I have absolutely no experience with video fakery, but it looks very convincing to me. I don’t understand what Israel stands to gain from destroying an entire block though. Is it possible that the buildings were demolished internally (I’m not sure what Hamas would gain from that either). I don’t see the point for either side.
On a related note, I was debating the issue today and asked one of my acquaintances in the National Guard about what would happen in an analogous situation if the US forces in Afghanistan came under fire from a hospital in Kabul during the invasion. My friend claimed that the US would be obligated to operate under this fire until such a point that a team of soldiers could clear the facility with small arms. She also claimed that the US would be under international obligation to refrain from attacking the hospital using artillery if there were civilians inside. Is this actually the case?
There were probably gunmen inside threatening Israeli ground troops. Having artillery pound enemy fortifications before your infantry advances is standard military doctrine.
Again, a net increase in settlers is not a significant concession, it is the opposite. Every house “built” is on land that had to be cleared of Palestinians first, and involves the demolition of Palestinian homes.
I’ve been to the settlements and I can tell you that with a few exceptions, that’s patently untrue. The West Bank may be densely populated, but it’s not *that *densely populated. There are still plenty of hilltops and open fields, and building there is a lot cheaper and more convenient that first demolishing Arab homes.
So, your solution to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is the eradication of Israel?
Regardless of whether or not one supports that, what makes you think you’ll find any significant number of Israeli or diaspora Jews who would support this?
Proposing solutions that one side will reject out of hand is pretty pointless and a waste of time.
That’s what happens when you take “counterpunch”'s “facts” seriously.
Let’s see, this is the article from July 6th:
Israel’s military carried out airstrikes on 10 sites in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, the army said, as tensions remained high following weekend clashes between Israeli police and demonstrators in Jerusalem and Arab towns in northern Israel. The Israeli airstrikes targeted what it said were militant sites including rocket launchers and a weapons manufacturing site, following at least 29 other rockets and mortars fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel over the weekend, the army said. Two of those rockets were aimed at Beersheba, a southern city deeper into Israel than any other attack in the current round of violence.
or maybe this one:
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli air strikes killed seven Hamas gunmen early Monday, the Islamist group’s armed wing said, making it their highest single death toll since a 2012 cross-border war with the Jewish state.
Israeli military authorities confirmed the strikes, saying they “responded to rocket attacks against southern Israel,” targeting 9 “terror” sites and concealed rocket launchers.
The attacks followed a surge in rocket strikes at Israel from Gaza, where Hamas is the dominant force. The Israeli military said these attacks have topped 150 since mid-June, including about 20 rockets striking Israel on Sunday alone.
During one short-lived lull in rocket fire, The Washington Post’s William Booth saw a “group of men” at a mosque in northern Gaza. They said they had returned to clean up glass from shattered windows. “But they could be seen moving small rockets into the mosque,” Booth wrote. He also reported that Shifa Hospital in Gaza City had “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Nick Casey tweeted an image of a Hamas spokesman giving an interview at a Gaza hospital. With the shelling, “You have to wonder … how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.” The tweet was later deleted.
…
According to longtime Middle East analyst Matthew Levitt, Hamas has long planted weapons in areas inhabited by vulnerable residents. “It happens in schools,” he wrote in Middle East Quarterly. “Hamas has buried caches of arms and explosives under its own kindergarten playgrounds,” referencing a 2001 State Department report that said a Hamas leader was arrested after “additional explosives in a Gaza kindergarten” were discovered.
An additional challenge is Hamas’s almost unthinkable decision to rig the homes of many residents in the Strip with explosives, aiming to collapse the structures upon Israeli soldiers.
There is of course also a bonus that the blown-up houses later create a great Western-sympathy-creating photo op.
Counterpunch is a whacko truther website which is infamous for spouting anti-Semitic propaganda. It has published articles by Holocaust Deniers, people who’ve insisted the “blood libel” was correct, as well as other conspiracy theories.
They’re hardly a reliable source and I’d recommend finding one more reliable.
The “acceptable level of violence” is achieved when they stop bombing Israel. Anything done after the rocket attacks stop is not acceptable. Anything before that is just fine.
I guess I’m going to be one of those people who quote themselves; I didn’t get the exact website right but got my trifecta with blindboyard using a truther website:
I thought there was a pol taken few years ago where they asked Palestinians if they would take the money and either stay where they were (or move to soemplace other than israel) or if they would move back to Israel and the majority picked the former. Sure this would move things closer to the day when Israel is no longer a majority Jewish nation but so what? Why should we give any moral weight at all to that position? Why shoudl we respect that position any more thanw e respect Hamas’s position that Israel must revert back to what it was before 1948?
I think the other arab states should agree to pay some part of the restitution package that is offered to Palestinians.
Its supposed to be restitition OR the right of return, not restitution INSTEAD OF the right of return. And frankly even those taht are permitted tor eturn to Israel should get some restitution.
No its not. You’re just saying that we shoudl respect Israel’s preconditions but not Palestinian preconditions.
Well, yes but only because (as you point out) the Israelis would never agree to it. Its not like the Pallestinians are askig the jews to all walk into the ocean anymore now is it?
moving out 8000 of 400,000 settlers is not what I would call a significant concession. Moving out the military troops was not an act of unilateral charity, now was it?
And i don’t see how settlements are that much better than rockets or why rockets are not a permissible reponse to encroaching on my land.
I am reading what he is saying differently than you guys.
He is restating your argument (at least the way he sees it).
(1) Israel is a zionist state that is built on racialism and violence;
(2) We cannot realistically end that without eradicating Israel;
(3) Therefore we must preserve and protect Israel’s racialism and violence.