WAR in GAZA???

[Clux4]

Israel is fighting a Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).
Information Operation is the key to success in this kind of war.
Tanks against kids with cocktails looks pretty bad to anyone.

 

[bubblehead]

You guys seen this video:

Imperial History of the Middle East
http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html

This is a Holy War and has been fought for centuries and will continue to be fought for centuries to come.

 

[scoolbubba]

cool video, but more often than not those land grabs were from before Islam was even founded. That region has always been lined up perpendicular to trade routes from the far east to the west, which made it valuable to hold.
Even the Crusades, which were supposed to be about casting heathens out of the holy lands, were more about who controls what gets to Europe through Jerusalem and the Med. You could take the holy out of holy land, and still figure out what this has 99.9% of the time been about...land. plain and simple. Not until recently did the competing ideologies of Zionism and Pan-Arabism start to play into this, and even then it doesn't always line up along religious lines.
Calling this a holy war and saying its been going on forever and will continue to go on forever is a cop out, and lets everyone off the hook for something that can be stopped. Used to be not that long ago that Catholics weren't so fond of Protestants, and that seems to have worked itself out. This conflict is rooted in two groups claim to the same valuable piece of property, and they both have legit claims to living on it. Figuring out how to do it without ripping their throats out is the next step.

 

[usmarinemike]

Israel is fighting a Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).
Information Operation is the key to success in this kind of war.
Tanks against kids with cocktails looks pretty bad to anyone.

BINGO...caveats though...Israel doesn't have their own media against them, and there is literally nobody in the muslim world who Israel wants to impress. There is no chance of them winning the hearts and minds of muslims in Gaza and beyond.

 

[m0tbaillie]

The MSM here in the US, for the most part, has ignored the really nitty gritty coverage of the war (that aside, most western journalists have been booted out of the region by the Israelis).

However, al-Jazeera English has excellent coverage:

http://english.aljazeera.net

 

[wink]

cool video, but more often than not those land grabs were from before Islam was even founded. That region has always been lined up perpendicular to trade routes from the far east to the west, which made it valuable to hold.
Even the Crusades, which were supposed to be about casting heathens out of the holy lands, were more about who controls what gets to Europe through Jerusalem and the Med. You could take the holy out of holy land, and still figure out what this has 99.9% of the time been about...land. plain and simple. Not until recently did the competing ideologies of Zionism and Pan-Arabism start to play into this, and even then it doesn't always line up along religious lines.
Calling this a holy war and saying its been going on forever and will continue to go on forever is a cop out, and lets everyone off the hook for something that can be stopped. Used to be not that long ago that Catholics weren't so fond of Protestants, and that seems to have worked itself out. This conflict is rooted in two groups claim to the same valuable piece of property, and they both have legit claims to living on it. Figuring out how to do it without ripping their throats out is the next step.

Excellent. Too many people take the easy way out by talking about centuries of war and hate. That implies the problem is beyond solution because no one ever lived in that region in peace. That simply is not true. Over the centuries Arabs, Jews, and others have lived side by side in an accommodation, if not true peace. The Crusades are held up like it was the ancient norm, but it was not. What we see today can not be traced to medieval times as much as it can to barely 100 years ago. It is a modern political problem with a modern political solution as long as the Palestinians are willing to move into the modern world of democratic civilized peoples.

 

[OUSOONER]

Excellent. Too many people take the easy way out by talking about centuries of war and hate. That implies the problem is beyond solution because no one ever lived in that region in peace. That simply is not true. Over the centuries Arabs, Jews, and others have lived side by side in an accommodation, if not true peace. The Crusades are held up like it was the ancient norm, but it was not. What we see today can not be traced to medieval times as much as it can to barely 100 years ago. It is a modern political problem with a modern political solution as long as the Palestinians are willing to move into the modern world of democratic civilized peoples.

I agree with you on many points that you stated. However, I don't think Winston Churchill's division of Israel and the Middle East helped that much...Some places where the Jews moved into post-WW2, Palestinians had long lived. I don't think that would go over so well in the United States either, if all the sudden we were uprooted from our comfy homes and neighborhoods, so the Native Americans could move back in.

 

[bubblehead]

I agree with you on many points that you stated. However, I don't think Winston Churchill's division of Israel and the Middle East, "and the United States' incessant support for Israel," helped that much...

I added "that"...

 

[wink]

I agree with you on many points that you stated. However, I don't think Winston Churchill's division of Israel and the Middle East helped that much...Some places where the Jews moved into post-WW2, Palestinians had long lived.

The first post war reconfiguration of the Middle East was after WWI. The allies, less the US, carved up the Ottoman Empire. Those were largely imperialistically inspired borders. But within them Jews and Arabs usually got along. The UN Partition Plan of 1947 certainly changed the game. But Palestinians were not forcibly expatriated or cleansed from the Jewish state. The Palestinians that left Israel left because they simply could not stand to live with Jews within UN draw borders. Their Arab brothers encouraged them promising to destroy Israel for their refugee brothers. Then their Arab brothers kept the Palestinians in horrid refugee camps. The Palestinians have been a pawn used and abused by Arab states for over 60 years. In total, the Arab states have done more harm to Palestinians then the Israelis ever have.

I don't think that would go over so well in the United States either, if all the sudden we were uprooted from our comfy homes and neighborhoods, so the Native Americans could move back in.

That analogy is not on point. In fact, it is almost upside down. It is now the Palestinians that want to uproot Israelis. But Jews always lived in Palestine, Europeans did not always live in the Americas. To take up your point, there was never a political entity called Palestine, much like America was not a political entity when Europeans arrived. The Europeans established government and political processes. By most peoples' accounting, they made improvements, moved it along toward modernization. The Jews did the same for the region called Palestine. The U.S., very imperfectly, has made a political accommodation with the Native Americans that preceded Europeans and have assimilated them into the broader American society. Some Palestinians that live in Israel have done the same. Most, however, have chosen to remain outside the political process and remain pawns of other Arab states and victims of their thuggish leaders who steal them blind keeping them in a perpetual state of poverty. Back to the reference about uprooting Palestinians. It was the Israelis that up rooted their own people to move them out of Gaza and give the Palestinians a place of their own, self rule. Homes left by the Jews were destroyed by Hamas. Their people now live in far worse accommodations. Huge green houses that allowed Israelis to feed themselves we bought by Israeli and American Jews for tens of millions of dollars and turned over to Hamas. They were destroyed by Hamas. Now Gaza can not even come close to providing for it's own. But keeping their people in hovels and without food is good for the Hamas agenda.

 

[exhelodrvr]

^^^ Good summary.

 

[OUSOONER]

Well articulated response

Therein lies another problem. If what you say is true, the Palestinians will never admit being a pawn to their "Islamic brothers". They will continue to say the Israeli's forced them out.

The Israeli's will say the contrary. They can agree cease-fires forever, but whenever there is any semblance of peace for an extended amount of time. Someone who wants to keep the pot stirred causes the peace to end.

This whole thing goes far beyond simply Israel and Palestine.Until we can come to some sort of agreement on a bigger stage (countries such as us, Great Britain, Iran, Syria, etc). Fronts such as Iraq/Afghanistan/Gaza will continue to flare up forever.

Asking these radicals to change their ideology is the only way I could see the violence ending. Their scholars and politicians of course are going to say it is our thinking that must change.

Until state sponsored terrorism is defeated and our image of being heavily biased towards Israel is viewed as "less biased", I fear there can never be a peace. Not to mention having to wait until more moderate thinking individuals are in leadership positions in some of the most radical of Islamic countries and who knows when that will happen, if ever.

 

[eddie]

That analogy is not on point. In fact, it is almost upside down. It is now the Palestinians that want to uproot Israelis. But Jews alway lived in Palestine, Europeans did not always live in the Americas. To take up your point, there was never a political entity called Palestine, much like America was not a political entity when Europeans arrived.

Palestine was a Roman province first (and the term in common useage throughout the majority of history), so yes it was a political entity, just never it's own state, which I believe is the point you were making. This is an often cited point, althought I have a lot of trouble figureing out what it has to do with anything. It isn't like the collection of Eastern Europeans who first populated the fledgling state of Israel were anything remotely close (culturally, ethnically, or otherwise) to the folks who got lost in the Sinai for 40 years back in the day. What does it matter who was there first, or by what terms which regions were called. They are both there now, at this point both with equally good claims to live in the places they do. Unfortunately, they are a pain in the ass together in the same room, and the fundamental root of a good majority of our geopolitical headaches.

Personally, I think it's a pretty bad habit that we so often still think of Jews as a racial / ethnic classification, especially in the context of the Palestinian problem.

As for the analogy, Arabs used to live there too, so I'm not sure the counter holds. Of course, it is an analogy. You or I can disprove any analogy if we hold it close enough. They are better illustrative devices than argumentative ones.

 

[A4sForever]

No matter what anyone says ... seems to me that there was a little "problem" w/Arabs of many sorts and Hebrews a lot longer than just 100 years ago ...

What?? What was that?? Something about 40 years wandering in the Wilderness .... I can't remember.

As long as the 'rabs controlled the area through various periods of history and the Jews shut up & sat down ... no problem. What's that?? Now those damn Jews want their own COUNTRY as well??!!??!!

Oy ve!!

And I suppose none of you have heard of Ishmael and Isaac, either ... ???

 

[OUSOONER]

As for the analogy, Arabs used to live there too, so I'm not sure the counter holds. Of course, it is an analogy. You or I can disprove any analogy if we hold it close enough. They are better illustrative devices than argumentative ones.

+1 This is what I meant..I know it is not the same. I was attempting, however poor my attempt was, to relate it to us. Many of those peasants are uneducated, some cannot even read. If you hear from other peasants that the Israelis are taking their homes that they have lived in for years...you're just going to be up in arms about it and throw out all logic behind it whether the claims are even true or not.

Ask any hotblooded Texan what he thinks about Mexicans in his own backyard. That analogy has a little bit more substance...the hotblooded Texan, uneducated and can't read part I mean. Does he care that Mexico was there first?

 

[mmx1]

So if you are Israel, how do you take the fight to an enemy that finds it acceptable to fight in the manner depicted on the left?

That problem is not unique to Israel and the answer is not "don't worry if the women and children get hit".