I have always found your morals to be very questionable, even if your level of knowledge and debating skills are good.
Now you have taken the good damn fucking cake, eaten it and left the building your dipshit infected arsehole.
Pay NZ a stupid damn backhanded compliment and think you can damn use a reputation built over a long time for your own moronic crusades. Why the hell do you think we have a good reputation on the world stage? If those pussilitic agents had managed to cheat their way into NZ passports it DOES damage our reputation - one way or another.
And I have a newsflash for you - NO country has the right to do that to another. Behave with some godammed integrity for a change. It is not right and moral just because you are Israel, and you don’t get to do whatever the shit you like.
Behaviour like this will catch up with you, every day respect for Israel will diminish, until one day you are left wondering where the hell all the support evaporated to. And you know what? You will deserve it. Israel will turn into an international Pariah.
I wasn’t in New Zealand when the attempt was made to subvert our national integrity, but you can be sure that it DID create anti Israeli, and anti Semitic sentiment where none existed before. You can also be sure that with the US at your back, this doesn’t really matter. What I am also sure of, is that when / if you are to encounter this sentiment you will just use it as further justfication of why you were right to try and cheat, and why poor poor Israel has to “endure” such negative sentiment.
Sorry I am not eloquent enough here to describe how stupid I think this is.
Presumably [thread=552673]this thread[/thread] about Mossad using forged passports from friendly countries (Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, etc.) in order to gain access to a Hamas leader and assassinate him. And then getting caught doing it. Mossad agents have also been caught using Canadian and New Zealand passports in the past.
I didn’t read the whole thread, but from what I’ve seen Alessan is defending his country’s use of these passports as what spies do and basically business as usual. I’m of two minds here. On one hand, I understand why Alessan is defending his country, which is probably one of the most threatened countries in the world. They have to do stuff that isn’t quite right to survive, and well, they have to not care what we think about it. But on the other hand, the argument that them doing so makes Canadians, Kiwipeople, Brits, French, Irish and Germans less safe abroad is also quite true, and we’re right to be mad at Mossad for it. I don’t know what Israel should be doing, but they should certainly be aware that the way they’re going about it, they will lose support, and “hey they hate us already those fucking antisemites” isn’t the answer. Quite a lot of us would like to be able to support Israel more.
Skimming through the thread, it seems that the OP is in as big a disagreement with **FinnAgain **as Alessan. Should this be a double pitting? Or even a party pitting? You know, with balloons and cake and stuff.
On the assumption that this is in regards to spies using faked passports identifying them as nationals of a third party nation: it is understandable why a Zealander might be pissed off. However, the flag of New Zealand is no more inviolable or protected then the flag of any other nation, and the ruse of using a false flag is long since accepted practice in the international community. The only flags whose use in deception is considered protected and inviolate by international convention are those of the Red Cross/Crescent/etc or a white flag of truce indicating a desire to surrender or parley.
-1 for no argument about who shags sheep, Aussies or kiwis.
…bengangmo, I am a kiwi and there wasn’t any significant increase in anti-Israeli or anti-semitic behavior. I think you need to be careful here: this isn’t really about Israel: its about respect for our nations sovereignty and our laws.
Remember the Rainbow Warrior? For those with short memories: French agents conducted an undercover operation in New Zealand that ended with the Greenpeace vessel the Rainbow Warrior sunk in Auckland harbour and one man dead. At the time New Zealand was debating anti-nuclear-ship legislation: this act of international terrorism by one of our close allies closed the debate.
Exemplary work by NZ citizens and their police, and lazy incompetent work by the French resulted in two arrests and the identification of many more suspects. Bullying by the French government and implicit approval from the rest of the international community helped get them released early.
New Zealand currently has soldiers over in Afghanistan. We have troops in Timor and the Solomons and a number of UN Observers deployed in many of the worlds hotspots. The NZSAS: along with other international units with Task Force K Bar, was awarded The United States Navy Presidential Unit Citation by Bush in 2004. In simpler words: New Zealand plays it part on the world stage and we are a good world citizen.
The Israeli agents caught in New Zealand were caught trying to steal the identity of a quadriplegic, wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy sufferer. Stealing this mans identity and potentially ruining his opportunity to travel in the future was the work of cowards and, like the actions of the French many years before, is not how allies on the world stage should treat each other. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what country they come from: is this how friends treat each other?
Quite what this killing achieved is debateable, the murdered man is readily repaced, and the offence caused to civilised nations will be added to the list of total Israeli atrocities.
Some idiot will come along and trade atrocities ‘They are worsr then them’ yadda yadda yadda.
Differant shades of shite.
We had to wait many years to arrest certain Serbian criminals, but we did it, and there is no doubt that many of the murderers from the Yugoslav wars will never be apprehended.
That still does not justify extra-judicial killings.
We have two moral apologists who simply refuse to see this.
Thanks. Yes I certainly remember the Rainbow Warrior. This was still being played for laughs against the french when I was at Uni in 1994, which was a pretty goodly amount of time after the event.
ANd yeah, its not about the fact that Israel did it, but that ANYBODY did it at all sucks gecko balls. More to the point, that those two predictable pratts should have the face to defend it is insane. Then they wonder where and how anti semitism / anti israeli feeling comes about.
I felt the NZ govt was bullied and wimped out over the rainbow warrior, and I suspect that part of reason it was selected in the first place was that we are such a minnow that really can’t take much action against Israel.
The day will come when international patience runs out with Israel for these sorts of stunts, and then we will here a lot of knashing of teeth about how the country is persecuted. What will be conveniently forgotton is all the gross transgressions that Israel has commited.
Personally I do not hope that patience with Israel runs out.I hope that Israel starts to act as a proper nation and not like a bunch of terrorists.
This country is under particular pressures, however it does not help its own cause.
Israel does need to remember just who its friends are and not abuse that friendship, Israel would be wise to remember that it needs us.
We need some recognisable differance in behaviour between the terrorists and respectable nations, and Israel is simply reducing the gap, or rather it is moving in the wrong direction.
What we need is for Israel to work on peace, it may be one sided, and it will need endless patience. Murder will never achieve their aims, unless that aim is to ensure no agreements will be reached. I often wonder if this is part of Israeli strategy, because discord is used by Israel to justify its actions.
I’ll be glad when some of the terrorist mentality leaders of Israel pass on, and some true nation building can begin, instead of the continual tit for tat justification for the latest outrage - politics of the schoolyard.
It IS true that spies often use fake passports. Alessan is right in stating that countries widely use this tactic.
It is also true that spies, historically, have been subject to summary execution without trial.
So I don’t think we should have a problem with Alessan’s position, as long as he doesn’t have a problem with the idea that any country that captures an Israeli spy using a fake passport just takes them out back, hangs them without the bother of a trial, and then FedExes the corpse back to Tel Aviv along with an invoice for the rope.
Israel has ‘peace’, doesn’t it? Are you taling about the occasional randomly targetted missle from Gaza?
When would be nice is if the state found an altenative to the policy of total subjugation of the Palestinians, and occupation of every hill top on the West Bank.
I’m still wondering how one gets from ‘Israeli agents use fake passports’ to an assertion that anti-semitism is equivalent to anti-Israeli feeling and that this is justified.
Pitting someone for having the guts to debate a topic in great debates? Bad form.
Nah - I’m pitting him for saying its ok to fuck with the laws of my country, to bring our national security into question and for generally just but a wanker
Generally, nowadays, spies are only subject to summary execution in time of war. In peacetime, they’re generally imprisoned. It’s generally better to capture a spy, anyway, because that way they’re available for trade for one of your spies they capture.
That being said, the UAE does have the death penalty for espionage and also for murder, so if these people were captured, they likely would have faced capital punishment.
Also, just for the record, we don’t know if the people involved in this were Mossad or not. Mahmoud al-Mabhuh was a bad man, and a lot of people wanted him dead. If Mossad did do it, then shame on them for being so sloppy. They’re usually better than this.
Thanks for the reminder, all that I have said so far is on the assumption that Mossad did do it, which we don’t know for certain yet. (although I do know the dried camel scrotums tried to screw with New Zealand’s laws and security)
