7 Things to Consider Before Choosing Sides in the Middle East Conflict

[umair127]

7 Things to Consider Before Choosing Sides in the Middle East Conflict
    Ali A. Rizvi | July 28, 2014

    Are you "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine"? It isn't even noon yet as I write this, and I've already been accused of being both.

    These terms intrigue me because they directly speak to the doggedly tribal nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You don't hear of too many other countries being universally spoken of this way. Why these two? Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, with diverse histories and cultures, and two incredibly similar (if divisive) religions. To come down completely on the side of one or the other doesn't seem rational to me.

    It is telling that most Muslims around the world support Palestinians, and most Jews support Israel. This, of course, is natural -- but it's also problematic. It means that this is not about who's right or wrong as much as which tribe or nation you are loyal to. It means that Palestinian supporters would be just as ardently pro-Israel if they were born in Israeli or Jewish families, and vice versa. It means that the principles that guide most people's view of this conflict are largely accidents of birth -- that however we intellectualize and analyze the components of the Middle East mess, it remains, at its core, a tribal conflict.

    By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.

    So before picking a side in this latest Israeli-Palestine conflict, consider these 7 questions.


    ***


    1. Why is everything so much worse when there are Jews involved?

    Over 700 people have died in Gaza as of this writing. Muslims have woken up around the world. But is it really because of the numbers?

    Bashar al-Assad has killed over 180,000 Syrians, mostly Muslim, in two years -- more than the number killed in Palestine in two decades. Thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Syria have been killed by ISIS in the last two months. Tens of thousands have been killed by the Taliban. Half a million black Muslims were killed by Arab Muslims in Sudan. The list goes on.

    But Gaza makes Muslims around the world, both Sunni and Shia, speak up in a way they never do otherwise. Up-to-date death counts and horrific pictures of the mangled corpses of Gazan children flood their social media timelines every day. If it was just about the numbers, wouldn't the other conflicts take precedence? What is it about then?

    If I were Assad or ISIS right now, I'd be thanking God I'm not Jewish.

    Amazingly, many of the graphic images of dead children attributed to Israeli bombardment that are circulating online are from Syria, based on a BBC report [link]. Many of the pictures you're seeing are of children killed by Assad, who is supported by Iran, which also funds Hezbollah and Hamas. What could be more exploitative of dead children than attributing the pictures of innocents killed by your own supporters to your enemy simply because you weren't paying enough attention when your own were killing your own?

    This doesn't, by any means, excuse the recklessness, negligence [link], and sometimes outright cruelty of Israeli forces [link]. But it clearly points to the likelihood that the Muslim world's opposition to Israel isn't just about the number of dead.

    Here is a question for those who grew up in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority countries like I did: if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories tomorrow, all in one go -- and went back to the 1967 borders -- and gave the Palestinians East Jerusalem -- do you honestly think Hamas wouldn't find something else to pick a fight about? Do you honestly think that this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are Jews? Do you recall what you watched and heard on public TV growing up in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt?

    Yes, there's an unfair and illegal occupation there, and yes, it's a human rights disaster. But it is also true that much of the other side is deeply driven by anti-Semitism. Anyone who has lived in the Arab/Muslim world for more than a few years knows that. It isn't always a clean, one-or-the-other blame split in these situations like your Chomskys and Greenwalds would have you believe. It's both.


    ***


    2. Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?

    There are three pervasive myths that are widely circulated about the "roots" of the Middle East conflict:

    Myth 1: Judaism has nothing to do with Zionism.
    Myth 2: Islam has nothing to do with Jihadism or anti-Semitism.
    Myth 3: This conflict has nothing to do with religion.

    To the "I oppose Zionism, not Judaism!" crowd, is it mere coincidence that this passage from the Old Testament (emphasis added) describes so accurately what's happening today?

        "I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods." - Exodus 23:31-32

    Or this one?

        "See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers -- to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- and to their descendants after them." - Deuteronomy 1:8

    There's more: Genesis 15:18-21, and Numbers 34 for more detail on the borders. Zionism is not the "politicization" or "distortion" of Judaism. It is the revival of it.

    And to the "This is not about Islam, it's about politics!" crowd, is this verse from the Quran (emphasis added) meaningless?

        "O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you--then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." - Quran, 5:51

    What about the numerous verses and hadith quoted in Hamas' charter? [link] And the famous hadith of the Gharqad tree explicitly commanding Muslims to kill Jews? [link]

    Please tell me -- in light of these passages written centuries and millennia before the creation of Israel or the occupation -- how can anyone conclude that religion isn't at the root of this, or at least a key driving factor? You may roll your eyes at these verses, but they are taken very seriously by many of the players in this conflict, on both sides. Shouldn't they be acknowledged and addressed? When is the last time you heard a good rational, secular argument supporting settlement expansion in the West Bank?

    Denying religion's role seems to be a way to be able to criticize the politics while remaining apologetically "respectful" of people's beliefs for fear of "offending" them. [link] But is this apologism and "respect" for inhuman ideas worth the deaths of human beings?

    People have all kinds of beliefs -- from insisting the Earth is flat to denying the Holocaust. You may respect their right to hold these beliefs, but you're not obligated to respect the beliefs themselves. It's 2014, and religions don't need to be "respected" any more than any other political ideology or philosophical thought system. Human beings have rights. Ideas don't. The oft-cited politics/religion dichotomy in Abrahamic religions is false and misleading. All of the Abrahamic religions are inherently political.


    ***


    3. Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

    This is the single most important issue that gets everyone riled up, and rightfully so.

    Again, there is no justification for innocent Gazans dying. And there's no excuse for Israel's negligence in incidents like the killing of four children on a Gazan beach. But let's back up and think about this for a minute.

    Why on Earth would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

    When civilians die, Israel looks like a monster. It draws the ire of even its closest allies. [link] Horrific images of injured and dead innocents flood the media. Ever-growing anti-Israel protests are held everywhere from Norway to New York. And the relatively low number of Israeli casualties (we'll get to that in a bit) repeatedly draws allegations of a "disproportionate" response. Most importantly, civilian deaths help Hamas immensely.

    How can any of this possibly ever be in Israel's interest?

    If Israel wanted to kill civilians, it is terrible at it. ISIS killed more civilians in two days (700 plus) than Israel has in two weeks. Imagine if ISIS or Hamas had Israel's weapons, army, air force, US support, and nuclear arsenal. Their enemies would've been annihilated long ago. If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza, it could do so within a day, right from the air. Why carry out a more painful, expensive ground incursion that risks the lives of its soldiers?


    ***


    4. Does Hamas really use its own civilians as human shields?

    Ask Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas how he feels about Hamas' tactics.

    "What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?" he asks. "I don't like trading in Palestinian blood." [link]

    It isn't just speculation anymore that Hamas puts its civilians in the line of fire.

    Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri plainly admitted on Gazan national TV that the human shield strategy has proven "very effective." [link]

    The UN relief organization UNRWA issued a furious condemnation of Hamas after discovering hidden rockets in not one, but two children's schools in Gaza last week. [link]

    Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, rarely killing any civilians or causing any serious damage. It launches them from densely populated areas, including hospitals and schools.

    Why launch rockets without causing any real damage to the other side, inviting great damage to your own people, then putting your own civilians in the line of fire when the response comes? Even when the IDF warns civilians to evacuate their homes before a strike, why does Hamas tell them to stay put? [link]

    Because Hamas knows its cause is helped when Gazans die. If there is one thing that helps Hamas most -- one thing that gives it any legitimacy -- it is dead civilians. Rockets in schools. Hamas exploits the deaths of its children to gain the world's sympathy. It uses them as a weapon.

    You don't have to like what Israel is doing to abhor Hamas. Arguably, Israel and Fatah are morally equivalent. Both have a lot of right on their side. Hamas, on the other hand, doesn't have a shred of it.


    ***


    5. Why are people asking for Israel to end the "occupation" in Gaza?

    Because they have short memories.

    In 2005, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza. It pulled out every last Israeli soldier. It dismantled every last settlement. Many Israeli settlers who refused to leave were forcefully evicted from their homes, kicking and screaming. [link]

    This was a unilateral move by Israel, part of a disengagement plan intended to reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians. [link] It wasn't perfect -- Israel was still to control Gaza's borders, coastline, and airspace -- but considering the history of the region, it was a pretty significant first step.

    After the evacuation, Israel opened up border crossings to facilitate commerce. The Palestinians were also given 3,000 greenhouses which had already been producing fruit and flowers for export for many years. [link]

    But Hamas chose not to invest in schools, trade, or infrastructure. Instead, it built an extensive network of tunnels [link] to house thousands upon thousands of rockets and weapons, including newer, sophisticated ones [link] from Iran and Syria. All the greenhouses were destroyed.

    Hamas did not build any bomb shelters for its people. It did, however, build a few for its leaders to hide out in during airstrikes. [link] Civilians are not given access to these shelters for precisely the same reason Hamas tells them to stay home when the bombs come. [link]

    Gaza was given a great opportunity in 2005 that Hamas squandered by transforming it into an anti-Israel weapons store instead of a thriving Palestinian state that, with time, may have served as a model for the future of the West Bank as well. If Fatah needed yet another reason to abhor Hamas, here it was.


    ***


    6. Why are there so many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel?

    The reason fewer Israeli civilians die is not because there are fewer rockets raining down on them. It's because they are better protected by their government.

    When Hamas' missiles head towards Israel, sirens go off, the Iron Dome goes into effect, and civilians are rushed into bomb shelters. When Israeli missiles head towards Gaza, Hamas tells civilians to stay in their homes and face them. [link]

    While Israel's government urges its civilians to get away from rockets targeted at them, Gaza's government urges its civilians to get in front of missiles not targeted at them. [link]

    The popular explanation for this is that Hamas is poor and lacks the resources to protect its people like Israel does. The real reason, however, seems to have more to do with disordered priorities than deficient resources (see #5). This is about will, not ability. All those rockets, missiles, and tunnels aren't cheap to build or acquire. But they are priorities. And it's not like Palestinians don't have a handful of oil-rich neighbors [link] to help them the way Israel has the US.

    The problem is, if civilian casualties in Gaza drop, Hamas loses the only weapon it has in its incredibly effective PR war. It is in Israel's national interest to protect its civilians and minimize the deaths of those in Gaza. It is in Hamas' interest to do exactly the opposite on both fronts.


    ***


    7. If Hamas is so bad, why isn't everyone pro-Israel in this conflict?

    Because Israel's flaws, while smaller in number, are massive in impact.

    Many Israelis seem to have the same tribal mentality that their Palestinian counterparts do. They celebrate the bombing of Gaza [link] the same way many Arabs celebrated 9/11. A UN report recently found that Israeli forces tortured Palestinian children and used them as human shields. [link] They beat up teenagers. [link] They are often reckless with their airstrikes. [link] They have academics who explain how rape may be the only truly effective weapon against their enemy. [link] And many of them callously and publicly revel in the deaths of innocent Palestinian children. [link]

    To be fair, these kinds of things do happen on both sides. They are an inevitable consequence of multiple generations raised to hate the other over the course of 65 plus years. To hold Israel up to a higher standard would mean approaching the Palestinians with the racism of lowered expectations.

    However, if Israel holds itself to a higher standard like it claims -- it needs to do much more to show it isn't the same as the worst of its neighbors.

    Israel is leading itself towards increasing international isolation and national suicide because of two things: 1. The occupation; and 2. Settlement expansion.

    Settlement expansion is simply incomprehensible. No one really understands the point of it. Virtually every US administration -- from Nixon to Bush to Obama -- has unequivocally opposed it. [link] There is no justification for it except a Biblical one (see #2), which makes it slightly more difficult to see Israel's motives as purely secular.

    The occupation is more complicated. The late Christopher Hitchens was right when he said this about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories: [link]

        "In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can't, it'll have to dispense with the occupation. It's as simple as that.

        It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can't govern other people against their will. It can't continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day.And it's unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I'm afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I'm a prisoner of that knowledge. I can't un-know it."

    As seen with Gaza in 2005, unilateral disengagement is probably easier to talk about than actually carry out. But if it Israel doesn't work harder towards a two-state (maybe three-state, thanks to Hamas) solution, it will eventually have to make that ugly choice between being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

    It's still too early to call Israel an apartheid state, but when John Kerry said Israel could end up as one in the future, [link] he wasn't completely off the mark. It's simple math. There are only a limited number of ways a bi-national Jewish state with a non-Jewish majority population can retain its Jewish identity. And none of them are pretty.


    ***


    Let's face it, the land belongs to both of them now. Israel was carved out of Palestine for Jews with help from the British in the late 1940s just like my own birthplace of Pakistan was carved out of India for Muslims around the same time. The process was painful, and displaced millions in both instances. But it's been almost 70 years. There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own. They are programmed to oppose "the other" just as Palestinian children are. At its very core, this is a tribal religious conflict that will never be resolved unless people stop choosing sides.

    So you really don't have to choose between being "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine." If you support secularism, democracy, and a two-state solution -- and you oppose Hamas, settlement expansion, and the occupation -- you can be both.

    If they keep asking you to pick a side after all of that, tell them you're going with hummus.

    Source: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=5602701

[zolace]

I disagree with the author’s assertion that this is a tribal conflict. Having followed tribal conflicts in many other states like Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia the Israeli-Palestinian struggle lacks many aspects that define traditional tribal struggles. Just to use as an example, the power dynamics are not very tribal. Hamas isn’t a familial or local structure, nor is Fatah / the Palestinian Authority, nor is the Israeli central government, and likewise their power structures are not based on the same flexible loyalty systems that seek to check power dominance that are seen in heavily tribalized conflicts. Tribal conflicts rather depend on weak central governments, and Hamas and the Israeli government have much stronger centralized powers than tribes do. Hamas with its loose militant coalition allies that don’t always listen to it might be more ‘tribal’, but Israel certainly isn’t in its execution of conflict.

[Full Spectrum]

7 Things to Consider Before Choosing Sides in the Middle East Conflict
    Ali A. Rizvi | July 28, 2014

    Are you "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine"? It isn't even noon yet as I write this, and I've already been accused of being both.

    These terms intrigue me because they directly speak to the doggedly tribal nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You don't hear of too many other countries being universally spoken of this way. Why these two? Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, with diverse histories and cultures, and two incredibly similar (if divisive) religions. To come down completely on the side of one or the other doesn't seem rational to me.

    It is telling that most Muslims around the world support Palestinians, and most Jews support Israel. This, of course, is natural -- but it's also problematic. It means that this is not about who's right or wrong as much as which tribe or nation you are loyal to. It means that Palestinian supporters would be just as ardently pro-Israel if they were born in Israeli or Jewish families, and vice versa. It means that the principles that guide most people's view of this conflict are largely accidents of birth -- that however we intellectualize and analyze the components of the Middle East mess, it remains, at its core, a tribal conflict.

    By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.

    So before picking a side in this latest Israeli-Palestine conflict, consider these 7 questions.


    ***


    1. Why is everything so much worse when there are Jews involved?

    Over 700 people have died in Gaza as of this writing. Muslims have woken up around the world. But is it really because of the numbers?

    Bashar al-Assad has killed over 180,000 Syrians, mostly Muslim, in two years -- more than the number killed in Palestine in two decades. Thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Syria have been killed by ISIS in the last two months. Tens of thousands have been killed by the Taliban. Half a million black Muslims were killed by Arab Muslims in Sudan. The list goes on.

    But Gaza makes Muslims around the world, both Sunni and Shia, speak up in a way they never do otherwise. Up-to-date death counts and horrific pictures of the mangled corpses of Gazan children flood their social media timelines every day. If it was just about the numbers, wouldn't the other conflicts take precedence? What is it about then?

    If I were Assad or ISIS right now, I'd be thanking God I'm not Jewish.

    Amazingly, many of the graphic images of dead children attributed to Israeli bombardment that are circulating online are from Syria, based on a BBC report [link]. Many of the pictures you're seeing are of children killed by Assad, who is supported by Iran, which also funds Hezbollah and Hamas. What could be more exploitative of dead children than attributing the pictures of innocents killed by your own supporters to your enemy simply because you weren't paying enough attention when your own were killing your own?

    This doesn't, by any means, excuse the recklessness, negligence [link], and sometimes outright cruelty of Israeli forces [link]. But it clearly points to the likelihood that the Muslim world's opposition to Israel isn't just about the number of dead.

    Here is a question for those who grew up in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority countries like I did: if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories tomorrow, all in one go -- and went back to the 1967 borders -- and gave the Palestinians East Jerusalem -- do you honestly think Hamas wouldn't find something else to pick a fight about? Do you honestly think that this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are Jews? Do you recall what you watched and heard on public TV growing up in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt?

    Yes, there's an unfair and illegal occupation there, and yes, it's a human rights disaster. But it is also true that much of the other side is deeply driven by anti-Semitism. Anyone who has lived in the Arab/Muslim world for more than a few years knows that. It isn't always a clean, one-or-the-other blame split in these situations like your Chomskys and Greenwalds would have you believe. It's both.


    ***


    2. Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?

    There are three pervasive myths that are widely circulated about the "roots" of the Middle East conflict:

    Myth 1: Judaism has nothing to do with Zionism.
    Myth 2: Islam has nothing to do with Jihadism or anti-Semitism.
    Myth 3: This conflict has nothing to do with religion.

    To the "I oppose Zionism, not Judaism!" crowd, is it mere coincidence that this passage from the Old Testament (emphasis added) describes so accurately what's happening today?

        "I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods." - Exodus 23:31-32

    Or this one?

        "See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers -- to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- and to their descendants after them." - Deuteronomy 1:8

    There's more: Genesis 15:18-21, and Numbers 34 for more detail on the borders. Zionism is not the "politicization" or "distortion" of Judaism. It is the revival of it.

    And to the "This is not about Islam, it's about politics!" crowd, is this verse from the Quran (emphasis added) meaningless?

        "O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you--then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." - Quran, 5:51

    What about the numerous verses and hadith quoted in Hamas' charter? [link] And the famous hadith of the Gharqad tree explicitly commanding Muslims to kill Jews? [link]

    Please tell me -- in light of these passages written centuries and millennia before the creation of Israel or the occupation -- how can anyone conclude that religion isn't at the root of this, or at least a key driving factor? You may roll your eyes at these verses, but they are taken very seriously by many of the players in this conflict, on both sides. Shouldn't they be acknowledged and addressed? When is the last time you heard a good rational, secular argument supporting settlement expansion in the West Bank?

    Denying religion's role seems to be a way to be able to criticize the politics while remaining apologetically "respectful" of people's beliefs for fear of "offending" them. [link] But is this apologism and "respect" for inhuman ideas worth the deaths of human beings?

    People have all kinds of beliefs -- from insisting the Earth is flat to denying the Holocaust. You may respect their right to hold these beliefs, but you're not obligated to respect the beliefs themselves. It's 2014, and religions don't need to be "respected" any more than any other political ideology or philosophical thought system. Human beings have rights. Ideas don't. The oft-cited politics/religion dichotomy in Abrahamic religions is false and misleading. All of the Abrahamic religions are inherently political.


    ***


    3. Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

    This is the single most important issue that gets everyone riled up, and rightfully so.

    Again, there is no justification for innocent Gazans dying. And there's no excuse for Israel's negligence in incidents like the killing of four children on a Gazan beach. But let's back up and think about this for a minute.

    Why on Earth would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

    When civilians die, Israel looks like a monster. It draws the ire of even its closest allies. [link] Horrific images of injured and dead innocents flood the media. Ever-growing anti-Israel protests are held everywhere from Norway to New York. And the relatively low number of Israeli casualties (we'll get to that in a bit) repeatedly draws allegations of a "disproportionate" response. Most importantly, civilian deaths help Hamas immensely.

    How can any of this possibly ever be in Israel's interest?

    If Israel wanted to kill civilians, it is terrible at it. ISIS killed more civilians in two days (700 plus) than Israel has in two weeks. Imagine if ISIS or Hamas had Israel's weapons, army, air force, US support, and nuclear arsenal. Their enemies would've been annihilated long ago. If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza, it could do so within a day, right from the air. Why carry out a more painful, expensive ground incursion that risks the lives of its soldiers?


    ***


    4. Does Hamas really use its own civilians as human shields?

    Ask Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas how he feels about Hamas' tactics.

    "What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?" he asks. "I don't like trading in Palestinian blood." [link]

    It isn't just speculation anymore that Hamas puts its civilians in the line of fire.

    Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri plainly admitted on Gazan national TV that the human shield strategy has proven "very effective." [link]

    The UN relief organization UNRWA issued a furious condemnation of Hamas after discovering hidden rockets in not one, but two children's schools in Gaza last week. [link]

    Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, rarely killing any civilians or causing any serious damage. It launches them from densely populated areas, including hospitals and schools.

    Why launch rockets without causing any real damage to the other side, inviting great damage to your own people, then putting your own civilians in the line of fire when the response comes? Even when the IDF warns civilians to evacuate their homes before a strike, why does Hamas tell them to stay put? [link]

    Because Hamas knows its cause is helped when Gazans die. If there is one thing that helps Hamas most -- one thing that gives it any legitimacy -- it is dead civilians. Rockets in schools. Hamas exploits the deaths of its children to gain the world's sympathy. It uses them as a weapon.

    You don't have to like what Israel is doing to abhor Hamas. Arguably, Israel and Fatah are morally equivalent. Both have a lot of right on their side. Hamas, on the other hand, doesn't have a shred of it.


    ***


    5. Why are people asking for Israel to end the "occupation" in Gaza?

    Because they have short memories.

    In 2005, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza. It pulled out every last Israeli soldier. It dismantled every last settlement. Many Israeli settlers who refused to leave were forcefully evicted from their homes, kicking and screaming. [link]

    This was a unilateral move by Israel, part of a disengagement plan intended to reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians. [link] It wasn't perfect -- Israel was still to control Gaza's borders, coastline, and airspace -- but considering the history of the region, it was a pretty significant first step.

    After the evacuation, Israel opened up border crossings to facilitate commerce. The Palestinians were also given 3,000 greenhouses which had already been producing fruit and flowers for export for many years. [link]

    But Hamas chose not to invest in schools, trade, or infrastructure. Instead, it built an extensive network of tunnels [link] to house thousands upon thousands of rockets and weapons, including newer, sophisticated ones [link] from Iran and Syria. All the greenhouses were destroyed.

    Hamas did not build any bomb shelters for its people. It did, however, build a few for its leaders to hide out in during airstrikes. [link] Civilians are not given access to these shelters for precisely the same reason Hamas tells them to stay home when the bombs come. [link]

    Gaza was given a great opportunity in 2005 that Hamas squandered by transforming it into an anti-Israel weapons store instead of a thriving Palestinian state that, with time, may have served as a model for the future of the West Bank as well. If Fatah needed yet another reason to abhor Hamas, here it was.


    ***


    6. Why are there so many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel?

    The reason fewer Israeli civilians die is not because there are fewer rockets raining down on them. It's because they are better protected by their government.

    When Hamas' missiles head towards Israel, sirens go off, the Iron Dome goes into effect, and civilians are rushed into bomb shelters. When Israeli missiles head towards Gaza, Hamas tells civilians to stay in their homes and face them. [link]

    While Israel's government urges its civilians to get away from rockets targeted at them, Gaza's government urges its civilians to get in front of missiles not targeted at them. [link]

    The popular explanation for this is that Hamas is poor and lacks the resources to protect its people like Israel does. The real reason, however, seems to have more to do with disordered priorities than deficient resources (see #5). This is about will, not ability. All those rockets, missiles, and tunnels aren't cheap to build or acquire. But they are priorities. And it's not like Palestinians don't have a handful of oil-rich neighbors [link] to help them the way Israel has the US.

    The problem is, if civilian casualties in Gaza drop, Hamas loses the only weapon it has in its incredibly effective PR war. It is in Israel's national interest to protect its civilians and minimize the deaths of those in Gaza. It is in Hamas' interest to do exactly the opposite on both fronts.


    ***


    7. If Hamas is so bad, why isn't everyone pro-Israel in this conflict?

    Because Israel's flaws, while smaller in number, are massive in impact.

    Many Israelis seem to have the same tribal mentality that their Palestinian counterparts do. They celebrate the bombing of Gaza [link] the same way many Arabs celebrated 9/11. A UN report recently found that Israeli forces tortured Palestinian children and used them as human shields. [link] They beat up teenagers. [link] They are often reckless with their airstrikes. [link] They have academics who explain how rape may be the only truly effective weapon against their enemy. [link] And many of them callously and publicly revel in the deaths of innocent Palestinian children. [link]

    To be fair, these kinds of things do happen on both sides. They are an inevitable consequence of multiple generations raised to hate the other over the course of 65 plus years. To hold Israel up to a higher standard would mean approaching the Palestinians with the racism of lowered expectations.

    However, if Israel holds itself to a higher standard like it claims -- it needs to do much more to show it isn't the same as the worst of its neighbors.

    Israel is leading itself towards increasing international isolation and national suicide because of two things: 1. The occupation; and 2. Settlement expansion.

    Settlement expansion is simply incomprehensible. No one really understands the point of it. Virtually every US administration -- from Nixon to Bush to Obama -- has unequivocally opposed it. [link] There is no justification for it except a Biblical one (see #2), which makes it slightly more difficult to see Israel's motives as purely secular.

    The occupation is more complicated. The late Christopher Hitchens was right when he said this about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories: [link]

        "In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can't, it'll have to dispense with the occupation. It's as simple as that.

        It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can't govern other people against their will. It can't continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day.And it's unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I'm afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I'm a prisoner of that knowledge. I can't un-know it."

    As seen with Gaza in 2005, unilateral disengagement is probably easier to talk about than actually carry out. But if it Israel doesn't work harder towards a two-state (maybe three-state, thanks to Hamas) solution, it will eventually have to make that ugly choice between being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

    It's still too early to call Israel an apartheid state, but when John Kerry said Israel could end up as one in the future, [link] he wasn't completely off the mark. It's simple math. There are only a limited number of ways a bi-national Jewish state with a non-Jewish majority population can retain its Jewish identity. And none of them are pretty.


    ***


    Let's face it, the land belongs to both of them now. Israel was carved out of Palestine for Jews with help from the British in the late 1940s just like my own birthplace of Pakistan was carved out of India for Muslims around the same time. The process was painful, and displaced millions in both instances. But it's been almost 70 years. There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own. They are programmed to oppose "the other" just as Palestinian children are. At its very core, this is a tribal religious conflict that will never be resolved unless people stop choosing sides.

    So you really don't have to choose between being "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine." If you support secularism, democracy, and a two-state solution -- and you oppose Hamas, settlement expansion, and the occupation -- you can be both.

    If they keep asking you to pick a side after all of that, tell them you're going with hummus.

    Source: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=5602701

Sorry if this is off topic, but after posting in topics along with you and reading your posts/topics I found I really like the way you think.

Anyhow I love how this topic has been positioned to explain all the little nuances and information that relates to this conflict.

Have a nice day umair127

[umair127]

7 Things to Consider Before Choosing Sides in the Middle East Conflict
    Ali A. Rizvi | July 28, 2014

    Are you "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine"? It isn't even noon yet as I write this, and I've already been accused of being both.

    These terms intrigue me because they directly speak to the doggedly tribal nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You don't hear of too many other countries being universally spoken of this way. Why these two? Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, with diverse histories and cultures, and two incredibly similar (if divisive) religions. To come down completely on the side of one or the other doesn't seem rational to me.

    It is telling that most Muslims around the world support Palestinians, and most Jews support Israel. This, of course, is natural -- but it's also problematic. It means that this is not about who's right or wrong as much as which tribe or nation you are loyal to. It means that Palestinian supporters would be just as ardently pro-Israel if they were born in Israeli or Jewish families, and vice versa. It means that the principles that guide most people's view of this conflict are largely accidents of birth -- that however we intellectualize and analyze the components of the Middle East mess, it remains, at its core, a tribal conflict.

    By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.

    So before picking a side in this latest Israeli-Palestine conflict, consider these 7 questions.


    ***


    1. Why is everything so much worse when there are Jews involved?

    Over 700 people have died in Gaza as of this writing. Muslims have woken up around the world. But is it really because of the numbers?

    Bashar al-Assad has killed over 180,000 Syrians, mostly Muslim, in two years -- more than the number killed in Palestine in two decades. Thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Syria have been killed by ISIS in the last two months. Tens of thousands have been killed by the Taliban. Half a million black Muslims were killed by Arab Muslims in Sudan. The list goes on.

    But Gaza makes Muslims around the world, both Sunni and Shia, speak up in a way they never do otherwise. Up-to-date death counts and horrific pictures of the mangled corpses of Gazan children flood their social media timelines every day. If it was just about the numbers, wouldn't the other conflicts take precedence? What is it about then?

    If I were Assad or ISIS right now, I'd be thanking God I'm not Jewish.

    Amazingly, many of the graphic images of dead children attributed to Israeli bombardment that are circulating online are from Syria, based on a BBC report [link]. Many of the pictures you're seeing are of children killed by Assad, who is supported by Iran, which also funds Hezbollah and Hamas. What could be more exploitative of dead children than attributing the pictures of innocents killed by your own supporters to your enemy simply because you weren't paying enough attention when your own were killing your own?

    This doesn't, by any means, excuse the recklessness, negligence [link], and sometimes outright cruelty of Israeli forces [link]. But it clearly points to the likelihood that the Muslim world's opposition to Israel isn't just about the number of dead.

    Here is a question for those who grew up in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority countries like I did: if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories tomorrow, all in one go -- and went back to the 1967 borders -- and gave the Palestinians East Jerusalem -- do you honestly think Hamas wouldn't find something else to pick a fight about? Do you honestly think that this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are Jews? Do you recall what you watched and heard on public TV growing up in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt?

    Yes, there's an unfair and illegal occupation there, and yes, it's a human rights disaster. But it is also true that much of the other side is deeply driven by anti-Semitism. Anyone who has lived in the Arab/Muslim world for more than a few years knows that. It isn't always a clean, one-or-the-other blame split in these situations like your Chomskys and Greenwalds would have you believe. It's both.


    ***


    2. Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?

    There are three pervasive myths that are widely circulated about the "roots" of the Middle East conflict:

    Myth 1: Judaism has nothing to do with Zionism.
    Myth 2: Islam has nothing to do with Jihadism or anti-Semitism.
    Myth 3: This conflict has nothing to do with religion.

    To the "I oppose Zionism, not Judaism!" crowd, is it mere coincidence that this passage from the Old Testament (emphasis added) describes so accurately what's happening today?

        "I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods." - Exodus 23:31-32

    Or this one?

        "See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers -- to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- and to their descendants after them." - Deuteronomy 1:8

    There's more: Genesis 15:18-21, and Numbers 34 for more detail on the borders. Zionism is not the "politicization" or "distortion" of Judaism. It is the revival of it.

    And to the "This is not about Islam, it's about politics!" crowd, is this verse from the Quran (emphasis added) meaningless?

        "O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you--then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." - Quran, 5:51

    What about the numerous verses and hadith quoted in Hamas' charter? [link] And the famous hadith of the Gharqad tree explicitly commanding Muslims to kill Jews? [link]

    Please tell me -- in light of these passages written centuries and millennia before the creation of Israel or the occupation -- how can anyone conclude that religion isn't at the root of this, or at least a key driving factor? You may roll your eyes at these verses, but they are taken very seriously by many of the players in this conflict, on both sides. Shouldn't they be acknowledged and addressed? When is the last time you heard a good rational, secular argument supporting settlement expansion in the West Bank?

    Denying religion's role seems to be a way to be able to criticize the politics while remaining apologetically "respectful" of people's beliefs for fear of "offending" them. [link] But is this apologism and "respect" for inhuman ideas worth the deaths of human beings?

    People have all kinds of beliefs -- from insisting the Earth is flat to denying the Holocaust. You may respect their right to hold these beliefs, but you're not obligated to respect the beliefs themselves. It's 2014, and religions don't need to be "respected" any more than any other political ideology or philosophical thought system. Human beings have rights. Ideas don't. The oft-cited politics/religion dichotomy in Abrahamic religions is false and misleading. All of the Abrahamic religions are inherently political.


    ***


    3. Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

    This is the single most important issue that gets everyone riled up, and rightfully so.

    Again, there is no justification for innocent Gazans dying. And there's no excuse for Israel's negligence in incidents like the killing of four children on a Gazan beach. But let's back up and think about this for a minute.

    Why on Earth would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

    When civilians die, Israel looks like a monster. It draws the ire of even its closest allies. [link] Horrific images of injured and dead innocents flood the media. Ever-growing anti-Israel protests are held everywhere from Norway to New York. And the relatively low number of Israeli casualties (we'll get to that in a bit) repeatedly draws allegations of a "disproportionate" response. Most importantly, civilian deaths help Hamas immensely.

    How can any of this possibly ever be in Israel's interest?

    If Israel wanted to kill civilians, it is terrible at it. ISIS killed more civilians in two days (700 plus) than Israel has in two weeks. Imagine if ISIS or Hamas had Israel's weapons, army, air force, US support, and nuclear arsenal. Their enemies would've been annihilated long ago. If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza, it could do so within a day, right from the air. Why carry out a more painful, expensive ground incursion that risks the lives of its soldiers?


    ***


    4. Does Hamas really use its own civilians as human shields?

    Ask Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas how he feels about Hamas' tactics.

    "What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?" he asks. "I don't like trading in Palestinian blood." [link]

    It isn't just speculation anymore that Hamas puts its civilians in the line of fire.

    Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri plainly admitted on Gazan national TV that the human shield strategy has proven "very effective." [link]

    The UN relief organization UNRWA issued a furious condemnation of Hamas after discovering hidden rockets in not one, but two children's schools in Gaza last week. [link]

    Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, rarely killing any civilians or causing any serious damage. It launches them from densely populated areas, including hospitals and schools.

    Why launch rockets without causing any real damage to the other side, inviting great damage to your own people, then putting your own civilians in the line of fire when the response comes? Even when the IDF warns civilians to evacuate their homes before a strike, why does Hamas tell them to stay put? [link]

    Because Hamas knows its cause is helped when Gazans die. If there is one thing that helps Hamas most -- one thing that gives it any legitimacy -- it is dead civilians. Rockets in schools. Hamas exploits the deaths of its children to gain the world's sympathy. It uses them as a weapon.

    You don't have to like what Israel is doing to abhor Hamas. Arguably, Israel and Fatah are morally equivalent. Both have a lot of right on their side. Hamas, on the other hand, doesn't have a shred of it.


    ***


    5. Why are people asking for Israel to end the "occupation" in Gaza?

    Because they have short memories.

    In 2005, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza. It pulled out every last Israeli soldier. It dismantled every last settlement. Many Israeli settlers who refused to leave were forcefully evicted from their homes, kicking and screaming. [link]

    This was a unilateral move by Israel, part of a disengagement plan intended to reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians. [link] It wasn't perfect -- Israel was still to control Gaza's borders, coastline, and airspace -- but considering the history of the region, it was a pretty significant first step.

    After the evacuation, Israel opened up border crossings to facilitate commerce. The Palestinians were also given 3,000 greenhouses which had already been producing fruit and flowers for export for many years. [link]

    But Hamas chose not to invest in schools, trade, or infrastructure. Instead, it built an extensive network of tunnels [link] to house thousands upon thousands of rockets and weapons, including newer, sophisticated ones [link] from Iran and Syria. All the greenhouses were destroyed.

    Hamas did not build any bomb shelters for its people. It did, however, build a few for its leaders to hide out in during airstrikes. [link] Civilians are not given access to these shelters for precisely the same reason Hamas tells them to stay home when the bombs come. [link]

    Gaza was given a great opportunity in 2005 that Hamas squandered by transforming it into an anti-Israel weapons store instead of a thriving Palestinian state that, with time, may have served as a model for the future of the West Bank as well. If Fatah needed yet another reason to abhor Hamas, here it was.


    ***


    6. Why are there so many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel?

    The reason fewer Israeli civilians die is not because there are fewer rockets raining down on them. It's because they are better protected by their government.

    When Hamas' missiles head towards Israel, sirens go off, the Iron Dome goes into effect, and civilians are rushed into bomb shelters. When Israeli missiles head towards Gaza, Hamas tells civilians to stay in their homes and face them. [link]

    While Israel's government urges its civilians to get away from rockets targeted at them, Gaza's government urges its civilians to get in front of missiles not targeted at them. [link]

    The popular explanation for this is that Hamas is poor and lacks the resources to protect its people like Israel does. The real reason, however, seems to have more to do with disordered priorities than deficient resources (see #5). This is about will, not ability. All those rockets, missiles, and tunnels aren't cheap to build or acquire. But they are priorities. And it's not like Palestinians don't have a handful of oil-rich neighbors [link] to help them the way Israel has the US.

    The problem is, if civilian casualties in Gaza drop, Hamas loses the only weapon it has in its incredibly effective PR war. It is in Israel's national interest to protect its civilians and minimize the deaths of those in Gaza. It is in Hamas' interest to do exactly the opposite on both fronts.


    ***


    7. If Hamas is so bad, why isn't everyone pro-Israel in this conflict?

    Because Israel's flaws, while smaller in number, are massive in impact.

    Many Israelis seem to have the same tribal mentality that their Palestinian counterparts do. They celebrate the bombing of Gaza [link] the same way many Arabs celebrated 9/11. A UN report recently found that Israeli forces tortured Palestinian children and used them as human shields. [link] They beat up teenagers. [link] They are often reckless with their airstrikes. [link] They have academics who explain how rape may be the only truly effective weapon against their enemy. [link] And many of them callously and publicly revel in the deaths of innocent Palestinian children. [link]

    To be fair, these kinds of things do happen on both sides. They are an inevitable consequence of multiple generations raised to hate the other over the course of 65 plus years. To hold Israel up to a higher standard would mean approaching the Palestinians with the racism of lowered expectations.

    However, if Israel holds itself to a higher standard like it claims -- it needs to do much more to show it isn't the same as the worst of its neighbors.

    Israel is leading itself towards increasing international isolation and national suicide because of two things: 1. The occupation; and 2. Settlement expansion.

    Settlement expansion is simply incomprehensible. No one really understands the point of it. Virtually every US administration -- from Nixon to Bush to Obama -- has unequivocally opposed it. [link] There is no justification for it except a Biblical one (see #2), which makes it slightly more difficult to see Israel's motives as purely secular.

    The occupation is more complicated. The late Christopher Hitchens was right when he said this about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories: [link]

        "In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can't, it'll have to dispense with the occupation. It's as simple as that.

        It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can't govern other people against their will. It can't continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day.And it's unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I'm afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I'm a prisoner of that knowledge. I can't un-know it."

    As seen with Gaza in 2005, unilateral disengagement is probably easier to talk about than actually carry out. But if it Israel doesn't work harder towards a two-state (maybe three-state, thanks to Hamas) solution, it will eventually have to make that ugly choice between being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

    It's still too early to call Israel an apartheid state, but when John Kerry said Israel could end up as one in the future, [link] he wasn't completely off the mark. It's simple math. There are only a limited number of ways a bi-national Jewish state with a non-Jewish majority population can retain its Jewish identity. And none of them are pretty.


    ***


    Let's face it, the land belongs to both of them now. Israel was carved out of Palestine for Jews with help from the British in the late 1940s just like my own birthplace of Pakistan was carved out of India for Muslims around the same time. The process was painful, and displaced millions in both instances. But it's been almost 70 years. There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own. They are programmed to oppose "the other" just as Palestinian children are. At its very core, this is a tribal religious conflict that will never be resolved unless people stop choosing sides.

    So you really don't have to choose between being "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine." If you support secularism, democracy, and a two-state solution -- and you oppose Hamas, settlement expansion, and the occupation -- you can be both.

    If they keep asking you to pick a side after all of that, tell them you're going with hummus.

    Source: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=5602701

Sorry if this is off topic, but after posting in topics along with you and reading your posts/topics I found I really like the way you think.

Anyhow I love how this topic has been positioned to explain all the little nuances and information that relates to this conflict.

Have a nice day umair127

Thank you,as the topic says ,is good to get your information on both sides before you choose one,and this is what i don,and i want others to understand it too.I look forward to talk with you!Have a nice day also!

[zolace]

1. Why is everything so much worse when there are Jews involved?

1.) He says “Muslims have woken up around the world.” Which implies that they were, relatively speaking, asleep before Operation Protective Edge started when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian issue? That doesn’t really track given how pervasive the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in not only Arab and Islamic politics, but also in core Arab and to a lesser extent Islamic identity. This conflict, more than any other existing conflict in the world, has had a very large social impact on the Middle East and it remains a core concept in both pan-Arabic, anti-colonial / nationalistic, and Salafi Jihadi overarching ideological structures.

And no, I don’t think it is just about the numbers. It never has been. It started off as a matter of nationalism vs. western colonialism which has been a very pungent sector of discourse and mobilization for large parts of the world (pretty much every place that was once a European colony). Even in strongly independent countries concerns of neo-colonialism are a constant theme when it comes to developing states and their relations with larger powers. The big difference here is that Palestine has never been allowed / achieved its independence. As far as the nationalism and colonialism debate goes, it is the last unsettled vestige of western colonialism in the Middle East and Africa.

Things like the genocide in Darfur, the ISIS activity in Iraq, and the civil war in Syria are all more bloody, but with the exception perhaps of Darfur, none have been as long lasting. There is also another critical piece to the puzzle that goes along with the colonial and nationalism theme, and that is that none of the other listed examples are seen as imported conflicts from the West the way that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is. Syria, the ISIS, Darfur, etc are all horrible, but they are all internal conflicts largely perpetuated by internal actors. We’ve seen these differences in discourse reaction before with the Gulf War and how outraged and divisive the notion of western troops intervening was and especially how divisive stationing US troops on Saudi soil was relative to the initial conflict.

I also find his remarks of anti-Semitism driving the conflict to be a bit off in terms of the conflicts history. Rising anti-Semitism tends to be a side effect of the conflict, which, while it can and has reinforced said conflict, it isn’t the core driver of it; and never has been. The Arab uprising against the Turks that set the playing field for Arab nationalist interaction with Russian Jewish refugees had little to do with religion, and much more to do with ethnicity and regional identities.

[zolace]

2. Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?

2.) Why do people keep saying it isn’t a religious conflict? Because large parts of it aren’t. It isn’t always possible to separate nationalism from religious identity for all factions in this conflict, but large swaths of other factions such as the Palestinian Authority and more moderate and liberal Israeli parties are secular. Ignoring that for the sake of the ease of labeling it a religious conflict and calling it a day is disingenuous and completely counterproductive when it comes to attempting to understand the dynamics of the conflict. He tries to equate Zionism with Judaism, and while that is certainly the path that some Israeli factions takes (and we see this most visibly expressed in the settler movement) one hardly has to be religious in order to be a Zionist, and the Zionist congress was careful to make it that way and to encourage a larger sense of Jewish national identity outside of conservative Orthodox Judaism. They are potent factions, and are often considered “kingmaker” factions within Israeli politics, but they don’t represent the largest faction within Israel.

He then moves on to Islam, and tries (poorly) to interpret Islamic theology to fit into the space of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by asserting that it is a religious imperative that Muslims cannot have Jewish or Christian allies (which is false considering the most ideal representative of Islamic lifestyle: Muhammad maintained alliances with Jewish and Christian peoples his entire life). He is falling victim here to the same sort of trouble that others have when reading the Quran: lack of historical context and unfamiliarity with interpreting text that isn’t written in narrative form. These Jews and Christians for example are specific tribes that broke alliance contracts with the Ummah, not all Christians and Jews in general (otherwise Muhammad would have been openly disobeying God’s law for the rest of his life through his network of alliances, something which I am sure that the rest of the Ummah wouldn’t have failed to notice).

Theology aside, once again his attempted linking of Islam to Palestinian nationalism rather ignores that this nationalist conflict started off as one between two different predominately Islamic groups: Arabs and Ottoman Turks. Islamic Arabs certainly weren’t too “religious” to ally themselves with Christian British soldiers against the Turks for the sake of their nationalism and desires for self-determination during the Arab Revolt in the First World War. The author seems to completely forget that Palestinians and Levantine Arabs DID ally themselves with Christians and Jews against the Turks for the sake of promoting their nationalist agendas. Likewise, the Fatah charter recognizes the original Jewish inhabitants of the region prior to the mass migration of Jews from Russia and then from Western and Eastern Europe as Palestinians themselves.

The author doesn’t make any attempt to actually look at the historical narratives and political discourse of the factions in these conflicts when trying to ascertain whether or not it is a religious conflict which seems like a rather large hole in his methodology. He also ignores a large bulk of Palestinian political expressions (one which are very long standing) for a much more recent expression of Palestinian nationalism (and one originally funded and allowed to grow in part by Israel): Hamas. Yes Hamas is more religious, but it is also a newer player in a much longer Arab nationalist movement in the region and it also doesn’t theologically represent a majority of Palestinians. This was especially visible during the elections when Hamas was forced to drop its call for the destruction of Israel and advocate instead a two state solution in order to simply be competitive with Fatah and capture the 40% of the vote that it did.

[zolace]

3. Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

3.) I think he has the question wrong when it comes to the deeper issues of the Gazan situation. It isn’t why would Israel want to deliberately target Palestinian civilians, it is why would Israel want to deliberately target civilian infrastructure (which has a side effect of killing a lot of civilians)? The answer of course is that collective punishment is a pretty common weapon within the Israeli arsenal, and one of the main tools it utilizes in order to put pressure on Hamas. We see this theme of pressure through collective punishment all of the time, from home demolitions, to the Gaza Blockade itself, to the deliberate targeting of Palestinian infrastructure as viable military targets despite the fact that it violates international laws of war. As I type this the Gazan power plant for example was just shelled. Likewise past reportings such as the Goldstone Report documented deliberate attacks on civilian water infrastructure and transportation infrastructure. Israel has even developed remote control bulldozers to use for these purposes during military engagements. Pressure through civilian targeting is a potent, though illegal tool, but it has proven effective for Israel in the past even if it is arguably detrimental to Israel in the long run.

The author also assumes that Israel should be against wanting to help Hamas through the imagery that it gets, but there are a couple of things here that need to be considered: 1.) Israel has historically used Hamas (very effectively I might add) as a counter to the Palestinian authority and as a source of division within the Palestinian nationalist movement. 2.) Israel’s internal politics and public opinion need to be considered here. Governments are all too often forced to act “irrationally” for the sake of catering to domestic attitudes. We see this happen all of the time. WWI didn’t make any logical sense in Europe either; so much so that many political theorists at the time shrugged off war as a rather silly possibility.

[sana8410]

I have no interest in picking either side. Let them kill each other.

[zolace]

4. Does Hamas really use its own civilians as human shields?

4.) Yes. Though simply focusing on this I think misses a lot of the justified criticism when it comes to some of Israel’s targets. Legally speaking Israel is required to minimize civilian casualties and when considering possible collateral damage, military gains have to clearly and significantly outweigh civilian cost. Use of human shields by Hamas is abhorrent and a war crime; that doesn’t mean however that Israel is justified in bombing those shields. There are multiple layers of legal responsibility here. the question in this issue is not whether Hamas is living up to its responsibilities (it's obvious they aren't), it is: is Israel living up to its responsibility to limit civilian casualties as best as it can?

[zolace]

5. Why are people asking for Israel to end the "occupation" in Gaza?

5.) He wants to claim that occupation ended in 2005 with the disengagement plan. He’s simply wrong, especially when it comes to both the legal viewpoint under international law, and the internal political discourse within Palestinian nationalist circles. He mentions dismantling Israeli settlements. Fine. But he doesn’t mention that Israel, under the Oslo Accords agreed to allow Palestinian fishing rights off of the Gazan coast for at least 20 miles, but that the actual allowed number rests at three. It caused a collapse in a long vital Palestinian industry: Fishing. Likewise Israel is in defacto control of large swaths (some 44%) of arable Gazan territory through the application of ‘no go’ security buffer zones which eat up large swaths of Gazan Agricultural land crippling another basic Gazan economic market: Agriculture. Add the blockade, and economic restrictions, the fact that Israel, not Palestinians, collects many of the region’s economic taxes, and the closure of Gazan airspace and borders, and we are left with a piece of land that is legally still very much so under occupation. Some colonial regimes were less involved than this in their foreign territories.

He also doesn’t comment on the unilateral nature of the pull-out and the civil war that it facilitated within Palestine. There was no security mechanisms in place for transfer of security and power. If anything the pull-out was a highly destabilizing operation and a complete deviation from the formal peace process (the Road Map to Peace) that was in place at the time. A road Map that Israel never even bothered to take the first step on (indeed, an Israeli aid to Sharon and one of the chief architects of the disengagement plan openly stated that it was done specifically in order to kill West Bank peace talks and a two state solution and take the issue of West Bank settlement Expansion off of the table).

[zolace]

6. Why are there so many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel?

6.) This entire argument seems very disingenuous to me. Israel protects its citizens better! Really? That’s why? It couldn’t have anything to do with the vast differences in military power and capabilities between the two? It couldn’t have anything to do with the use of inaccurate home-made rockets out of fertilizer vs. precision multimillion dollar missiles and aircraft? To be honest, staying inside their homes is probably the safest place for Palestinians (either that or UN facilities). Israel openly states and has in the past that anything related to Hamas is a fair target, which would mean that any Hamas bunkers or safety zones would be considered fair, if not, priority targets. Does this guy not remember that it was a police station / graduation ceremony that was among the first targets bombed in Operation Cast Lead? Does he really think that Palestinians should be eager to flock to such places for their safety?

[zolace]

7. If Hamas is so bad, why isn't everyone pro-Israel in this conflict?

7.) His list of Israeli flaws is laughable. Many of them listed are very small fringe issues that aren’t part of official Israeli policy, and he focuses on them instead of on the actual and much larger issues in play here. He comments on some fluff piece about some Israeli possibly arguing that rape should be used against Palestinians which isn’t a policy and has nothing to do with the conflict, but completely ignores the widespread and pervasive water crisis? The complete inability to accurate identity key issues makes me feel as though this author doesn’t even know enough about the conflict to even know what the key issues are.

I saw no mention of the collapsing fishing and agricultural sectors in it; no mention of the cash or water crisis, and no mention of severe shortages of medical supplies and electricity. Not even a single mention of collective punishment either, or the history of extra-judicial executions and widespread arbitrary arrest and detention policies. That is to say nothing of the West Bank and the effects of the separation barrier, discriminatory movement restrictions, daily military abuses, impunity for settler violence and pricetag campaigns, security zones and permit restrictions, home demolitions, administrative detention policies, the Right of Return, the status of Jerusalem, etc. The only major specific issue that he even mentioned was settlement expansion allowing everything else to be vaguely captured under “occupation” (which according to him doesn’t even apply to Gaza). The only other potential issue that he touches on is a smaller one with a reference to Israel’s human shield use through the neighbor policy (but this actually doesn’t have anything to do with Gaza and is practiced primarily in the West Bank and has been utilized less and less over the years ever since it was taken off the books as official policy in 2005).

I also disagree that Israel is setting the moral standard here. I think that would be Abbas. Israel has engaged in widely deadly military operations and even full scale wars over less than 1/10 of what it is currently doing to Palestinians and yet, despite this, Abbas and his faction has remained peaceful, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and has been sitting at an empty peace table for close to eight years now.

Finally, when he says that it is too early to call Israel an Apartheid state, I would disagree with that as well. It has practiced an official policy of discriminatory occupation for 47 – 48 years now since the 67 war (to say nothing of its right to return policy and treatment of Palestinian refugees prior to that) The entire length of Apartheid in South African official policy? 48 years. Israel even has the three different classifications of citizens as the South African Apartheid governments did. Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, and Palestinians (South Africa’s was white, colored, and black). The argument that Israel can’t be considered to be engaging in apartheid because of the existence of Arab Israelis rather ignores how Apartheid historically worked and the different tiers of discrimination that exist within such systems.

One of the few things that I agree with him on is that it is overly simplistic to be simply either “pro-Palestinian” or “pro-Israeli”.

[Matze]

This conflict is a very hard one to chose a side because I am Christian and it says in the bible that Jews are gods chosen people but they have done lots of terrible things to the innocents of Gaza and really anyone who is deemed "in the way" I have also seen many people that are in the Israel government say genocidal things about Muslims and Arabic's. Which is also very ironic for a Jew to say with what's happened to them. I have also seen an article about a rabbi saying it was good Europe is gaining lots of Muslims as payback for the holocaust.  So with all that said and done I am almost about to be pro Palestine.

 

[Spendulus]

This conflict is a very hard one to chose a side because I am Christian and it says in the bible that Jews are gods chosen people but they have done lots of terrible things ......
 

I tend to seriously dislike people who contrive situations or manufacture controversy with the intent of getting me or others to "pick a side."

That goes for the parties in these conflicts, as well as some of the people in these threads.

[Brewins]

Why do I need to pick sides in the Middle East?
This is not my war, and I'm not politician or weapon smuggler or political analyst

[ajareselde]

It is one thing to choose a side in the middle east conflict, but its another thing to
support third parity involvement in the fight.

We are all aware that things are not the way they are shown in news, and its hard to realy know who stands beding the curtain.

[Matze]

This conflict is a very hard one to chose a side because I am Christian and it says in the bible that Jews are gods chosen people but they have done lots of terrible things ......
 

I tend to seriously dislike people who contrive situations or manufacture controversy with the intent of getting me or others to "pick a side."

That goes for the parties in these conflicts, as well as some of the people in these threads.

I wasn't really trying to get you to pick a side I couldn't care less. I just wanted to show that neither side is good.

[Spendulus]

This conflict is a very hard one to chose a side because I am Christian and it says in the bible that Jews are gods chosen people but they have done lots of terrible things ......
 

I tend to seriously dislike people who contrive situations or manufacture controversy with the intent of getting me or others to "pick a side."

That goes for the parties in these conflicts, as well as some of the people in these threads.

I wasn't really trying to get you to pick a side I couldn't care less. I just wanted to show that neither side is good.

There is absolutely zero new in this current round of nonsense, all this can be seen in the days of Arafat.  Media whores.

[zedicus]

6. Why are there so many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel?

6.) This entire argument seems very disingenuous to me. Israel protects its citizens better! Really? That’s why? It couldn’t have anything to do with the vast differences in military power and capabilities between the two? It couldn’t have anything to do with the use of inaccurate home-made rockets out of fertilizer vs. precision multimillion dollar missiles and aircraft? To be honest, staying inside their homes is probably the safest place for Palestinians (either that or UN facilities). Israel openly states and has in the past that anything related to Hamas is a fair target, which would mean that any Hamas bunkers or safety zones would be considered fair, if not, priority targets. Does this guy not remember that it was a police station / graduation ceremony that was among the first targets bombed in Operation Cast Lead? Does he really think that Palestinians should be eager to flock to such places for their safety?

The reason there are so many more civilian deaths in gaza is because hammas is using citizens as human shields. They keep weapons and soldiers mixed in with the civilian population so in order to target the military they must target places where civilians are.

[Sindelar1938]

Great article with what I think is a pretty balanced perspective on what's going on
Kudos to the author, and let's home sanity will eventually prevail in the region