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 (nobody)...and 365 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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hullo. i am on the left, and consider myself for the palestinian cause. i am also a born-and-raised israeli. much as this will make me unpopular, allow me to say: none of you know shit. on both sides. the situation is so immensely complicated, such a tremendous confluence of forces find articulation in that particular region that these ill-informed arguments drawn from cursory readings of magazines and websites really doesn't begin to penetrate the surface. for example: polls consistently show that over 70% of israelis are vehemently opposed to a military presence in gaza. why, then, is the idf (israeli army) there? how has the israeli political process allowed itself to be hijacked by a minority of fanatics? the answer is one that the israeli intelligentsia is struggling with. israel is, after all, a functioning democracy -- but there has been a gradual proliferation and accumulation of political power by extreme right. what goes on in the palestine is yet more complicated. the political power of the palestinian authority has been ipso facto replaced by the hamas in various parts of gaza, and the structure of the authority itself is highly amorphous and vague. just what the fuck is arafat? a perma-chairman? just how much can or can he not do? all i'm saying is: please be sympathetic to the suffering of both sides, and do your best to support grass-roots efforts to increase dialogue. the government of switzerland recently pledged several million dollars to help a mixed palestinian-israeli school, for example. sweeping military or political manuevers simply won't resolve the animosity at this point. |
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? "word. but I just want to make clear, I dont favor one more then the other. the whole situation is fucked, and a complete mess, and basically everyone is to blame." |
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Israel is not a "functioning democracy". How can it be when it excludes non-Jewish people the rights of Israeli citizens? The only solution is one secular state for Jews and Arabs. |
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people (including me of course) dont listen |
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I realise I'm coming into this one quite late on, and it's probably been said before, but how can you just list a load of "good news from Iraq" without qualifying any of it. If you don't attribute your news to reliable (or, as is probably the case, UNreliable) sources, it is entirely meaningless. One thing that caught my eye, exactly how are school textbooks which ignore the existance of Sadaam Hussain a good thing? Just because he's been ousted doesn't mean history can be rewritten. It's important that both nations and individuals learn from past mistakes. That can't happen if you ignore your shortcomings and the terrible things that have happened. Then again, given America's unending cycle of devastating foreign policies, I guess it makes sense that you're proud of that particular little "statistic". Which only reenforces my suspicion that humanity never really learns anything from it's history. Partly because our histories are constantly rewritten and entirely subjective. Partly because we're stubborn. I realise that, in the grand scheme of things, this particular "fact" you chose to feed us is possibly the least offensive/important.. But it did amuse me that you would even bother mentionning something as crass as this. |
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on that note.... did anyone see that documentary on ch4 last night that showed a british journalist being shot dead in Gaza? It was fucking mad! The whole doc was done by a camera crew going house-to-house in Gaza chatting to folks whose homes were in the path of bulldozers. They chatted to locals and tried to chat to isrealies in the area too. On the last night there, they were in a house that had a bulldozer and APC approaching. The forces stopped their approach and basically parked a hundred yards or so from the house. The camera crew thought it would be a good idea to raise some white flags and head out with a camera to try and talk to the soldiers. A palestinien cameraman remained in the house with his camera on infra-red to film the attempt by the british journalists to chat to the soldiers. "Hello there! We're British journalists, Hello?" *BANG - warning shot "We're British journalists" *BANG - you see a white flag, a camera and a body hit the ground. One of the reportres was shot in the neck and died instantlyand the cameraman filming all this gets shot at too so retre4ats back into the house while you here the other reporters screaming. It was really eeire. To be fair to the documentary makers, they didn't make a bigger deal out of this than any of the killings of Palestinians or Israilies during the program. |
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