lightly amended:
Absolutely succinct professor! Nothing to add; what you say can only be expanded.
Permit me to add some of the less succinct : As Abraham Lincoln opined, "A house divided against itself cannot stand" and so, with the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate under whose jurisdiction Palestine was but a province of Syria – so many years later the time tested and proven doctrine of "divide and rule" was effected on the possibility of a united Palestinian front against Holy Israel.
The murder of the three Israeli teens, even though to this day denied by Hamas, whipped up Israel's revenge mood and fanned the flames of war against Hamas - a war to the finish which 80% of Israelis are said to support up till today.
I don't know exactly what kind of stuff the IDF rabbis teach Israel's warriors of today but must confess that I am a little biased after reading through some of the grizzly parts of Parshat Devarim, this Sabbath's Torah Portion (in which Gaza is mentioned): The Prophet Moses speaking (at a time when the Geneva Convention had not yet been concocted):
Deuteronomy 2: 32-35 "Sihon went out towards us – he and his entire people – for battle, to Jahaz. Hashem our God gave him before us and we smote him and his sons and his entire people. We captured all his cities at that time, and we destroyed every populated city, with the women and small children; we did not leave a survivor. Only the animals did we loot for ourselves, and the booty of the cities that we captured."
The Prophet Moses celebrates some more divinely ordained carnage and genocide in Deuteronomy 3: 1- 7
But I'm even more biased after digesting the following commentaries on this Sabbath's Torah Portion, starting with "May I sit and cry with you?"
It's important to make a distinction between secular Fatah's decline into corruption, mismanagement, conspicuous consumption, toothlessness, and the meteoric ascendancy of Islamic Hamas which was born in 1987 as the purifier, conscientiously engaged in social and community work – schools, hospitals, clinics - the schools as indoctrination centres to impart jihadist zeal to the babies, along with their mother's milk. And so the blind Sheikh Yassin, Hamas' spiritual leader was assassinated, targeted from an Apache helicopter as he made his way to the mosque in his wheelchair, on his way to performing his morning prayer; he was murdered because he was preaching resistance "by any means necessary". In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual adviser Mohammed Badie will also be executed or imprisoned for life, for the same reason
I missed Rabbi Ari Enkin's webinar on "Gaza: From Torah Times to Terror Tunnels" – in spite of which I venture to question whether Gaza was or is part of the holy land promised to the Jewish people by Hashem.
Iron dome has been successfully tested and is still being advertised (the orders will soon be rolling in) - thus far at least tested against Gaza's effete missiles, not exactly of the same calibre as the one that brought down Flight M17 over Eastern Ukraine.
As to the blood libel, the ignoramuses don't understand that kosher rules forbid the faithful not only cannibalism but also the eating or drinking blood, whether human or animal. But what's the poetic difference between Jews using the blood of Palestinian children to bake Passover's unleavened bread and the cemeteries of Gaza being soaked with Palestinian children's blood? Wasted blood?
Lastly, Gaza is certainly a test case. Sharon made Gaza judenrein in 2005 did not hand over to any authority, just left Gaza and for the reasons that you have given, imposed the land air and sea blockade and want the people of Gaza to believe that living in an open-air prison is the same as Freedom.
Gaza which has been the recipient of all this bombardment is a mere 360 km² in size (the Gambia is 11,300 km², Nigeria is 923,768 km²) so the minuscule Gaza strip is a test case for a two state solution, which in my view will never come into existence without the complete demilitarisation of Gaza and the West Bank + Israel being assured secure and defendable borders now and for all eternity.
From another discussion of Gaza I said : " as many others will continue to observe, the Hamas government has obviously invested tons of money digging and cementing tunnels from which to infiltrate Israel, in acquiring rockets, missiles, preparing for their jihad against Israel - the state that they say they do not recognise and will never recognise - money that could have been put to better use in improving the Gaza people's quality of life even under the air, sea and land blockades imposed by Israel - and more recently Pharaoh El-Sisi's Egypt.
In my humble opinion, the wisest course of action that's up to the Hamas leadership to take right now is for them to ask for a ceasefire/ truce, during which the IDF would be permitted to dismantle their stockpile of rockets, missiles, and destroy the remaining tunnels that will be destroyed, peacefully, without any innocent Gaza bystanders being blown up in the process...and to undertake to not smuggle in new weapons, rockets, missiles and to not use valuable cement for tunnel building instead of reconstruction - to ensure that the air, land and sea embargo is lifted."
| ▪ |
From Cornelius Adebayo over here in our peaceful corner in
On Saturday, 2 August 2014 00:06:07 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:
just a quick historical question. perhaps cornelius can confirm what i think i've learned:
israel supported the creation of hamas to split palestinian support away from the plo, away from arafat, whom they wanted to weaken.
then hamas grew, to israel's supprise? and anyway it became the most popular in gaza where miserable conditions fostered more radical responses. hamas got elected, and against the palestinian authority's weakness, chased the p.a. out of gaza, to the west bank ywhere the now rule, with israeli support. israel has tried desperately since then to split the palestinians between the two, and when the p.a. allied itself with hamas, israel ratcheted up the screws against gaza. in fact, the blockade against gaza, which has destroyed a livable life in gaza, was due to this political decision to try to turn the gazans against hamas. now hamas and the p.a. have come together again, whereupon the israeli participation in the peace process ended. this war seems to be the punishment of hamas for having risen in gaza and now for allying with the p.a., with the result that israel now sees itself facing not a pacified p.a., but a united, and more militantly oppositional, palestinian community.
is this correct?
ken
On 8/1/14 10:21 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
...Sir ,
The democratically elected Hamas are now part of a unity government endeavour. Of course, should there be elections in the West Bank tomorrow, Israel is afraid that Hamas might easily win the day at the ballot box - and not Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah which is seen as increasingly toothless in its peace talks with Israel who go on with settlement expansion like never before.
The latest announcement from Fatah's spokesman is that all the Palestinians are united with their brothers and sisters in Gaza and that Hamas is a part of the PLO.
What's happening is not pretty. Some of my personal views about what's happening have been posted here the past couple of days...
On Friday, 1 August 2014 12:48:47 UTC+2, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:"However there would have been no need
for Israel to break international laws if the
Hamas had not kept on provoking Israel in the first
instance."
Ola
Who is 'provoking" who? Who was the first provocateur? HAMAS critics argue that the HAMAS government in Gaza is not democratic. They say the Israeli government is. If this is so, which government should have superior values and be held to a higher standard of humanity I dare to ask?
oa
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@
googlegroups.com ]
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 6:18 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com; okonkwo...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flames
Dear All
There is no doubt that Israel is breaking international laws
and that she is getting away with it under the leadership
of Benjamin Nettanyau who is as much as war monger as any
Hamas leader could be.
However there would have been no need
for Israel to break international laws if the
Hamas had not kept on provoking Israel in the first
instance.
The state of Israel has no other choice but to protect her citizens.
If the Hamas keeps on using its civilians as sacrificial lambs to shield its troops
from Israel's superior firepower, one can hardly blame only the state of Israel
for the thousands of civilians including infants and school children
who have been either killed or wounded
during the ongoing Israeli counter-offensive.
The leadership of the Hamas are fully aware that that Israel's war doctrine
is to deploy overwhelming disproportionate
force in retaliation for any attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens,
The Hamas must learn the lesson that it is suicidal to keep
on provoking wars it knows it cannot win and that if by chance
it ever appears it might be winning, such an anticipated victory would be truncated
by the increase in supplies of ammunitions and logistics to Israel by the USA and other western countres
to bolster the Israeli efforts.
Only ruthless religious ideologues keep on year in and year out using its peoples
as guinea pigs for the testing of the
latest weaponry from Israel, the USA and other western countries,
The rest of the world must tell the Hamas and her dwindling number of Arab supporters that
it must learn to live and let live.
The only solution to the Palestinian-Isreali dispute is a two state solution!
The state of Israel is here to stay; it is not going anywhere.
Nettanyau and the rest of the Israeli leadership must also realize that her citizens
would know no lasting peace until it agrees to meet the Palestinians in the middle.
israel must stop building settlements on Palestinian lands!
Bye,
Ola--a strong supporter of Palestinian rights who is currently fed up with Hamas tactics.
---- Original Message ----
From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Jul 31, 2014 6:17 pm
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flamesthis is completely true
here is the amnesty international report that details these violations: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israelgaza-conflict- questions-and-answers-2014-07- 25
ken
On 7/31/14 4:35 PM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) wrote:
In Gaza, International Law Is Up in FlamesIn a flagrant violation of international law, Israel's assault on Gaza has killed hundreds of civilians and devastated civilian infrastructure.By Phyllis Bennis<http://fpif.org/authors/phyllis-bennis/> , July 30, 2014. Originally published in OtherWords<http://otherwords.org/israel-violates- .international-law-in-gaza/> Israel is imposing collective punishment against all Gazans, attacking hospitals, schools, and power stations.As Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip rages on, ceasefires come and go. Most last just long enough for Palestinians to dig out the dead from beneath their collapsed houses, get the injured to overcrowded and under-resourced hospitals, and seek enough food and water to last through the next round of airstrikes."There is nothing left but stones," Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer quoted an old woman saying as she searched desperately through the rubble of what had been her home.Casualties are soaring. By late July, Israel had killed more than 1,100 Palestinians<http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/29/world/meast/ -- at least 73 percent of them civilians<http://www.npr.org/mideast-crisis/> blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/28/ , including hundreds of children. Fifty-six Israelis, almost all of them soldiers, have died too.336000847/conflict-in-gaza- heres-what-you-need-to-know- today> A July 28 poll<http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/ shows that 86.5 percent of Israelis oppose a ceasefire. Yet we continue to hear that Israelis want peace.Poll-865-percent-of-Israelis- oppose-cease-fire-369064> It's true that at least some of them do. An Israeli protest in Tel Aviv brought 5,000 people into the street. That's good -- though a far cry from the 400,000 who poured into the streets to protest Israel's invasion of Lebanon back in 1982.And when a young Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and tortured to death -- burned alive -- in Jerusalem after the bodies of the three kidnapped young Israeli settlers were found, many Israelis tried to distance themselves from the horrific crime. "In our society, the society of Israel, there is no place for such murderers," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed.But in fact, there is a place for those who call for murder -- at the highest political and military levels of Israeli society.Meet Ayelet Shaked<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/ , a member of the Knesset -- Israel's parliament. She belongs to Israel Home, a far-right party in Netanya hu's governing coalition. She issued on Facebook what amounts to a call to commit genocide, by deliberately killing Palestinians, including women, children, and old people.2014/07/07/israeli-politician- declares-war-on-the- palestinian-people.html> "The entire Palestinian people is the enemy," Shaked posted. "In wars, the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure."The Knesset member went on to say that the mothers of Palestinians killed should follow their dead sons to Hell: "They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."Her language reminds me of a chapter in our own history -- the genocidal Indian Wars. U.S. military leaders had called on their troops to wipe out all the Native American. Col. John Chivington<http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/ was asked on the eve of the Sand Creek Massacre about killing Cheyenne children. "Kill and scalp all, big and little -- nits make lice," he replied.four/whois.htm> Shaked's comments also echo the words of an Israeli colonel<http://www.hrw.org/de/news/2010/09/24/yes-war-does- who testified under oath at the wrongful death trial of Rachel Corrie, a young U.S. peace activist killed by an Israeli soldier driving an armored bulldozer in Gaza. "In a war zone there are no civilians," said the military officer -- who was responsible for training Is raeli soldiers to serve in the occupied territories.have-rules> There's no question that Hamas' primitive rockets violate international law. They can't be accurately aimed at military targets. But that doesn't justify Israel's violation of its own obligations under international law as the occupying power in Gaza.
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