[QUOTE=âcaoimhaoin, post: 989284, member: 273â]Have they ever been accused of war crimes before? The UN seems to be genuinely pissed compared to the past.
Any chance the world is going to start turning on these cunts.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, look up the Goldstone report. It investigated and came to conclusions about humanitarian law and human rights abuses on both sides during the last conflict. The Israelis went apeshit over it. Makes for stark reading. Apart from ignoring any rules regarding protection of civilians Israel persistently attacks essential civilian infrastructure in order to subjugate.
10k protesters, the Israelis killed two.
An NGO was playing a radio advert with the names and ages of all the children killed by Israel so far. Israel banned it.
An Israeli woman with a British passport was captured in Gaza and held for ransom last night. She was raped and made carry the child to birth and released only after the child was born. Oh no, wait, scratch that, that was The honourable Woman on BBC
israel blaming stray hamas rockets for hitting the Un school
EARLIER this month, at a private meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his security advisers, a group of Middle East experts and former intelligence officers warned that a third Palestinian intifada was imminent. The immediate catalyst, they said, could be another mosque vandalized by Jewish settlers, like the one burned on Tuesday, or the construction of new settlement housing. Whatever the fuse, the underlying source of ferment in the West Bank is a consensus that the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has reached a dead end.
Mr. Abbasâs political strategy was premised on the notion that security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government would make Israel feel safer and remove its primary justification for continuing to occupy the West Bank, thereby clearing the way for a Palestinian state. Ironically, owing to the success of his efforts, many Israelis have had the luxury of forgetting that there is an occupation at all.
Thanks to the American- and European-financed peace that Mr. Abbasâs government has been keeping in the West Bank, Israelis have come to believe they can eat their cake and have it, too. A majority of citizens polled earlier this year said their state could remain Jewish and democratic without relinquishing any of the West Bank. Years of peace and quiet in Tel Aviv allowed hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take to the streets last summer to protest the high price of cottage cheese, rent and day care without uttering a word about Palestinians in the West Bank. The issue has ceased to be one of Israelâs primary security concerns. Mr. Netanyahu would have to be either politically suicidal or exceptionally forward-thinking to abandon a status quo with which a vast majority appears satisfied.
By contrast, Palestinians today see their leadership banging its head against a wall, hoping against reason that a bit more good behavior will bring about an independent state. As a result, longstanding debates over how to achieve national liberation â by comforting Israel or confronting it â have now been resolved. Palestinians of all political stripes are no longer arguing about whether to make Israelâs occupation more costly, but how.
During the 1990s, Mr. Abbas was one of the key architects of the Oslo peace process, which envisioned a phased Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank leading to a permanent peace agreement (though not necessarily to a Palestinian state). Today, he is perhaps its last remaining believer. He has been forced to pay lip service to the demands of those who advocate confrontation by issuing repeated pledges to confront Israel â by dismantling the Palestinian Authority or refusing to negotiate unless Israel freezes settlement construction â only to renege on each one.
As the gap between the Palestinian presidentâs words and actions has grown, so has the distance of his policies from public sentiment, leading to his governmentâs turn to greater repression: torturing political opponents, blocking Web sites and arresting journalists and bloggers critical of Mr. Abbas. Even Mr. Abbasâs close advisers confide that he is at risk of becoming another Antoine Lahad, the leader of Israelâs proxy force during its occupation of southern Lebanon. The chief steward of Mr. Abbasâs policies, the unelected prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has acknowledged, âI think we are losing the argument, if we have not already lost.â And Mr. Abbas himself has admitted that the peace process is âjammedâ and that his government had merely helped create âa good situationâ for Israel, which, enjoying years of unprecedented cooperation with Palestinian forces in the West Bank, lacks incentives to agree to any change.
But these days, Palestinian security forces have little reason to believe their efforts are advancing national goals, and Israel canât assume that the Palestinian Authority will provide security indefinitely. Last month, as gunfire returned to the streets of Jenin, and 1,600 Palestinian prisoners entered the fourth week of a hunger strike, Mr. Abbas said: âI cannot control the situation. I am afraid, God forbid, that the security system here will collapse.â That sentiment echoed remarks by Yuval Diskin, the recently retired head of Israelâs internal security agency: âWhen the concentration of gas fumes in the air is so high,â he said, âthe question is only when the spark will come to light it.â
The root cause of this instability is that Palestinians have lost all hope that Israel will grant them a state. Each attempt to exert what little leverage Palestinians possess has been thwarted or has proved ineffective. Boycotts of settlement jobs and products havenât gained mass support, and would not stop settlement growth even if they did. The Palestinians could have pushed for a vote last September in the United Nations General Assembly â a move that frightened Israel and America because of its implications for Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court. Mr. Abbas abandoned that effort in favor of a petition for statehood at the Security Council, which was always guaranteed to fail, and then deftly sold his capitulation as defiance.
These failures have left Palestinians who hope to make present conditions untenable for Israel with only two options: popular protest and armed resistance. The first option faces enormous obstacles because of political divisions between Hamas in Gaza and Mr. Abbasâs Fatah in the West Bank. Each faction regards mass mobilization as a potential first step to its overthrow, as well as a means of empowering a new generation of leaders at the expense of existing ones.
If mass demonstrations erupted in the West Bank, Israel would ask Palestinian security forces to stop any protests near soldiers or settlers, forcing them to choose between potentially firing on Palestinian demonstrators or ending security cooperation with Israel, which Mr. Abbas refuses to do. As he knows and fears, mass protests could quickly become militarized by either side. For that reason, his government has offered little more than rhetorical support for the small weekly protests so beloved by foreign activists and the Western press, and has actively prevented demonstrators from approaching any Jewish settlements.
The second option is armed confrontation. Although there is widespread apathy among Palestinians, and hundreds of thousands are financially dependent on the Palestinian Authorityâs continued existence, a substantial number would welcome the prospect of an escalation, especially many supporters of Hamas, who argue that violence has been the most effective tactic in forcing Israel and the international community to act.
THEY believe that rocks, Molotov cocktails and mass protests pushed Israel to sign the Oslo Accords in 1993; that deadly strikes against Israeli troops in Lebanon led Israel to withdraw in 2000; that the bloodshed of the second intifada pressured George W. Bush to declare his support for Palestinian statehood and prodded the international community to produce the Arab Peace Initiative, the Geneva Initiative, and the Road Map for Middle East Peace. They are also convinced that arms pressured Ariel Sharon, then Israelâs prime minister, to evacuate settlers and troops from Gaza in 2005. That pullout also had the effect of freezing the peace process, supplying âthe amount of formaldehyde that is necessary,â as a Sharon adviser put it, âso there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.â
For more militant Palestinian leaders, who never believed in the peace process, the lesson was clear: âNot an inch of Palestinian land will be liberated,â Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy head of Hamasâs political bureau, told me, âwhile Israelis feel that controlling it exacts few costs.â Matti Steinberg, a former senior adviser to Israeli security chiefs, described Mr. Abbas as the most obliging, nonviolent Palestinian leader Israel has encountered and warned of taking him for granted. âThe Israeli center is caught in a vicious cycle,â he said. âIt argues that it cannot make peace while there is violence, and when there is no violence it sees little reason to make peace.â
History may credit Mr. Abbas with reigning over the more virtuous phase of this cycle, but he has likely laid the groundwork for the uglier one. Hamas, meanwhile, has already moved on. âIsraelis had a golden opportunity to sign an agreement with Abbas,â Hamasâs health minister, Basem Naim, told me in Gaza last November. âBut the chance has already passed. They will not get it again.â
Joey Barton knows the score, a thoroughly alright sort
http://balls.ie/football/joey-barton-gets-very-political-in-a-twitter-spat-with-yossi-benayoun/
[QUOTE=âmyboyblue, post: 989498, member: 180â]Joey Barton knows the score, a thoroughly alright sort
http://balls.ie/football/joey-barton-gets-very-political-in-a-twitter-spat-with-yossi-benayoun/[/QUOTE]
Joey Barton 
I think this is a good piece on RTEâs coverage.
http://thomasorourke.blogspot.ie/2014/07/july-23rd-2014-harmful-assumptions-and.html?m=1
I havenât posted in a bit due to a few things going on but as this conflict rumbles on I have actually decided that the only way to get on with things is to do as they do in Tel Aviv and that is completely ignore what is happening and live almost in a bubble continuing to get on with your life and let the rest of the world fret about something that even tho you are only 70kms from you have simply no control over⌠let them protest about it anyway, the thousands of kms can comfort them, just donât tell them that no one of the Hamas or IDF side gives a fuck⌠so why should I?
The situation is deteriorating to its predicted endgame, a bloody stalemate with both arrogant combatants displaying scant regard for human life trying to say he bought the other to a ceasefire.
Given the scale of the massacre in Beit Jalilya it is embarrassing to say that the rockets sirens that we have 3 times a day at home are troubling, I often wonder in order to even things up should Israel disable the Iron Dome for a week and allow the Hamas rockets to kill people?, it seems that the world wants it, they want jews to die?, at least thats what the feeling is here, should Hamas be given a chance to kill a few people? In order to get the world to see what Israeli citizens in Ashkelon are going thru should we let a rocket blow up a kindergarten?, maybe the next time Hamas tunnel across should they be allowed run amok in a kibbutz or a Moshav? Murder a family? A few toddlers? Nah, Hamas donât want t to do that, theyâre only messing with toy guns⌠israel uses the real ammo⌠bang , bang , bang,⌠unjustified no doubt, Israel 1,300, Hamas 51 half time score⌠surely thatâs reflective of the situation?
Anyway, the whole thing disgusts me, I am sad and have no energy⌠what I see in Beit Jalilya is a massacre, kids being pulled out of fucking rubble, yes there are tunnels, yes there are grad launching sites in Wafa hospital, yes Hamas are firing from mosques, we fucking know that⌠you have 1.8 million people in a strip of land 25kms x 6kms, yes Israel ask then to move⌠yeah to where? Where the fuck are they to go⌠yes Hamas will rape your 6 year old son if you decide to leave, stay and some filthy cunt in an IDF tank will shell your house and your son anyay, either way your fucked, your livelihood is gone⌠damned if you do, damned if you donât⌠Ill take my chances and join Hamas thanks⌠Israel must accept a degree of responsibility for that
Both sides are committing war crimes, Hamas shot rockets in the direction of my wife and kid⌠what did we do? Israel by knowingly bombing heavily built up areas where the civialians have nowhere to go are 1000 times more guilty⌠that is murder, plain, simple.
Both sides disgust me, their media disgust me, the MTV war generation in ireland like the IPSC and the Irish4Israel groups utterly sicken me, taking their packaged sky news version of events⌠one side saying Israel is an apartheid state⌠its actually not it just protects its borders and bombs the fuck out a neighbor, if it was apartheid theyâd be part of the state, they are not, the likes of the IPSC choose to ignore other conflicts, selective genocide⌠that is anti-Semitic really⌠The clowns in Isrish4Israel are going on about settlements, justifying what the IDF are doing by saying âshur assad killed 2k last weekâŚâ this is the land of the bible⌠Hamas are the aggressor⌠would you fuck offâŚ
The issue in israel is, palestinians really are not seen as human beings by I would say 80% of the population, Israelis are the nicest warmest people you could meet, those who have been here know (not the lads in a hostel post IDF in Thailand). The first country to support all natural disasters, Megen David Adom going to Turkey and supporting Iranian earth quake victims, the list is endless, BUT Palestinians, they are terrorists, you need to understand the impact of the holocaust, what it has done, people want a state , they see the Palestinians as a barrier to it, they see them all as terrorists⌠The Palestinian leadership donât do anything to allay this :Intifadas, rockets, suicide bombs, it gives israel justification to hate⌠maybe they have a point? Maybe they created this situation in order to justify what they really want and that is the removal of all Palestinians from the WB and Gaza⌠or maybe the simple reason is they are right, whatever they do, evacuate Gaza, whatever, they Arabs just want them dead,
its not all Israel tho⌠the tunnels in Gaza are a feat of engineering, they have a colossal stockpile of rockets, not bad for a starving population, these people have been let down by their leaders, by the world and by society, not forgetting they hate jews as much as the 80% I say above hate them⌠maybe they have more cause
Both sides say they want something simple, israel say stop the rockets weâll stop âdefendingâ ourselves, Hamas call for borders to be opened with israel and Egypt but yet keep launching rockets, an end to the sea blockade and allow air traffic, problem is israel only want peace on their terms, Hamas donât seem to want peace at all claiming they are victims in all this, they are, but without being a victim Hamas are nothing and the blame of this lies as much with Israel as it does with Hamas
It exhausts me, my memory of this war is as I have written here standing in a parking lot near Kiryat malachi listening to F16s bomb the strip , the rumble as 1 tonne bombs blow up communities and all I could think of was a fella there like me with his kid and wife waiting for his time, stripped of his dignity, wanting nothing to do with this , his wife seeing him in tears, him feeling nothing but despair as he couldnât protect his kid. I never want to hear that again but its fucking part of me now and I hate both of them for that.
I wrote on the IPSC and irish4Israel facebook pages that both Netanyahu and ismail haniyeh should be made visit the families of the 1000 gazans and 50 israelis who were murdered by them and explain to them why they died⌠I have been banned form both pages⌠what the fuck do I know??
Mickee good to hear from you buddy. I will read your post after The Sunday Game.
Probably
Good to see ya back mickee321. Keep the head down.
Excellent post @mickee321, donât agree with all your posts but they are a good read .Must be hard to keep your sanity at times over there. I really donât understand why the fuck you choose to live there. Surely you must be starting to form an exit strategy?
Mind yourself Mickee
+1
Thatâs as tired as Iâve ever heard anyone sound from a post.
mickee, we love you!
[QUOTE=âglasagusban, post: 990715, member: 1533â]+1
Thatâs as tired as Iâve ever heard anyone sound from a post.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, suppose so.
Clarkey loves Mickee
:D:D:D
[QUOTE=âglasagusban, post: 989810, member: 1533â]I think this is a good piece on RTEâs coverage.
http://thomasorourke.blogspot.ie/2014/07/july-23rd-2014-harmful-assumptions-and.html?m=1[/QUOTE]
Thatâs very well written alright.