Israel a pariah nation

[Misty]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 195838.stm

It is a great pity Israel was ever permitted to create their own nation without the same privilege being granted to the Palestinians. If the US hadn't supported them over the years maybe they would be so militant. I don't support violence from either side, but Israel seems to be the aggressor in most conflicts.

[WinePusher]

Israel isn't allowing enough humanitarian aid to rach Gaza, that is a fact!

Is it really? Where is the condemnation from the Red Cross and the United Nations on the humanitarian aid? Can you give any evidence to support this? Is there been any? Now, tell me why a humantarian aid ship would try to run a blockade, why would a peaceful ship try to run a blockade when there are other ways to transport relief into Gaza. Egypt is providing much aid to Gaza, do their ships run the Israelie blockade? Why only this ship.



I want you to look at this video closely. If this ship sole purpose was to provide aid to Gaza, why not allow inspection by Israel? Notice the Israelie soldier being beaten and thrown overboard without doing anything to provoke the crew. Why would a peaaceful ship attack on sight an Israelie soldier who showed no intention of attacking. Please answer with fact based evidence and not the usual opinionated conjecture.

The ship had every right to try to run the blockade, which the Israelis had no right to impose.

Really? ISRAEL HAS NO RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF? SO IF BOMBS COME FLYING INTO ISRAEL THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO STOP IT. IS THAT WHAT YOUR TELLING ME!

Israel is in the wrong and every right-minded person believes that to be true.

Every right minded person believes Israel is in the wrong, hm. I'm not even going to waste my time responding to this.

I don't condone rockets being fired into Israel, but I can fully understand why there is so much hatred for that state!

Good, we can agree on one point.

So, are you saying that the hatred of Israel justifies the bombing of that state?

Ask yourself this, why do people hate Israel. Why does iran and Hamas and Hezbula hate Israel. They are the only country in the middle east that is a democratic state, please give me another democratic middle eastern state if you can.

Why do you dislike Israel, because they aren't following the steps of Iran and oppressing women?

[Misty]

Israel is the architect of all its problems, imo. It is evil the way it is starving the people of Gaza. I bet they don't let the last aid ship to pass through the blockade.

[WinePusher]

Israel is the architect of all its problems, imo. It is evil the way it is starving the people of Gaza. I bet they don't let the last aid ship to pass through the blockade.

Oh God. Ok Misty, fundamentalists get alot of heat on here for not substantiating claims with evidence and not responding to legitamate questions. I hope that those same people call our fundamentalists call you out on your unwillingness to answer a single one of my questions or provide any evidence for your claims.

PROVE THAT ISRAEL IS THE ARCHITECT OF ALL IT'S PROBLEMS

PROVE THAT ISRAEL IS STARVING THE PEOPLE OF GAZA. THERE IS NOT EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS, THERE'S EVIDENCE OPPOSING THIS. PROVIDE EVIDENCE FOR THIS, CITE A SOURCE, DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN THROW AT A RIDICULOUS STATEMENT LIKE THAT.

[Misty]

Israel is the bully boy in the Middle East, because it is backed up by the US. I don't condone rockets being fired into Israel but its response is always disproportionate and causes even more aggression. If I was a Palestinian I would feel pretty aggressive towards that state, I should think.

Apparently the plight of people in Gaza, according to the BBC, which I trust to report fairly, is terrible because the Israeli Government will not let enough humanitarian aid through

[JoeyKnothead]

Israel is the bully boy in the Middle East, because it is backed up by the US. I don't condone rockets being fired into Israel but its response is always disproportionate and causes even more aggression. If I was a Palestinian I would feel pretty aggressive towards that state, I should think.

Apparently the plight of people in Gaza, according to the BBC, which I trust to report fairly, is terrible because the Israeli Government will not let enough humanitarian aid through

Keep in mind that folks have been previously found to transport all manner of weaponry in ambulances and other humanitarian packages.

[cnorman18]

Here is a column by Lillian Pinkus, member of the Israel Commission of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas. This was published in The Dallas Morning News today.

Lillian Pinkus: In defense of Israel

04:28 PM CDT on Thursday, June 3, 2010

The debate surrounding Israel right now demands moral clarity. The Gaza flotilla was not on a humanitarian aid mission.

First, there is no humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza. Street markets are stocked with fresh fruits, vegetables and baked goods. Over-supplies of Coca-Cola, Nescafe and Snickers have sent prices plummeting. Gazans just recently opened a Olympic-size community pool. (Do you have one in your neighborhood?)

Yes, there is poverty in Gaza, and some people live under oppressive conditions. Their terrorist leadership, Hamas, deserves full responsibility for that. Gaza is blockaded because of the genocidal policies and actions of Hamas against Israeli citizens. It is Hamas that should be receiving international condemnation for its continued refusal to accept international demands to recognize Israel and end its violence against the country. It is Hamas that should be pressured to end its illegal siege of Gaza and return it to the less radical leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad.

I say that this is a moment that demands moral clarity because by condemning Israel for acting to secure its citizens, we strengthen the radical forces like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran that threaten our way of life. We also undermine the only country in the Middle East that shares our democratic values for liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and gender equality.

Second, the Gaza flotilla was making an aggressive act strategically planned to harm Israel. Israel's enemies have learned that they cannot extinguish the Jewish state by militarily force or through terror " and not for lack of trying. Still, they never chose the option of peace with Israel.

Israel's enemies continue their efforts to defeat it. The campaigns they wage now are not military. They are campaigns designed to demonize and weaken Israel by eroding public support for the Jewish state.

The Gaza flotilla is one such example. Portrayed to the world as a humanitarian mission in order to gain sympathy and support, this flotilla chose confrontation with Israel; this was intentional. With united voices, they knew they could win the PR battle " poor humanitarian group vs. Israeli forces. And win big they did.

The demonization of Israel then quickly moves to the United Nations . The U.N. is disproportionately influenced by the voting bloc of the 57 member states of the Oganization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC is second in size only to the U.N. itself as a unified body of nations. OIC member states also control more than 30 percent of the vote in U.N. Human Rights Council. (The irony is self-evident.) It is not Israel's actions that lead to U.N. condemnation. Rather, it is the political agenda of the OIC that drives Israel's continued demonization by the UN.

There are other examples of well-funded and loosely organized campaigns to demonize Israel " campaigns like Israel Apartheid Week on college campuses and pro-Palestinian efforts to have mainline churches divest from companies doing business with Israel. They are built upon lies. The international isolation of apartheid South Africa rested on two wrongs: the racist inequalities of black citizens and the refusal by the apartheid regime to negotiate. Neither is the case with Israel. All Israeli citizens enjoy equal rights, and it is in fact the Palestinians who have resisted negotiations.

These campaigns effectively turn the spotlight on Israel while diverting world attention away from the real core of the conflict " Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the radical Islamists who seek to undermine any chance for peace. This is an incredible inversion of justice and morality. It is a radical Islamist war of deception.

It is a time for moral clarity. We can no longer afford to be fooled.

Here are some more remarks from Cal Thomas of the Tribune Writer's Syndicate:

According to the familiar script, anything that the Palestinian side, Hamas, Iran and numerous other haters of Jews and Christians do is justified because of the Israeli 'occupation' of 'Palestinian land.' When Israeli soldiers defend themselves from violent attacks by these 'peace activists,' they are always acting 'disproportionately' and thus deserving of denunciation, censure and ostracism from the 'world community.' One wishes the haters of Israel would direct some of that zeal to the real enemies of freedom and religious pluralism: radical Islam.

And from John Podhoretz in The New York Post:

Israel faced a blockade run. ... Failure to act would have ended the blockade and handed Hamas a much larger victory than the media victory it won this week. That too would have occasioned a frenzy, with Hamas trumpeting a triumph and Israelis and friends of Israel around the world wondering how on earth this could have been allowed to happen.

Eventually, we will learn what Israel's military did poorly. But though it may have done what it did poorly, it did not do wrong.

Anyone care to reply to any of these points?

Demonizing Israel is popular on both the left and the far right. It's easy, it's fun, and it's emotionally satisfying; but it won't lead to peace. "Not condoning" rocket attacks on innocent civilians is all very well, but supporting the efforts of Israel's enemies is, precisely, condoning and justifying those attacks.

Need proof of the motivations and goals of this "humanitarian flotilla"? Here's a story from the Associated Press:

PARIS " The Turkish Islamic charity behind a flotilla of aid ships that was raided by Israeli forces on its way to Gaza had ties to terrorism networks, including a 1999 al-Qaida plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, France's former top anti-terrorism judge said Wednesday.

The Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, known by its Turkish acronym IHH, had "clear, long-standing ties to terrorism and Jihad," former investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Bruguiere, who led the French judiciary's counterterrorism unit for nearly two decades before retiring in 2007, didn't indicate whether IHH now has terror ties, but said it did when he investigated it in the late 1990s.

"They were basically helping al-Qaida when (Osama) bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil," he said.

Some members of an international terrorism cell known as the Fateh Kamel network then worked at the IHH, he said.

Kamel, an Algerian-Canadian dual national, had ties to the nascent al-Qaida, Bruguiere said.

Among Kamel's followers was

Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who was arrested in the U.S. state of Washington in December 1999 on his way to bomb Los Angeles International Airport as part of an al-Qaida plot.

"IHH had a role in the organization that led to the plot," Bruguiere said, reiterating sworn testimony he made in a U.S. Federal Court during Ressam's trial. Ressam is serving a 22-year prison sentence.

Bruguiere issued an international warrant for Kamel, Ressam's former mentor, who was extradited from Jordan to France in 1999 and sentenced to eight years in prison on terror-related charges.

IHH vehemently denies ties to radical groups. The group is not among some 45 groups listed as terrorists by the U.S. State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Nine people on board the IHH flotilla were killed by Israeli forces on Monday.

"We are a legal organization," IHH board member Omer Faruk Korkmaz said late Wednesday in response to Bruguiere's statements. "We have nothing to do with any illegal organization," he said.

"We don't know Ahmed Ressam or Fateh Kamel," Korkmaz said. "We don't approve of the actions of any terrorist organization in the world."

French investigators found in the 1990s that "several members of Fateh Kamel's network worked at the IHH as a cover," Bruguiere said. "It was too systematic and too widespread for the NGO (non-governmental organization) not to know" their real goal, he said.

The former judge, renowned for tracking down convicted terrorist Carlos the Jackal, said he didn't believe the IHH could have been infiltrated by terrorists without its knowledge.

"It's hard to prove, but all elements of the investigation showed that part of the NGO served to hide jihad-type activities," Bruguiere said. "I'm convinced this was a clear strategy, known by IHH."

The judge said he was personally involved in a raid with French and Turkish police at IHH headquarters in Istanbul in 1998, where they found weapons, false documents and other "incriminating" material.

"It was clearly proven that some of the NGO's work was not charity, it was to provide a facade for moving funds, weapons and mujahedeen to and from Bosnia and Afghanistan" " areas focused on by Islamic militants then.

In Istanbul, Korkmaz, of IHH, confirmed the late '90s police raid but denied that any weapons were found and said there was no evidence found of links to militancy.

Bruguiere would not specify how many members of Kamel's terror cell worked at IHH or give their names, but he said one of the suspects, a man from Bosnia, appeared in another terror-related case as recently as 2005 " though there was no indication at the time that the man still had ties to IHH.

Elements within the charity supported jihadi operations in the 1990s, Bruguiere said, before adding: "I don't know whether they continued to do so" more recently.

"But it seemed clear at the time that it was thanks to a measure of political backing within the Turkish government that it (IHH) could continue to operate," despite the strong suspicions against it, Bruguiere said.

Bruguiere retired from the judiciary in 2007 when he took part in an election to become a lawmaker in the conservative party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He lost his bid.

Bruguiere, 67, is now the coordinator for the European Union in a terrorism finance tracking program jointly run with the United States.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters on Wednesday that "we know that IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years. That is obviously of great concern to us."

But, he said the U.S. could not "validate" that IHH has connections to al Qaida.

It all looks pretty clear to me. This was a PR attack on Israel, pure and simple, calculated and with the outraged responses already prepared before it happened. Shame on the world press, and on the suckers on this forum, for being co-opted and bamboozled by the radical Islamist propaganda machine.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 25:

...
Yes, there is poverty in Gaza, and some people live under oppressive conditions. Their terrorist leadership, Hamas, deserves full responsibility for that. Gaza is blockaded because of the genocidal policies and actions of Hamas against Israeli citizens...

Exactly. Time and again Israel has offered land for peace, only to be rejected.

It is Hamas that should be receiving international condemnation for its continued refusal to accept international demands to recognize Israel and end its violence against the country. It is Hamas that should be pressured to end its illegal siege of Gaza and return it to the less radical leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad.

General agreement. Regardless of who the leaders are, such leaders should renounce and actively thwart the violence.

I say that this is a moment that demands moral clarity because by condemning Israel for acting to secure its citizens, we strengthen the radical forces like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran that threaten our way of life. We also undermine the only country in the Middle East that shares our democratic values for liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and gender equality.

I can not agree more.

Second, the Gaza flotilla was making an aggressive act strategically planned to harm Israel. Israel's enemies have learned that they cannot extinguish the Jewish state by militarily force or through terror " and not for lack of trying. Still, they never chose the option of peace with Israel.

I lack sufficient data here, but agree with the general sentiment.

Israel's enemies continue their efforts to defeat it. The campaigns they wage now are not military. They are campaigns designed to demonize and weaken Israel by eroding public support for the Jewish state.

Agreed. Where previous tactics have failed, new and perhaps more subtle forms have been created.

The Gaza flotilla is one such example. Portrayed to the world as a humanitarian mission in order to gain sympathy and support, this flotilla chose confrontation with Israel; this was intentional. With united voices, they knew they could win the PR battle " poor humanitarian group vs. Israeli forces. And win big they did.

Contingent on my lack of sufficient data, the point does seem reasonable and logical.

The demonization of Israel then quickly moves to the United Nations . The U.N. is disproportionately influenced by the voting bloc of the 57 member states of the Oganization of the Islamic Conference...It is not Israel's actions that lead to U.N. condemnation. Rather, it is the political agenda of the OIC that drives Israel's continued demonization by the UN.

Hammer, nail, head.

Demonizing Israel is popular on both the left and the far right. It's easy, it's fun, and it's emotionally satisfying; but it won't lead to peace. "Not condoning" rocket attacks on innocent civilians is all very well, but supporting the efforts of Israel's enemies is, precisely, condoning and justifying those attacks.

It goes right back to "don't try to kill me and I won't try to kill you". Israel has a "god-given" right, but more importantly a responsibility to defend its citizens, even if that means the military invasion of the South Pole.

>snip AP article, but encourage all to read it<

It all looks pretty clear to me. This was a PR attack on Israel, pure and simple, calculated and with the outraged responses already prepared before it happened.

Agreed.

Shame on the world press...

I'm with ya till the next part...

and on the suckers on this forum...

I anticipate an apology.

...for being co-opted and bamboozled by the radical Islamist propaganda machine.

I think this is a fair assessment, even as it may approach a violation of civility.

[Solon]

This is an article from Stratfor, a global intelligence service, that takes a look at the motives and background to these events as well as likely consequences that I think does a good job of boiling down the key issues here.

The flotilla was indeed meant to provoke a reaction from Israel and make them look brutal and violent in the eyes of the world. That the people planning this thought that it would be so simple to provoke Israel tells what they think of that country. What does it tell us about Israel that they fell for such a trap?

[cnorman18]

This is an article from Stratfor, a global intelligence service, that takes a look at the motives and background to these events as well as likely consequences that I think does a good job of boiling down the key issues here.

The flotilla was indeed meant to provoke a reaction from Israel and make them look brutal and violent in the eyes of the world. That the people planning this thought that it would be so simple to provoke Israel tells what they think of that country. What does it tell us about Israel that they fell for such a trap?

What was their alternative?

Allowing the ship to dock in Israel and have the goods delivered overland was a perfectly reasonable solution; that was rejectedl by the flotilla's organizers in favor of deliberate provocation, which was of course their plan from the beginning. Allowing the ship to run the blockade would have had even worse consequences, as outlined by John Podhoretz in my post.

Tell me what the Israelis should have done.

World opinion matters, but not much. Jews have long since learned that no one on Earth much cares about their security or welfare, and no country on Earth, including the US, can be depended upon for support or alliances. We're on our own, and always have been. Everybody hates the Jews? Nu, this is different how?

[Misty]

I don't hate Jews, many British Jews are not in favour of the way Israel goes about its business.