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Gaza: Israel has no right to inflict terrorism on the Palestinians
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Eric Waugh's article (Belfast Telegraph, January 6) is a typically thoughtful piece, but one which uncharacteristically misses a fundamental point about the present bloody events in Gaza.
He is quite right that no one with an ounce of humanity would deny the right of Israel both to exist and to have peace and security for its citizens. Equally, he is correct that Hamas has no right to inflict terrorism on Israel. However, by the same token, Israel has no right to inflict terrorism on Palestinians. No ‘buts'. No qualifiers.
Having heard such weasel words from all sides for 30 years over here, I find sickening Israeli spokespeople dismissing ‘collateral damage' in Gaza by saying that ‘Hamas bears responsibility for the violence'. It is an inescapable conclusion that the Israeli Defence Forces now regularly kills innocent Palestinian civilians with the same brutal disregard their American mentors have shown in recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Am I alone in feeling my stomach churn when I hear Tzipi Livni and neo-fascist ‘Bibi' Netanyahu electioneering on a platform of how to deal with Hamas?
For people whose history has been so scarred, current events seem to show that many in Israel have not absorbed the need for humanity towards others — the very humanity their people were denied in the past. The need for humanity, Eric, is a subject on which we must lecture the Israelis until they get the message. There is no difference between paramilitary terrorism and state terrorism. Both are evil and wrong.
But until they do, where are the voices of the children who day and daily are being killed and maimed to be heard? Drowned out, I'm afraid, by explosions and the babble of petty-minded apologists clamouring in one-sided justification of Israeli state terrorism.
BRIAN SCOTT
Belfast
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24 Comments
Typical leftist alternate-reality editorializing. The Arabs lost the '67 war and no longer have any right to "Palestine." End of story.
Posted by KB | 04.02.09, 19:50 GMT
AJC, you need two sides for a discussion/negotiation and Hamas have made it only too clear that a peaceful solution is completely against their principles! To quote directly from their charter: "Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement."
Does this sound like a partner interested in peace?? Should Israel pin them down and force them to talk with a gun to their head?? While you would be busy trying to converse with such people, they would most likely shoot you dead, round up your family, friends and neighbours and kill them too (for being infidels - also an clear instruction in their charter) and then laugh as you try and blame Israel for these actions too.....
Posted by Robert Clayton | 27.01.09, 16:14 GMT
Robert – you admit that it was obvious that an attack on Gaza would kill many children – so Israel in its calculations was prepared to kill over 300 innocent children? And to what purpose? The Hamas rockets (and all accept they were wrong) were killing roughly 6 Israelis per year. This is much less than the death rate caused by the IRA here, but you would never have advocated the Army respond in NI as the Israelis responded in Gaza – or would you?
Talking to the elected representatives of terrorist groups solved Ulster’s problems – painful and unpleasant as that may have been, it was better than the choice made by Israel in Gaza.
You issue the challenge: What would I do? I would talk to the people the Palestinians of Gaza elected. I would look for a political and not a military solution.
Posted by AJC | 26.01.09, 22:43 GMT
According to The Times, 45% of Gaza's population are children under the age of 14. Therefore, when Hamas brought a war upon Gaza, it was inevitable and unavoidable that children would be among the casualties. Hamas were well aware of this during their 8-year-long provocation of Israel (via thousands of rocket attacks).
AJC, are you suggesting Israel should allow itself to be constantly attacked without any form of defence or retaliation, because the Hamas terrorists choose to hide behind children? It took eight years of failed attempts to stop the rockets before the Israelis felt they had no choice but to attack Hamas murderers in Gaza.
Will anyone criticising Israel's actions please tell me how you would stop the attacks if you were Israel's prime minister, without using the words, "Well, I wouldn't do this, or this, or that".....what WOULD you do?? (this is the most basic question which no detractor of Israel will have the guts to even attempt to answer)
Posted by Robert Clayton | 21.01.09, 13:49 GMT
Robert, Israel may not celebrate the deaths of children, but it is killing them all the same. Israel claims the deaths are accidental in the same way the Omagh bombers claimed the deaths were accidental. But at least the Omagh bombers stopped after the first 30 murders. Israel has gone on to kill nearly 300 children.
Well done Brian Scott.
Posted by AJC | 15.01.09, 22:41 GMT
This story and the consequent comments are nothing more than drivel. Lets look at the facts.....Israel is the only free democracy in the Middle East; Israel is the only country in the Middle East where ALL religions are tolerated (and live freely and openly - including Muslims, who make up 20% of Israel's population); Israel contributes more to the world of health care and technology in proportion to its size than any other country in the world (just think....no cancer care without Israel, no computers or Internet, no mobile phones, the list continues); Israel is the only country in the Middle East where you can openly demostrate against the government; Arab-Israelis themselves would rather live in Israel than in fundamental Islamic countries
If Israel actively wanted to target Palestinian civilians, the death toll would be well into the hundreds of thousands now, not less than 1 thousand. However, unlike Hamas, Israel doesn't celebrate the death of civilians.....
Posted by Robert Clayton | 14.01.09, 16:29 GMT
Two wrongs do not a right make!!
Posted by Homer | 14.01.09, 10:06 GMT
I agree with your letter in principal Brian, but I have to disagree with one part. You say that There is no difference between paramilitary terrorism and state terrorism. Both are evil and wrong. I disagree, is it not the place of a democratic state to respect the rule of law and the rule of international law? For a state to ignore both it in effect makes them worse than terrorists who are not bound by such moral restrictions in the first place.
To Zen it may be Judeophobia, but it is my belief that the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto were right to fight the Nazi's and die on their feet fighting rather than on their knees in a gas chamber. Likewise it is right for the people of Palestine in the ghetto of Gaza to fight to remove the Israeli Jack Boot from thier necks and die on their feet fighting than huddled in the ground floor room of their house by Israeli bombing.
Posted by Bren | 14.01.09, 09:53 GMT
democracy ? and Gazans are not allowed to choose Hamas?
Why let American select a president that ruined America?
Let all Gazan children and civilian leave for say, West Bank and make Gaza an arena or if you wish a killing field for Hamas and Israeli soldiers. The world shall see the heros
Posted by heyhey | 14.01.09, 02:54 GMT
From its very inception Israel has committed itself to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine. Ethnic cleansing is fundamental to Israel's strategy to incorporate every inch of Palestine into Israel proper.
Israel has stopped at nothing to achieve this goal including mass murder, massacres, bulldozing villages, destroying life sustaining infrastructure, erecting concentration camps, starving...you name it, Israel has done it.
Now within Israel there is a growing demand to 'wipe out' every last Palestinian, men women and children. There is this sinking feeling that this malevolence has found purchase in the IDF's merciless campaign in the Gaza.
Israel , as it stands today, clearly has no right to exist! The world cannot allow such a state to exist.
Such malevolence should be dealt with using every available resource. Israel must change or die!
Posted by Matt | 13.01.09, 23:44 GMT
Brian...how would you like it if i were to rain rockets et-al down on your property...i dont expect you would feel GREAT about it. I detest(ALL) Insurgents
Posted by Anti-Hamas | 13.01.09, 21:18 GMT
Israel is a violently racist state, only able to do what it does through bribery of US politicians and control through ownership of most of the mainline US media, by way of the Jewish anti-American organisation known as AIPAC. See the book by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt called "The Israel Lobby" for info on Zionist-Jewish involvement in causing the illegal and catastrophic war on Iraq.
Posted by David | 13.01.09, 21:15 GMT
In the past many of us on the unionist side were impressed by the Israel’s robust response to terrorism and wished that the army would rain down death on the IRA units. (See photo of Peter Robinson Belfast Tele Photo Gallery of Troubles no 17) We instinctively side with the Israelis.
Looking at Gaza now, would any of choose to turn the clock back and have had our army try to solve our troubles by a similar bloodbath.
Israel has got it badly wrong. Our troubles were solved by the policing of the RUC and by negotiating with the elected representatives even when they had links with terrorism. Our Unionist spokesmen should be encouraging Israel to do the same. (280 children killed in 3 weeks – would be unacceptable in N. Ireland and is unacceptable in Gaza.)
Posted by Parent | 13.01.09, 20:22 GMT
Dear Brian,
You are not alone in your feelings. But, most people that are in support of Israel have lent themselves to one -sided indocrtination and rhetoric of Talmudic and political Zionists; that because a'state called Israel' has been established' the true hope and dream of the Jew they must get rid of all Palestinians; rob, kill and destroy their existence. This deception and duplicitous nature of what Israel has said and done over the years, and gotten away with concerning the Palestinians, is now surfacing for all the world to see. Many will not look at it. But you and I know because "we are our brothers keeper, and what they do to them, they do to us." The lights are clearly being shined into the darkness of this state terrorism which they will deny has been perpetrated in stages as genocide upon a selective group of humans. Sorrow is in my heart over the massacre we have seen. A true abandoning of conscience has been taught to Israel. They will not listen to you or to me.
Posted by Anne | 13.01.09, 19:44 GMT
Stuart, once the illegal occupation ends and the seige of Gaza has been lifted the rockets will stop. Their rockets are a pretty weak comparison to the Israeli slaughter, they are not even remotely dangering to the Israeli people. They are a desperate cry for help which has been ignored for decades, although violence from either side will solve nothing. Israel are the real terrorists claiming they are democratic. It is pretty obvious they plan to wipe out an entire race and only let the West view media censored by them. Typical.
Posted by kam | 13.01.09, 18:57 GMT
This is a good article. You see you can flout international law as long as you have the protection of that expert in terrorism the USA. Israel has flagrantly ignored Resolutions 242, 339 and 1442 of the UN because they are backed up by the USA. The people of Gaza have been reduced to abject poverty by the Israelis, and under international law you have a right to defend yourself against occupation: I am not for a moment excusing the terrible rockets fired by Hamas, but these people are desperate and Israel is committing appalling war crimes against these people. They are using phosphours bombs. Do the people who support Israel realise the appalling situation of the Palestinians that the Israelis subject them to everyday with blockades, apartheid, special areas for those awful colonists and the Palestinians. I charge the Jewish State with the intention of exterminating the people of Gaza as I heard through the grapevine that there is a lot of natural gas near Gazas coastline.
Posted by Patrick Murphy | 13.01.09, 18:50 GMT
Is Israel's policy of murdering children their way of stopping the next generation of suicide bombers? If Israel cares for civilians why have they left over a million unexploded cluster devices in Lebanon after the 2006 war? Why do they bombard highly populated areas - the argument that Hamas hide behind their people doesn't wash - they are a populist people's militia made up of local street fighters as well as established troops. Why do the Israelis not allow the free western media into Gaza if they have nothing to hide?
BTW - Northern Ireland politics and Gaza bear no resemblance.
Posted by Agnostic | 13.01.09, 15:07 GMT
great letter brian, I agree with your point of view, just out of curiosity , the people who are pro-israeli, how many are unionists? quite a lot id say
Posted by Michael | 13.01.09, 13:15 GMT
John# It would be dogmatic to maintain that the toddlers of Gaza Strip are directly responsible for the consequences of Israeli defensive action. However, the fate of Gaza Strip's toddlers is the responsibility of their parents and/or extended families who do support Hamas in too many instances, and persist in underpinning Hamas and their ilk. It is immoral for non-Gazans to be held morally and financially hostage to the actions of Hamas and their advocates in Gaza Strip and beyond.
Posted by Charles Smyth | 13.01.09, 13:10 GMT
Stuart, you're saying all Palestinians support Hamas? What total and utter rot gut. I have been in the region - no they don't. Could you provide me with evidence to back your spurious claim? That's evidence, not personal opinion. That anyone thinks a toddler actually 'supports' a terrorist organisation is beyond belief. Please, engage brain before opening mouth.
Posted by John | 13.01.09, 12:29 GMT
24 Comments