now to the conditions on the ground, you are trying to dismiss the shocking figures of Palestinians killed by Israel each year (the vast majority of them being civilian) as the result of unfortunate retaliatory fire after Hamas provocations. This is again demonstrably false, the footage is there to be viewed, and the fact of the matter is that Israel is well known for inciting violence in order to justify a heavy-handed response. The Gazans have been living under desperate, brutal conditions for decades. Do you really expect people not to protest against this treatment? In 2011, the UN documented that:
- 54% of Gazans are food insecure and over 75% are aid recipients.
- 35% of Gaza’s farmland and 85% of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures.
- Over 90% of the water from the Gaza aquifer is undrinkable.
- About one-third of the items in the essential drug list are out of stock.
https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/OCHA_Gaza-HumSituation.pdfThe conditions have only worsened since 2011, and as stated by the UN's OCHA, The Gaza blockade is a denial of basic human rights in contravention of international law and amounts to collective punishment.
Further, our respective governments are now aiding and abetting war crimes. You are here justifying Israel's conduct, and your justification for it is based on the fact that Hamas carried out a terroristic act, so therefore Israel can carry out a much larger one in response. Terrorism is a tactic that is undeniably being used by both sides here. I denounce it entirely; you appear to be in favor of it as long as it is carried out by Israel.
We surely both agree that Israel has the right to defend itself; however, this is not an unconditional right. Israel is using the recent attacks as justification to punish an entire population, and the methods through which they are doing this are in direct violation of international law.
For example, Israel ordering over 1 million people to immediately leave their homes and move south, with no guarantee of return given, is a war crime of mass forcible transfer.
Given that it is part of a wider bombing campaign against an entire civilian population, it constitutes a crime against humanity.
Israel levelling entire residential housing blocks to the ground, wiping out generations of entire families, and using white phosphorus munitions against civilians are violations of the international humanitarian law principles of distinction and proportionality.
The population of Gaza now has no access to food, water, and electricity. Hospitals no longer function. They must now choose to be the victims of either genocide or ethnic cleansing. Note that Israel itself stated upfront that their response to the Hamas attack 'will not be clean'. In the Israeli defense minister's view, Palestinians are 'human animals' and Israel will 'act accordingly' in their response. You may continue to try and deny war crimes, but Israel won’t bother joining you.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-fighting-human-animals-defence-ministerFurthermore, what Israel is doing will have
profound and lasting consequences for all of us. If people find it difficult to care about Israel's response for any other reason, they should at least care about it for this one. I live and work in the region. If I get killed by one of these dorks now, I'm going to be really pissed off.
Even if Israel completely eliminates Hamas now, we know what evil rises out of the ashes thanks to 9-11. It will not be the end of Arab resistance. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stated in 1948 that ‘The Arabs of the Land of Israel have only one function left to them—to run away'. They did not run away then and they are not going to simply run away now. The greatest threat to Israel has always been its own stupid, short-sighted and discriminatory actions. Sadly, it is the Israeli and Palestinian citizens who will continue to pay the biggest price.
