No. I am not – not even going to counter with the “but you guys do it too. All the time.”
But I repeat, if there’s a challenge, please bring it up and cite it. I have been doing a lot of reading on this event and haven’t seen any.
BTW, Malthus, pardon for not responding to you last night but I missed you post amongst the many others. You were actually the only one to tackle the question in the OP about possible reactions within the changing face of the ME.
I think these two statements from today by Erdogan & Morsi respectively, do reflect a certain change in tone from prior occasions. STM this might yet turn out to be Israel’s (and Bibi’s) biggest mistake yet.
[**Erdogan: Israeli strikes a pre-election stunt.
Turkish prime minister lays blame for conflict firmly on Jewish state, tells reporters ‘before this election they shot these innocent people in Gaza for reasons they fabricated**’](http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4306829,00.html)
(2) The sources are wrong in the actual facts they allege.
I have no idea wherether #2 is the case with your sources. However, #1 is obvious on its face. Your sources are very clearly biased. That would be true even if every single fact they relate is 100% true and accurate.
The problem here is that few or none of us are in a position to judge the accuracy of facts on the ground as they happen. One clue as to the reliability of facts as alleged is judging the accuracy of the source. Your position appears to be ‘well, if you think they are wrong, prove them wrong’, but it does not work that way - it is up to the person making allegations to prove that they have substance, and that proof is rendered more convincing if it is based on sources which do not (as your sources clearly do) demonize one side of a conflict and support the other side, and use obvious manipulation and emotive appeals that are entirely one-sided.
That goes for anyone proving anything about current events of course, but this thread is the most egregious example I have seen, at least today.
You would expect the Turks and Egyptians to react with a lot of harsh words. Both have no love for Israel (whether run by Bibi or not). The Turks have a major beef with the Israelis over the Cyprus natural gas deal, and that has driven relations between the two countries into the toilet for the last few years.
Well, no offense, but your cites do say that the Israeli attacks are in response to rocket fire from Gaza. The only difference seems to be that your sources blame Israel for starting it, because they shot some mentally disturbed Palestinian when he tried to sneak up to the border, and (apparently) didn’t respond to challenges from the border guards.
The other issue is that they claim the Israelis shot a teen-ager named Ahmed Younis Khader Abu Daqqa, allegedly while he was playing football.
The first one, even if I take it at face value, is hard to take as an example of a horrible atrocity -
Cite. So, crazy guy acts crazy. It’s too bad, but what are you gonna do?
The other one is a bit more problematic. I am sorry to say that I am reluctant to take the Palestinians’ version of this as gospel. The source makes it sound as if the IDF is deliberately targeting children. I am wondering if there might not be more to the story than that.
Erdogan’s response is not really new. He’s been ignoring the behavior of Muslim-headed governments since at least the last invasion of Gaza. He’s definitely not going to say anything in defense of Israel considering the demands he’s made since the Mavi Marmara. He does this for domestic consumption and I think to heal what I have come to believe is a real fragile ego. If Hamas ever makes him look like he’s not the big man then he’ll call for their demise.
Hamas is not acting like a responsible government protecting its people. If it was, there would rarely be rocket attacks. Its making things worse for its people. The Arab governments will only criticize Israel because what could they possibly gain by criticizing Hamas? Still, they act irresponsibly if they criticize Israel without saying a word of Hamas because Hamas does not deserve support. They hold their people hostage. Although they do a lot of good for Gazans when the resources are available, they bound them to being slaughtered by Israelis.
Israel is acting like a thug. The escalation is their fault. The rocket attacks that preceded this seemed to be fairly typical (judging from the biased, yet seemingly factual, RedFury source). They freaked out. They act irresponsibly by promoting policies that continue to fail despite having nearly all the power in the situation.
I am sincerely sorry for this hijack: The Turkish relationship with Israel soured because of Operation Cast Lead (the handling of which was an attack on Erdogan’s ego more than anything else as far as Turkey is concerned). Events following exacerbated it, including the Cyprus natural gas deal, but this natural gas deal is vastly overshadowed by things like the Mavi Marmara.
There was little in the way of problems between Israel and Turkey prior to that point.
I’m not clear on how the undoubted fact that rocket attacks and the like are “typical” for Hamas argues that Israel is at fault for not putting up with them.
What do you consider a “typical” attack on civilian population? Please give me the number of missiles your country would accept being fired daily at their civilians, then we can discuss whether Hamas fire can be considered “typical” or not.
Why don’t you join Poor Yorick and demonstrate how slaughtering a bunch of Palestinians is going to solve “putting up with rocket attacks”. I keep reading about the rocket attacks, mortar strikes, and kidnappings since before Cast Lead, since after, since before this escalation, and I am sure I will reading of them for years to come. So yeah, they’ll be putting up with them for a long time.
You’re home city is being fired upon and your worried about the word typical? Well since you are: Those rockets are getting better, nothing your government is doing is solving the problem. Given the ineffectual policies of your government and the ineffectual policies of pretty much every government involved, I think you ought to decide for yourself what is typical because you’ll be living with it for years to come.
I sincerely am sorry that you have to put with this (Alessan as well).
Obviously I wouldn’t guarantee that the Israeli military response is going to solve the problem once and for all, but I suspect it has a better chance of working than sitting back and doing nothing while Hamas kills Israelis.
Hamas has no chance of victory in a straight military confrontation with Israel. Therefore they are taking their standard tack, which you and I agree is “typical”, which consists of killing enough Israelis to provoke a response, and then blame Israel for starting it. I wonder if Hamas is still hiding its rocket launcher in the middle of civilian targets so as to maximize the number of Palestinian casualties again.
Which of the Hamas policies of rocketing civilians have saved them from Israeli attacks? No snark intended, but what would you suggest Israel do? From what I can tell, Hamas doesn’t seem real interested in a political discourse.
I plugged “Israel Hamas Gaza timeline” into google to try to find some source without an obvious vested interest. The closest I got was the Chicago Tribune. Their very, very cursory timeline starts at 2005. Starting June 23 of this year:
I’m sure there are a lot more details that supporters from either side can cite, but from the outside looking in, it looks like Hamas, for reasons good or ill, launch rockets at Israel. Israel eventually responds. Lather, rinse, repeat.
No, I do not understand why I need to or should “accept” this. Any other country would go to all-out war against an enemy and a territory firing upon them constantly.
I think it is telling that what everyone would expect from their own government, they won’t tolerate when it’s “da joos” doing it :rolleyes:
You haven’t answered my question: how many missiles a day would you agree to take? How long until you were hollering for your government, your army, the world, to take out the bastards shooting at you, and make sure they stay out? easy for you to tell me what I need to “accept” from the comfort of your home, innit? :rolleyes:
We’re not in the pit, so I’ll just let that slide.
The Cyprus deal is the rational reason why the Turks and Israelis are at odds. It would exist even if Erdogan and Bibi did not, and even if Cast Lead and the Mavi Marmara never happened - the Turks and Israelis are bound to clash over natural gas, because both wish to control it. It’s an inevitable source of friction and, one suspects, that this (rational) friction explains more than Erdogan’s ego.
How come we never hear the query in reverse? How much ordnance* should an occupied nation allow to be rained on them from air, land and sea before they are able to retaliate even if with their crudest means? Obviously, since they are not allowed to become a nation by their very conquerors, each retaliatory strike – no matter buy what group or individual – becomes automatically labeled by the Western Media as a “terrorist attack.”
Meanwhile the nation-state in power is allowed to use force at will and any civilian death becomes ipso-facto “collateral damage.” What a bunch of Orwellian double-speak bullshit.
*And I daresay that Gazans have taken hundreds if not thousands more hits (never mind horrendous amounts of casualties) than the combined number of rockets/mortars launched by them. But see? No one counts those…:rolleyes:
ETA:In short, who is allowed to legitimately resist and/or retaliate against Israel aggressions?
It does stand a better chance but the gains are only temporary. I think without recognizing Hamas’ right to rule that area and opening up trade to Gaza, most of the Gazan Palestinians will have nothing much to look forward to and the worst among them will have more reason to join Hamas and fire rockets instead of some antisocial activity that only harms their family and friends.
End the embargo. Get the Palestinian minds on money, getting laid and educating their children. Treat the few that will inevitably fire rockets as the criminals they are with a sovereign government that will punish them.
If it makes you feel better to think I am saying this because its “the joos” then feel free.
My initial impulse would be to bomb the shit out whoever was firing crappy missiles at my country too. Yet you have ask yourself if this tit-for-tat relationship the Israeli government has with Hamas and the attempt to nearly completely isolate Gaza from the rest of the world is really going to stop any of this. I doubt it. Recognizing this, and if my government were as awful as yours, I would say about 50 - 100 a day. I would say that even if I lived next door to you in Tel Aviv.
Because there is no evidence that, absent Gazans shooting rockets at the Israelis or carrying out other sorts of attacks, the Israelis would give a damn about Gaza at this point. The Israelis want nothing from Gaza, and would be perfectly happy to ignore its existence.
