WN: 70 Palestinians killed in IDF operation in Gaza - Ynet News

[eric]

nebula:

I can't abide your tone in the above responses. Obviously you're getting very upset. I assure you I have read quite a bit on the subject, and because I am trying to be objective here, I think the best response for me is to simply disengage. I regret that the discourse had turned less than amicable, but the subject is a passionate one.

In Christ.

You got off lightly, mate, cus Nebula wasn't the only that was getting upset. You just walked into a mine field.

[nebula]

I can't abide your tone in the above responses.

I'm a female. I'm entitled to getting emotional.

And like Eric stated, you waltzed into the wrong place to whine about people getting upset at you.

I assure you I have read quite a bit on the subject,

If you have read so much, why have your posts not evidenced this?

[Elchingen]

eric:

Ah, the threatening tone. I expected that.

Why does everyone get so upset over any opposition on this issue? I have not insulted Israel. I have not distorted facts. I have not sought to rile anyone up. There are simple truths to every issue, not black and white assumptions of someone elses evil simply because they are regarded as evil. Do Israeli's somehow rise above the fallen man state that ever other human has? Are they never wrong and consistently defending themselves regardless of what they may do to others? Are they honorary Americans, in fact, who are automatically exempt from censure on account of their obvious, inherent righteousness?

You folks seem to be saying, "If you are not here to agree with us, don't bother coming!"

Some welcome!

In Christ.

btw, what good would reason do here, even if I gave every footnotable source imaginable? You would simply argue my sources and ignore my valid points. I have seen as much elsewhere. Love you anyway!

[Guest shiloh357]

I disagree that Hamas stopping their rocket attacks would bring peace. I say this because over the past forty years there have been many times when Israel said, for instance, the suicide bombings have to stop, or the terror raids have to stop, or the hijackings have to stop. Over the past few years the suicide bombings had stopped, and for quite some time, but this did not in any way change the conditions the Palestinians suffered.

What you fail to notice is that the terrorism has not stopped. Israel's condition for peace is that the Palestinians denounce terrorism, denounce their goal of destroying Israel, recognize Israel's right to exist and to exist as a Jewish nation and be willing to live in peaceful co-existance with Israel.

Just before the start of the negotiations at Anapolis, Mahmoud Abbas made it clear that under no circumstances would the Palestinians ever recognize Israel as a Jewish nation. The reason for this would be an admittance that Israel has a right to exist in the first place AND it would be tantamount to abandoning the insane goal of removing Israel altogether and absorb all of Israel into a nation called "Palestine."

When your enemy denies your basic right to exist, from what point do you negotiate peace? If no common ground on the right of Israel to exist can be reached, then Israel has no basis on which to negotiate.

Israel must either embrace and assimilate the Palestinians as co-citizens in a single state(which they refuse to do) or they must grant unequivocal statehood to those areas under Palestinian control(which they refuse to do).

Israel is not under any obligation to assimilate the Palestinians. Israel did not make the Palestinians into refugees in the first place. The Arab world created this refugee problem when they attempted to annihilate Israel one day after Israel declared nationhood.

Israel has consistently rebuffed every initiative for peace in the pursuit of a greater Israel and a wholesale removal of the Palestinians altogether.

Wrong. Israel has done more for peace than any other nation would have ever done were they facing a similar threat.

Absent from your comments above is any recognition of the sacrifices and risks that Israel has taken in the name of peace. Absent is any recognition of how Israel has sought to provide the Palestinians every opportunity at self-determination. The hospitals and schools that Israel has built, the modern sewage treatment systems, the universal health care, the opportunities for employment and equal access to Israel

[eric]

OUCH!!! Like I said.......a mine field.

[Elchingen]

Shiloh:

There is then as much of a redusal of Palestinians to accept Israel as vice-versa. My point is that the party holding power, that being Israel, is the one with the initiative.

As to the events of 1948, recall that Palestinian rejection of the proposed "settlement" was due to the miniscule territory they were expected to agree to be given. Why should they have accepted it? Recall that there were originally three zones proposed--the Israel, the Palestinian and the buffer zone. Israel jumped the date for the mandate by one day and seized as much as they could, in the process driving by gunpoint thousands of Palestinians from their homes. This is what caused the refugee problem. The remaining areas were taken by Jordan and Egypt respectively(West Bank and Gaza) and those territories became the de facto zones where 1.5 million Arabs were sequestered after 1967 when Israel occupied them.

I am not so much admonishing Israel as drawing you folks to the truth about the situation. Even today, every Palestinian that is alive is alive at the whim of the IDF. If the situation were not to savage, why would so many Israel soldiers be refusing to serve in the occupied territories? Read their testimonies as to why and you may understand some of these long-standing greivances those people have.

It is well and good to build schools and sewer systems, but I must point out, as you well know, that Israel feels as much of a right to bulldoze any structure they see-as they have demonstrated.

There is black on both sides. The issues are much more than a he said/she said of violated deals. Furthermore, it is primarily the government and the security forces I see as having committed serious crimes on the part of Israel, and much much less the people.

An open and honest look at all of the facts would reveal the truth of the matter, that although both sides say peace while making war, only one side stands so much more vastly powerful than the other. After all, it is the Palestinians who are the oppressed and not the Israelis.

Likewise, to call Israel a "blessing" to the Palestinians is unimaginable. It is tantamount to calling the white South Africans a blessing to their indigenous subjects prior to the freeing of South Africa.

In Christ.

[Guest shiloh357]

There is then as much of a redusal of Palestinians to accept Israel as vice-versa. My point is that the party holding power, that being Israel, is the one with the initiative.

No, they are not the one with the initiative. Israel does not owe anyone a country. That is a fatal flaw in your reasoning. Israel is not reponsible for the Palestinians not having a country.

As to the events of 1948, recall that Palestinian rejection of the proposed "settlement" was due to the miniscule territory they were expected to agree to be given. Why should they have accepted it?

There were no "Palestinians" in 1948. No such Arab entity existed until 1967, 19 years AFTER Israel was reborn, and thus thus it was not the Palestinians who rejected the partition plan but the greater Arab community.

Israel jumped the date for the mandate by one day and seized as much as they could, in the process driving by gunpoint thousands of Palestinians from their homes. This is what caused the refugee problem.

False. The Arabs created the refugee problem when they encouraged the Palestinians to leave their homes into what is now the the disputed territories in advance of a six Arab army invasion meant to wipe Israel out one day after declaring nationhood. Even the Arab newapers and journalists of the time period laid the blame for the refugee crisis squarely on the shoulders of the Arab nations that invaded. Please note the following Arab sources:

"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".

- by Abu Mazen, from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976

"The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle."

- Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948

"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."

- London Times, May 5, 1948

"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."

- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948

"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

- The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948

"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."

- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949

"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."

- Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183

"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.".

- Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25

The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.

- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31

I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem, [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948

- Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948

The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.

- Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949

We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.

- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952

The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. . . . He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.

- Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951

Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals . . . declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations.... It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.

- Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."

- from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954

"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war."

- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948

"The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews"

- Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953

"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."

- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949

"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] ...A large road convoy, escorted by [british] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. ...[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns... [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.""

- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz

"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."

- Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, told to the United Nations Security Council, quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14

"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"

- The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

"...our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents ... Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families."

The Haifa Workers' Council bulletin, 28 April 1948

"...the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country."

The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48

" The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.

...The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families."

- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948

"Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return."

- Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, (Beirut, 1973), Part 1, pp. 386-387

"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of refugees... while it is we who made them to leave... We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of political purposes..."

- Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war [note: same person as above]

"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."

- bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957

One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.

Commentary Magazine -- January 2000, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/0001/letters.html

The remaining areas were taken by Jordan and Egypt respectively(West Bank and Gaza) and those territories became the de facto zones where 1.5 million Arabs were sequestered after 1967 when Israel occupied them.

What you fail to recognize is the kind of brutality the Jordanians and Egyptians subjected the Palestinians to for 19 years. No one complained about the lack of health care, the filthy water, the short life exptancy and the utterlly deplorable living conditions the Arabs forced the Palestinians to live under. No one cares about suffering of the Palestinians unless they think they pin it on the Jews.

Furthermore, Israel's presence in the territories has never been a genuine occupation. People like you speak about Israel's presence there in a vacuum. You ignore the fact that Israel is there because Israel was forced into a war of self-defense and was attacked from the West Bank by Jordan and from Gaza by Egypt in 1967. Israel was in a war of self defense and according to the internationally recognized rules war, any territory won in self-defense becomes the property of the victorious, defending nation. Israel's presence was/is not an "occupation" but a military buffer to prevent Egypt and Jordan from staging future attacks from those areas. An occupation is when you overthrow a current sovereign government and replace with the government of the conquering nation. Since the Palestinians were not a sovereign nation, and since Israel did not overthrow, either Egypt or Jordan and since neither the West Bank nor Gaza were under the sovereignty of any nation, there is no "occupation" of those territories. Israel did not take control of the West Bank or Gaza from the Palestinians but from Jordan and Egypt.

If the situation were not to savage, why would so many Israel soldiers be refusing to serve in the occupied territories?

There are conscientious objectors to wars and combat in the United States. That is not how you determine the rightness or wrongness of a particular conflict.

It is well and good to build schools and sewer systems, but I must point out, as you well know, that Israel feels as much of a right to bulldoze any structure they see-as they have demonstrated.

What Israel bulldozed were the houses of known terrorists, and their families which supported them. Israel did not just randomly bulldoze palestinian homes on a whim. It was a response to terrorism. Once again, you want to look at Israel's actions in a vacuum. People like you want to condemn Israel's actions while ignoring the Palestinian terrorism that forced Israel to take the measures it has taken to combat terrorism.

An open and honest look at all of the facts would reveal the truth of the matter, that although both sides say peace while making war, only one side stands so much more vastly powerful than the other. After all, it is the Palestinians who are the oppressed and not the Israelis.

Yeah, blowing up babies on buses and in supermarkets, gunning down innocent people on side roads, blasting rockets into innocent israeli towns who have nothing to do with Palestinian woes, calling for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews does not count as oppression in your book? Its a typical one-side anti-Semitic slam against Israel.

Israel has been subjected to multiple wars and nonstop terrorism for 60 + years, now by the entire Arab community. It's citizens are under contstant attack in a war of attrition meant to destroy Israel.. Israel is not sending out suicide bombers, Israel is not calling for the Palestinians to be destroyed or thrown into the see. Israel is not teaching their children that Palestinians are descended from apes and pigs. In both territories, Mein Kampf has been a best seller.

Israel has not been perfect in its treatment of the Palestinians, but Israel's mistakes are the product of the oppression and irrational hatred that have been imposed on it. Israel's mistakes have been made in a sincere attempt at self defense, and not out of any desire to brutalize, harrass, humiliate, oppress or otherwise harm the Palestinian people.

The Palestinians are oppressed but not by Israel. The oppression comes from their own people and from the Arab community that refuses to absorb the refugees they created. They force the Palestinians to remain as refugees for the purpose of smearing Israel in the public arena. The keep the Palestinians poor, ignorant and angry. It means a ready-made pool of angry, brainwashed youngsters to mold and fashion into terrorists.

It is Hamas that banned fruits and vegitables as well as milk grown or pasteurized in Israel, cutting off much needed food for their children.

Likewise, to call Israel a "blessing" to the Palestinians is unimaginable.

Israel has been a blessing to the Palestinians. Israel has done for them what NO OTHER nation has done, including their own Muslim bretheren. Israel has built schools, hospitals and permanent housing for the Palestinians. They are given free health care, as well as social security and welfare benefits. They are even given access to the Israeli justice system and over 40% of all cases of Palestinians brought against Jewish citizens of Israel have been ruled in the favor of the Palestinians. But you are unwilling to recognize the good things Israel has done. Since Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza, palestinian children stopped dying of preventable childhood diseases, and had clean water to drink. Life expectancy jumped dramatically in only a few years. The modern sewage treatment provided in place of the open trenches running down the middle of streets of Arab towns like Nazareth, also helped prevent the unnecessary outbreak of disease.

The Palestinians became more healthy literate and their quality of living was 200% over what they experienced while under Arab control, but you are unable or unwilling to acknowledge those things, which highlights the less than honest approach you take to this issue.

It is tantamount to calling the white South Africans a blessing to their indigenous subjects prior to the freeing of South Africa.

That is a completely erronious comparison. This conflict bears absolutely no resemblance to the problem of apartheid in South Africa and for you to make such a silly and ignorant comparison only proves how little knowledge or understanding of the history and dynamics of this conflict you actually possess. It is nothing but a typical, uninformed, anti-Semitic comparison that I have come to expect from people like you.

Do Israeli's somehow rise above the fallen man state that ever other human has? Are they never wrong and consistently defending themselves regardless of what they may do to others? Are they honorary Americans, in fact, who are automatically exempt from censure on account of their obvious, inherent righteousness?

That is a complete misunderstanding of our advocacy for Israel. We do not support Israel unconditionally, but we do support Israel against people like you who have both an obvious igorance of the history and dynamics of this conflict and who choose single Israel out for special condemnation. People like you lay the blame for this conflict on Israel's doorstep in spite of the fact that Israel has never issued one suicide bomber, has never engaged terroristic policies, has never started a war with the Arabs, has never called for anyone's destruction and regularly protects Muslim freedoms of both speech and religion inside Israel proper.

[nebula]

Psalm 83:4 - "Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more."

Elchingen - Do you desire to see Israel become no more?

[hupo]

eric:

Ah, the threatening tone. I expected that.

Why does everyone get so upset over any opposition on this issue? I have not insulted Israel. I have not distorted facts. I have not sought to rile anyone up. There are simple truths to every issue, not black and white assumptions of someone elses evil simply because they are regarded as evil. Do Israeli's somehow rise above the fallen man state that ever other human has? Are they never wrong and consistently defending themselves regardless of what they may do to others? Are they honorary Americans, in fact, who are automatically exempt from censure on account of their obvious, inherent righteousness?

You folks seem to be saying, "If you are not here to agree with us, don't bother coming!"

Some welcome!

In Christ.

btw, what good would reason do here, even if I gave every footnotable source imaginable? You would simply argue my sources and ignore my valid points. I have seen as much elsewhere. Love you anyway!

Elchingen

You have no idea what a threatning tone is. I joined a Palestinian-Israeli forum where people declared their loyalty to the Palestinians.

I was warned that this was the case yet they allowed me to stay as long as I didn't accuse the Palestinians of anything.

"Anything" to them was ANYTHING - I was warned every time I mentioned a suicide bombing, not to lie in this forum!!

While people disagree with you, no one here has threatened to kick you out, something I didn't have the privelage of in that forum

Yes, you are getting off lightly

Regards - David

[Old Timer]

The distinction seems to be that many see the suffering and think that the solution is stopping all hostilities. After all, this makes good sense. Stop killing each other and there will be peace.

Israel should simply surrender Sinai (which they have done) and Gaza (which they have also done) the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and then the killing will stop and there will be peace.

Only one little problem remains. This will not be enough to satisfy the Arab nations or the