SA Footy

There's definitely blame on both sides but the absolutely skewed arsenal, both militarily and politically to one side makes any meaningful negotiations almost impossible.

There is only one solution in the eyes of Israel and the US. Basically its to eliminate Palestine. I mean they are just bombing the shit out of the place at the moment.

dedja wrote:There's definitely blame on both sides but the absolutely skewed arsenal, both militarily and politically to one side makes any meaningful negotiations almost impossible.

Yeah you can't exactly call Hamas pure victims, but as the saying goes one mans terrorist is another's freedom fighter.

I think in the conservative US, giving a crap about Muslims would also be seen as terrible, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with any of the radicals

This is my basic understanding.

Arabs and Jews did once live together fine in Palestine for a long time (many centuries without many conflicts).

Then Zionism emerged in late 19th century and the Jews wanted to make Israel their own state. Not necessarily those Jews that were already in Palestine. The Zionists looked upon Arabs pretty poorly and the Arabs resented that.

WWI came and by 1917 Britain desperately needed support, so facilitated a Jewish state in Palestine in order to get US and Russia onside, who were both heavily influenced by key Jewish players, as well as the finances that would come with it from the wealthy Jews.

After WWII and the break up of the British Empire, Palestine was divided up and a Jewish State, Israel, formed.

This was the nail in the coffin for the Arabs and they've been fighting ever since. Huge percentages of Arab population were murdered in the years after by Jews.

Palestine doesn't officially have a military, Hamas are the extremists who fight guerilla warfare. Israel, backed by US, have a full blown and powerful military.

You could say Israel are the bullies, but I bet if they stopped fighting the Jews currently occupying Israel would be dead meat.

Look at what the extreme Islam (ISIS) are doing in Syria and Iraq.

It's a lose/lose situation. You can blame religion and imperialism.

Glad we are in Australia! The world is fragile at the moment.

and the 3 day cease fire has been broken....

TISM as always had the right idea (NSFW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvu9MY81Afo

I agree that the weapons at each side's disposal are completely inequitable. I also appreciate the way the everyone is making reasonable points in this thread respectfully. It's an assumption, but I don't think such reasoned discussion would happen in some countries. Then of course, perhaps most of us here in Adelaide / Australia have far less stake than people a lot closer to the troubled areas, so we are not so passionate with a single point of view....

and Israeli has been captured by hamas and another 2 killed. The cease fire is over

A`good summary Aerie. We just need to add that post-WWII guilt in the US and western Europe, over having refused to take the Jews from Germany when Hitler offered to let them leave before the war, led to strong support for the emigration of European Jews to Israel. The effect of the war years on those emigrants probably helped shape the "active defence" attitude in Israel today.

As for the borders - the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights were the sites from which rocket attacks were launched on Israel in 1967. After the six-day war the Israelis vowed to retain those sites so that they could not be used that way again but they gave back most of the other territory they had captured. (At the time they could have marched on and captured Egypt too easily enough.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_day_war

more schools being bombed

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... an-ki-moon

Another thing I found interesting.

Abc and the guardian have the Hamas conflict as the lead story.

On the advertiser site, I counted links to 25 other stories before the link to the same conflict.

Both sides are to blame in this little fight Benny
SOP to put their weapons in bad places and encourage retaliation so they can use it as propaganda
Hamas have said they wont stop sending over rockets until they get what they want, so killing a few of their people is OK, and quite useful, to them

Jimmy_041 wrote:Both sides are to blame in this little fight Benny
SOP to put their weapons in bad places and encourage retaliation so they can use it as propaganda
Hamas have said they wont stop sending over rockets until they get what they want, so killing a few of their people is OK, and quite useful, to them

How many people have those rockets killed? Proportional response is not there...

Bully wrote:I'm not religious or believe in anything but wasn't it the Jews who sent Jesus to the cross ?

That's what Hitler said and the rest is history.

Never been a hummus fan. Chick peas are bad, let alone pureed in a dip. Ick.

bennymacca wrote:

Jimmy_041 wrote:Both sides are to blame in this little fight Benny
SOP to put their weapons in bad places and encourage retaliation so they can use it as propaganda
Hamas have said they wont stop sending over rockets until they get what they want, so killing a few of their people is OK, and quite useful, to them

How many people have those rockets killed? Proportional response is not there...

Only takes one death to pi$$ someone off
No such thing as proportional response in war
Do you think they should just send back one for each one sent over? It would go on for years......

I think killing thousands of innocent people is a disproportionate response.

So how about we just find a winner in this and end it, petty fighting going on for centuries. They want to fight well get it on properly, Israel bomb the life out of all them and take the land. It's time this got late in the fourth qtr

westcoastpanther wrote:So how about we just find a winner in this and end it, petty fighting going on for centuries. They want to fight well get it on properly, Israel bomb the life out of all them and take the land. It's time this got late in the fourth qtr

Or set out a bit of land for a fully fledged Palestinian state?

Why can't we all just get along?

bennymacca wrote:I think killing thousands of innocent people is a disproportionate response.

Nothing proportionate about any of it
And I say again, there's nothing proportionate about war
Pick on someone bigger than you and you're gonna cop it
That's why countries build up big arsenals - it's as much a deterrent as an ability to defend
There's no "Oh look, New Zealand have invaded us but their armed forces are a 1/4 our size, so let's be fair about this and only use 1/4 of our defensive capability"
It is what it is