I'm sure Israel has been in the wrong many times, Jazz, only I also know about the strategies and propaganda that create wrong where there is none, which nobody on your side of this seems capable of imagining.
You are imparting an opinion on my that I have never expressed. You constantly complain about people doing this to you so I cannot imagine why you would turn around and do it to me. I have never said that there is no propaganda about this issue coming from BOTH sides.
But this IS what I impute to you, the usual false equivalence which is the same thing as taking sides.
Again, the problem. While I suppose it's reasonable to assume that SOME propaganda exists from both sides in time of war, I'm not sure Israel is in fact doing any of this, and in any case this is NOT the kind of propaganda I'm talking about. The propaganda I'm talking about is this concerted relentless effort to make Israel out to be the bad guy ALL THE TIME. I'm talking about the setting up their own civilians as targets so they can vilify Israel for accidentally hitting some of them even though their arsenals were intentionally placed among them and even though Israel warned them about planning to attack. I'm talking about this playing up of the victims to make Israel look bad when nobody even knows what really happened. I'm talking about pretending that a terrorist organization is a legitimate entity, or calling them freedom fighters and that sort of thing. I'm talking about pretending that Israel is creating the terrorism when the terrorism is ideologically self-generating and is the only provocateur. I'm talking about pretending that the two sides are equivalent when the terrorists are the aggressors and Israel on the defensive. I'm talking about jumping to the conclusion that Israel "used excessive force" based on no facts whatever. I'm talking about making everything look like the terrorists are the victims when it's the other way around in reality. I'm talking about the various disguises and pretenses the terrorists use to make Israel look bad. It's a huge propaganda assault on Israel. NOTHING SIMILAR is going on from Israel's side.
Certainly there MUST be cases where stories are over/under exagerated. There are also stories that go unreported. My problem has consistently been that you seem to ferociously admonish any attempt to bring to light the real cases where Israel has done something wrong.
This is because ALL ONE HEARS is blanket condemnations of Israel with a little aside about how well of course nobody is condoning Hezbollah either. Go back and read the thread. Post after post of indignant condemnations of Israel, accusing them of every kind of evil thing, never giving the benefit of the doubt, denunciation after denunciation in the most highflown tones of righteous indignation. All one hears is how Israel is killing innocent people, how Israel is using excessive force, how Israel is racist, how Israel has committed atrocity after atrocity. Not ONE shred of benefit of the doubt, questioning if the facts are all understood, if the3 situation has been rightly interpreted NOTHING LIKE THAT. So I've taken it as my job to try to supply that needed information from the other side of the story.
It alwasy "MUST" be because they had a good reason. They can do no wrong.
This is because I'm answering this constant barrage of accusations that they can do no right. The most scurrilous evil motives are imagined without the slightest idea that they MIGHT have had a good reason. And they often do. Even the worst things they have done that may well be criminal are in some cases provoked by the unfair tactics of the enemy.
Yet on the other hand, any action that any Palestinian or other Arab takes is automatically relegated to the status of "terrorist". Your attitude is seemingly focused on the infallability of Israel.
You are not reading in context. The situation is a war between Israel and terrorists. There is nothing automatic about what I'm saying. I have to fight to remind anyone that we ARE talking about terrorists, criminal organizsations because all anybody here has to say is how it's all Israel's fault adn they treat terrorists -- CRIMINALS, OUTLAWS -- as if they were legitimate.
But as has been shown over and over and over again, while some of these may indeed deserve to be called criminal, many if not most of them are mistakes, honest mistakes,
Perhaps. I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise. No one here has said that Israel ALWAYS commits attrocities.
Oh really? Just about nothing else has been said on the subject. Why am I bothering to dig up answers then? Accusations of Israel in purple tones of condemnation are all I'm hearing.
[qs] some caused by the duplicitous actions of their enemies, some provoked such as when a young soldier loses his cool when ambushed by a woman suddenly being revealed as a man and shooting the young Israeli's superior. The Israelis lose it and shoot everything in sight. Criminal no doubt. But provoked.
How is that different from an innocent man who just had his house bulldozed from finding a gun and going on a murderous rage? It is equally deplorable. Yet you call one of them "provoked" and another the unsolicited act of a "terrorist". [/qsd]
Be sure it's an innocent man. Be sure it's not just another terrorist pretending to have been unfairly victimized. This happens all the time. You may be right. But you may be wrong.
And I'm not sure you wouldn't act similarly in a similar situation where you don't know who is a threat and who isn't; a kid at a checkpoint confronted by a pregnant woman in an ambulance just after being told to watch out for
exactly that situation because a bomb-strapped suicide bomber is hiding in the back. Seems to me the terrorists are really responsible for some of these atrocities by the Israelis, against civilians because they set up their own operations among civilians.
So I guess that makes Israel responsible for the purposeful placing of civilian settlements in the occupied territories? How is that not setting up shop among civilians? Faith there is almost always a two way street here. It is not just unprovoked action against Israel for no purpose.
I'm not commenting on the settlements, as I don't know enough about that situation.
No, I'm sorry. In some individual cases I'm sure there is a two way street, unintentional injustices, but you are wrong, overall this whole mess is caused by the terrorists.
Are you unable to appreciate the effect of such tactics? Considering that they are quite common one could in fact admire Israel's restraint instead of constantly accusing them.
What effect? Are there countries lining up to battle Israel because these tactics are so convincing? You don't think nation-states are smarter than that?
Who are you talking about? The UN is either not so smart or is just corrupt. I suspect the latter.
Jazzns previously writes:
This is a matter of fact for me and other people who have experienced the situation. You wonder why the "terrorists" can survive under such underdog conditions. It is because Israel creates new terrorists every
day.
Faith writes:
I think you are judging from emotion rather than trying to understand all the facts of the situation.
Jazz writes:
Since when are experiences emotions? Since when are experiences not also facts of the situation? You mean to tell me that it is "provoked" for an IDF soldier to go off his rocker and yet when it happens to a Palestinian it is not exactly what I just described?
No, I'm questioning your INTERPRETATION of the situation. You don't know for sure it happened as you say. And in any case NOBODY even THINKS of the situations I am trying to explain on Israel's behalf. Something bad happens, that's just Israel's evil actions. Nobody bothers to consider the circumstances, everybody falls for the sob story and doesn't think that it might be an act or a set up or brought about by the terrorists' manipulations, but these things happen all the time.
OK I'll give you that there were some tribal groups there that now call themselves Palestinians because their roots go back a ways, some towns etc. What exactly does that add to the claim that there was an entity called Palestine?
The rest of the world has a criteria for attrocities that does not hinge on your requirement of a nation-state. This is not about the creation of a country of Palestine. We were just fine given the local dynamics of the area before Europe had the need to carve up land and haul flags above capitol cities.
Well, yes, I guess you can argue that modernity should never have come to the Middle East and that's the cause of the whole thing. But I also wonder just how "fine" things really were or how long that would have lasted. Nothing stays the same.
I sometimes wish my grandfather's farm were still available to visit, with all its charming primitive accoutrements, the kerosene lamps and the outhouse and the well on the hill and the wood stove and the butter churn and so on. Peaceful times there.
I am talking about individuals, innocent people who have been killed, maimed, made homeless, had their land and property taken from them, and generally terrorized by an imperialistic force.
But this is mostly false history. Propaganda. {Or let me say, I can't take this for granted as you do, since I know there is another side to the story, which keeps being shown here when I track down the information which nobody else is tracking down}.
You go build a house. Live in it for a week. Then let me come destroy it with all your possessions in it with the reason that you don't have any tie to the land.
No house was destroyed for such a reason. I'm merely answering the claim that there were ancient ties to the land. For most of the "Palestinians" there simply were not. Very few can make that claim. As for WHY the house was destroyed, that's what is in dispute. You denounce it as imperialist aggression, and I'm calling that false history and propaganda. I'm not claiming there were no injustices, there were probably many on an individual level, but in the overall context of the Arab nations' trying to do in Israel, and now the terrorists who willingly put their own people in harm's way for the same aim, things are not as they seem and certainly not definable from anybody's individual loss, however tragic or unjust.
OK, but you seem to be defending people that are dangerous to Israel.
I believe that Israel is equally dangerous to innocent civilians based on their track record.
The cause of ALL Israel's "dangerous" acts is the TERRORISM!!!! And most of it is simply set up to make them look bad anyway. STOP THE TERRORISM and there will be NO danger from Israel!!!!
I am not trying to defend terrorists. I am trying to defend the good name of innocent people who only want to live their lives in peace.
As long as the terrorists will not stop their neverending war against Israel there are always going to be innocent victims.
STOP THE TERRORISM AND ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE MIDDLE EAST WOULD STOP.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2
