Apparently Israeli picnic goers don't find "rockets" terrifying at all

[eridani]

http://rinf.com/alt-news/war-terrorism/israelis-cheer-whoop-whistle-bombs-rain-palestinians-gaza/

Israelis watch from hilltop being “entertained” as Palestinian’s in Gaza are bombed by the IDF, Israeli Defense Force

It’s been hard following the horrific Israeli assault on Gaza and then I came across this account from Harriet Sherwood entitled “Israeli’s Gather on Hillsides to Watch and Cheer as Military Drops Bombs on Gaza” published in the ICH, Information Clearing House, July20, 2014. It grabbed my attention.



Also in 2009: Israeli's Picnic On Israel/Gaza Border To view Action.

http://item.liveleak.com/2/view?i=b3d_1231628428&comments=1&use_old_player=1

[Bonobo]

1. I wonder what you think is gained by this OP.

I would wonder the same thing if someone posted a photo of a Palestinian cheering a dead Israeli or a site of a suicide bomber.

It is so unproductive in a pragmatic or even karmic way.

Unless you really want to fan the flames of hatred.

Is it your point to "prove" that Israelis are inhuman?

I find it to be a gross OP. And that is just my opinion.

[eridani]

2. The most frequent excuse offered for this slaughter is the constant rain of rockets

If the supposed victims of the rockets don't appear to be threatened at all, there goes the excuse.

[Bonobo]

3. The rockets do kill people though and they are a threat, albeit small by comparison to missiles.

Israel DOES let nearly daily rocket attacks go for long stretches of time with little reaction.

But that doesn't mean that can continue forever.

[eridani]

4. Automobile accidents kill far more

If picnic goers don't take the rockets seriously, why should anyone else?

3) This Israeli operation, among others, was caused by rocket fire from Gaza.

Israel claims that its current and past wars against the Palestinian population in Gaza have been in response to rocket fire. Empirical evidence from 2008, 2012 and 2014 refute that claim. First, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the greatest reduction of rocket fire came through diplomatic rather than military means. This chart demonstrates the correlation between Israel’s military attacks upon the Gaza Strip and Hamas militant activity. Hamas rocket fire increases in response to Israeli military attacks and decreases in direct correlation to them. Cease-fires have brought the greatest security to the region.

During the four months of the Egyptian-negotiated cease-fire in 2008, Palestinian militants reduced the number of rockets to zero or single digits from the Gaza Strip. Despite this relative security and calm, Israel broke the cease-fire to begin the notorious aerial and ground offensive that killed 1,400 Palestinians in twenty-two days. In November 2012, Israel’s extrajudicial assassination of Ahmad Jabari, the chief of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, while he was reviewing terms for a diplomatic solution, again broke the cease-fire that precipitated the eight-day aerial offensive that killed 132 Palestinians.

[Bonobo]

8. Maybe because they are not aimed where the picnic-goers were.

Plenty of people in Israel DO take them seriously. Does that prove the opposite of what you are assuring?

Oh, and car accidents are accidental.

[eridani]

13. They aren't "aimed" anywhere at all

They don't have the technology available to actually aim them.

[Bonobo]

17. Of course they are aimed. Pointing them is "aiming" them. nt

[eridani]

19. "Aiming" implies control. They don't have the technology for control.

"In the general direction of Israel" isn't very specific.

On the other hand, IDF knows damned well that they are desrtoying infrastructure.

[Historic NY]

23. Dumb bombs kill too...

video from 2009 thats not exactly the present situtation either.

[eridani]

24. The present situation is like the previous situations--mass murder of civilians living in

--a big outdoor prison.

[madokie]

11. The important part in all this

to me, and I am allowed to have an opinion on this, is the fact that Israel has Stolen the land they live on from the Palestinians to begin with. Thumping the bible in their justification of that thievery.
IMO
take from it what you may, I'm not here to nor will I argue the point either. I simply pay attention to whats going on around me and have for 66 years now.
peace

[Bonobo]

12. You think they should leave?

Where do you think they should go?

[madokie]

14. Who is they?

I know the answer to that question so you don't have to embarrass yourself with a reply.

They'll be no further discussion with you on this
its nothing personal either, just a difference of opinion from a different perspective.
Have a good rest of the night, I plan too.
peace

[Bonobo]

16. Oh, I wouldn't be embarrassed but maybe you would be.

You're talking about the Israelis.

I can only presume that your answer to the question is something you are ashamed to say.

I guess you think the Jews should jump in the ocean or "go back to where they belong".

You know, if your opinion is so fair and reasonable, why won't you say it?

[madokie]

20. You make the mistake of trying to put words in my mouth

or thoughts in my mind.

Goodnite byebye

As I said no further discussion on this with you
You're working from emotion, I'm not. Rational discussion is out

[Bonobo]

21. Well I asked you if they should leave and if so, where?

You answered with a sort of "I know but I won't answer" thing.

You invited misinterpretation if, in fact, I am misinterpreting.

[Threedifferentones]

29. That's exactly it, this problem requires a time machine.

Stealing that land to create Israel was a terrible decision. Of course, at the time it was made colonialism was basically still in full swing. Europeans, and their American business partners, were quite accustomed to carving up the ME, and indeed the world, as they saw fit, and killing/terrifying anyone who dared to argue. Israel succeeded the British "Mandate" of Palestine, and Israel won the ensuing war because Britain and America willed it to be so.

Now that generations of Israelis have grown up in the state, we have two sides, full of innocent people, that have no reason to ever budge. The Palestinians understandably want their home back, and the Israelis understandably do not want to give up their own. So the violence will never end.

I must add, however, that in any struggle I always have more sympathy for an underdog than a dominant force.

In this case especially, since at the start of the struggle (which was the UN resolution and the creation of Israel) the Palestinian underdogs were clearly, undeniably in the right:

Colonialism was wrong, it's lingering after effects are still wrong, and I do not see why Israel should be exempt from that obvious truth.

If that is the opinion of the other poster it is indeed fair and reasonable.

[eridani]

15. Behind the 1967 borders would be a good start

Arafat recognises Jewish state and limit to return of refugees
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/19/israel

Yasser Arafat has told an Israeli newspaper that he recognises Israel's right to remain a Jewish state and is, therefore, prepared to accept the return of only a fraction of the Palestinian refugees.
In an interview with Ha'aretz, published yesterday, the Palestinian leader was asked if he understood that "Israel has to keep being a Jewish state"?

"Definitely," he replied.

[Bonobo]

18. Hamas doesn't think so. nt

[eridani]

22. That is changing--probably why Israel chose to attack before Hamas agreed to recognition.

Hamas, Abbas' PLO announce reconciliation agreement 4/23/2014
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Hamas-Abbass-PLO-announce-reconciliation-agreement-350195#!

Hamas and Fatah announced Wednesday that they have reached a “historic” agreement to end their differences and form a Palestinian unity government.

The announcement came one day after a senior PLO delegation arrived in the Gaza Strip for talks with Hamas leaders on ways of ending the Hamas-Fatah dispute and achieving national reconciliation...

The latest agreement, which was signed at the home of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, states that the two sides would work toward implementing previous accords reached in Qatar and Egypt.

It calls for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government within five weeks. Six months later, the Palestinians would hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections.


How the West Chose War in Gaza By Nathan Thrall July 17, 2014
Gaza and Israel: The Road to War, Paved by the West
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gaza-and-israel-the-road-to-war-paved-by-the-west.html

Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation agreement by preventing Hamas leaders and Gaza residents from obtaining the two most essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000 civil servants who worked for the Hamas government and continue to administer Gaza under the new one, and the easing of the suffocating border closures imposed by Israel and Egypt that bar most Gazans’ passage to the outside world.

Yet, in many ways, the reconciliation government could have served Israel’s interests. It offered Hamas’s political adversaries a foothold in Gaza; it was formed without a single Hamas member; it retained the same Ramallah-based prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister and foreign minister; and, most important, it pledged to comply with the three conditions for Western aid long demanded by America and its European allies: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements and recognition of Israel.

[treestar]

25. The US

We should have let them in as refugees in the first place (or more to the extent we did).

Rather than creating and propping up a state already populated.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Not a new thing...

http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/spring-2011/spectators-witness-history-at.html

Spectators Witness History at Manassas

It is a popular, almost legendary, story that innumerable civilians armed with picnic baskets followed the Union Army out from Washington in July 1861 to watch what everyone thought would be the climactic battle of a short rebellion.

<...>

Near Centreville, Capt. John Tidball witnessed a “throng of sightseers” approach his battery. “They came in all manner of ways, some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still others in buggies, on horseback and even on foot. Apparently everything in the shape of vehicles in and around Washington had been pressed into service for the occasion. It was Sunday and everybody seemed to have taken a general holiday; that is all the male population, for I saw none of the other sex there, except a few huckster women who had driven out in carts loaded with pies and other edibles. All manner of people were represented in this crowd, from the most grave and noble senators to hotel waiters.”

<...>

London Times correspondent William Howard Russell observed, “On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex .... The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood —‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond to-morrow.’ Irritated by constant appeals to borrow his glass, Russell decided to press forward after an officer rode up and exclaimed to the cheering crowd, “We have whipped them on all points.”

[4now]

9. Well that makes it ok then....Cheer away.

[Bonobo]

10. Maybe you don't what the word "cheer" means?

It's the only explanation I can think of for such a bad misread.

[Purveyor]

6. "fan the flames of hatred...." Indeed as the apartheid state calls up another 16K to

to bolster their slaughter/genocide?

[snooper2]

28. I think it goes to show they are just fundie assholes like the people they are trying to kill

[4now]

7. Cheering while your side murders children would seem to fan the flames.

[treestar]

26. There are elements of both sides that will do this

Of course they hate each other, in general.

But there are Israelis who object to the extent of the attacks on Palestinians, too.

[Marrah_G]

27. It's fucking disgusting

They go to the live feed sites and cheer about it too, saying horrible things.