Gaza

Community
#21

Ryan: my post was intended partly as some historical clarification over borders, and partly to show that the the situation, from the beginning, has been created and perpetuated by both sides and not solely Israel. Before 1948, the term ‘Palestinian’ did not exist. The people who are now Palestinians were mainly Arabs living in the land of Palestine. Whether it was forced expulsion, a personal choice or whether they were incited to flee by surrounding Arab countries (and there is evidence for all three) - they left. The one’s that stayed became part of Israel’s Arab citizenry, the ones that left for other countries got stuck in between because none of the Arab countries would grant them citizenship (see my above post). This was a deliberate act (again, see above).
Bear in mind that the US was not particularly involved at this point.
Also, reasons for the rapid establishment of the State of Israel (1948, very soon after the UN Partition Plan) are likely to be rooted in WW2 - the British would not allow refugees from the concentration camps to enter Israel. This was a very important issue for the Jewish community in Israel at the time, and they went ahead even though the infrastructure etc for an independent country wasn’t actually in place. As soon as independence was declared (for an Israel that had the borders specified by the UN) the Arabs attacked (literally, the very next day, and in violation of the UN). Until some time in 1949 there was war (and it really WAS a war of existence). In all that, I guess it’s not surprising that a Palestinian state never got formed. I’m not well-versed enough in the history of the region and political analysis to pinpoint times where it could have happened. The PLO seemed to be a step in the right direction, at the time.

As for the current situation - I am not as informed as I would like to be (working on that), so I don’t want to make any definite comment. However, I don’t necessarily agree with everything the Israeli government does (or the NZ government for that matter).

#22

And this kind of shit makes me really angry.

[quote=“The BBC article”]"The Israeli army was saying: ‘This is the Israeli Defence Forces, we are asking all the people to leave their homes and go to the school. Ladies first, then men.’

“We decided to send the women first, two by two,” he said.

First to step outside was the wife of his cousin, Rawhiya al-Najar, 48.

“The army was about 15 metres (50 feet) away from the house or less. They shot her in the head,” he said.

The woman’s daughter was shot in the thigh but crawled back inside the house, he said. [/quote]
The thing about Gaza, is that is has 1,500,000 inhabitants in a 10Km x 4Km area. That’s not much bigger than the suburb of Mt Albert. And only a very small fraction are actually militant Hamas. Not that the IDF give a fuck, they’ll happily kill defenceless innocents.

This kind of behaviour has a name. It’s called “terrorism”.

#23

This kind of stuff has been going on for years.

The fact of the matter is hopefuly this time somthing will be done about the stupid acts commited as part of war.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war … rld_War_II

spiegel.de/international/ger … 79,00.html

O - no one told you the red army raped their way across germany?

Yea its not right.

Can we do anything?

Nope.

goes back to finding a cheap electricity company.

#24

Good luck with that. In this city there are no cheap electricity companies.

R

#25

I find it interesting that Andrews points were pretty much ignored. While I don’t really agree with all the points, he does bring a harsh reality to the table: this way has gone on for ever and just keeps on rolling on; eye for an eye for an ear for a leg for a heart. Will it ever stop? possibly.

#26

For the record: fries inside the kebab is totally delicious, and the only way to eat real kebabs (IMO). In the Middle East ‘kebab’ is used to refer to shish kebabs only, and what we would call kebab in NZ is called shawarma. You can also have the exact same thing with falafel (but then it’s not called shawarma).
Also, they’re way less stingy with the hummus.
Shawarma is awesome :smiley:

The chocolate milk is really good too.
And hummus is just that delicious.

#27

And the same could be said of the Europeans: Chronically fractious, continually warring and militantly nationalistic. Invading your neigbours was seen as a valid method of international integration for many centuries. And, much of this was based on religeous fanaticism.

But they managed to sort out their differences peacefully, and now we have the EU.

Defeatism is, well, self-defeating.