Does anyone really care about the Palestinians?

[L'Chaim]

Imagine what it would have done to the Northern situation if the British had used the kind of hardware Israel uses in Gaza and the West Bank i.e. F16's, Merkava tanks. Do you seriously believe it would have shortened the Troubles?

And imagine if the IRA had used suicide bombers, killed Israeli children with rifle butts (like the hero that was returned to Lebanon last year). When I was 17 or 18 I was working in a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, close to the border, and Arabs from lebanon were firing rockets at it. For a couple of days and nights they targeted the nursery, which was full of babies and toddlers and those too young to go to school. The Israeli air force sorted it out and stopped the attacks. I'm glad Israel had that hardware. Did the IRA ever target kids like that? At the end of the day all you've got is 'imagine' and 'what if'.

[FutureTaoiseach]

And imagine if the IRA had used suicide bombers, killed Israeli children with rifle butts (like the hero that was returned to Lebanon last year). When I was 17 or 18 I was working in a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, close to the border, and Arabs from lebanon were firing rockets at it. For a couple of days and nights they targeted the nursery, which was full of babies and toddlers and those too young to go to school. The Israeli air force sorted it out and stopped the attacks. I'm glad Israel had that hardware. Did the IRA ever target kids like that? At the end of the day all you've got is 'imagine' and 'what if'.

But Israel has not just put Palestinian children at risk. Israel has actually killed thousands of them. It isn't comparable. It's like what the Nazis did in Italy after an attack on their soldiers in Rome when Hitler ordered 15 Italians killed for every German soldier (which led to a massacre in the Ardeatine caves for which Erich Priebke is currently under house-arrest in Italy). You can't just dispense with the rules of war (under the Geneva Convention) by indiscriminately flattening one of the most densely-populated urban areas on earth just because your religion tells you that this is your land and just because Joshua massacred the indigenous populations of Palestine including the Amalekites. This is another example of the madness that organised-religion instills in governments and peoples. The death-ratio between the Palestinians and the Israelis in the Gaza conflict was 10:1 for Palestinian-deaths to Israeli deaths. That is grossly irresponsible and shows a savage cruelty and disregard for human life that is much worse even than that of Hamas. It's Zionazism (at least prior to 1942). The IDF behaves like wild-beasts, butchering Arabs at random because of a tiny chance that Hamas rockets will hit them.

[Toland]

And imagine if the IRA had used suicide bombers, killed Israeli children with rifle butts (like the hero that was returned to Lebanon last year). When I was 17 or 18 I was working in a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, close to the border, and Arabs from lebanon were firing rockets at it. For a couple of days and nights they targeted the nursery, which was full of babies and toddlers and those too young to go to school. The Israeli air force sorted it out and stopped the attacks. I'm glad Israel had that hardware. Did the IRA ever target kids like that? At the end of the day all you've got is 'imagine' and 'what if'.

I just had words with a Northerner about waddaboutery. The very same applies to you.

The vaguely valid point you are making (if it were corroborated with evidence, which I'm sure you can produce) is being hidden by the way you are making it.

This is typical of the the way conversations on similar subjects in Northern Ireland go.

The undercurrent in what you are saying is as follows:

I couldn't give a monkeys about civilian casualties on the other side (and if I say I do I don't mean it) because the combatants on the other side actually target civilians -- kids even.

[L'Chaim]

But Israel has not just put Palestinian children at risk. Israel has actually killed thousands of them. It isn't comparable.

Israel has put palestinian children at risk? Surely you mean terror groups like Hamas has put Palestinian children at risk? Every reasonable school of philosophy, theology and common sense distinguishes between deliberately targeting civilians and inadvertently killing civilians while targeting terrorists who hide among them. The targeted killing of children and other vulnerable citizens is without any moral justification. When the Ku Klux Klan carried out similar dreadful attacks, though on a smaller scale, there was worldwide condemnation. No one condemned the responses by the FBI and other US agencies or army. Where people like you go wrong is where you try to justify the anti-Jewish outrages as the work of freedom fighters. The victims of the Holocaust and other genocides didn't take revenge by killing innocent children, even the children of the perpetrators of that violence. Yet Israel's enemies have not hesitated to target children or anyone else. And people like you try to describe Israel's attempts to prevent these outrages as morally equivalent to the outrages themselves. You fail to acknowledge the fundamental difference between deliberately targeting and/or killing civilians and accidentally killing civilians in the course of self-defence.

[Toland]

Double effect nonsense. Are you sure you're not catholic?

[L'Chaim]

I just had words with a Northerner about waddaboutery. The very same applies to you.

The vaguely valid point you are making (if it were corroborated with evidence, which I'm sure you can produce) is being hidden by the way you are making it.

This is typical of the the way conversations on similar subjects in Northern Ireland go.

The undercurrent in what you are saying is as follows:

The waddaboutry was in response to FT's waddaboutry question -"Imagine what it would have done to the Northern situation if the British had used the kind of hardware Israel uses in Gaza and the West Bank i.e. F16's, Merkava tanks. Do you seriously believe it would have shortened the Troubles? ". That was my whole point, all he has is 'imagine' and 'what if'

[Shirley Temple Mount]

When I was 17 or 18 I was working in a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, close to the border, and Arabs from lebanon were firing rockets at it. For a couple of days and nights they targeted the nursery, which was full of babies and toddlers and those too young to go to school.

Yawn ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz........... Id be pretty sure if a scrap of that were true that it was your fellow Kibbutzim radioed in your coords to hezballah because they couldnt take your incessant piffle anymore.

Ye hid behind the nursery di'nt ya ?

[FutureTaoiseach]

Israel has put palestinian children at risk? Surely you mean terror groups like Hamas has put Palestinian children at risk? Every reasonable school of philosophy, theology and common sense distinguishes between deliberately targeting civilians and inadvertently killing civilians while targeting terrorists who hide among them. The targeted killing of children and other vulnerable citizens is without any moral justification. When the Ku Klux Klan carried out similar dreadful attacks, though on a smaller scale, there was worldwide condemnation. No one condemned the responses by the FBI and other US agencies or army. Where people like you go wrong is where you try to justify the anti-Jewish outrages as the work of freedom fighters. The victims of the Holocaust and other genocides didn't take revenge by killing innocent children, even the children of the perpetrators of that violence. Yet Israel's enemies have not hesitated to target children or anyone else. And people like you try to describe Israel's attempts to prevent these outrages as morally equivalent to the outrages themselves. You fail to acknowledge the fundamental difference between deliberately targeting and/or killing civilians and accidentally killing civilians in the course of self-defence.

The fact that the Palestinians fired into Sderot does not absolve Israel of the responsibility to minimise civilian casualties. The Goldstone (who is Jewish) report found that Israel had deliberately targetted civilians. Israel is demolishing Arab homes in East Jerusalem and replacing them with Jewish settlers - as Panorama on BBC recently revealed. It also revealed that 87% of the homes demolished as being illegally constructed are Arabs, and that an Israeli settler-organisation has been cynically given excavation rights under Arab homes in East Jerusalem. It is fascism - pure and simple. Israel is seeking a racially-pure state like the Nazis and Milosevic's Serbia.

[L'Chaim]

The fact that the Palestinians fired into Sderot does not absolve Israel of the responsibility to minimise civilian casualties. The Goldstone (who is Jewish) report found that Israel had deliberately targetted civilians. Israel is demolishing Arab homes in East Jerusalem and replacing them with Jewish settlers - as Panorama on BBC recently revealed. It also revealed that 87% of the homes demolished as being illegally constructed are Arabs, and that an Israeli settler-organisation has been cynically given excavation rights under Arab homes in East Jerusalem. It is fascism - pure and simple. Israel is seeking a racially-pure state like the Nazis and Milosevic's Serbia.

But the facts get in the way of your little conspiracy theory and join-the-dots scenario. If Israel had wanted a racially pure state (not so subtle link to Nazism there FT), they would have expelled all the Arabs in 1948 and not have allowed them to increase their population from 400,000 to 1.5 million today. They could have also expelled the arabs in the West bank in 1967 and saved themselves a lot of trouble from then on. But the fact is, they didn't and don't!

[JSLeFanu]

The state of Israel's priority is, quite properly, the safety and welfare of Israelis citizens. One would think that HAMAS would similarly prioritize the safety and welfare of Gazans, wouldn't you? Well as I'm sure you'll allow they don't. I'll go further and say that it is HAMAS policy to place their citizens in harms way. Putting the lives of its citizens on the line is in fact policy.

So those are the boundary conditions within which Israel and Gaza operates. It's asymmetrical. One government is welded to the concept to protecting its citizens from harm while the other chief tactic is the placing into harms way of its citizens.

What then happens is that HAMAS takes aim at the citizens of Israel. HAMAS knows that Israel, like any western democracy, is bound to put a stop to attacks on its people. The only way to do so is to do what typically happens in such situations and that's to attack those who attack you. In Gaza it is, I'm sure everyone agrees on this, impossible to respond effectively while protecting HAMAS's citizens from harm.

I think Israel is constantly being asked to do that which would be expected of no one else and that's to absorb the punishment and simply turn the other cheek. It's not usually phrased this way though. Usually one hears comments about "proportionate response" etc. A proportionate response? In warfare? Whoever heard of it? Once an army enters battle what's required of it is to overcome its enemy and that is NEVER achieved by responding proportionately. Wars and battles are won by those who respond disproportionately and Israel isn't any different from any other army.

One of the big difficulties is that when Israel gets proactive it gets hammered in the west. The west wants it to make concessions, we're brought up in a world where reasonable people sit down and work things out like grown ups. That however isn't the world in which Israel has to operate. It operates in a world where concessions are taken as a sign of weakness. Most westerners have a hopeless grasp of the way Arabs think. We cling to the notion that they're really quite like us but simply get riled by Israeli policy or US "imperialism." I'm sure they get riled by both but the fact of the matter is that they're riled by the very existence of Israel.

Israel agrees, say, to pull out of Lebanon. There's a very short burst of applause from the "international community." Then Israel has to sit back and absorb heavy fire from the territory which it was persuaded by, ahem, the International Community, it wouldn't have to fear any attacks from. It ends up as it ended up in 2006. While the likes of Bob Fisk and others like to portray 2006 as a disaster for Israel it was anything but. Israel was punished for pulling out of Lebanon and rewarded as a consequence of eventually defending itself in 2006. Since then there's hardly been a peep out of Hezbolah. It was argued that Israel should pull out of Gaza and it did so unilaterally. What was the pay off? Well that's easy, the pay off was a steadily increasing amount of rocket fire into its neighborhoods.

HAMAS depends on Isreal defending itself and knows its own citizens are completely vulnerable, just as vulnerable as it is impossible for Israel to respond meaningfully while avoiding civilian casualties. HAMAS then displays the corpses for us to get upset about and we, with Pavlovian reliability, respond as desired. Our ability to be horrified and to take it out on Israel is one further boundary condition which feeds this meat grinder. HAMAS believes that western sympathy for Israel can be thus undermined. Remember HAMAS is playing for the big prize, a greater Palestine without Jews. A Palestine which resembles much of the rest of the middle east, in other words a hell hole.

The problem here is that HAMAS, like a lot of Arabs, are addicted to lose/lose games. To paraphrase Golda Mier "when the Palestianians learn to love their own children as much as they hate jews we'll have peace in our land."