Israel vs. Hamas

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lets put the rocket attack ranges in perspective
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gnm2C1B8vbI/SV3k_Ravb1I/AAAAAAAACZQ/_ugZKCLvfCU/s1600-h/map.JPG
this shows TTI(time to impact) from gaza

http://mesi.org.uk/DangersMap.aspx
Click on the Iarael & its neighbors tab & then click on one of the tags at the left

 

It brought a smile to my face that while we've been debating this so heatedly there's an advertisement on learning to speak arabic at the bottom of the page

 

That is a dramatic graphic. You are aware that since 2002 iirc about 20 to 30 Israelis have been killed in rocket attacks by Hamas? That is probably about as much as die in car accidents on a particularly bad holiday week in Israel.

PS: A more general overview on the casualties and incidents on either side since 2000. Israeli civilian casualties fell sharply with Hamas stopping suicide bombings. The rockets have a vastly greater psychological than physical impact. The worst thing about them is IMO that they symbolise Hamas resilience.

 

No, what I meant is that the Jews are the only group in the world that have been stripped of their land, scattered to all the corners of the world, and forced into other societies for thousands of years, and yet still retain a cultural identity. I mean that most Jews tell you they're Jews and are proud of it, whether they follow the religious practices of Judaism or not. I mean that Palestinians, going through the same thing, would consider themselves Itanians, Germans, Americans, Egyptians, Chinese, or whatever other nation they ended up in thousands of years later. Many nationalities have been scattered to the winds through the course of human history. Only the Jews have survived it.

 

NOG,
Thanks for the clarification. I understand your point now, but I don't agree with the implications. So the Palestinians, unlike the Jews, will eventually 'get over it'? I do not think so.

The Israelis are now fighting for three weeks and there is no end in sight. The Israelis, as they keep on fighting, have apparently not achieved their goals. What those are is unclear. Does Israel have a plan? Are they just content with killing as much (suspect) Hamas folks as possible, while supporting Fatah's operations against Hamas in the West bank? Did they want to destroy Hamas? Stop the rockets? Really, really close the border? Teach the Palestinians that they are a defeated people so that they eventually 'get over it'? Do Livny, Olmert and Barak agree on their reasons for the war, that is, does the Israeli leadership have a coherent vision of what they want to accomplish? Or did they just succumb to the urge to lash out and by the way also pre-empt an Obama peace initiative and boost their own electoral chances against über-hawkish Netanyahu?

The eminently well informed Anthony Cordesman on Gaza:

IMO the tragedy is that Israel is trying the same thing over and over again, that is trying to use force to impose their will, hoping for a different result. In a sense, Israel has bet the state on being able to re-establish its illusion of deterrence. The longer this goes on, the more deterrence becomes an illusion. They haven't learned their own lessons well.

The problem is that Israel is clearly the aggressor, or in Jabotinsky's disturbingly clear and honest language, a colonial power, and the occupier - but mentally and spiritually, they cannot accept this role. They cannot see that they have become what they have hated. The Palestinians will not stop firing their rockets. Even if they are destroyed another organisation, maybe more effective, will emerge. Another lesson they forgot from Lebanon. Israel cannot win this war, Israel must try find a peace before demographics puts it into a position where there is no other option than complete ethnic cleansing. I think that is the only thing that the US would not support from Israel.

 

why do people keep moaning about peace, you cant stop a fight between 2 groups that want to fight. Both sides would have to be reined in by force, but as has been said the Palestinians will never stop fireing rockets so the fight will continue.
The rockets may simply be an excuse used by Israel to attack, but what would happen if they stopped? maybe Israel would have to come up with a real reason to continue their bloodshed which could be stopped internationally, so long as the rockets are fired into Israel, Israel have a legal reason to attack.

Maybe the actual goal here should be to find out where the palestinians rockets are coming from and stop the supply.

 

The new type of rockets that the palestinians are using are of a larger type than most of their neighbores use & the closest existing models are chinese. They are apparently 122mm models that have a range of 30/40Km(~19-25miles). The iranian 122mm's don't have this range but the chinese do.

Ragusa, Israel gave up all of gaza in 2005, they relinquished homes, farms, places of business and worship.
Since then the palestinians have launched more than 10 THOUSAND rockets from gaza into southern Israel. If this had been happened in any other country the offending state or nation would have been wiped from the face of the earth years ago.


Also roughly 33% of all the israeli children in the rocket attack areas have been diagnosed as suffering from PTSD.
"We have only killed a few of your people with our rocket attacks" says the terrorist, yes but you have scarred an entire generation.

 

But the only peace that Hamas will accept is the dissolution of Israel and the death of any Jews that don't leave. As long as Hamas holds to that ideal, Israel will remain on this merry-go-round of attacks and ceasefires. The only solution that will end the violence is Ethnic Cleansing--something that Israel does not wish to do.

 

No, I told you about the hudna already.

And, a little late, some background that suggests that those who blame Hamas for 'seizing power' in Gaza are premature in their judgement. It was a little more complicated than that. In fact, Hamas counter-couped Fatah from seizing power - pre-empting a US sponsored coup of Fatah (in Bush's GWOT there was no chance for an Islamist party going unchallenged, much less in Palestine; Elliot Abrams cooked up a similar, also failed scheme for Lebanon, where Hezbollah counter-couped the Saudi/American backed groups). As a rule of thumb things are messy down there; with US involvement they get even messier. It is thus unwise to assign guilt to only one party. It is wrong most of the time.

 

This is what pisses me off the most, what truly and really pisses me off in this conflict. How horrendously onesided so many people are, how completely blind they can be for the suffering of the weaker party. Wow, 33% of the Israeli children are suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. That is horrible, that most likely close to 100% of the Palestinian children do the same is self-inflicted. That the Palestinian children lived in what pretty much amounts t a ghetto without access to even the basic nescesseties of life is self-inflected. That several Palestinian children are killed or maimed by Israeli bombs and bullets every year is self-inflected. This view of the Palestinians as sub-human and as Israel basically eradicating vermin really really riles me up and it is common, Martaug is by no means alone in it. If you want to bring up suffering, bring it up in relation to the other side of the conflict. The last numbers I saw had 900 Palestinians dead in this last round of fighting, less than 20 Israelis has died. Whatever political side you might take in this conflict everyone should be well aware that a vast majority of the suffering is inflected by the Israelis on the Palestinians and it is one of the few conflicts where a vastly superiour force can slaughter indiscrimately and be supported by so many people.

 

joacqin, I really hate to say this, but from a purely practical perspective, that just tells me that Hamas is really bad at what they're doing and causing more harm to their own people than to Israel. I know, that's a touchy statement, but that's how it appears to me.

What really confuses me is how you say Israel has to back down. You reasoned that, because Hamas is a religious group that will never give up their religious conviction to destroy Israel (still not sure where that comes from), they can't be expected to back down. By that logic, you seem to think that it is more reasonable for Israel be completely destroyed and the jews scattered to the world once more than for Hamas to give up violence.

 

Here is a Video from a Palestinian Arab about Hamas, how they terrorize their own people who aren't conform with them:



I wonder why so many sympathize with Hamas who (in my opinion, and I think I'm not alone here) is a fascist like terror organization.
They cause so much damage to its own people that I wonder why so many blame solely Israel.

If you don't believe media from western sources have at least a look to this.

edit:
There are some pretty harsh scenes here (killings but no close ups).So If you don't want to see such things don't click this link.

 

yet you do exactly the same thing.

There is no doubt in my mind that many of the civillian targets which are 'shelled' are fired by the palestinians, they are conveniently UN hospitals or other high profile targets, they are always hit by mortar shells - a weapon used more commonly by the palestinians then Israel who rely on guided weapons.

 

And here it goes, I support Hamas, I do the same thing. You missed my point, remove all the politics, remove all your pre-conceived notions. You have a conflict between two sides. One side is locked into a tiny enclave without any resources whatsoever, without any real organisation or administration. The people locking them into this enclave have all of the above, they have all hte power and all the guns. This side continously provoce the weaker side, humilitate and insults it and when the weaker side feebly strikes back in any way possible (often in a blind rage, focus on blind) the vengeance is swift and furious. How can the brunt of the responsiblity lay with the weaker side? How can they be the aggressors? They do not have the power to be the aggressors, they can shout all they want about eradicating their foe but not even they themselves believe in it. Many of you have yourself stated that if the roles were reversed you would support a fullblown invasion to sort out the mess.

To use a schoolyard analogy, what I see is a really big obnoxious kid beating the living crap out of a small obnoxious kid. The small kid is stupid as well as obnoxious and tries to hurt the big one as much as he can and is easily taunted into a blind rage and when that happens the big kid beats the crap out of the little kid again. You are the other kids who stand around and cheer the big kid for every kick to the face he lands on the prone small kid (much as the Arab world are cheering and luring the small kid on despite the fight being hopeless).

I don't think you need to pick sides to see that it is the side with the power that holds the most responsibility. What was it Ben Parker said? "With great power comes great responsibility."

Also, this talk about "precision weaponry" is laughable, are you guys high or something? There is no such thing as a precision bomb, it is a propaganda tool invented during desert storm and much used since then. The entire Gaza strip is a tightly inhabited area and the accuracy of the so called precision bombs isn't nearly accurate enough to be relied upon. Just last night they bombed a Swedish hospital down there, it was completely blown out because the home of a Hamas leader lived a bit down the road. I doubt there is anywhere in Gaza which isn't close to some Hamas dude. The place is *tiny* and it has 1.5m people crammed into it. Let me ask you this, would it be ok if the Palestinians managed to build a better rocket and take out the entire Knesset in one go? Would that be a sufficently military and political target for you? That is what Israel is doing to Hamas who despite all their faults is the mostly democratically chosen leadership for the Palestinians? I do not view the Israeli government as any less terrorists than Hamas but I guess when you wear a suit and command soldiers in uniform and high-tech weaponry to kill people you aren't a terrorist. That label is only for people who can't afford high-tech weaponry.

 

I support neither. Hamas has to be fought, but the way Israel is fighting them is both overreacting (a skull for an eye leaves the whole world decapitated) and counter-productive.

 

I mostly agree with The Shaman. But to use joaqin's analogy, when the littler kid is constantly harassing the big one, observers tend to say that they brought it on themselves. I'm also not sure what Israel should do. If they pull back to earlier borders and cease hostilities, what will likely happen?

In an ideal world, Hamas would stop their rocket attacks and the suicide bombings would also cease. That would be awesome.

The sad fact is that it seems there are some in the Islamic world who would see that withdrawal and ceasefire as a show of weakness and decide to press even harder to destroy Israel, continuing their attacks and continuing to kill Israelis. So just how, exactly, is Israel supposed to respond? Ignore the attacks on their people?

I am fully aware that such an argument could also be made by the Palestinians -- if they stop hostilities, they are pretty certain that the Israeli's would continue to assault them. Maybe they're even right -- some of you have posted some pretty compelling evidence that there's a lot of Warhawks in the Israeli government.

All of this tells me that we need a neutral third party in the area keeping these two aggressors off each others' backs.

 

I spent 6 years in the forces and let me tell you that you dont have a clue what your talking about, I spent 3 weeks on HMS Splended as part of a live fire exercise and let me tell you, its weapons are so precise its not a question of what building you want to hit, its a question of what window you want it to go through.
If a target it missed its human error not the weapon.

Did they? Im having trouble finding a report with Yahoo, Guardian Unlimited and Reuters on this.

Is Knesset a terrorist paridise smuggling weapons and fireing mortars and rockets at civillians?

That is not what is happening, that is your view, you are heavily bias afterall.

I disagree, many labelled the coalition terrorists during the invasion or Iraq

Rubbish, why should they hold back in the face of terrorists attacking them? If anything it is their responsibility to prevent further attacks at the behest of a government which cant control its own militants.

Wonderful poetic exaggertaion.

really... Id call high explosives agressive power

No one said they would support an invasion, we answered the question, to which the outcome would have been intervention.

I have a different one, you have one kid who is big, and one kid who is small, the big kid always picks on the small kid, who has just joined the school with his mates, oh, lets call them Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, they constantly fight with the little boy whos parents keep telling him, fight them back, which the kid does. soon, the kid grows up, and now he's bigger then the kids who were picking on him before, but he remembers all that happened before. The other kid still thinks he can goad the now bigger kid, who kicks sh!t out of him for it.

More accurate I think.

The closest the palestinians and the isralies have ever been to peace was under fatah, with the oslo accords, not under Hamas who simply want to fight, when there is a cease fire, they are simply consolidating their positions and rearming, Hamas do not want peace, they want to fight.

 

Wow, did you even watch the video above?
Hamas is not a regular democratic party.
they killed and terrorized enough people (their own) so they took the government partly by supporters and partly due to sheer force and terror to the rest who didn't yet support them.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054867.html

So much for the only democracy in the Middle East!

 

It is the same as Germany is doing all the time:
They ban parties who violate the national constitution (mostly right radical parties here in my country).
One should distinguish between abuse of power and self-defence against undemocratic behaviour.
"accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist"
I don't know if above accusation is true, but if it is, such parties would be banned here too, and I consider Germany to be a solid democracy.