Israel refuses peace negotiations

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Rami. Just because you tell someone you're going to do something doesn't make it right. If I said I was going to burn your house to the ground tonight would that make it ok? :rolleyes: Israeli's just somehow think they're above the rest and that's why you have to live with the threat of terrorism all the time.

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That doesn't make it right. Not by a long shot. But it does show the purpose was not to kill people, but to make a political statement.

I don't think I'm above anybody. I actually think you're the one who's saying "how hard can it be?" for Israel to give in to Hamas' and Fatah's every wish.
I'd like to hear your solution to this conflict. Criticizing is easy but finding solutions is much tougher. If your solution means closing Israel up and giving the land away, I guess we won't be agreeing. I think that we have a right to this land (and by that I don't mean Gaza and the West Bank) and that pushing us out to sea isn't an option.

I do agree that continuing to build settlements in the territories is wrong, and I do think that cutting off electricity to Gaza is wrong.
Agreed, Israel is more powerful than Hamas, but I don't think this fact makes it ok for Hamas to use terrorism.

I think that had anyone here visited Israel, while they might not agree with a lot of actions this country takes, their view would be a lot less anti - Israel. I wish you could see the looks in the eyes of kids 8-9 year old, pure hatred and killing intentions as they pelt you with rocks the size of bowling balls. The bottom line is that I wasn't brought up like that, you weren't brought up like that, and we both would never bring up our kids up like that.
Come visit, The sun is great, the food is good and Rally Jordan is not far from the Dead Sea (I will probably go anyway).

What troubles me is the massive criticisme towards Israel everywhere. In my mind this is always a warning signal that something is very wrong...

When the US invaded Iraq, I was among them who critisiced the action taken, along with thousands of other people in Sweden and throughout the world. All the ususal arguments where brought up: capitalisme, Bush being intellectually challenged, Bush being a murderer, oil and so on.

But where were all these people when Saddam Hussein brought terror upon his people? Nowhere. The terror of Hussein was not interesting, the only interesting aspect of the situation in Iraq and the state-terrorism was when it was able to use it as a weapon towards USA. This very sick reversed thinking is to be found in many other conflict areas in the world aswell. Who cares if the talibans supress their women if it is the "capitalisme" under Bush or his likes who challenges it? If it is a capitalistic state which in some way is giving a helping hand towards the people in dispair, then the people might just aswell remain in the regimes of terror, it seems.

When the government of Burma earlier this year with brute force brought down the uprisings in the country, many burmanese people where upset with the US for not coming and aiding them... We know whose side mainstream media would have taken if the US had taken such an action. Peoples suffering always comes second to the chances of throwing mud on states like the US, GB, France, Spain or Israel.

The US and Israel for shure does a lot of things wrong, like ignoring the will of the UN, but somewhere people should also react to the assaults made by many muslime countries on their own people, and on neighboring countries.

The criticisme is very simple I believe, it can not be that everything is the israels fault. The palestinians are at least as ignorant towards human rights as Israel.

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Originally Posted by Rani

That doesn't make it right. Not by a long shot.

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Stop right there. IT'S WRONG. It pisses people off and just makes them want to attack you. At the end of the day someone's got to be the "bigger man" and say "Screw this it's pointless. Lets try and stop the bloodshed"

At the end of the day there's going to come a point where the international community doesn't tolerate your childish tit for tat attacks and leaves you to your own devices. There's only so much you can do to defend yourself these days against terrrorism. Either there will come a day when Israel realises this or there will come a day when it's not just small bombs and mortar attacks. It'll be small nuclear devices, dirty bombs and chemical or biological weapons.

It's your choice as a country if you want it to get worse and we all know it can get a whole lot worse. You're not exactly surrounded by friends or neutral countries now are you.....

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Originally Posted by Daniel

The thing is Magnus. I think we expect more from an affluent country than we do from a paramilitary organisation that was founded because the palestinians are oppressed.

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This is where i hope we can meet. That we think of Israel more of a "real" state, and thus could expect more from them. But I seldom see any evidence that this is the case...

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Originally Posted by Daniel

At the end of the day someone's got to be the "bigger man" and say "Screw this it's pointless. Lets try and stop the bloodshed"

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Guess what? We've tried that already. didn't work. Does that surprise you?
http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Mini...1-Dec-2006.htm

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Since the beginning of the cease-fire with the Palestinians on 26 November, more than 40 Kassam rockets have been fired into Israel - nine of them in a single day (Wednesday, 20 December). In effect, in cannot be said that a cease-fire truly exists; rather, Israel has shown restraint by not responding to this continuous fire from the Gaza Strip at Ashkelon, Sderot, and the western Negev.
Even though most of these rockets aimed at Israel's civilians have fortunately not resulted in loss of life or serious property damage, no country in the world would tolerate any such attacks on its civilian population. Israel continues to follow a policy of restraint out of a desire to give a chance for peace to develop; out of a willingness to give Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas an opportunity to solidify his control of the government and because Israel wants to avoid an escalation of the situation - but this cannot go on forever.

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BTW this was a year ago.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

...It's your choice as a country if you want it to get worse and we all know it can get a whole lot worse. You're not exactly surrounded by friends or neutral countries now are you.....

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Don't worry about us, Wer'e few but we give a he11 of a fight when attacked by real soldiers instead of cynical hiding in families' homes.

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Originally Posted by Rani

I haven't heard of any "Bulldozing the house of anyone thought to be involved in terrorism". It's true houses of mass murderers (suicide bombers- I hope you agree with me that blowing yourself up in the middle of a shopping mall is murder and not military action) were destroyed. The way you portrayed it is not true.
I stood at a checkpoint like you mentioned near Jerusalem as a soldier. I NEVER hassled NOR brutalised anyone. I did check for explosives, I did search for weapons and I did check ID's. Like it or not I also treated people with respect and dignity, for the simple fact that I know I'm not better than them in any way. BTW a friend of mine from my squad almost got himself killed but fortunately he caught a person hiding a 12 inch blade in his coat before he got a chance to use it.

I honestly believe that if a viable chance for peace (and by that I mean a viable partner) presented itself, Israel would jump at the opportunity. This was proven in 94 in Oslo and in 2000 in Camp David.

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Rani, I may be wrong about bulldozing the houses of all known terrorists but it goes beyond just suicide bombers. Perhaps the houses of significant terrorist leaders. I do know that the bulldozing of such homes preceded suicide bombing by decades.

I know several Israeli ex-soldiers, obviously every able bodied Israeli adult is one. You're not trying to tell me that there aren't Israeli soldiers who enjoy the position of power they hold over Palestinian civilians and abuse it at checkpoints etc? They may be a minority and more likely to be from the poorer elements of Israeli society but they do cause an amount of animosity out of proportion to their numbers and they most certainly do exist. Certainly the Israelis I know who tend to be of European origin viewed Jewish Israelis descended from those who had been in the territories from way before 1948 as being a totally different and more brutal group of people.

Forget the Palestinians for a moment, how long can Israel carry on doing this Rani? How long can it keep sending kids of both sexes to be traumatised in the Occupied Territories? And how far is the reality of life in Israel in 2007 from the founding principles of the Jewish State in 1948?

Another thing is that globalisation is going to hit Israel as hard as it does any other country. Israel's recent economic growth is highly reliant on IT/High tech. Problem with that is (and I'm going to stereotype here) the kind of geeks you need for those fields tend to be highly employable anywhere in the world and tend to be averse to a military lifestyle. If Israel carries on being unstable will the economy be able to tolerate the braindrain caused by these geeks moving off to the US or the EU rather than serving in the reserves?

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

Rani, I may be wrong about bulldozing the houses of all known terrorists but it goes beyond just suicide bombers. Perhaps the houses of significant terrorist leaders. I do know that the bulldozing of such homes preceded suicide bombing by decades.

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First of all, you might have seen that I'm very careful in every word I say. If I claim something I back it up. In my view, Tossing around populistic claims when you're not sure isn't valid discussion conduct, and that's why I don't do it.

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

I know several Israeli ex-soldiers, obviously every able bodied Israeli adult is one. You're not trying to tell me that there aren't Israeli soldiers who enjoy the position of power they hold over Palestinian civilians and abuse it at checkpoints etc? They may be a minority and more likely to be from the poorer elements of Israeli society but they do cause an amount of animosity out of proportion to their numbers and they most certainly do exist.

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Yeah they do exist, I think that this kind of attitude is not an Israeli-only trait. These people can be found anywhere in the world in any position from Police officers to managers at fast food restaurants. They certainly do a lot of damage, and I am against this sort of behavior.

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

Certainly the Israelis I know who tend to be of European origin viewed Jewish Israelis descended from those who had been in the territories from way before 1948 as being a totally different and more brutal group of people. ?

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That's just racist.

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

Another thing is that globalisation is going to hit Israel as hard as it does any other country. Israel's recent economic growth is highly reliant on IT/High tech. Problem with that is (and I'm going to stereotype here) the kind of geeks you need for those fields tend to be highly employable anywhere in the world and tend to be averse to a military lifestyle. If Israel carries on being unstable will the economy be able to tolerate the braindrain caused by these geeks moving off to the US or the EU rather than serving in the reserves?

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It already has started to hit, and I think your wrong in your stereotypical assumptions. You'd be amazed how many of those "geeks" are former fighter pilots, special forces or non combative intelligence officer.
Here the army generally tries to capitalize on people's attributes, and gifted programmers usually use their talents in that field. Companies like Intel and Google (in their Israeli branches) usully try to employ these people because of their experience.
Also, because it's mandatory people don't view going to the army as something you'd do for macho or economical purposes.
Those who cheat their way out of enlisting are free to leave any day if they ask me.

It's not racism. It's an observation. Certainly if I was to say "All black people are brutal people and so on" that would be racist but it does seem to be that people in Africa seem to be central Africa can we very brutal and ruthless people who seem to value life less than us Westerners. We have to get away from this "you mentioned something to do with race and something negative in the same sentence so you must be racist" attitude that some people seem to have. The fact of the matter is how many people have you heard of being hacked up by machette in Australia or the UK? They're simply not brutal people and they value life a lot more then a lot of people in Rwanda and Somalia and other African countries. Is that racist? Nope. It's merely an observation.

If Dylan's friends have experience of these matters then it's not racist. It's simply an observation.

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Originally Posted by Rani

You'd be amazed how many of those "geeks" are former fighter pilots, special forces or non combative intelligence officer.
Here the army generally tries to capitalize on people's attributes, and gifted programmers usually use their talents in that field. Companies like Intel and Google (in their Israeli branches) usully try to employ these people because of their experience.

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Just wanted to pick this one point out. The Israeli engineers that work for Intel are brilliant and have done some very good work. So I don't only have "bad" things to say about Israel and it's people.

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Originally Posted by Magnus

I think there is no one which question Finlands right to exist today. If there where I think some Finns would be a bit upset.

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I don't think that's a good analogy. When Finland got independent, it was populated by people who were born there and not by immigrants. Israel is largely populated by first, second or third generation immigrants from Europe and America. I believe if they hadn't immigrated there in the first place, there would be a lot less trouble.