You’ve probably heard this story by now. . .
From the Washington Post:
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children — emaciated but alive — in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.
You think my subject line was sacrilegious? Paul Woodward didn’t pull any punches either at War in Context with the heading to his link to the WaPo story: “Israel provides Palestinians with snacks as it takes massacre rest breaks.”
Meanwhile, the BBC reportered:
“This is a shocking incident,” Pierre Wettach, ICRC head for Israel and the Palestinian territories said in a statement.
“The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded.”
Correspondents say the criticism is unusually strong, coming from an agency considered to be neutral.
What are the odds that even a story like this will make a dent in the hardened hearts of the Israeli administration, the outgoing and incoming US administrations, nor even the US congress?
Categories: World
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
I heard on the radio that the UN is pulling out of Gaza because their (our) trucks have been hit by Israeli shelling.
And again, how is Israel defending liberal, enlightened civilization?
Hello? Anybody home? These Hamas terrorists worship death! Read the Hamas Covenant where they say that all peace treaties are nonsense and that “death in the service of Allah is their loftiest ambition.” Maybe if Hamas was interested in peace or a state or in sending their kids to college, they wouldn’t cowardly fire weapons from behind babies and act sanely instead or homicidally and suicidally.
And how does this make it okay for Israel to attack UN aid workers? Get a grip.
Game, set, match, Ann!
But you agree that Hamas are death-worshippers, who desire not a state nor peace but death. You agree that they use civilians as shields, that they hide explosives in mosques and homes and schools, that they shoot from behind civilians and babies to draw Israeli fire, and then they often stage the filming of the aftermath to manipulate the press. You agree that their ideology is shocking, hate-filled, racist, counter-productive. You agree that Hamas dresses their kids as suicide bombers and encourages suicide as a vocation. Right?
No, I don’t agree with all of that, and certainly not with the myopic view of history it represents. More importantly, I don’t agree with your determination to blame the entire grotesque situation on one group, or with the idea that the militant wing of Hamas represents the culture, ideology and values of the majority of Palestinians. Hamas is in power now because they built hospitals and schools (which they control with an iron fist and shut down in retaliation for protest), because they’re perceived as less corrupt than Fatah (which is not difficult), and because the Mossad helped put this particular group of thugs in power.
When your choices are all shit, you pick the one that stinks the least. And where did those limited choices for Palestinians originate? Who built the ghettos? Who happily took possession of land that was not unoccupied, displacing a population with every right to be there and relegating them to limbo?
There is no moral high ground here, you fool. Terrorists are created from desperation and hopelessness. Israel is just as responsible for Hamas as are the Palestinians, and you really don’t want to look too closely at our beloved ally’s human rights practices, in war or truce.
1. Terrorism is created by ideology, not poverty. I’ve lived with poverty-stricken people in several countries and somehow they manage to find other options.
2. Most of your other comments are wrong, but I don’t have the time and you don’t have the inclination to explore it.
3. Name-calling of people who disagree with you says a lot about you.
77kart: Terrorism vs ideology – did I miss the part where these things are mutually exclusive?
1. Simplistic, and reflective of your own thought processes, which are not far removed from those of the people you so abhor.
2. You have no possible way of gauging my inclination to explore the subject; again, you appear to be extrapolating from your own mindset, as the one person on this thread locked into the kind of thinking that makes war inevitable and negotiation impossible.
3. Yes, it does. Although in this case, “fool” seems rather innocuous compared to “death-worshipper,” “coward,” and “insane.” So I suppose it says something about us both, doesn’t it?
It would be much easier to take you seriously if you approached the subject with thoughtful personal opinion rather than stale rhetoric; I would happily listen to and disagree with a mind, but a mouthpiece isn’t worth the time – and if you care about convincing others of your views, ranting is also remarkably ineffective.