Mother Jones - Comments for "Gaza War Bush's Parting Gift to Middle East"

good post Ratzinger.

Dear Mike,
Just imagine yourself living in Gaza. That would be enough for anyone to make war to anyone. It's a prison! And now remember that your country invaded Iraq, while Iraq had nothing to do with the twintowers in the first place! It is obvious that the Palestinians shall never get what they want, if they try to get it through violence. I condemn their violence, but, I do understand. Also Israel's position is far from easy, I know. Neither Israel will ever win through violence however. In my opinion, to blindly support Israel is stupid, cruel and not constructive. Remember that Israel continuously prefers not to take up United Nations verdicts. When Iraq refused to act upon UN orders/requests, it got the US all over itself ...
Life sucks, especially when you are Palestinian and living in Gaza.
Matthew

Wexler, US is involved to the teeth. Every bomb,missle,rocket,white powder drops on Gazans are made in US. US are not looking other way. They are in it all the way.

We must begin to wonder whether it is viable to have the United States involved in negotiating peace in the Middle East at all.

The United States continues to hamper all international efforts that could potentially be unfavorable to Israel through use of vetoes and abstentions.

A sorry illustration of this trend came last Friday, when the the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution urging a cease-fire between Hamas militants and Israelis, with the United States deciding to abstain from voting. The US abstention considerably weakened the resolution, of course, and the result was that the resolution was hardly noticed at all by Israel and the Hamas.

In fact, the most important ArabIsraeli breakthroughs, such as the Oslo agreements, occurred without U.S. involvement, as did Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

The United States' blind support of Israel, along with its reckless action in Iraq, not only impedes any progress of peace talks, it also fuels the growing instability in the Middle East. So perhaps the United States must ask itself, when does an allegiance become a liability?

We must begin to wonder whether it is viable to have the United States involved in negotiating peace in the Middle East at all.

The United States continues to hamper all international efforts that could potentially be unfavorable to Israel through use of vetoes and abstentions.

In fact, the most important Arab?Israeli breakthroughs, such as the Oslo agreements, occurred without U.S. involvement, as did Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

regardless of anyone's ranting justifications in favour of one side or the other, the fact is that when war breaks out in every other part of the world, the civilian population has at least a marginal chance of running away from it. this is not the case in gaza. the assault on gaza pretty much equates to shooting fish in a barrel. i apologize for my humanity gene but i just don't think that can be described as legitimate self defense. several months ago mary robinson was screaming about the conditions in gaza and was completely ignored. it should be no surprise that the cease fire broke down.

i don't suppose it's ever occurred to anyone that "peace" with the palestinians isn't actually in israel's best interest (i refer to the state, not the israeli citizens there). what is in israel's best interest is to manipulate american support(popular, fiscal and politial) by making sure they keep the entire region shaken and stirred and fractured so that we feel a need to continue to jump to their defense which in turn prevents the u.s from even considering dealing with the rest of the middle east in any other terms than those that favour israel.

i wholeheartedly support israel's right to exist and defend itself, however i think it is past time for the rest of the western world to stop giving them carte blanche. it would be equally helpful if we could stop demonizing all of the islamic world under the convenience of the "terrorist" blanket. not all conflicts over there are the same and i personally have never lumped the palestinian organizations in with organizations like al qaeda. if i did that i'd have to call israelis a bunch of terrorists also, since it was partly due to their own bombs and violence that sickened a post ww2 britain and europe into handing palestine over to them. once again the west's racism is showing it's ugly face. 60 years later it just doesn't openly include jews. that is progress of a kind but not nearly enough.

this israeli/arab conflict does not actually date back for thousands-or even hundreds of years. it dates back to when zionism became an ideology in the late 1800's while pogroms were raging across russia and europe and jewish immigrants determined that it was time to end the "2000 year old foreign occupation" -that is a paraphrase of a statement made by d ben gurion at the end of the british mandate- and the palestinians were too optimistic to actually consider negotiating a 2 state settlement then. if living in a region for 2000 years doesn't mean it's at least partly your home then maybe america should start worrying about native americans arming themselves to take back their homeland, too.

The Gaza Strip has been turned into a "concentration camp" by two weeks of Israeli bombardments, said a senior Vatican official.
Cardinal Renato Martino, the Vatican's justice and peace minister, was quoted by the online Italian daily Il Sussidiario.

"Let's look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp," said Cardinal Martino.

On June 21, 2004, Ralph Nader, the well known consumer rights' activist and presidential candidate, took the dramatic, and radical, step of accusing George Bush Jr and the American Congress of being zionist puppets. "The subservience of our congressional and White House puppets to Israeli military policy has been consistent. They're almost all puppets. There are two sets: Congressional puppets and White House puppets. When the chief puppeteer (Ariel Sharon) comes to Washington, the puppets prance." (Ralph Nader 'Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking' The American Conservative).
Nader reiterated the same point a week later, "What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government. The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show."" (Nader's speech to the conference of the Council for the National Interest entitled, "The Muslim Vote in Election 2004″ quoted in 'Ralph Nader Calls Israel a "Puppeteer"' IsraelNN.com June 30, 2004).
On august 5, 2004 Nader responded to accusations by mentioning a zionist joke, "The Israelis have a joke for the obvious, that the United States is the second state of Israel." (Quoted in Ralph Nader 'Nader Writes to the Anti-Defamation League on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict'

Mr. Independent,

Israel is in no moral position to tell Iran or Hamas to do anything. The Israelis are armed to the teeth with nuclear bombs and nuclear warheads, all pointed at Iran and Arab countries. Israel does not even allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities; Iran does. Israel still occupies parts of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon and refuses to give them up. Israel is the nuclear bully of the Middle East. The Israelis have annexed large parts of the Palestinian land and built hundred of Jewish settlements over it.

In the recent attack on Gaza, the Israelis have killed over 875 Palestinians and wounded over 3800; mostly civilians. The United Nation Human Right Commission is currently investigating numerous reports of war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against unarmed Palestinian civilians.

We Americans are complicit in these war crimes, since we give Israel over 6 Billion Dollars of our tax money annually in the form of military and economic aid. In fact, American made F-16s warplane have been used to bomb civilians in Gaza in lat 15 days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2bgyMYNHOc

Peace is the only way out.

I agree withyou

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 - a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border - were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.
Don't forget the USS Liberty.
Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 800 Palestinians dead in just over two weeks, thousands over the years since 1948 - when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel - is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

What will it take to get an Israeli spokesperson to talk to Iran and a Saudi to talk to Hamas. This middleman concept of the U.S. being in between the actual parties concerned is self-defeating and ludicrous. Israel should be right up front with Iran-You develope a bomb, we will take out your facilities. The Saudi's have sponsored Hamas and other terrorist groups but run to us anytime their boys get in trouble! Let's tell the Saudi's that Hamas is their concern not ours!

tf gray...wow your nickel tour of history is worth about as much as it costs.

I guess there were no Jews living in 'Palestine' before WWII? (I doubt you can even give a factual definition of the territory)

The British Mandate of Palestine included the present day country of Jordan...so the British didn't just give 'Palestine' to the Jews...they received a tiny sliver and were mercilessly attacked for even daring to lay claim to that.

So get your facts straight before you go spouting off...oh I forgot, Leftists make a habit of spouting off and are allergic to facts.

I understand...the fact that you would find common ground with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is telling enough.

Mother Jones - Comments for "Gaza War Bush&#039;s Parting Gift to Middle East"

Mother Jones - Comments for "Gaza War Bush's Parting Gift to Middle East"