15 yr old Florida teen attacked, imprisoned, denied medical treatment

Agreed

 

I apologize for having thought you like them, then.

 

ROFL!!!

 

Dude, 350 some rockets have been launched in the past 3 days at Israel. Israel also killed 8 Hamas terrorist trying to infiltrate Israel and kill innocent civilians.

"Who has Hamas managed to kill"...well if Israel wasn't able to shoot the rockets out of the sky the death toll in Israel would be just as high. I live in Tel Aviv and have had to run to a bomb shelter 6 times already. Many many more rockets in the south. Don't act like Hamas is innocent, I can respect a position against settlers because I myself also am against it and support a 2-state solution, but its this mentality that Hamas is a victim that sickens me and any civilized human being. It also is the reason the Palestinians are still living in ruble, here's a word of advice to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, don't declare in your charter that your end goal is the destruction of the Jewish people because funny enough, Jews take that a bit seriously.

 

Nuances tend to disappear when there are air raid sirens. I certainly wasn't terribly pleased when that **** would wake me up in the middle of the night -- and I lived in an old building in Florentin. No shelter for me. It meant crouching in the stairwell with my dog, who began to associate the Code Red with "Oh boy, we get to go for a walk!"

Hamas and the Likudniks have a similar problem. They benefit politically from conflict -- it makes the polls spike and makes people forget why they don't like their own leaders. In this specific case, I think the causus beli is even weaker than recent scuffles with Gaza. No proof has been offered to connect the kidnappers in Hebron with Hamas, and no one seems to have a problem with the double standard. When Beitar Ultras or Kahane-lovers commit a violent act, it's the unfortunate act of lone crazies and Peres or (or Livni or whatever token fig leaf in the government) will mug the camera with regret and calls for restraint, but when Palestinian extremists act on their own, the people of Gaza get collectively punished for not policing their own (which in this case is even more ludicrous considering the kidnappers were in the West Bank).

Since Nettanyahu knows that perception is 9/10s of statecraft, all he has to do is be rosh kattan about it and say that anyone that doesn't support him is siding with terrorists.

Hamas is just as cynical in their political manuevering and no one should have much sympathy for them, but no one with half a brain would think they have much to gain from this. They have never been weaker since taking power, for a lot of reasons. The new Egyptian leadership view them as enemies, their own popularity is in a lull among Palestinians, and they have even agreed to play junior partner to the PA (whom they hate as much if not more than anyone) with Abbas as president in order to break their own stalemate. Hamas knows that it will be held responsible for any attacks from within it's borders from whomever is trying to make a name from themselves. When it happens, it's seen (rightly) as a threat to their own leadership, since it invites retaliation from Israel and makes heroes of those from within that say Hamas isn't doing enough to "fight the good fight."

But the cynical truth is that when that retaliation does come, the leadership can breathe a sigh of relief as it sustains their support a little while longer. Gazans, much like Israelis, however much they dislike their own leaders like having rockets dumped on them understandably much less, and it's not exactly a simple matter to objectively intellectualize the exchange.

 

Get off it, I don't appreciate the crocodile tears.

We both know the ultimate goal of this Israeli government and Zionism today more generally. It is to finish the ethnic cleansing of 1948. To focus on Hamas is to really miss the tragedy here.

 

Exactly. No wonder israel funded Hamas during the 80s and well into the 90s. Hamas' continued existence benefits the state of Israel and it's propaganda machine more than it does anyone else. I mean just take this tread for example, most hasbarists will insist on directing all attention towards Hamas. Israel finds Hamas to be quiet convenient. Sure air sirens go off and bomb shelters await, but it's not like crude rockets can compare to the hyper advanced drone systems implemented ruthlessly by the Israeli Offense Forces, just as an example.

If only gazans had sirens and bomb shelters and an iron dome. They're still struggling to get food past the siege and into Gaza.

www.mondoweiss.net

 

You seem to have an extremely one-sided view of all of this. What is the ultimate goal of Hamas (as described in their charter), and weren't the majority of Palestinians supporting them, an offspring of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood? They are still shooting rockets at Israel. How can you just focus on the other side?

 

If Gazans had the weapons Israel has and Israel only had the weapons Gazans have, what do you HONESTLY think would happen?

 

Israel is still ethnically cleansing the land from the river to sea. It is an apartheid state and Hamas are terrorists who are resisting the onslaught of the 4th most powerful military in the world.

There are NOT SIDES to this, there's just the truth. I am living proof of it, my father's home was ethnically cleansed in 1948, it is now a suburb of Tel Aviv. My mother's town was ethnically cleansed in 1967, today it is a town choked off from the rest of civilization by the monstrous apartheid wall.

I'm sorry but it's not about taking sides. It's about facts on the ground.

 

Hamas has a history similar to the Mujahadin in Afgghanistan. They were the religious extremist nobody rivals to the secular (and much more popular) PLO. Hamas never had overwhelming support (and certainly not now) but rose to power as houstonhoya said, by clandestine support from Israel, similar to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" stuff the US did in the Cold War.

 

LOL, that's cute.

 

Gaza is an open air prison. They are people. They are not animals or brutes like you seem to want to characterize Gazans.

A gazan life should be treated the same as an Israeli life. But the government chooses not to. Why? Simply because Gazans are unfortunately not Jewish. So they must remain in the open air prison and once a year, they should be bombed with white phosphorous and cluster bombs. C'mon, let's be real.

 

Well said. Personally, I believe the Palestinian people would be better off without the PA, fatah, and Hamas. Bunch of crooks.

 

Here's a sober piece from the not-so-Jihadist Jewish Daily Foward:


How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza
Kidnap, Crackdown, Mutual Missteps and a Hail of Rockets
getty images

By J.J. Goldberg
Published July 10, 2014, issue of July 18, 2014.


In the flood of angry words that poured out of Israel and Gaza during a week of spiraling violence, few statements were more blunt, or more telling, than this throwaway line by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Brigadier General Moti Almoz, speaking July 8 on Army Radio’s morning show: “We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”

That’s unusual language for a military mouthpiece. Typically they spout lines like “We will take all necessary actions” or “The state of Israel will defend its citizens.” You don’t expect to hear: “This is the politicians’ idea. They’re making us do it.”

Admittedly, demurrals on government policy by Israel’s top defense brass, once virtually unthinkable, have become almost routine in the Netanyahu era. Usually, though, there’s some measure of subtlety or discretion. This particular interview was different. Where most disagreements involve policies that might eventually lead to some future unnecessary war, this one was about an unnecessary war they were now stumbling into.

Spokesmen don’t speak for themselves. Almoz was expressing a frustration that was building in the army command for nearly a month, since the June 12 kidnapping of three Israeli yeshiva boys. The crime set off a chain of events in which Israel gradually lost control of the situation, finally ending up on the brink of a war that nobody wanted — not the army, not the government, not even the enemy, Hamas.

The frustration had numerous causes. Once the boys’ disappearance was known, troops began a massive, 18-day search-and-rescue operation, entering thousands of homes, arresting and interrogating hundreds of individuals, racing against the clock. Only on July 1, after the boys’ bodies were found, did the truth come out: The government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas’ West Bank operations.

The initial evidence was the recording of victim Gilad Shaer’s desperate cellphone call to Moked 100, Israel’s 911. When the tape reached the security services the next morning — neglected for hours by Moked 100 staff — the teen was heard whispering “They’ve kidnapped me” (“hatfu oti”) followed by shouts of “Heads down,” then gunfire, two groans, more shots, then singing in Arabic. That evening searchers found the kidnappers’ abandoned, torched Hyundai, with eight bullet holes and the boys’ DNA. There was no doubt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately placed a gag order on the deaths. Journalists who heard rumors were told the Shin Bet wanted the gag order to aid the search. For public consumption, the official word was that Israel was “acting on the assumption that they’re alive.” It was, simply put, a lie.

Moti Almoz, as army spokesman, was in charge of repeating the lie. True, others backed him up, including Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. But when the truth came out on July 1, Almoz bore the brunt of public derision. Critics said his credibility was shot. He’d only been spokesman since October, after a long career as a blunt-talking field commander with no media experience. Others felt professional frustration. His was personal.

Nor was that the only fib. It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren’t acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas’ Hebron branch — more a crime family than a clandestine organization — had a history of acting without the leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests. Yet Netanyahu repeatedly insisted Hamas was responsible for the crime and would pay for it.

This put him in a ticklish position. His rhetoric raised expectations that after demolishing Hamas in the West Bank he would proceed to Gaza. Hamas in Gaza began preparing for it. The Israeli right — settler leaders, hardliners in his own party — began demanding it.

But Netanyahu had no such intention. The last attack on Gaza, the eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, targeted Hamas leaders and taught a sobering lesson. Hamas hadn’t fired a single rocket since, and had largely suppressed fire by smaller jihadi groups. Rocket firings, averaging 240 per month in 2007, dropped to five per month in 2013. Neither side had any desire to end the détente. Besides, whatever might replace Hamas in Gaza could only be worse.

The kidnapping and crackdown upset the balance. In Israel, grief and anger over the boys’ disappearance grew steadily as the fabricated mystery stretched into a second and third week. Rallies and prayer meetings were held across the country and in Jewish communities around the world. The mothers were constantly on television. One addressed the United Nations in Geneva to plead for her son’s return. Jews everywhere were in anguish over the unceasing threat of barbaric Arab terror plaguing Israel.

This, too, was misleading. The last seven years have been the most tranquil in Israel’s history. Terror attacks are a fraction of the level during the nightmare intifada years — just six deaths in all of 2013. But few notice. The staged agony of the kidnap search created, probably unintentionally, what amounts to a mass, worldwide attack of post-traumatic stress flashback.

When the bodies were finally found, Israelis’ anger exploded into calls for revenge, street riots and, finally, murder.

Amid the rising tension, cabinet meetings in Jerusalem turned into shouting matches. Ministers on the right demanded the army reoccupy Gaza and destroy Hamas. Netanyahu replied, backed by the army and liberal ministers, that the response must be measured and careful. It was an unaccustomed and plainly uncomfortable role for him. He was caught between his pragmatic and ideological impulses.

In Gaza, leaders went underground. Rocket enforcement squads stopped functioning and jihadi rocket firing spiked. Terror squads began preparing to counterattack Israel through tunnels. One tunnel exploded on June 19 in an apparent work accident, killing five Hamas gunmen, convincing some in Gaza that the Israeli assault had begun while reinforcing Israeli fears that Hamas was plotting terror all along.

On June 29, an Israeli air attack on a rocket squad killed a Hamas operative. Hamas protested. The next day it unleashed a rocket barrage, its first since 2012. The cease-fire was over. Israel was forced to retaliate for the rockets with air raids. Hamas retaliated for the raids with more rockets. And so on. Finally Israel began calling up reserves on July 8 and preparing for what, as Moti Almoz told Army Radio, “the political echelon instructed.”

Later that morning, Israel’s internal security minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told reporters that the “political echelon has given the army a free hand.” Almoz returned to Army Radio that afternoon and confirmed that the army had “received an absolutely free hand” to act.

And how far, the interviewer asked, will the army go? “To the extent that it’s up to the army,” Almoz said, “the army is determined to restore quiet.” Will simply restoring quiet be enough? “That’s not up to us,” he said. The army will continue the operation as long as it’s told.

The operation’s army code-name, incidentally, is “Protective Edge” in English, but the original Hebrew is more revealing: Tzuk Eitan, or “solid cliff.” That, the army seems to feel, is where Israel is headed.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/201764/...ggered-an-unintended-war/?p=all#ixzz375TYHzWR

 

Why don't they realize this and get rid of them? That would be a great first step.

 

Thank you. I really hope everyone reads this.

 

If the UK, US and Israeli governments enjoy all-time lows in popularity and can't seem to elect themselves any real change, you're asking a lot to expect Palestinians to do the same.

We don't all get to have Angela Merkel, you know!

 

You're an idiot

 

Save us the crocodile tears