Beautifully written and educational. Try to ignore the ad-hominems who accuse you of being an apologist without realizing they are. If one truly knew the history of all of this as this article shows, they have no grounds for an argument. War is hell on all sides. The victims are always innocent civilians. You bring a good point; men (and women) soldiers who've killed and have blood on their hands have a unique kind of suffering to deal with; it's all a terrible trauma and waste of life - human and all other. Just as it was revealed and covered up about 9-1-1, it will be revealed about Mossad's part in this - plus the new Israel/Saudi canal that will come out at... Gaza.
To clarify, my emphasis was on North America and Israel Palestine based organizations through which Canadians can support the Palestinian struggle for justice nonviolently, either by direct participation and observation "on the ground," or through information-sharing or sharing financial support. _Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation_ is based on interviews with over 100 Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent activists. Standing Together, the final group I described, is made up of over 5000 Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and calls for an immediate, permanent ceasefire by both sides, along with return of the hostages, an end to the 17-year siege of Gaza, and the Israeli occupation, and full equality for Israel's Palestinian minority.
Like all other apologists you avoid mentioning what triggered the response and also quote from heavily biased sources. You now find yourself having to defend the indefensible. The logical conclusion of your thinking is that Israel should just let these innocent peaceful Gazans roam freely in Israel having their will with the population, as demonstrated previously. The bottom line is that Muslims will not permit a truly democratic society to exist in their midst, no matter the rationale.
Steve: Stop with the insults already, they do your argument no good. Ad hominem attacks only prove you have no case to make. I've just posted a couple of links that are direct statements by Israeli officials. Maybe you consider those biased? They condemn themselves by their own words and actions. Do you maintain that every international observer, aid worker, doctor, nurse on the ground in Gaza is lying about what they're seeing? That would be some conspiracy! Especially when we live in the age of video evidence—you only have to look to see it.
As to October 7, it was a clown show. I mean, come on, Hamas using hang gliders to fly over the wall? This is a threat Israel couldn't have successfully fought? Why was there not a single post on the Wall with soldiers raising the alarm? On the most sophisticated security system in the world? Suddenly Hamas is just allowed to pour through multiple points in the Wall with not a single soldier to stop them? You don't think that's just a little bit suspicious? Read journalist Max Blumenthal's reports in the links I posted earlier. It has all the earmarks of a false flag operation that gave Israel the justification to stomp Palestine into a pile of smoking rubble, similar to the false flag of 9/11 that justified the subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US.
the only one 'defending' anything by attacking is... you. Israel, along with the USA, had planned to take down seven middle eastern Arabic countries; five down, two to go. Next on the list is Iran.
Please don't speak to me about 'defense' - I live in the USA and know all about the kind of 'defense' both the U.S. and Israel use, and it's indefensible. The truth is coming out, despite all efforts to suppress it and kill the journalists trying to reveal it. Sean is giving you links and trying to have a rational dialogue with you. No one is attacking, except you, so just stop it.
PS. to my comment below: Fuck the Israeli children who are being held hostage; no hope for them!
And fuck too, all those young innocent foreigners at the Peace Rave, who were raped, slaughtered and kidnapped; or perhaps Sean doesn't have ant emotive statistics for them! Or the families that were burned alive in their houses; who gives a shit, they were only Jews!
No one is saying any life is worth more or less than another, not me, not the jurists at the International Court of Justice, no one. But "defense" does not justify war crimes against your enemy in any jurisdiction on Earth. You forget that Israeli citizens have testified that many of the Jewish deaths early in the conflict were people killed by their own IDF forces on the Hannibal Directive principle that if Israel has to kill its own citizens in order to root out suspected Hamas terrorists, it's quite prepared to do so. The Peace Rave you refer to has also been subjected to more scrutiny since October 7 and has elements of Israeli propaganda all over it. Look at these videos, if you can: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tgsb18_K6E4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAT9NQ4WkE0
A typical apology for the terrorist act by Hamas that started this, which incidentally broke the existing ceasefire! A downplaying of an act that Israel is supposed to tolerate when no other nation would: The UN and Al-Jazeera estimate 32,070 civilian deaths and 74,298 injured, with 50% of these casualties children, and 8,000 missing. For comparison, Israeli officials revised the death toll in Israel down from 1,405 to 1,139, with nearly 9,000 injuries. As if this is some sort of proportionality. a selection of 'statistics' hand-picked to skew the neutral's opinion; some 'journalism'
Steve, with respect, the International Court of Justice, the UN, numerous experts in international law, military experts such as Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas Macgregor and countless medical and aid workers from Canada, the US and other countries who have served in Gaza hospitals all testify that this has all the earmarks of a GENOCIDE against the Palestinian people. Attacking food aid convoys, snipers picking off journalists, women and children, herding refugees into "safe" areas and then opening fire on them, all these are documented atrocities of the IDF. These are all WAR CRIMES by any legal or humanitarian definition. This is a totally asymmetrical conflict, the Israeli elephant squashing the Gaza bug. IDF soldiers post grinning videos of themselves on social media blowing up apartment blocks. There are links to Israeli government officials saying Palestinians are "human animals" and deserve to be treated as such, with blockage of humanitarian aid—another war crime. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-defense-minister-human-animals-gaza-palestine_n_6524220ae4b09f4b8d412e0ahttps://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-fighting-human-animals-defence-minister
Beautifully written and educational. Try to ignore the ad-hominems who accuse you of being an apologist without realizing they are. If one truly knew the history of all of this as this article shows, they have no grounds for an argument. War is hell on all sides. The victims are always innocent civilians. You bring a good point; men (and women) soldiers who've killed and have blood on their hands have a unique kind of suffering to deal with; it's all a terrible trauma and waste of life - human and all other. Just as it was revealed and covered up about 9-1-1, it will be revealed about Mossad's part in this - plus the new Israel/Saudi canal that will come out at... Gaza.
To clarify, my emphasis was on North America and Israel Palestine based organizations through which Canadians can support the Palestinian struggle for justice nonviolently, either by direct participation and observation "on the ground," or through information-sharing or sharing financial support. _Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation_ is based on interviews with over 100 Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent activists. Standing Together, the final group I described, is made up of over 5000 Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and calls for an immediate, permanent ceasefire by both sides, along with return of the hostages, an end to the 17-year siege of Gaza, and the Israeli occupation, and full equality for Israel's Palestinian minority.
Salaam aleikum Sean
Like all other apologists you avoid mentioning what triggered the response and also quote from heavily biased sources. You now find yourself having to defend the indefensible. The logical conclusion of your thinking is that Israel should just let these innocent peaceful Gazans roam freely in Israel having their will with the population, as demonstrated previously. The bottom line is that Muslims will not permit a truly democratic society to exist in their midst, no matter the rationale.
Steve: Stop with the insults already, they do your argument no good. Ad hominem attacks only prove you have no case to make. I've just posted a couple of links that are direct statements by Israeli officials. Maybe you consider those biased? They condemn themselves by their own words and actions. Do you maintain that every international observer, aid worker, doctor, nurse on the ground in Gaza is lying about what they're seeing? That would be some conspiracy! Especially when we live in the age of video evidence—you only have to look to see it.
As to October 7, it was a clown show. I mean, come on, Hamas using hang gliders to fly over the wall? This is a threat Israel couldn't have successfully fought? Why was there not a single post on the Wall with soldiers raising the alarm? On the most sophisticated security system in the world? Suddenly Hamas is just allowed to pour through multiple points in the Wall with not a single soldier to stop them? You don't think that's just a little bit suspicious? Read journalist Max Blumenthal's reports in the links I posted earlier. It has all the earmarks of a false flag operation that gave Israel the justification to stomp Palestine into a pile of smoking rubble, similar to the false flag of 9/11 that justified the subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US.
the only one 'defending' anything by attacking is... you. Israel, along with the USA, had planned to take down seven middle eastern Arabic countries; five down, two to go. Next on the list is Iran.
Please don't speak to me about 'defense' - I live in the USA and know all about the kind of 'defense' both the U.S. and Israel use, and it's indefensible. The truth is coming out, despite all efforts to suppress it and kill the journalists trying to reveal it. Sean is giving you links and trying to have a rational dialogue with you. No one is attacking, except you, so just stop it.
PS. to my comment below: Fuck the Israeli children who are being held hostage; no hope for them!
And fuck too, all those young innocent foreigners at the Peace Rave, who were raped, slaughtered and kidnapped; or perhaps Sean doesn't have ant emotive statistics for them! Or the families that were burned alive in their houses; who gives a shit, they were only Jews!
No one is saying any life is worth more or less than another, not me, not the jurists at the International Court of Justice, no one. But "defense" does not justify war crimes against your enemy in any jurisdiction on Earth. You forget that Israeli citizens have testified that many of the Jewish deaths early in the conflict were people killed by their own IDF forces on the Hannibal Directive principle that if Israel has to kill its own citizens in order to root out suspected Hamas terrorists, it's quite prepared to do so. The Peace Rave you refer to has also been subjected to more scrutiny since October 7 and has elements of Israeli propaganda all over it. Look at these videos, if you can: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tgsb18_K6E4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAT9NQ4WkE0
October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
AND: VIDEO: What really happened on October 7? https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/18/video-what-happened-october-7/
A typical apology for the terrorist act by Hamas that started this, which incidentally broke the existing ceasefire! A downplaying of an act that Israel is supposed to tolerate when no other nation would: The UN and Al-Jazeera estimate 32,070 civilian deaths and 74,298 injured, with 50% of these casualties children, and 8,000 missing. For comparison, Israeli officials revised the death toll in Israel down from 1,405 to 1,139, with nearly 9,000 injuries. As if this is some sort of proportionality. a selection of 'statistics' hand-picked to skew the neutral's opinion; some 'journalism'
Steve, with respect, the International Court of Justice, the UN, numerous experts in international law, military experts such as Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas Macgregor and countless medical and aid workers from Canada, the US and other countries who have served in Gaza hospitals all testify that this has all the earmarks of a GENOCIDE against the Palestinian people. Attacking food aid convoys, snipers picking off journalists, women and children, herding refugees into "safe" areas and then opening fire on them, all these are documented atrocities of the IDF. These are all WAR CRIMES by any legal or humanitarian definition. This is a totally asymmetrical conflict, the Israeli elephant squashing the Gaza bug. IDF soldiers post grinning videos of themselves on social media blowing up apartment blocks. There are links to Israeli government officials saying Palestinians are "human animals" and deserve to be treated as such, with blockage of humanitarian aid—another war crime. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-defense-minister-human-animals-gaza-palestine_n_6524220ae4b09f4b8d412e0a https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-fighting-human-animals-defence-minister
Two wrongs don't make a right.