I'm not going to defend what this guy said, but do you realize how pointless it is? You can find quotes from legislators in every government around the world most likely that is equally offensive about some group they deal with. You made him sound a little more important by leaving off that he's the deputy minister of RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS. He's basically a fundamentalist rabbi, the equivalent of the thousands of Muslim clerics that spew garbage on that level or worse every day.
Did Israel ever lie and say they didn't hit the school? I thought they said they weren't sure but that it might have been rockets from Hamas. And then weren't they the ones who admitted it? It wasn't a foreign agency proving it was it?
But you see how there's an impulse within the pro-Israel community to cry fowl over Hamas' decades old mission statement and underplay any racist or fascist declarations emanating from within israeli civil and political society today? That's why it's relevant to share this quote in this thread, it is very much the opposite of pointless.
Their politicians have said the same thing. This is my point and it affects me personally being a US tax payer.. Both sides suck. Stop funding them. Let Israel handle their own business. Ooh that's right, they would be doomed without us.
Again, that is a single member of the legislator. The leader of Hamas called for the death of Israel as a state and the humiliation of it every day. He called the kidnapping and murder of 3 Israel teens a heroic act. He claims that the holocaust is an exaggerated event and that the Jews have done worse to the Palestinians. These are just quick references.
It really isn't. I would recommend that you go visit it. You seem to be a great guy. I think it could open your eyes to just go and visit it. I believe s land balla did go. Also, I was trying to find the actual quote from Eli Ben Dahan you quoted. All I could find were two letters to the editors of Pakistani online papers where the same person writing the letter to the editor (a guy called Farruk Billal) attributed this quote to this man. No actual media source which I could find reports that quote. Can you provide a source? It seems like something one would (rightly) get fired for, if true, so I would find it surprising if this quote is actually correct.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-chief-claims-no-responsibility-for-kidnapping-but-praises-it/ Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal on Monday praised the June 12 kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers as a heroic act but denied having any information on the abduction In a lengthy interview with Al-Jazeera on Monday evening, Mashaal insisted that Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, abducted while hitchhiking in the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem, were “settlers and soldiers in the Israeli army.” “No one claimed responsibility so far. I can neither confirm [Hamas's responsibility] nor deny it,” Mashaal said, quickly adding that the circumstances of the kidnapping were more important than the perpetrators. “Blessed be the hands that captured them,” Mashaal said. “This is a Palestinian duty, the responsibility of the Palestinian people. Our prisoners must be freed; not Hamas’s prisoners — the prisoners of the Palestinian people.” The “disappearance,” as he termed it, took place in the West Bank, an area he said was considered occupied “even by the United States.” Secondly, the three were not “youths, as Israel calls them, but first and foremost settlers … and not even regular settlers, but armed ones.” Mashaal promptly produced a photocopied page, reproduced from a viral Palestinian Facebook post juxtaposing the photo of Naftali Fraenkel with that of Israeli “Big Brother” contestant Itai Wallach posing with blindfolded Palestinians during his military service. Mashaal claimed the two were one and the same. “This is a very important aspect which should be mentioned,” Mashaal said. “They [the three youths] are combatants. Settlers in the West Bank are a disaster … they burn agricultural produce, kill children by running them over, invade homes, burn mosques and attack churches.” Mashaal blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the abduction, lambasting his insensitivity to the plight of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike. The Al-Jazeera interview will make it impossible for Abbas to continue cooperating with Mashaal if Hamas’s involvement in the kidnapping is proved “I ask the families of these three soldier-settlers: Had Netanyahu heard the voice of these hunger strikers … would the Palestinian situation be so stressed? … had Netanyahu not provoked us in Jerusalem by Judaizing it, would Palestinians be as angry?” “The one who lost these three [youths] is Netanyahu by ignoring the Palestinian suffering and provoking our people,” Mashaal said. Throughout the interview, Mashaal was careful in his attempt to both justify armed resistance and at the same time avoid directly confronting PA President Mahmoud Abbas, his partner in a Palestinian unity government declared June 2. But the Al-Jazeera interview will make it impossible for Abbas to continue cooperating with Mashaal if Hamas’s involvement in the kidnapping is proved. Hamas, Mashaal asserted, is “one movement” in which the armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, is subordinate to the political bureau even if it is not directly ordered to carry out specific operations. “I, Khaled Mashaal, and my brothers in the political bureau, claim full responsibility for any action carried out by any member of the movement,” he said. “But Hamas is not a small shop; it’s a large movement, and every person knows his role in it.” The ideological rift between Hamas and Abbas’s Palestinian Authority concerning Israel, kept so far on the back burner, is becoming harder to hide. Abbas and other Fatah officials have repeatedly declared that Hamas had acquiesced to the peaceful resolution of the conflict. But Mashaal asserted that the contrary was true; that in fact Fatah had agreed in the 2011 Cairo reconciliation document to releasing prisoners “by all means.” “It is unacceptable for any Palestinian official, big or small, to say ‘if it is proved,’” Mashaal charged, referring to PA threats to end the unity pact if Hamas is demonstrated to be behind the kidnapping. “It is illogical for us to warn or threaten each other. Suppose that it is Hamas … suppose that it’s a member of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades or the PA security agencies … will we condemn ourselves?” An Israeli defense official last week charged Mashaal with possibly giving the green light to the kidnapping. In a speech Mashaal delivered last month in Doha, Qatar, where he resides, he declared that Hamas’s military wing would “provide a response” to the plight of hunger-striking Hamas political prisoners in Israeli jails.
I'll probably have to go Israel for work one day and I was looking forward to it before the tension picked up again. I have plenty of co-workers that were ex-pats there. They said you would be surprised of the number of Israeli's that get along fine with Arabs and the number of Israeli's that disagree with their government's actions. You find that here in America as well. They come visit our HQ here as well. Nice people really although their work mentality differs from ours (very self-centered, non-team oriented, etc). On your second point, I can look for a source.
I've been many times. It's not a terrorist organization. It's an apartheid state engaging in terrorist tactics to ethnically cleanse land it believes belongs to it because Methuselah.
My point was that word gets so loosely thrown around by us Americans. Anyone fights us or an ally..they're terrorists and they very well may be but sometimes you have to look at yourself in the mirror too.
Were the three 'teenagers' committing crimes at the time? Surely. They were settlers. And surely, if a Palestinian of age 17 committed a crime by being in Israel illegally, the Israelis would incarcerate him without charge. Now I must say, the death of innocent civilians is very regrettable, and I have previously condemned the act in question. I'm simply drawing attention the the overlooked fact that the three teens lived illegally in illegal settlement blocks and were kidnapped while doing so.
I can confirm that. But that's part of what makes Israel so much better than Palestinian-run Gaza: It's ok to openly disagree with your government, to protest and to criticize. It's a democracy. I am not saying that the Israeli government is doing everything right, far from it. But they allow for a lot more freedom and in general, Arabs and Jews are living peacefully along each other. The problem are the extremists on both sides; sadly, the extremists on the Palestinian side are much more strongly represented in their government than the extremists are represented in Israeli society (although they exist as well, and have influence - I am not denying that at all - these extremist settlers are just as bad as Hamas to me).
I previously apologized for having called you a Hamas sympathizer, but sadly, you are presenting the exact same argument as the leader of the terrorist organization Hamas.
Sadly, I care not for what you think, for you think not quite clearly, or honestly, if I may say. Were they settlers and are the settlements illegal? Yes, they were. And yes, they are illegal according to most everyone in the world, including every American government since the first settlement in the West Ban--err, I mean Judea and Samaria.
Haha I'll take your non-answer to be tacit confirmation of the above. Ya, it is terrible that they were. And it is terrible that every 3 days for the last decade, one Palestinian child has died at Israel's hands. Gigs up ATW, jump ship homie
I think we can agree that both sides are at fault and living peacefully should be the common goal but there's too much blood for it to ever happen (so it seems). The people (leaders?) of Palestine will never be happy about the amount of land that has been taken and the lack of basic freedoms. Just look now..Palestinians have no where to go. Gaza is their proverbial prison. Their economy will always be crap...did you see the list of things they want? Are those unrealistic 'demands'? And I'm not too sure about Israel being a true democracy. Did you see the video of the American Jew who was treated like crap a few weeks ago? We saw this in Egypt. These countries are all the same.
