POLL: The best way to achieve world peace

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What? are you advocating that I offended you. I didn't mean to that was just a bonus.

 

Stop the genocide.

"Israel also kidnaps and tortures children, including by keeping them in outdoor cages, over night, in winter.

But, even ignoring international law and that Gaza is under illegal Israeli occupation, Gaza did not initiate this current round of violence; Israel did:

Western/US/Israeli propaganda says the violence started with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths on June 12th. That is a lie:

On May 20th, the Israeli government murdered 2 unarmed Palestinian teens, one on video, and wounded a third.

The firing of pathetic scrap metal rockets from impoverished Gaza, which have killed no one, were in fact launched in response to earlier Israeli bombings, killings, assassinations, and arrests of Palestinians, including children.

Since the year 2000, Israel has killed 1,500 Palestinian children, while Palestinians have killed 132 Israeli children. That means Israel has killed over 1,000% percent more Palestinian children than vice versa.

As documented by the Washington DC based non-Profit, The Jerusalem Fund, Israel breaks far more ceasefires than Palestine – this includes firing of the Palestinian scrap metal rockets.

For example, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many other human rights organizations reported that in Israel’s 2009 Gaza Massacre, Israel killed about 450 children, and it was Israel, they documented, that broke the ceasefire. (In that massacre, Israel killed overall from 1,400 to 7,000 Palestinians, almost all civilians, while 13 Israelis were killed, several from friendly fire.)

According to a landmark, comprehensive study of all of Israel’s wars, by Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and former academic director of the M.A. Program at the Israeli Defense Forces’ National Defense College:

“. most of the wars in which Israel was involved were the result of deliberate Israeli aggressive design . None of these wars – with the possible exception of the 1948 War of independence – was what Israel refers to as Milhemet Ein Berah (war of necessity). They were all wars of choice . ” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 35, (bold added)

“I review a number of peace-related opportunities ranging from the Zionist-Hashemite collusion in 1947 through the collapse of the Oslo Process in 2000. In all those cases I find that Israeli decision makers – who had been willing to embark upon bold and daring military adventures – were extremely reluctant to make even the smallest concessions for peace . I also find in many cases Israel was engaged in systematic violations of agreements and tacit understandings between itself and its neighbors.” – Defending the Holy Land, pg. 40

Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country. That includes Iraq under Hussein.

Hamas is the government elected by Gaza in elections that Jimmy Carter (and many others) observed and said were completely fair and free. Israel constantly says Hamas uses human shields. But in Israel’s biggest massacre of Gaza, the one in 2009, all the human rights organizations, including Amnesty, HRW, and the jurist Richard Goldstone, found that Hamas DID NOT use human shields. On the contrary, Israel used human shields, which is a regular practice for Israel. Israel uses civilians as human shields.

Israel forced Palestinian civilians to dig and lay naked in trenches around Israeli tanks. See here at 6:45.

Goldstone Report:

XIV. THE USE OF PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS AS HUMAN SHIELDS

“The Mission received allegations that in two areas in north Gaza Israeli troops used Palestinian men as human shields… The Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It has no reason to doubt the veracity of their accounts and found that the different stories serve to support the allegation that Palestinians were used as human shields.”

Noam Chomsky: “Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus’—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.”

In the history of all rocket and mortar fire into Israel, 26 people, total, have been killed. And remember, Palestine breaks ceasefires far less often than Israel, as documented above.

This number of 26 is in contrast to the minimum number of 1,400 people who were murdered by Israel in a single one of its terrorist atrocities, the 2009 Gaza Massacre.

Noting that in the current massacre, zero Israelis and over 100 Palestinians have thus far been killed, and noting that Gaza is a concentration camp – Israel allows no one to enter or leave – Dan Sanchez gives a perfect description of the disparity in arms between the US/Israeli war machine and Palestinian scrap metal projectiles: “They [the Gazans] are like fish in a barrel, being blasted by a shotgun from above. It’s like some of the fish in the barrel pathetically spitting water at the gunman, and [US media calls] that a “shooting battle.”

The rhetoric and tactics of Hamas and other groups resisting Israeli occupation and colonization can be brutal (though far less so than Israel). Propagandists try to attribute this to anti-Semitism, to distract from the fact that these groups are resisting having their country stolen and their people dispossessed and annihilated. Native American resistance to European colonizers was sometimes extremely brutal, as was their rhetoric, but everyone universally recognizes that this was not because of “anti-White-ism”, or “anti-European-ism”, but because they were having their land stolen and their people massacred, the same thing that Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation, ethnic cleansing, colonization, aggression, and annexation. Miko Peled, son of an Israeli general, recently stated that if Israel doesn’t Like rockets, they should decolonize Palestine. Dr. Norman Finkelstein notes that “The Palestinians have the right to use arms to resist an occupation . However, the fact that morally and legally they have that right doesn’t mean that it’s the most prudent strategy. In my opinion, a national Palestinian leadership committed to mobilizing nonviolent resistance can defeat the Israeli occupation if those of us living abroad lend support to it.”

In 1948, the people who wanted to form a Jewish state carried out a massive terror and ethnic cleansing campaign against the occupants of Palestine, expelling about half of them (750,000) from their land and into concentrated areas (Gaza and West Bank). Israel has slowly continued colonizing even those areas, which were specifically reserved by the UN for Palestinians. Israel takes all the best land and resources, such as water. Here is a visualization of what has happened, and is currently happening with massive support from Obama":

 

what you accuse is wrong. I've been in the military for seven years and the last time an unaremed person was shot was 4 years ago. Your anti-semitism is not welcome on this forum.

 

criticism of Israeli war crimes isn't anti-Semitism.

 

good for you. by the way can you make things more exciting your post are really boring and i like to debate so heat up the post. And yes it is.

 

if criticism of Israel= anti-Semitism, that means Israel is the only country on Earth that cannot ever be criticized.

lol!!!!!

 

yep exactly right. we haven't done anything wrong stop picking on jews and israel. Israel = jewish state.

 

Israel has never done anything wrong?

lol!!! you must be joking.

Israel has committed war crimes for decades.

 

first off you didn't give statsistics, stop trying to change the subject. and provide the UN trials where they were accused of this. we haven't committed any war crimes.

 

It's worth looking into why that is.


If you read interviews of Sunni citizens in Iraq you will find that the violence really isn't the defining problem.

Ever since we made Maliki ruler in Iraq the Iraqi government AND the Shiite militias have been shooting Sunnis and chasing them from where they live. And, Maliki managed to drive much of the Sunni representation out of the Iraqi government. This isn't surprising, as we liked Maliki for one big reason - he was instrumental in OUR program of disenfranchising Sunnis - a program called deBaathification that we subsequently determined to be a major disaster. But, Iraq continues with that program even today.

So, from the point of view of Sunnis, the abject violence is a wash - the Iraqi government kills them, the Shiite militias kill them and ISIS kills them. The real issue for them has been what's between them and having a government that represents them. So far, it has not looked like the Iraqi government is that solution.

The same sort of problem faces many of those in Syria.

In Palestine, West Bank is under military occupation, property, water rights, etc. are being stolen in large segments while the people live under military law enforced by mercenary police who are not adequately controlled by Israel. Inside Israel, Israel has moved to make being Arab a reason for conferring less than full citizenship and continues to limit where they can live, denies property rights, etc. And Gaza has been under choking embargo for 8 years, with the current status being that Israel refuses to fulfill its cease fire promises while citizens of Gaza live without adequate food, medicine, water, housing, fuel, etc. This embargo, put in place as illegal group punishment because Gazans voted wrong, is clearly an act of war. The USA was instrumental in putting this embargo in place.

Etc.

These situations render terrorism to be less than a top line problem.

 

Professor Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories and a longtime member of The Nation's editorial board.
" The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

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Collective punishment:

The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

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Targeting civilians:

The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

•
Disproportionate military response:

The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on December 26.

The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

I remind all Member States of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people. "

 

hmm... still no sources. and thats one professor.

 

This is why Israel has used group punishment against Palestine for Palestine having joined UN human rights and court organs.

Until now, Israel couldn't be charged or even investigated by the World Court, for example.

And, subsequent to the recent war, Israel specifically blocked rights groups from entering Gaza.

Then, YOU come along and say, gee, we haven't been convicted in court!! That's seriously sick.

So, your statement really goes to one of the root crimes of Israel, which is that of group punishment - which Israel has carried out many times. It includes the embargo against Gaza (an act of war). It includes clamping down on the embargo as the first act of war against Gaza in retribution for improved UN status and for the teenagers who Israel mistakenly thought were killed by Hamas in Gaza. And others.

 

Are you actually going to DENY those crimes???

Even Netanyahu states many of those crimes as purposeful acts of Israel.

Please identify which one you deny.

 

Is group punishment against the international code of conduct, we do it to terrorist. your sick because you don't even sight the name of the laws we've violated. by the way someone can't be punished on a national scale unless tried and convicted. At least i know the law.

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please identify which one you accuse us of. yes i am denying it. Palestinians and Arabs are terrorist groups that need to be stopped.

 

No, Israel commits group punishment against the citizens of Palestine.

Netanyahu has stated that concerning the embargo of Gaza, for just one example. He says that is what Israel has done and will do - he is not denying it. In fact, he has used it as a continuing threat.

You would know that if you knew the law and listened to what Netanyahu says.

Yes, someone can't be convicted without going before the court. And, THAT is why Israel has worked to prevent courts from being available to the victims of its crimes. And, it is why Israel has prevented international rights organizations from entering Gaza.


Freemarket gave a very reasonable list of crimes committed by Israel. Maybe you could start by picking one of those and attempting to defend yourself.

 

Israel committed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and 1967.

they committed massacres of civilians in 1948.

they have been stealing non-Jewish land since 1967 in the West Bank.

 

"United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories and a longtime member of The Nation's editorial board. "

We're glad you guys love us and we got your thank you gift.

 

hmm.... is stealing self-defense? no. site your sources, plus what you claim is proposturous, i studied israeli history in Austria for 5 years, i know what i am talking about.

 

this is the kind of Jewish and Zionist extremism that Im talking about.

committing racist ethnic cleansing will not bring peace, but the destruction of Israel.

 

what? You make no sense.

 

I think you have misunderstood what I am saying. I appreciate the Jewish people and the vast contributions that they have made. I am opposed to the corralling and killing of innocent people by the greedy. Your representatives have made some very inhumane choices.
I dont restrict this to Israel but also consider the decisions made in washington to be war crimes. I dont care what flag you are waving but dont believe in doing it blindly. What we have now in washington are not Americans and dont represent the people. They have all committed treason against the American people by disregarding their oath to enforce the constitution. That doesnt make me anti American any more than these comments make me anti-semitism.

 

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"only the dead have seen the end of war" -Plato

There will be peace when the human race ceases to exist, which is hopefully not anytime soon.