Israel bomb hospital among other things

Israel is only as maniacal and as lunatic as the US allows it to be. Pressure has to be mounted toward the US if we want to see any fundamental change in Israel's regime. As long as the US funds and enables them, the killings and the settlement expansion will continue.

Why the **** would we not allow Israel to defend itself? Do you really know what's going on over there or did you just jump on the Israel did bandwagon?

killing unarmed civilian is not defence

One. If one is fired upon from position x one DEFENDS themselves by targeting that position. Two. HAMAS reports most casualties as civilian meaning their own soldiers, not civilians, are counted as such. You have no accurate way to judge how many civilians are killed. Three......unless Israel deliberately targets civilian peaceful areas......I don't buy it. Where are you from?

Illegal occupiers of land have no right to talk about self-defense. This would be true if Hamas and the Palestinians were illegally occupying parts of Israel.

If we go that route no one owns any land ever. But that is not how the world is founded. Israel is there. You want peace....get over it. Move on. They aren't going anywhere.

Yes, most of the world was founded on conquest, war crimes, genocide, rape and just about everything in between. You're not telling me anything, really.

I hope my bud Ali is okay. And any others that may be from there.

I hope he's fine as well. As far as others...well, there are 600 dead now so...

Others from here I meant.

But in general I hope, well I don't know what to hope but wish this stuff didn't have to happen

It's a bit like a full grown man locking up a 3 year old child without any food, then proceeding to kick the absolute shit out of them when they complain.

@poptart I would dispute that.

It's more like Liechtenstein gone suicidal with Austria over lost lands from 60 years ago. Austria puts a blockade on it to prevent it from bringing any further harm on it, seeing how Liechtenstein is hell-bent on fighting Austria. then as Liechtenstein goes to war by constantly firing rockets or attempted cross-border raids - is suddenly confronted with the partial force of Austria and is now crying foul because of the extremely unfair military advantage Austria wields over Liechtenstein. it's so bad that it's neighbor Switzerland (Egypt in this analogy) has joined in making the blockade more effective until Liechtenstein decides to come to it's senses.

The people of Gaza end up suffering in the end, for the political goals, ambitions and decisions made by their elected leadership.

Iran is moving towards developing nuclear weapons, they voted for Ahmadinejad, still means US and international crippling sanctions apply until Iran figures out nuclear weapons might not be a super great thing to have or to be going for. They voted for Rouhani later on but the nuclear issue has not been resolved yet, hence sanctions stay in place.

Amen, brother. I think Maddow and the rest of the shows on MSNBC have helped them shed most of their viewers over the past few years.

The rule of thumb is that when news is breaking and a crisis is unfolding, cable news networks see a big jump in viewership. Turns out that’s not the case if you are MSNBC. On the first full day of coverage of the Malaysia Airlines disaster and Israeli troop movement into Gaza the day before, the Comcast-owned news channel actually was down double digits among adults 25-54 both in total day and in primetime on July 18. While rivalsCNN and Fox News Channel were up 16% and 13% in total day over the comparable day last year, when the news was much quieter to say the least, MSNBC fell 38% to a mere 87,000.

Credit Yahoo!TV

Woof. Just put it out of its misery and all the shows along with it.

No, it's much, much worse.

**** that hospital. fox said they was hiding bandages of mass destruction in that motherfucker.

And people say Fox news is bad....

Makes sense. It's unfortunate that this happened. But it doesn't really seem like the Israelis had any good options: hitting the missiles obviously risks collateral damage, but that might be the only way to destroy those missiles without putting Israeli lives at risk.

@whipassmt: They could have disclosed the information they knew about the deaths of the teens instead of going on a two week tour claiming to rescue them. That might have helped save not only Israeli lives but Palestinians as well.

huh? Are saying that Hamas should've disclosed that information or Israel should've? I think you mean Hamas, but I'm not sure.

Good post.

I like Cenk Uygur's passion.

That lanbd has been lost in a 60 years process not suddenly 60 years ago. Austria also doesn't have multiple UN resolutions telling them that they are occupying land illegaly. Suddenly international law can be selectively followed or ignored? Good to know I guess. International law was created in order to prevent countries from taking land and resources from others as they please which is what Israel has been doing.

@whipassmt: Israel.

oh okay. Thanks for clarifying.

First of all, you're half right with this. The U.S. arguably armed the Israelis by supplying them with weapons, yes, but ever since West Beirut, Israel's been a fully autonomous nation, to say the least, and they'll be damned if the world thinks they answer to the U.S. Israel does whatever the hell it wants. The decision for Israel to attack Hamas, happens to be a decision the U.S. supports.

Your last sentence is complicated, and is kind of an overly simplistic simplification. I'm not privy as to what the U.S. still gives/trades with the Israelis in today's times, but by far the biggest thing a U.S. presence in Israel does is prevent any involvement from Russia. If the U.S. wasn't there, Israel would have been wiped off the map a long time ago.

@sibu_xgamer - It seems to me that whenever anyone wants to bring up international law, they don't tend to read the fine details. Arabs (and i am one of them) really like to bring up international law against Israel, they bring up UN Resolution 242, but then negate to mention that on top of Israel pulling back from the captured '67 territories, that Israel is to have strong defensible borders.

At it's narrowest point between West Bank and Mediterranean sea it is 9 miles. That is indefensible for any army. Now there can be a security arrangement reached between the new Palestine and Israel but if anyone has bothered to watch Arab or Palestinian TV in Arabic you'll come to find that they're really not even interested in Israel existing in the first place. Which then goes on to negate UN Resolution 181, which the Arabs acted against in 1948 waging the war against the new Israel and in which Israel ended up winning and increasing it's territorial hold. the 1956 war and UN Resolution 242 essentially made 1967 borders the internationally recognized borders, which are greater then what was given in 1948 original partitioning.

International Law only seems to apply when people want them to be applied.

If your talking settlements then I agree, I think they're illegal and i don't buy the Israeli argument, but again, it's been decades and the problem largely been on the Arab side, they have to come to terms that an Israel exists, i think the Arab leaders know it and accepted the reality. the Arab on the street however it's a very very different story. the issue of Right of Return will need to be a mixture of Arabs taking them in, Israel taking some in, new Palestine taking some in, and international body taking them in.

so it's not like the Arabs are super ideologically strict about international law. in fact i'd ask and welcome you to come to any of the 22 Arab states and tell me that they're all like Sweden when it comes to human rights, and we are much more humane in modern warfare then Israel with it's nasty leaflets, phone calls and roof tapping warnings. in Syria they do helicopter barrel bombings, which i hear is a blast in the neighborhoods...

I even often hear from friends in Bahrain that they won't respect Israel until they can treat their Arab Israeli citizens better. this coming from Arabs - like myself - who couldn't say a negative thing to our leadership or the clergy without losing our jobs and being thrown in jail for 20 years. remember even in glamorous fabulous Dubai, you can't say anything negative about the city without getting jailed. the same group of friends that don't recognize Israel's right to exist demand that Israel take better care of the Arabs then the Arabs take care of themselves?! the irony is lost on them....

A Saudi human rights lawyer recently went to jail for 15 years for the crime of inciting public opinion...

The problem for the Arabs in the end with Israel, especially the Palestinians when negotiating. is that the Arabs are in no position to threaten Israel physically, it's a nuclear powered nation, many of it's weapon system are positively future-war like. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen are on fire, Egypt is teetering on bankruptcy and has a smaller GDP then Israel does (and keep in mind Egypt is 80 million people vs Israel's 7 million) and a FAR higher poverty level, Lebanon is Belgium with a cancerous growth called Hezbollah. the Palestinians are helpless militarily-speaking, the Gulf states are at the moment largely insulated thanks to high-oil prices and can manage stability despite internal problems and threats from Iran. Everyone else in the Arab nation is either too far away or too small to matter.

So militarily it's impossible to threaten Israel physically, not to mention watch how the international community would react to wiping out a UN member state (same as what happened with Kuwait).

and it turns out, you can't negotiate Israel out of existence either....

But the Arab persist in this notion of eradicating the state, and no Palesitnian leader has the gall to share Jerusalem, accept limited and multilateral right of return, and land swaps based primarily on the 1967 borders. in fact some in the PLO consider this path to peace as only a temporary stepping stone to eradication of the state.

So while i think the Israeli settlements are illegal and need to be pulled back. keep what i said in mind whenever you think the Israeli leadership whether left or right wing, is being a dick in negotiations. y ou don't speak or understand Arabic, what they tell you in the West is not always the same what they say in the Arab world.

I can tell you when they say "Palestine from the river to the sea" they're not talking just West Bank and Gaza, but all of it....

If after reading all this you still wanna argue that i'm wrong, then i suggest you

Israel's illegal occupation, civillian killings and settlement expansion doesn't conflict with US interests. If it did, they would suspend support for the state just as they do with other states that conflict with it's power. They are plenty of "fully autonomous" states that have had sanctions imposed on them by the US.

I seriously hate these new forums....

Therein lies the moral ambiguity of Israel's responses to provocation: aka massive overreaction. It is the same thought process that results in hundreds for one prisoner swaps and seems built into the DNA of the Israeli state right from the beginning. You start making decisions that kill dozens or hundreds or thousands of civilians because you value your own sides lives much more greatly. We are all susceptible to that type of thinking as are our gov'ts, but at some point you cross a line. The hospital incident is a micro example, but I'd suggest that the decision to assault Gaza is the exact same illogic on a macro scale.

I think the Gaza decision was probably necessary. Israel would've have liked to be able to just use air-strikes and artillery without sending in ground troops, but they can't destroy Hamas' tunnels that way. That is why Israel is using ground troops, in order to destroy the tunnels, which may be a more important threat to Israel than the rockets since Israel has bomb-shelters and the Iron Dome to deal with rockets. If I recall correctly, 13 Hamas terrorist tried to use the tunnels to enter an Israeli kibbutz last week and planned on killing some of the residents and kidnapping the others. The Hamas plot was foiled, but I think that is what provoked the ground invasion.

From what I've heard, two-thirds of the Israeli population have to stay in bomb shelters because of the rocket fire (Israel is a small country, and Hamas' rockets are getting more sophisticated and capable of traveling further). Of course Israel is reacting the way it is.

Like I said hitting those missiles close the hospital is not a good thing for Israel, but neither is leaving the missiles in place and risk allowing them to be used against Israeli tanks.

If Hamas had accepted Egypt's cease-fire terms, then this whole ground assault wouldn't have happened.

That's again, an overly simplistic explanation. The U.S. does NOT agree with Israel all the time. Their have been NUMEROUS instances where Israel has simply ignored agreements we've had them. Examples are Israel entering West Beirut, which inevitably led to the Israeli forces massacring the civillians there, which received condemnation from the U.S. not only for the massacre, but because we had an agreement that they would not even enter Beirut in the first place.

Then of course, there is the Yom Kippur War which Israel almost lost before the U.S. airlifted thousands of tons of machinery to Israel which saved their ass. To thank us, they violated the UN peace treaty near the end of the war, crossed over the Suez Canal and almost destroyed Suez before the advance was halted. All of which were, again, in violation of the will of the United States, who merely wanted to use Egypt's surrender to wrest the country out of Soviet control.

Israel is disillusioned and thinks all of the surrounding nations are out to get them, and will attack at the slightest provocation. They will only listen to the U.S. up until they are attacked, at which point they will not stop until they face resistance, then maybe they will listen. If Israel is attacked during treaty negotiations, they will resume the fighting, as we've seen before in previous wars, and as we've seen just this week (NOTE: this time, I think its wholly justified that Israel retaliates).

If it were up to me, I would be tempted to sever ties with Israel and leave them to their own devices. At the same time, I am no expert in foreign policy, so I can only assume (and hope) that there's some damn good reasons why the U.S. continues it relationship with Israel.

I have a solution to solve this problem. America will let Israel have New Jersey. Seeing that it's the arm pit of New York and it's sort of shaped like Israel, we'll let them have it so long as they call it New Israel. All the Israelis would have to do is get used to a coast being on the opposite side of their country.

I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

You guys just never get tired of trying to demonize Israel.

And you use this far left nutbag site that makes fox and CNN look unbiased to make your point.

Wow..

It really isn't that delusional to think that.

they do that pretty well on their own mate

@SaudiFury:

I'm no expert on the matter (as tis obvious), however from what I have read over the years it seems a country is being slowly suffocated by sanctions causing abject poverty, and their response to often ineffective chucking of shit bombs by armed groups over the border is to employ full military offensives kicking the shit out of women/kids/etc. I could be wrong, but y'know tis in the papers n'all.

@poptart:

so if you admit to knowing very little on the subject , why make stupid comments?

and yes that statement you made is incorrect. as is that series of maps

Oh I know, they just attack completely unprovoked.

@Darkman2007:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/21/hospital-hamas-isreal-hiding-among-civilians?CMP=twt_gu

I didn't realise you had to be an expert to post an opinion. If you're looking for expertise on the conflict I would recommend avoiding a fucking gaming forum for starters.

@poptart said:

@SaudiFury:

I'm no expert on the matter (as tis obvious), however from what I have read over the years it seems a country is being slowly suffocated by sanctions causing abject poverty, and their response to often ineffective chucking of shit bombs by armed groups over the border is to employ full military offensives kicking the shit out of women/kids/etc. I could be wrong, but y'know tis in the papers n'all.

What country?

@-Sun_Tzu-:

Country/land/province/area/region/whatever/etc

@poptart:

Im not asking you to be an expert, but there is a difference between not being an expert and not having a clue.

for a start, that series of maps is incorrect, for instance, it switches constantly between ethnic and state, often on the same map and applying different standards , in 1946 all people living in the British Mandated Palestine, were called Palestinians be they Jews or Arabs (and often Arabs rejected that term at the time, believing it to be an attempt to supersede their tribal/religious identity) when was there Palestinian land in 1956 for instance? or for the last (outdated) map seems to apply state ownership for the Jews, but ethnic for Arabs, where I could claim a big chunk of northern Israel is populated by Arabs.

and why even start in 46? go back 40 years and Palestine itself didn't really exist even as a province (being a part of the Shaam , or greater Syria province of the Ottoman Empire). and it goes on and on.

Why would Hamas agree to Egypt's cease fire proposal? They are terrorists. They have no defence against air attack. It is incredibly naïve to believe they would just stop when the only way which they can exact some measure of revenge/success is to have Israeli boots on the ground. You don't think Israel knows that? Might as well been your cease fire proposal or mine... same chance in hell.

They have had tunnels for years. They have used rockets for years. Israel has used air assaults on Hamas rocket launchers for years. Israel has caught infiltrators emerging from tunnels for years. There is nothing particularly special about these circumstances except 3 Israeli kids were murdered and so was a Palestinian boy and both sides escalated. Even that is nothing more than the same macro pattern repeating.

It is the same tit for tat that has been going on a very long time. And it is a losing proposition for Israel in the long term. For every Hamas terrorist killed 5 more are going to be released from prison when the inevitable prisoner exchange happens in a few years. Further, for every dead civilian 2 or more survivors in that family are going to be recruited by Hamas in the next few years. There is zero probability of success through violence for either side.

Obviously its a complex issue, but I can only process what I read however limited or one sided that may be (what I read generally has a greater sympathy towards the plight of the Palestinians). I had no idea that map was incorrect (yes for that I am ignorant!), however I still can't unshackle myself from the viewpoint that Israel seem to somewhat 'overreact' to Palestine unrest as per my previous article (yes its from the Guardian so we know what their stance is).

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/21/hospital-hamas-isreal-hiding-among-civilians?CMP=twt_gu

None of the parts are innocent. but Israel has killed close to 600 now, while Israel have lost 2 civilians

well thats a good point, one often hears the overreaction or disproportionate use of force argument, the problem is that nobody seems to suggest a viable "proportional" strategy. what would be proportional? would it be better if Israel took an equal amount of explosives and just randomly fired it at the Gazans? if Israel actually did that, it would get accused of indiscriminately firing at civilians.

At the end of the day Israel is only using a fraction of its capabilities (if the intention was to flatten Gaza, it would have happened long ago). Alot of people seem to link "primitive rockets" with some sort of low threat. Yes there are relatively few casualties (only due to the fact there are bomb shelters and the Iron Dome defense system), but they disrupt the normal life , and also hurt the economy, and given past examples in the world, Israel isn't overreacting anymore than any other country would. I honestly think alot of people in both Western Europe and North America , have not had a situation similar to this for 70 years, and would have no idea how their country would respond (and Im not including 9/11 , that was a bit different). In the Middle East in particular, part of the idea is deterrence , the only way your country is left alone is when others are terrified of it (nobody is scared of Lebanon , and as a result its used and abused by everybody, on the other hand , most states in the region are terrified of Iran , and therefore have mostly left it alone for the past 25 years despite its meddling in their affairs).

You hear what you want to hear. And you make straw man arguments, a la randomly firing the same amount of explosives, that offer no insight.

I make the disproportionate force argument often because that reflects reality and I always pair it with the thought that violence cannot solve the matter. Reasoned people who talk about disproportionate force are prepared to accept some minimum amount of force as a transitional part of a strategy that largely involves everything else except force.

If you want to undermine Hamas you need to demonstrate actions that are clearly antithetical to the ideology that Hamas promotes. It is hearts and minds basic 101 stuff. Hamas itself is not and has never been the issue. The average common people are the issue and Hamas is nothing more than the heavier armed version of a street gang that exists without any other credible authority around.

You defeat Hamas the way you defeat any indigenously supported insurgency or any street gang: by showing the population that there is a better alternative and supporting them to achieve the alternative. You do not defeat Hamas by giving their ideology credence. Every time Israel blows up a house they make Hamas' propaganda ring true to the average common person in Gaza. It is completely self defeating and of no military value.

Why don't you do the same for Palestine then? Don't they have a right to defend themselves?

It's not defense when you are the ones starting the aggressions. Are you willfully ignoring what is happening or just ignorant? If I punch you in the face and you retaliate I cannot claim defense.

You're dealing with a moral exceptionalist here.