Tuesday, December 30, 2008

In The Most Unlikely Of Places . . .

Talk of the Hamas/Isreali conflict is hazardous at best. Depending upon the source of your information, the supply ship Dignity, carrying Cynthia McKinney (write your own jokes here) was either "rammed by an Israeli warship," (video here) or "tried to outmaneuver" the Israeli patrols and blithely head into a warzone:

The captain of the Dignity said the Israelis broadcast a radio message accusing the vessel of being involved in terrorist activity. But Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor denied that and said the radio message simply warned the vessel not to proceed to Gaza because it is a closed military area.

Palmor said there was no response to the radio message, and the vessel then tried to out-maneuver the Israeli patrol boat, leading to the collision.


So much for unbiased journalism. The arguments made on behalf of either side of the Gaza Conflict are always heated, often beyond reason. Which is why I was ultimately surprised by the following two diametrically opposed yet still mostly logical posts found at, of all places, The Huffington Post:

Without further ado:

Myths of Israeli Victimhood

Hamas Is Largely To Blame

Between the two, you can find the essence of all arguments boiled down into the relevant facts. The question remains, of course, on what to do next, but it's heartening to see some honest dialogue for a change.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm siding with Israel in this conflict. I'm not saying that Israel is blameless, but Palestine, in particular, Hamas, is far from the victim that they want us to believe. They were the ones that broke the ceasefire. I don't believe they were trying to hit just military targets. Further, when even Egypt and the West Bank Palestinians (Fatah) are almost openly hoping that Hamas is defeated, it's hard to see an upside with Hamas.

Israel has stated that they can coexist with the Palestinians, while Hamas says they still want Israel destroyed. Further, Palestinians in Israel have more rights than a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. For example, an openly gay Palestinian, a Palestinian who renounces Islam, or a woman who doesn't want to wear a burka, would have a better chance of living, not being beat up, or going to jail in Israel than in the Gaza Strip.

It's time for Hamas to join the 21st Century and to stop the violence, and their hatred. It's time for them to decide that peace and their children are more important than violence and hatred of Isrealis.

Jamie said...

You know, I read a comment on another blog today that was a bit infuriating. One person mentioned that Hamas launches rockets every day into Israel, over 3000 in 2008 alone. The response from the blogger whose site the comment was left on?

How many people died from those 3000 attacks?

As if, somehow, those should be excused because Hamas doesn't know how to aim properly. They still launched rockets, whether they killed anyone or not.

Grrrr.

Anonymous said...

This is classic tribalism. It is completely about religion and race. And I'm not sure how we can "solve" that.

If it wasn't for the existence of Israel, the Palestinians would still be part of the Hesemite Kingdom of Jordan. And I seriously doubt Abdullah II would care too much about their "humanitarian rights" under the auspices of a rebellion. He certainly isn't the worse of the Arab dictators. But does anyone doubt, if Amman still controlled Gaza, that King Abdullah would put down this little Hamas uprising by the most lethal force available to him?

And he wouldn't get all this crap from the Arab League about it either. In fact, everyone would probably salute him as a strong and decisive Muslim ruler. One who acted boldly in the face of a dangerous threat.

Substantively, the Palestinians wouldn't be any better off under Jordan. The only difference is religion and ethnicity. They will bitch less about being tortured and killed by their own people, even though they bitterly protest such behavior when it comes from outsiders.