Poll: was israel right for Attacking Gaza
- Thread starter lior13
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Do you not consider that perhaps you are ignorant, in that what you see will be directly influenced by Israeli media, media controlled by the Israeli government that is incredibly hardline and pro-Zionist at the moment? Such a situation does not give a balanced view.SoulRus said:
The rest of the world (supposedly) receives balanced media, with viewpoints coming from both Gaza and Israel. When there are reports of Israel using phosphorous warheads (banned by the Geneva Convention, to which the Israeli forces are bound) and bombing UN schools when UN officials give the *exact* location on the grounds that there were rockets being launched *nearby*, and encouraging kids to go out and play in the hours that they were planning a massive aerial bombing campaign? Sure - no-one agrees with Hamas, condones what Hamas does and they are on the majority of the West's "Terrorist Watchlist" and the west has no dealings with them.
And how does shutting off the water and electricity supplies help combat Hamas militants specifically? That alone is dodgy behaviour in international-relation and human-rights terms.
But by annexing land lawfully given to the Palestinians by the UN, bombarding Gaza (the entire area of which is essentially a sub-poverty refugee camp), setting up settlements on Palestinian land, preventing foreign medical aid reaching the refugees and causing thousands of collateral civilian deaths for a handful of Israeli deaths does come across as shameful and unjust to outsiders. And as mentioned, striking against Palestinians in such a manner only increases the support for Hamas, and thus increases the chance of future attacks.
A friend of mine living in Israel explains that many of the mortar and rocket attacks are short-ranged affairs (for ballistic weapons) and are incapable of reaching most of the large settlements. As such civilian casualties from these strikes are light, and the response was in no way justified (I personally think Mossad should have been used to infiltrate over the boarder and kill the rocket teams as they were setting up).
He also agrees with the (UK) media view that the whole attack was started to increase the chance of the (then-current) prime minister winning the next election by swaying the minds of those who were unhappy with the domestic policies by being able to show they were taking action against the attacks. Given how long Israel *had* been bombarded, the timing of the invasion was suspiciously close to polling time. He's also terrified of some of the rhetoric he's heard from zionists and the government - (summarised, not quoted) "Hamas states it's desire is to demolish the state of Israel and drive it's people into the sea. We cannot allow this, and we must have a powerful military presence as a defence. And the only way to be safe from terrorism is to ensure that there is no Palestinian governmental presence to unite the people against us".
Obviously I cannot prove his opinions, I'm just sharing a different viewpoint from someone who lives in Israel too.
Just because people disagree with your personal view doesn't mean they are "ignorant" or "dicks". Reading through the responses from many of the people that voted "no", you can see that they are not anti-Semitic, or just attacking Israel - but rather criticising the way that Israel handled the response to the rocket attacks, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Gaza Strip has become.
I've already explained how I feel the solution could be rectified (in brief: international intervention, US backing off, maybe creating a single state so both populations are fairly represented or at least Israel's government becoming less Zionistic and more open to sharing land with Palestinians/removing the wall/alloing humanitarian aid through and Hamas laying down it's arms and determination to wipe out the Jewish race as such actions are not only intolerable to both Israel and the international community but also only make their own situation worse), and I don't see how it's unfairly biased to either side. Both have to accept they have a responsibility for the millions of people (both sides of the "borders") suffering and need to become less radicalised and take up their differences on the political stage instead of the military one.
