Gaza

personally I'd like to see our national govt grow some balls....

yeah Fishy that is almost a given, another sad reflection on where we are at perhaps

still there are many Jews around the world (and in Israel) whom ado not blindly follow the lies and deceit the Israeli parliaments (and their US counter parts) have sound bited for decades

Israel is one of the most secular states in the world for fuck's sake. VERY low percentage of "practising" Jews.

And if we're going to turn religion into the key issue here, you fucking anti-semites, then let's consider the fact that the Jews were there well before the Muslims turned up.

Well, if people like RobW can claim Labour was run by a conspiracy of Feminazi lesbians, a completely untrue fabrication, I am quite within my rights to remind people New Zealand is now run by a Jewish banker - a verifiable fact.

...can claim Labour was run by a conspiracy of Feminazi lesbians..

And if we're going to turn religion into the key issue here, you fucking anti-semites, then let's consider the fact that the Jews were there well before the Muslims turned up.

Israel is one of the most secular states in the world for fuck's sake. VERY low percentage of "practising" Jews.

And if we're going to turn religion into the key issue here, you fucking anti-semites, then let's consider the fact that the Jews were there well before the Muslims turned up.

Palestinian people are Semitic, vads.

And for the record most "Jews" of today are not, they are Ashkenazi.

So they were not "there well before the Muslims turned up"

Jono have you not picked up that Vads seems to hate/fear Muslims?

Jew = religion, not race
So, yes, Jews were in Palestine LONG before the Muslims showed up.
BTW Muslim is also a religion.

if thats restraint I'd hate to see them go all out... the resulting slaughter would make the nazis look like pussys

What is it - 300 mortars or rockets fired at Israel in the last 2 months?

"Why are we going to recognize Israel?" said the leader [Hamas], Mahmoud Zahar. "Is Israel going to recognize the right of return of Palestinian refugees? Is Israel going to recognize Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital?"

How often has Israel broken a cease fire agreement compared to their neighbours?

You say all this while conveniently avoiding comment on points such as Hamas' doctrine to exterminate the Jewish state?

JABALIYA, Gaza — The bodies of the children who died outside the United Nations school here were laid out in a long row on the ground. Some were wrapped in the vivid green flag of Hamas, some were in white shrouds and some were in the yellow flag of Fatah, which is rarely seen these days in Hamas-run Gaza. Hundreds of Gazans crowded around, staring at the little faces, some of them with dark eyes still open, but dulled.

Abdel Minaim Hasan, 37, kneeled, weeping, next to the body of his eldest daughter, Lina, 11, who was wrapped in a Hamas flag. “From now on I am Hamas!” he cried. “I choose resistance!” But then he cursed other Arab nations for ignoring the plight of the Gazans. “The Arabs are doing nothing to protect us!” he shouted.

Asked about fighters, he said: “Of course we don’t want them around us. But we don’t know who they are, we don’t know their faces. And they wear normal clothes.”

She was defiant about the presence of Hamas. “Listen, I will always open my house to protect the fighters,” she said. “We have to be patient. We are dead anyway like this. And when Hamas runs in the elections, I’ll vote for them; they have Islam.”

..Israelis cannot deny the fact that their handling of the matter all these years has created more tension than otherwise.

Hamas, until today, is still considered to be extremist militant organisation by even the Palestinians..

Israel uses the ceasefires with Hamas to extend illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as fast as they can. That is a breach of the ceasefire as surely as bombing Gaza.

So what are Hamas/the Palestinians to do? Stand by why illegal settlements push them off their land, or fire rockets and at least go down fighting?

Islamic settlement of the area is itself illegal! It was secured by their illegitimate conquests of the Middle Ages.

If Israel was left completely to the Palestinians, there would not be peace at last as they somehow want the world to believe - there would be fighting, and tons of it, as soon as any perceived or actual inequity of power arose (just as in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites).

Interesting comment Vads... Just how long is long enough for it to become theirs? Is it any different to the honkies settling NZ but just with more years?

Taken to the nth many, make that most, land can be subject to some historic claim by some displaced people... when is it too long? If the displaced people can take it back is it theirs again?

Iraq was a very stable country during Saddam's rule. It was not a democracy and it wasn't a country where you could really speak out against the government, but it was nontheless very stable and violence free.

Saddam's Iraq >> Democratic Iraq

Iraq was a very stable country during Saddam's rule... It was not a democracy.

Hamas basically treats chaos as sport. Without the game happening they are nothing. They exist to stir trouble under the guise of holy living/cusade etc... but their general existence beyond their saying they're followers of Islam is no different to a gang of tards who just want want want and throw their toys whenever stuff doesn't go their way.

In a February 2006 interview with the Washington Post, Haniyeh dispelled many of the lies circulating in the western media about Hamas. He said that he wanted to see an end the "vicious cycle of violence" and vehemently denied the claim that "Hamas is committed to destroying Israel". He said, "We do not have any feelings of animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not to harm anybody....We are not war seekers nor are we war initiators. We are not lovers of blood. We are oppressed people with rights."

Wa Post: "Would Hamas recognize Israel if it were to withdraw to the '67 borders?"

Haniyeh: "If Israel withdraws to the '67 borders, then we will establish peace in stages... We will establish a situation of stability and calm which will bring safety for our people.

Wa Post: "Do you recognize Israel's right to exist?"

Haniyeh: "The answer is to let Israel say it will recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, release the prisoners and recognize the rights of the refugees to return to Israel. Hamas will have a position if this occurs."

Wa Post: "Will you recognize Israel?"

Haniyeh: "If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them."

Haniyeh's answers are straightforward and rational. He asked for nothing that isn't already required under existing United Nations resolutions; a return to the 1967 borders, basic human rights, and settlement of the final status issues. An agreement could be facilitated tomorrow if Israel was willing to conform to international law. Instead, Israel has chosen to invade Gaza. For 60 years it has employed the same failed strategy.

For each of these Arab states, Hamas represents a force that could stir the social pot at home — either by creating a backlash against the regimes for their ties to Israel and their perceived failure to aid the Palestinians, or by emboldening democratic Islamist movements in the region that could threaten the stability of both republican regimes and monarchies. With somewhat limited options to contain Iranian expansion in the region, the Arab states ironically are looking to Israel to ensure that Hamas remains boxed in. So, while on the surface it may seem that the entire Arab world is convulsing with anger at Israel’s offensive against Hamas, a closer look reveals that the view from the Arab palace is quite different from the view on the Arab street.

could you now explain/describe the Israeli parliament and zionist movement with such an objective brush

Well the Israelis, while evil, at least have tried to establish a stable, democratic state.

..hamas whilst evil have been trying to do similar things (well minus the ethnic cleansing, thus far) but... well we know why they can't - no one will let them

People who spend their life planning bad things, torturing people, demanding money/support/land, making rockets wont change their ways..

you've just described the Israeliu parliament

invercargill cafe - the owner asked where they were from when they started talking in hebrew

they are still entitiled to their own personal view...

Point being, you can use that logic to justify polygamy or incest too...

I think it's pretty fair and practical to maintain a certain level of decency and expect that people who chose to live here follow it too. One of the best things about NZ is the lack of religious and racial fighting compared to most places (even compared to Aussie!). How do you maintain this, one of our great aspects, while allowing people like this do the worst sort of advertising for the country in that respect and be able to just walk on their merry way as if no damage was done?

He might be entitled to his view, but he's acted on them in a way detrimental to New Zealand's global reputation, not to mention tourism. Bugger human rights laws - the guy just cost people jobs.

our global reputation can only be increased when we allow people to voice their own views - we value our freedoms

It begs the question, if we were to ask would-be migrants questions on their views on, for example, Israel - do you think the answers given should be an indication of whether someone should be offered the privilege of living in NZ?

what changes would you have new New Zelaanders make Rob - whiten their skin and sign up to National Business review and buy a season ticklet to Eden park?

What are your thoughts with regards to the similar move by northland cafe owner Shane Cavanagh? Whom I am assuming is possibly a kiwi and most likely white... but as the surname originates in ireland they are most likely former IRA members/supporters (see terrorists are everywhere... I know I can't sleep at night either)

I don't support the stance taken by either cafe owner but appreciate that they have a right to voice their concerns - even if not a legal right to deny service to a particular ethnic/religious group (which is a bit fucked IMHO)

Are you really suggesting NZ implement a rule which only allows people with pro-Israel attitudes to immigrate here?

Most of NZ wont appreciate how desirable this place is until we've let its got double the population and is a haven for radical idiots like this cafe guy.

the thing they did wrong was to deny them service - they have the right to inform their clientale their views on issues such as the gaza slaughter

January 19, 2009 "The Independent" By Robert Fisk:

It's a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza. Condi and Ms Livni thought their new arms-monitoring agreement – reached without a single Arab being involved – would work. Ban Ki-moon welcomed the unilateral truce. The great and the good gathered for a Sharm el-Sheikh summit. Only Hamas itself was not consulted. Which led, of course, to a few wrinkles in the plan. First, before declaring its own ceasefire, Hamas fired off more rockets at Israel, proving that Israel's primary war aim – to stop the missiles – had failed. Then Cairo shrugged off the deal because no one was going to set up electronic surveillance equipment on Egyptian soil. And not one European leader travelling to the region suggested the survivors might be helped if Israel, the EU and the US ended the food and fuel siege of Gaza.

After killing hundreds of women and children, Israel was the good guy again, by declaring a unilateral ceasefire that Hamas was certain to break. But Obama will be smiling on Tuesday. Was not this the reason, after all, why Israel suddenly wanted a truce?

Egypt's objections may be theatre – the US spent £18m last year training Egyptian security men to stop arms smuggling into Gaza and since the US bails out Egypt's economy, ignores the corruption of its regime and goes on backing Hosni Mubarak, there's sure to be a "compromise" very soon.

And Hamas has had its claws cut. Israel's informers in Gaza handed over the locations of its homes and hideouts and the government of Gaza must be wondering if they can ever close down the spy rings. Hamas thought its militia was the Hizbollah – a serious error – and that the world would eventually come to its aid. The world (although not its pompous leaders) felt enormous pity for the Palestinians, but not for the cynical men of Hamas who staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 which killed 151 Palestinians. As usual, the European statesmen appeared hopelessly out of touch with what their own electorates thought.

And history was quite forgotten. The Hamas rockets were the result of the food and fuel siege; Israel broke Hamas's own truce on 4 and 17 November. Forgotten is the fact Hamas won the 2006 elections, although Israel has killed a clutch of the victors.

And there'll be little time for the peacemakers of Sharm el-Sheikh to reflect on the three UN schools targeted by the Israelis and the slaughter of the civilians inside. Poor old Ban Ki-moon. He tried to make his voice heard just before the ceasefire, saying Israel's troops had acted "outrageously" and should be "punished" for the third school killing. Some hope. At a Beirut press conference, he admitted he had failed to get a call through to Israel's Foreign Minister to complain.

It was pathetic. When I asked Mr Ban if he would consider a UN war crimes tribunal in Gaza, he said this would not be for him to "determine". But only a few journalists bothered to listen to him and his officials were quickly folding up the UN flag on the table. About time too. Bring back the League of Nations. All is forgiven.

What no one noticed yesterday – not the Arabs nor the Israelis nor the portentous men from Europe – was that the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting last night was opening on the 90th anniversary – to the day – of the opening of the 1919 Paris peace conference which created the modern Middle East. One of its main topics was "the borders of Palestine". There followed the Versailles Treaty. And we know what happened then. The rest really is history. Bring on the ghosts.

A Pointless War Has Led to a Moral Defeat for Israel

Editorial
January 18, 2009
The Guardian

In historical terms, it is impossible to separate Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza from the long narrative of conflict and mutual grievance in the region.

In geographic terms, the war over a tiny plot of land cannot be detached from the wider involvement and strategic interests of other countries: Syria, Egypt, the US, Iran.

All of which makes it difficult to judge where - even if a unilateral Israeli ceasefire holds - the war really begins and ends.

That fact alone explains why the operation represents a defeat for Israel, as was always likely to be the outcome. The notion that the country's security problems can be resolved by the unilateral use of extreme force is a persistent delusion among Israeli politicians. In this case, the problem was perceived to be Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel; the solution was judged to be a war against Hamas. That analysis did not allow for the vital, humane recognition that, in densely populated Gaza, an all-out war against Hamas is, by necessity, an attack on the civilian population.

Even on its own terms, the campaign has failed. Israeli authorities will insist that they have limited the ability of Hamas to launch rocket attacks. But the ostensible war aim was destroying that capability completely.

Israel will also claim that its campaign has exposed a lack of support for Hamas in many Arab capitals; that Hamas' position as the ruling authority in Gaza has been undermined; and that Hamas has been revealed as little more than a terrorist proxy acting on behalf of and armed by Syria and Iran.

But the reality is that the status of Hamas as the preferred vehicle for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has been enhanced by the indiscriminate brutality of the military assault.

Meanwhile, that status guarantees the resurgence, in some form, of armed response, including rocket fire and terrorist attacks on Israeli soil. It is possible that Hamas' military capability has been drastically reduced. But even when Israel had full command of Gaza's external borders, it could not stop the trade in smuggled weapons. Sadly, Hamas will re-arm with or without a ceasefire agreement.

Meanwhile, any increased consideration of Iranian or Syrian sponsorship of terrorism will pale against global outrage at the extraordinary disregard shown by Israeli forces for the lives of Palestinian civilians. It is quite possible, as the Observer today reports, that an Israeli withdrawal will reveal evidence of actions deserving indictment as war crimes. Those allegations must be independently investigated.

Israel's allies in the west, chiefly the US, have traditionally defended the country on the grounds that it is a democracy besieged by despotic regimes and terrorists. But while Israeli citizens do enjoy immense political and social freedom, those values do not automatically prevent the state from committing atrocities.

The fact of Israeli democracy is not a reason to resist negotiations with Hamas. That was true before this pointless, brutal war and will remain so afterwards.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

sorry about the full text of these opinion pieces... I know they break the rules, but I also know fuck all people follow links

Gwynne Dyer: Uncle Sam shamed by fiery friend
4:00AM Wednesday Jan 21, 2009
By Gwynne Dyer

Middle East conflict

Ehud Olmert really doesn't care any more. He is serving out his time as Israel's Prime Minister until next month's election.

But then he will spend a long time fighting the corruption charges that forced him to resign, and he won't be going back into politics afterwards, even if he wins.

Not after two bloody, futile wars in three years, he won't. So he's very angry, and he tells it like it is.

On January 8, he had a problem. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was going to vote for a United Nations Security Council resolution that called on both Israel and its Palestinian enemy, Hamas, to accept a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, she had been largely responsible for writing it, and Olmert was furious. He wanted more time to hammer Hamas, so he phoned up George W. Bush and yanked on his choke-chain.

According to Olmert's account of what happened, given in a speech on January 13 in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon: "I said, 'Get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said, 'I don't care: I have to talk to him now'.

"They got him off the podium, brought him to another room, and I spoke to him.

"I told him, 'You can't vote in favour of this resolution.' He said, 'Listen, I don't know about it. I didn't see it. I'm not familiar with the phrasing'."

The President did as he was told: "Mr Bush gave an order to Secretary of State Rice and she did not vote in favour of it - a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised, and manoeuvred for," said Olmert triumphantly.

"She was left pretty shamed, and abstained on a resolution she arranged."

The Security Council passed the resolution 14-0, but the US abstained.

Senior Israeli politicians are usually much more circumspect about the nature of their relationship with the occupants of the White House, and Olmert's colleagues were appalled that his anger had led him to speak so plainly.

It is one thing to talk to the President of the United States that way. It is quite another thing to reveal to the American public that Israeli leaders talk to US presidents that way.

The Bush Administration, deeply embarrassed, tried to deny Olmert's account of the conversation. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the story was "just 100 per cent, totally, completely not true", and the White House deputy press secretary, Tony Fratto, said more cautiously that "there are inaccuracies" in Olmert's account of events.

Olmert's office replied curtly that "the Prime Minister's comments on Monday were a correct account of what took place". He really doesn't give a damn anymore.

Not only does the story humiliate Bush personally, but it gives wings to the suspicion, already widespread in the United States, that under Bush, the Israeli tail has consistently wagged the American dog.

Merely to mention this issue is still to court accusations of anti-Semitism, but the fear of such accusations that once silenced any serious examination of Israeli influence on American foreign policy has dwindled in the past few years.

Indeed, Olmert's little indiscretion has opened up a wider question: Is it normal for Israeli leaders to speak to American presidents like this?

There can be little doubt that Ariel Sharon, Olmert's predecessor, also spoke to Bush in a bullying way, because he bullied everybody. Did Benjamin Netanyahu give orders to Bill Clinton?

Probably not, because silken menace is more his style, but he certainly got his way almost all of the time. Did Yitzhak Shamir talk to George H.W. Bush that way? He wouldn't have dreamt of it, and the senior Bush would never have stood for it.

These discussions usually end up being about the alleged power of the "Jewish lobby" over US foreign policy, and in Congress it is obviously huge. The vast majority of the members of Congress will always vote for bills that involve aid or support for Israel, in many cases because they know what will happen at the next election to those who don't.

But the key foreign policy decisions are made in the White House, not in Congress, and the presidency is different.

At the top, it really depends on who the president is. Ronald Reagan always gave Israel everything it wanted, whereas Bush senior forced Shamir to start talking to the Palestinians after the first Gulf War and paved the way for the Oslo accords and the "peace process". The United States is still a sovereign country, and it can choose its own Middle East policy if it wishes.

Which way will it go under the new administration? Well, can you imagine Barack Obama letting an Israeli prime minister talk to him like that?

* Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London.

I hardly see it an acceptable outcome if Muslims ran Israel

I hardly see it an acceptable outcome if Muslims ran Israel - Muslim states are horrid in their treatment of non-Muslims and women...