War in Gaza – Day Six: Context of the conflict

[nebula]

War in Gaza – Day Six: Context of the conflict

<snip>

“Why can’t they all just sit down and talk? ”

It is difficult for many Westerners to understand the depths of religious hatred and motivation found throughout the Islamic and Arab world. These are directed sometimes at the West, sometimes at Russia, but always at Israel. The foundations of these attitudes are Koranic, and are amplified in the Islamic hadith (a kind of Oral Law compilation, considered authoritative by all Muslims). According to these perspectives, the Jewish people have no right to any part of the land of Israel, and it is the duty and obligation of all Muslims to wage jihad against the Jews and all who stand with them. It is not a war about borders, or about refugees, or about Western influence. It is a war of Islamist annihilation targeting Jews both in Israel and around the world.

Ø Sheikh Hussein Massawi, former head of Hezbollah, declared regarding Israel, “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

Ø Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and former head of Hamas, announced, “Make no mistake. There will be no peace as long as there is a Zionist-Jewish state. Our holy goal is to liberate all of Palestine, and if the Jews do not go, they will die. All of Palestine is Islamic land – every inch.”

Ø Articles 6 of Hamas’ 1988 constitution declares that “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it … The Islamic Resistance Movement…strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”

Ø Article 8 is the official slogan of Hamas, and it is not ashamed to announce that “Allah is our goal, the Prophet our model, the Qur’an our Constitution, Jihad our path and death for the cause of Allah our most sublime belief.”

This last point (Article 8) is also the slogan of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. It is curiously perverse that Western governments insist on describing Egypt’s government as peaceful, while all the while the Islamic world and serious students of Islam know what the Brotherhood really stands for (see “Hurtling through the fog of war: a Messianic perspective on the new Hamastan” at www.davidstent.org, February 2006).

Deceptive ceasefires do not equal peace

<snip>

As Khaled Mashaal (Secretary-General of Hamas) declared on April 26, 2008 concerning tahadiye or hudna (Arabic words for temporary cease-fire while simultaneously preparing for renewed hostilities, “It is a tactic in conducting the struggle... It is normal for any resistance that operates in its people’s interest...to sometimes escalate, other times retreat a bit... The battle is to be run this way and Hamas is known for that...In 2003 there was a cease-fire and the operations were resumed” (Mashaal: Truce a ‘tactic’ in Palestinian struggle; AP, April 26, 2008).

Read the full report here

[hupo]

“Why can’t they all just sit down and talk? ”

I think you've answered that question pretty accurately

Islam tells them not to sit down and not to talk unless it's for temporary tactical reasons

[OneLight]

Why is it that we can see this so plainly but the world turns a blind eye?

[hupo]

Why is it that we can see this so plainly but the world turns a blind eye?

Oil?

[Tinky]

Why is it that we can see this so plainly but the world turns a blind eye?

Because the unsaved are blinded by Satan. His hatred for the Jews is passed on to those that are lost. It's the same reason why the world hates Christians.

[Guest shiloh357]

Why is it that we can see this so plainly but the world turns a blind eye?

That's just it... The world doesn't turn a blind eye. Much of the world opreates from a conscious double standard when it comes to Israel.

Much of the international community and the liberal press from many countries around the world paint Israel as the bully of the Middle East. The press ignores violence committed against Israel, until Israel seeks to enact any measure of self-defense. Even the most measured and restrained methods of self-defense are painted as "state sponsored terrorism." There is no means of self-defense that Israel can employ that will not meet with international condemnation. Much of the world applies a moral equivalency standard, which equivocates Israel's self-defense with the terrorism being waged by the terrorists. That is like comparing the arsonist with the fire fighter.

Israel was being pummeled with rockets long before it mounted its current aerial response. There was no international outrage. The international outrage found a voice only when Israel struck back at specific targets in Gaza. the international community cannot seem to bring itself to call Hamas a terrorist organization. They cannot bring themselves to use the words "terrorists" or "terrorism" when describing the acts of terror that are enacted against Israel. Usually the media will characterize the acts of terror waged on Israel as "resistance," Some will refer to the terrorists as "armed groups" or militants at best. They go out of their way to refrain from calling them terrorists.

When Israel kills terrorists or arrests terrorists, the media simply reports that, "X number of Palestians were killed by Israeli soldiers, or that Israel arrested "Palestinians." It is an attempt to hide the fact that Israel was employing self-defense against terror, and leaves the reader with the impression that the IDF is just arbitrarily arresting Palestinian people.

Hamas is not only committed to destroying Israel, they are committed to destroying the Jews whereever they can be found in the world. Hamas is a genocidal organization and it is way past time that Israel goes in and wipes out Hamas permanently. That may result in the deaths of civilians in Gaza, but the truth is that there is no way to fight a sanitary war. The world doesn't lift a eyebrow when Jewish civilians are murdered on buses, playgrounds, in supermarkets

No, the world knows what it is doing. The old anti-Semitism that the Jewish people faced when they were scattered all over the globe in various communties has morphed into the moral indifference, and out right hatred that Israel as a nation experiences on a global scale. Now we have anti-Semites challenging the legitimacy of Israel's continued existance and even those who are challenging whether or not Israel should have been re-established at all. No other nation faces such prejudice and ethnic hatred for simply daring to breathe the same air as everyone else.

Israel tries too hard to appease world opinion. The world cannot hate them more than they already do. It's time for Israel to thumb their nose at their critics, take the gloves off and annihilate Hamas AND their supporters in Gaza; every last one of them. Show them no mercy. The only way to defeat terrorism is to make the price for terrorism higher than the terrorists want to pay.