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Dear Shame on you

You seem to be all over the place leaving lovely comments today. khasteh nabashi!

I am so glad you visited this conversation. Why don't you calm down, take a couple of minutes off, sit down for a while and watch a couple of video clips? 

I didn't know we were introduced before, I guess that's how you know what I have "ever" or "never" done.

I am sure mibakhshid keh be jaa nayavordam...

IRANdokht

to IRANdokht

when have you ever expressed sympathy for the jewish people? NEVER. your pretty words are nothing but a lie. you mask your anti-semitism with pity for the palestineans. you couldn't care less about palestine, unless it benefits the iri. you insult people who disagree with you. you personalize your attacks on registered users AND anonymous users. your attitude is condescending and quite frankly, insulting to other iranians whom YOU think you speak for.

its abosolutely true israel could handle this with less violence. i've never denied that or the fact that innocent people die. but hamas is ten times worse than the jews because they hide bethind women and children just to accuse the israelis of killing innocent babies.

you accuse everyone of propoganda yet the hamas is the ultimate propogandist.

SHAME ON YOU.

Dear Anonymous Observer

My friend, thanks for your kind words in the midst of this hatefest that is going on here. Now, with all due respect to Mr. Oz, what he says is not necessarily a divine edict of facts. Israel's incursion into Lebanon, despite all the shorcomings, actually did end the rocket attacks and Hizballah's presence south of the Litany river. Besides, never before had there been such a long time given to a group like Hamas to build such an infrastructure in that piece of land with such immunity. so Mr. Oz's claims on "never before" need not necessarily apply in this case. Now, you are being quite naive. What exactly is your alternative proposition? What does it mean: police work on the tunnels. How is that done? Why do you think Hamas will allow such work, by Israel or by any international force? And when not, how are those "policing" forces to be protected to do their job? Counter attacks on Hamas again by any chance? Wouldn't they result in death of civilians as well? And where where these international forces all the time Hamas was given authority over Gaza and left to its own devise to build such an infrastructure? Where where they when Israel was bombed? How many more years do you think it would have taken in the corridors of UN or elsewhere to finally agree on the implementation of such a force in gaza despite Hamas' refusal to cooperate, if ever? How many Israeli children would have been under constant threat or would have been killed in rocket attacks for all that time?
And the problem is not just the tunnels. You didn't read me correctly. There is a wide and deep infrastructure that Hamas has implemented now in Gaza. Nothing like it existed was ever before. I told you, as long as Israel had control there, no such military attack on Gaza was ever conducted, precisely for that reason. No such attack was necessary. Now it is. Why do you think Egypt and even Fatah are so cooperating so much this time around? Believe me, there is no other way to defuse Hamas. And at this point you need to defuse Hamas in its entire structure, not just its tunnels. You know how many Hamas top officials are already dead? Hamas has to infer losses, heavy losses, to stop its path. Not civilian Palestinians, they are no loss to Hamas, Hamas loves them dead.
Besides all the discussion on the details of the present situation, there is a bigger question at play here. It is a question of a general stance. A general kind of logic. It's not the first war AO. All wars contain tragic results. It is unfortunate, but what else is there to do? This one is more tragic because Hamas deliberately packs civilians in building it knows or suspects will be hit to deliberately increase the death toll. This is new here, grant you. But that war has innocent victims is nothing new. Give me real alternatives. How is it to do anything to defuse any part of Hamas power without engaging Hamas in some sort of military retaliation, even to protect [insufficient] policing work as you mentioned. If there is going to be any exchange of fire, innocent people will die. So how many are allowed and Ok for you? This is not a funny question, it is the reality of the situation.
Finally I leave you with this statistics in WWII:
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_...
It's a different scale altogether, but the same "logic" applies. If you were alive then, would you have been "compelled" to denounce allied war on Nazi Germany and fascist Italy then as well because of the number of German and other states' children and civilians who were caught in between and killed by ally attacks? You sure that would be really the "moral" stance to take, all things considered? You sure it is the case now as well?
The truth is, innocent people die in wars, but the sad truth is also that sometimes in the face of ideological fascism, war is inevitable. That is the tragedy of human life. The point is, one must never allow oneself to get confused about who the real guilty party is for all the death in such cases.

Zion, You Know I Love You!

But unfortunately this time, I have to disagree with you.  I am a man of conscious and my conscious does not allow me to sit silent when innocent women and children are being blown to pieces in a senseless war.  I am extremely disappointed in Israel.  I expected nothing from Hamas thugs, but I expected a lot more from Israel.  And unlike some of other mindless Israel bashers on this site, I think that I have earned my street cred. when it comes to defending Israel, that this time around, I can criticize it when it is wrong.

Your reference to the numbers is funny...I do remember that exchange.  But this is much more serious than shoe throwing...people are dying, and Israel could have used more discretion, especially as Amos Oz correctly points out, military operations have never stopped rocket attacks.  Hamas is just going to regroup, get the financial supprt from IRI and others to build more rockets and will fire more.  That is why this should be a police operation, with focus being the tunnels that connect to Egypt where the material is smuggled from.  Incidentally, if Israel lifts the blockade of Gaza, the market for these tunnels will be significantly reduced, and it will be harder for hamas to run its operations on this massive scale.

And for those of you who will instantly jump on me and say that IRI has nothing to do with Hamas at this time, here is a piece from www.antiwar.org, hardly a "neocon" operation that talks about the roughly $25 million a month given by IRI to Hamas.  While the IRI really did not have a direct hand in creating Hamas (and very little, if any, indirect role), it is one of Hamas's supporters. 

  //www.antiwar.com/ips/afrasiabi.php?articleid=14039

Israel should have put pressure on Egypt, more than anything else, to secure the border, bring in international monitors, and stop the smuggling of rockt making material into Gaza.  The way the current operation is being conducted, however, just shows that Israel has little concern for Plaestinian civilians, and that is what is the most disturbing aspect of this assault. 

I promise you that if Israel halts its operations immediately, and allows unconditional access to humanitarian aid and the international press, I will be the first one to jump of Hamas and expose it, again, as I have done in the past. 

Dear Anonymous Observer

There is much more going on than some terrorists hiding among some civilian populations somewhere. There is an entire vast infrastructure of terrorism and ideologically driven systematic murder built into every fiber of that society. This is something that can never take place inside Israeli territorial jurisdiction, or any other country for that matter. that is why your example and analogy is a false one. It never came to any such thing while the Gaza was under Israeli control either, that's why the checkpoints were there. This is the sort of thing that can only happen outside a country in a hostile environment, its level is tantamount to an act of war and the response, unfortunately, has to be a military one. Israel has been avoiding this for years now. There has been more than 7000 rockets,each potentially able to kill Israeli people, women and children as they have done already, on the small city of Sderot alone. Yet Israel has restrained from a military answer up to this point for the exact same reasons you mention.

Civilians are definitely the victims, they are definitely caught under the bloody hand of such systematic evil. Israel is trying to engage in surgical strikes and pinpointed operations to reduce the number of civilian casualty to the minimum, but there is no way to guarantee there will be no civilian deaths or that they remain under a fixed number that you may find "acceptable".

What do you have Israel do instead? It is easy to sit somewhere comfortable and make such nice decrees, but when it comes down to it, what do you have Israel do?And how can you guarantee that it will not end in the unfortunate death of civilians? [And who are you or anyone else to say how many are acceptable and when the number becomes unacceptable? (Reminds you of something?)]

Irandokht

Unblievable!!!!  You asked what kind of a person?  The answer is a person who has divorced him/herself from his / her humanity.  It is the ugly side of what human beings can become!!!

What those who sit in positions of power must realize is that power and empires are temporary things.  History has thaught us that lesson time and time again.  You may enjoy power one day, and the next day it may be taken away from you....and you may be in the position of the person or the race that you now seek to annihilate...it has happened many times in human hisotry.  Just look at the Nazis.  But we are a stupid and violent species....and most of us just cannot help our bloodlust when we get the opportunity....and that makes the human race an abject failure. 

your analysis is correct A. O.

and your hypothetical example is clear enough that if anyone would put their bias aside, they could never be able to argue it.

My issue has never been race or religion. I respect human life and I always speak for the victims, no matter which side they belong to. Unfortunately, in this situation, Israel has made it very clear who the real victims are. Now they call me names too, who cares!

I believe the problem is a complete disregard for this people as human being.

Now please do me a favor and watch this one too and tell me what kind of person would enjoy a soft drink while watching the bombing, listen to the interviews at the end of the short clip and then you'll see that the palestinians are not even considered human! they want to plow the field and get rid of them all...

IRANdokht

Irandokht

Thanks Irandokht.  It is not surprising to see people of conscious all over the world, including Israel, objecting to the tragedy that is taking place in Gaza.  As you know, I myself have been called all kinds of names on this site for coming out in support of Israel on many occasions.  But as I have said since the beginning of this conflict, this time Israel is wrong.  It is abandoning its obligations under international law and, more importantly, it is abandoning its high moral ground by committing these atrocities against a defenseless civilian population.  Hamas is a despicable criminal and terrorist gang (terrorist as to both Israelis AND Palestinian civilians), and I have no doubt whatsoever that it is using the civilian population as human shields and is hiding among them in order to protect its troops and maximize civilian deaths for propaganda purposes (which in and of itself is a war crime and a crime against humanity).  If it wasn’t, it would be on the outskirts of Gaza, outside of the city, fighting the Israeli ground force.  But Israel should (and does, no doubt) realize that tactic, and should not yield and submit to Hamas’s tactics.  Moreover, Israel knows that this kind of military operation is an ineffctive way to get rid of the rocket attacks on its cities as rockets were being fired at the cities even when it occupied Gaza in its entirety.

The only logical conclusion is that this is collective punishment on Gaza, plain and simple.  Israel’s excuse is that it is not to blame because Hamas is hiding amongst the civilians.  But the question to ask in return is this:  if a terrorist group was hiding in an Israeli settlement, or in a neighborhood in an Israeli city or town, would the Israeli army attack that settlement or town with this much fire power, and in a manner that would surely cause civilian deaths?!!!  Ponder that question for a minute, and you will realize that the answer is a solid NO.  It would find another way of approaching the problem without causing massive civilian deaths, and it should have done so here, so that we, and the world, would not see these innocent children dying everyday.     

please take a look

//therealnews.com/t/in...

Israeli intelligence agency cracks down on Israeli protesters

IRANdokht