[BlackKnight]

Israel says the Gaza operation will go on for "as long as necessary", rejecting international calls.

"The operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said at a televised news conference on Saturday.

"There is a time for cease-fires and a time to fight, and now is the time to fight," Barak said. "For months the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and security forces have been preparing for the operation that began today."

Israel placed the Gaza Strip under a blockade after the democratically-elected Palestinian government, Hamas, took control of the coastal area in mid-June 2007.

The Saturday onslaught came after a six-month truce between Israel and the Hamas movement expired on December 19.

Palestinian groups say they would consider a longer ceasefire if Israel met Hamas demands, cease all military attacks on Gaza, and lifts the embargo on the strip.

-Even Yahoo! for god's sake provided- although somewhat distorted- somewhat accurate details.

My blood is boiling.

The Arab nations and the World are sitting idly by, while Israel violates the Geneva Conventions attack after attack, bombardment after bombardment, purposely targeting innocent civilians. And even then, if you do buy that Israel is doing all that it can to avoid collateral damage, you do not manage to slaughter 200 Palestinians, with their decapitated corpses lying in the streets

I don't care what the bloody excuse is. The democratically-elected government of Hamas only started to intensify their petty rocket barrages that rarely injure anyone in the settlements, only after Israel has placed the embargo on the Gaza strip of 1,482,405 Palestinians, crammed in the world's largest population density of 10,665/sq mi (4,118/sq km).

Discuss whether Israel has the right to heavily bombard Gaza, claiming to target Hamas compounds, yet collateral damage is as high as 200 right now, rising hourly.

(And since this is a new event in the Israeli saga, I chose to create a new topic and not flood the other one regarding the Israeli Settlements.)

[Electron Sponge]

If someone was firing rockets into my country from outside it, I'd want the land they were firing the rockets from turned into a moonscape.

[Kzin]

It's terrible and I continue to oppose my government subsidizing it .... or our doing the same thing to other people, which is why my vilification of Israel is necessarily muted, they're only doing the same thing we do.

[Andre27]

BlackKnight, on Dec 27 2008, 07:03 PM, said:

Discuss whether Israel has the right to heavily bombard Gaza, claiming to target Hamas compounds, yet collateral damage is as high as 200 right now, rising hourly.

(And since this is a new event in the Israeli saga, I chose to create a new topic and not flood the other one regarding the Israeli Settlements.)

Does Israel have the right to defend its citizens? I'd say yes.

Does Hamas only have itself to blame for not enforcing/extending the cease fire? Also yes.

This article at Defense update gives a pretty good read about the current situation.

[SpoiL]

If Canada starting throwing rockets into the US..I'd say fire the nukes.(Not actually, but you get the point)

[BlackKnight]

Electron Sponge, on Dec 27 2008, 12:06 PM, said:

If someone was firing rockets into my country from outside it, I'd want the land they were firing the rockets from turned into a moonscape.

If their attacks were unjustly, you would.

But one must understand the Palestinian Gaza condition: Although not landlocked, they technically are. No access to the sea, and surrounded on three sides by Israel.

They have a border with Egypt, but Israel's butt-buddy dictator Mubarak closes and opens the border at the command of Israel, as if they run his nation.

And honestly, Electron, two-hundred Palestinians slaughtered, not all of which are "terrorists," nor responsible for the rocket attacks. And even then, Gaza has been under embargo for some time now, disallowing even the most basic of human necessities access into the over 1.4 Million Palestinian Gazans. So, when their rights have been infringed, their honor has been wiped, and they're under intense Israeli pressure constantly, what would you like them to do, when even Peace Talks have failed, due to Israel's disrespect of the Palestinian Human rights, treating them as third class citizens (second being Animals).

[Dennis Von Bremen]

It doesn't look like it's gonna end any time soon, it's like I said, first some Palestinians bomb Israel, then Israel retaliates, then Palestine retaliates, then Israel retaliates, and so on...

[Andre27]

BlackKnight, on Dec 27 2008, 07:12 PM, said:

If their attacks were unjustly, you would.

But one must understand the Palestinian Gaza condition: Although not landlocked, they technically are. No access to the sea, and surrounded on three sides by Israel.

They have a border with Egypt, but Israel's butt-buddy dictator Mubarak closes and opens the border at the command of Israel, as if they run his nation.

And honestly, Electron, two-hundred Palestinians slaughtered, not all of which are "terrorists," nor responsible for the rocket attacks. And even then, Gaza has been under embargo for some time now, disallowing even the most basic of human necessities access into the over 1.4 Million Palestinian Gazans. So, when their rights have been infringed, their honor has been wiped, and they're under intense Israeli pressure constantly, what would you like them to do, when even Peace Talks have failed, due to Israel's disrespect of the Palestinian Human rights, treating them as third class citizens (second being Animals).

Nonsense. The Palestinian people could have had peace several times already with the most noteworthy being the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and started hostilities. When you keep crapping on someone's front lawn, don't be surprised if you're chased off.

[Kzin]

SpoiL, on Dec 27 2008, 10:11 AM, said:

If Canada starting throwing rockets into the US..I'd say fire the nukes.(Not actually, but you get the point)

We flattened Iraq on the pretext that they might have the audacity to actually build rockets, whether they ever intended to fire them at us or not. So it goes without saying what we'd do to somebody who actually did it.

This post has been edited by Kzin: 27 December 2008 - 12:16 PM

[BlackKnight]

andre27, on Dec 27 2008, 12:09 PM, said:

Does Israel have the right to defend its citizens? I'd say yes.

Does Hamas only have itself to blame for not enforcing/extending the cease fire? Also yes.

This article at Defense update gives a pretty good read about the current situation.

First of all, just analyzing the source, it's clearly a right-wing Israeli propaganda.

And the first image they have on their site, is not an Israeli house that was hit by a rocket, rather a Palestinian home struck by Israeli fire.

Let's put all propaganda aside and deal with the facts:

Gaza, 1.4 Million Palestinians living in an area the size of Rhode Island (?), are under constant threat from Israel; constantly placed in embargoes; their basic rights have been terminated, all because their democratically-elected government of Hamas won the election by a landslide.

Now, to speak of the rocket attacks:

When has it begun to intensify?

It began to intensify after Israel placed a total embargo on Gaza, barring even food of entering, constant pressure from Israel, and the extreme poverty and tough life in Gaza. And yet even then, Hamas's rocket's ratio of Israeli death compared to Israel's "IDF", is at a ratio of 1:300. (If I could find a source that provides the total Israeli casualties killed by Hamas rocket fire, it would most certainly be greater than a ratio of 1:300.)

[Kenadian_2006]

andre27, on Dec 27 2008, 01:19 PM, said:

Nonsense. The Palestinian people could have had peace several times already with the most noteworthy being the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and started hostilities. When you keep crapping on someone's front lawn, don't be surprised if you're chased off.

That analogy is funny in an ironic way, because it could be applied in exactly the same way to the Israelis. Go figure.

[Dennis Von Bremen]

andre27, on Dec 27 2008, 12:19 PM, said:

Nonsense. The Palestinian people could have had peace several times already with the most noteworthy being the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and started hostilities. When you keep crapping on someone's front lawn, don't be surprised if you're chased off.

First off, Palestinians aren't one being, there are those for peace and those against it. Secondly, it was Israel that forced Palestinians out of their homes and into a highly overcrowded hell-hole, who wouldn't be pissed living in !@#$ conditions? Thus it makes sense that there are Palestinians who become so angered at their conditions that they become terrorists to get payback at those who caused them to live in the horrible conditions in the first place. As a result Israel gets pissed (understandably) when Palestinian terrorists attack them and so they retaliate, more innocent Palestinians are killed and for example people may lose their father or brother and as a result they hate Israel even more and this in turn pushes more Palestinians to becoming terrorists and the cycle continues and expands as a result, the new terrorists attack Israel, Israel retaliates, innocents die and more terrorists are formed, they attack Israel again, then Israel responds, and so on.

[Kzin]

andre27, on Dec 27 2008, 10:19 AM, said:

Nonsense. The Palestinian people could have had peace several times already with the most noteworthy being the Oslo Accords.

And the French could have had peace with Germany much earlier if they'd just let them keep their troops in France without objection, but it turns out that wasn't an acceptable condition to the French .....

You can argue all day about whether Israel has ever genuinely offered a deal they thought the Palestinians would accept ... my personal belief is they haven't, yours is apparently that they have, but politically of course only one group's opinion on that matters: the Palestinians themselves.

[BlackKnight]

andre27, on Dec 27 2008, 12:19 PM, said:

Nonsense. The Palestinian people could have had peace several times already with the most noteworthy being the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and started hostilities. When you keep crapping on someone's front lawn, don't be surprised if you're chased off.

Just using your own source, Andre, I found a hole in your argument, which you possibly may have intentionally hopped over, but no worries.

The momentum towards peaceful relations between Israel and the Palestinians as demonstrated by the signing of the Oslo Accords has been seriously jolted by the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.

Well, I'll be damned! I wonder why the Palestinian's just revolted against Israel if they had everything they needed! Let me guess: They just had to crap on Israel's lawn just for the hell of it, right?

[Lord Frost]

Israel is a nation descended from the one group of people in the world that have always been slaughtered first when problems. When the Crusades first were called, it was the Jews in Europe who were massacred first. They have been blamed for the Plague, for the Great Depression, and we all know what happened during WW2. Frankly, I am not surprised at Israel's aggression, nor am I surprised at the Kill ratio. It's the simple concept of "they punched you, you shoot them". Maybe if you Palestinians stopped supporting every terrorist group trying to destroy Israel, you might find them welcoming neighbors and protectors

[BlackKnight]

The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion in Gaza, as black clouds of smoke rose above the territory, ruled by Hamas for the past 18 months. Some of the Israeli missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school, and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children.

"My son is gone, my son is gone," wailed Said Masri, a 57-year-old shopkeeper, as he sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, slapping his face and covering his head with dust from a bombed-out security compound nearby.

He said he had sent his 9-year-old son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. "May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn," Masri moaned.

[Lord Frost]

it's what happens when you instigate violence against a powerful enemy who doesn't take crap from anyone

[Kzin]

Lord Frost, on Dec 27 2008, 10:31 AM, said:

Israel is a nation descended from the one group of people in the world that have always been slaughtered first when problems. When the Crusades first were called, it was the Jews in Europe who were massacred first. They have been blamed for the Plague, for the Great Depression, and we all know what happened during WW2. Frankly, I am not surprised at Israel's aggression, nor am I surprised at the Kill ratio. It's the simple concept of "they punched you, you shoot them". Maybe if you Palestinians stopped supporting every terrorist group trying to destroy Israel, you might find them welcoming neighbors and protectors

Yet we were more than happy to fund training Islamic terrorists to blow up people when the country being occupied was Afghanistan.

One man's terrorist, the other man's freedom fighter. The Russians were evil to kill them with airstrikes, the Israelis are noble?

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

[BlackKnight]

Lord Frost, on Dec 27 2008, 12:31 PM, said:

Israel is a nation descended from the one group of people in the world that have always been slaughtered first when problems. When the Crusades first were called, it was the Jews in Europe who were massacred first. They have been blamed for the Plague, for the Great Depression, and we all know what happened during WW2. Frankly, I am not surprised at Israel's aggression, nor am I surprised at the Kill ratio. It's the simple concept of "they punched you, you shoot them". Maybe if you Palestinians stopped supporting every terrorist group trying to destroy Israel, you might find them welcoming neighbors and protectors

Ah yes, because the Jews were victimized thousands of years ago, they have every right to wipe the Palestinians off of "their state," because after all, they were victimized decades and centuries ago!

Great argument, Lord Frost.

Quote

Maybe if you Palestinians stopped supporting every terrorist group trying to destroy Israel, you might find them welcoming neighbors and protectors

Provide them their basic necessities; provide them their basic human rights; withdraw out of their territory; halt the construction and expansion of the Jewish settlements into their state; cease the embargoes; cease the constant military pressure upon the Palestinians; cease the political pressure upon the democratically-elected Hamas government; treat them like humans, and then you may have peace!

But wait, by doing so, you are basically creating a Palestinian state, which is against the Zionist Manifesto of an Israeli state from the Nile to the Euphrates. Silly me!

[cjav0]

You'd think the Palestinians would get a clue by now. They want to wipe Israel off the map, but the only reason they still exist is by the mercy of Israel.
10/expected. palestinians made there choice now have to live with it or die with it.