Israel-hamas

[Gabriela]

[quote name='Adrestia' timestamp='1353090465' post='2511357']
I thought that Israel took out the Hamas leader in response to an increase in rockets from Gaza.
[/quote]

Yes, precisely. If you want to watch the rocket counts rise, see here: http://www.idfblog.com/2012/11/15/idf-disperses-leaflets-above-gaza-strip/

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='curiousing' timestamp='1353129865' post='2511673']
This is the first war in Israel since I became a Catholic, and I have to say: I'm kinda' shocked there's been no word on it from the Church (aside from the Jerusalem patriarch). Am I just missing the talk, or has the Church really said nothing? I don't expect that the Church will have something to say about absolutely every event I care about, just because I care about it, but war in the Holy Land...? You'd really think she'd have something to say.

Can anyone explain this to me?
[/quote]
The Melkite patriarch, Gregory III Laham, supports Palestinian statehood.

[url="http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/statehood-palestine-now-patriarch-tells-pope"]http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/statehood-palestine-now-patriarch-tells-pope[/url]

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[b]BEIRUT[/b] -- One of Lebanon’s most senior Christian leaders tonight told Pope Benedict XVI that recognition of Palestinian statehood would be “the most precious good the Arab world can obtain” for both Christians and Muslims, but stopped short of directly calling on the Vatican to extend that recognition unilaterally.

Patriarch Gregorios III Laham spoke tonight while welcoming Benedict to the Greek Melkite Basilica of St. Paul, where the pope was to formally sign the concluding document from a 2010 Synod of Bishops on the Middle East.[/size] [size=4]
An advance text of Laham’s welcome was briefly placed on the official Lebanese web site for the papal visit two weeks ago, then quickly taken down. In it, Laham called on the pope to recognize Palestine, ahead of an expected push for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly later this month.[/size] [size=4]
Tonight, Laham didn’t go quite that far, but he made his support for the Palestinian cause abundantly clear.[/size] [size=4]
“[b]The recognition of a Palestinian state is the most precious good that the Arab world can obtain in all its confessions, Christian and Muslim[/b],” Laham said.[/size] [size=4]
“It can guarantee the realization of the orientations expressed in the post-synodal exhortation,” referring to the pope’s document, “for which we express our most lively gratitude.”[/size] [size=4]
Statehood for Palestine, Laham said, “would prepare the way for a true Arab Spring, true democracy, and a real revolution capable of changing the face of the Arab world and of bringing peace to the Holy Land, the Middle East, and the world.”[/size] [size=4]
In general, [b]Christian leaders in the Middle East tend to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause[/b], in part because many of them are Arabs themselves, and in part because they believe Christians in Israel and Palestine suffer the same injustices as Arab Muslims.[/size] [size=4]
Though never officially confirmed, it was widely believed that Laham's original text, asking the pope to recognize Palestine himself, was taken down because it could embarrass Benedict during his three-day stop in the Middle East. [b]Officially, the Vatican's line on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict favors a negotiated two-state solution without unilateral gestures on either side.[/b][/size]
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[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1353131242' post='2511690'][size=4][size=4] [b]Officially, the Vatican's line on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict favors a negotiated two-state solution without unilateral gestures on either side.[/b][/size] [/size]
[/quote]
I stand with Israel and Rome on this one.

Ideally, the deal would be stacked in Israel's favor. It's not as though there aren't other Arab states in the area...

[Gabriela]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1353086321' post='2511309']
Fast foward to this month:
Israel bombed a military leader of Hamas.
Hamas started shooting rockets into Isreal.
Israel has started shooting/bombing back.
Egypt(Russia) is getting interested.
Syria(Iran) is getting interested.
[/quote]

Correction:

Hamas has been shooting rockets into Israel for 12 years. In 2012 alone, they've fired almost 1,200 rockets into Israel. On Wednesday, Israel carried out a targeted assassination of Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing. Since then, over 400 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza. The most recent ones were made in Iran. Israel has been launching a full-on attack in Gaza since then, targeting the rocket-launch sites.

It's not just Hamas firing rockets. There are by now so many terrorist organizations inside Gaza that it's hard to tell who's firing what, and Hamas hardly has control over the region. But I guarantee you the IDF knows which groups are firing from where. And they've dropped leaflets over Gaza and sent text messages to all residents telling them to stay away from Hamas operatives (whom they are bombing), so they clearly believe that Hamas holds the majority of the responsibility in the recent ramping up of rocket fire.

Also on Wednesday, rockets from Syria entered the Golan Heights for the first time since 1967. Israel fired warning shots back, but it was then determined that the rockets were not intended to target Israel, but merely strays from the internal conflict in Syria. I'm sure the IDF is watching Syria, but it's not presently considered a threat.

Egypt is now run by militant Islamists. The rhetoric of the Egyptian PM, Hesham Kandil, has been very aggressive and threatening toward Israel in the last few days. It's along the lines of, "Since the Arab Spring, Egypt is no longer the same country. Israel can no longer expect us to sit back and take this." Egypt is being watched. The IDF declared a brief ceasefire on Gaza when Kandil visited there this week. Kandil used the visit to threaten Israel. He has already withdrawn the Egyptian ambassador to Israel.

In brief: Things are not looking good. Please pray for peace and safety for all.

Edited November 17, 2012 by curiousing

[dominicansoul]

I watched the documentary [i]Promises[/i] when it first came out. Jews and Arabs have a long history of violence against one another. One group attacks the other and the other retaliates and vice versa. The documentary film maker introduces you to seven children, some arab, some jewish. He follows each child, filming them for three years. He talks to the arabs about the jews and the jews about the arabs. At the end, he introduces them to each other. The documentary shows that this cycle of violence could be broken if the Israeli and Palestinian children were not indoctrinated into the hatred.


Prayers for both peoples, and an end to the hatred and violence...

[Anomaly]

[quote name='curiousing' timestamp='1353131676' post='2511695']
Correction:

Hamas has been shooting rockets into Israel for 12 years.[/quote]Yeah, the second line should have said Hamas continued launching rockets and increased the frequency. There's been a long history of action/reaction, tit for tat, who needs to retaliate to even the scales for the latest affront.

I stand by my feeling that this will continue until either of the two sides are obliterated. There are a lot less Jews...

The existence of Isreal as a Jewish Country is an affront to the indigent Arabs and the Muslims. It's all well and good to have a Palistinian State, but even if established, way too many would percieve it as a first step of regaining the entire area and eliminating the artificial Israeli nation that was imposed on them. I don't think it's unreasonable for the Jewish people to fundamentally fear for their existence given historical reality and current rhetoric of leaders who fundamentally hate them.

[BG45]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/live-blog-rockets-slam-into-israel-s-south-in-third-day-of-idf-operation-in-gaza-1.478193

[quote]9:13 P.M. Rockets fired from direction of Egypt toward Eshkol Regional Council (Haaretz)[/quote]

For a two state solution to be viable you need the full cooperation of the Israelis, something they were willing to offer in the 1990s to Arafat, when they were even willing to give him land and he turned it down. One would also need the Palestinians to stop fighting each other; Fatah controls the West Bank, Hamas violently ousted Fatah from Gaza years ago, so there are two non-contiguously connected Palestinian pseudo-states. One of those pseudo-states, in Gaza, doesn't recognize the right of Israel to exist and demands the extermination of all Jews on the planet. Hamas has fallen a great way from the primarily social welfare offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that it was founded as by people such as Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

[url="http://gizmodo.com/5961399/anonymous-destroys-israel-by-taking-down-hundreds-of-websites-and-leaking-emails-and-passwords?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow"]Also, Anonymous is attacking Israel, having deleted bank records and taking out the database of the Foreign Ministry.[/url]

[Gabriela]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1353161632' post='2511780']
I stand by my feeling that this will continue until either of the two sides are obliterated. There are a lot less Jews...
[/quote]

I fear you are right. I hope you are wrong!

[Adrestia]

[quote name='dominicansoul' timestamp='1353159830' post='2511776']
The documentary shows that this cycle of violence could be broken if the Israeli and Palestinian children were not indoctrinated into the hatred.
[/quote]

Did this documentary go beyond the obvious conclusion and suggest a method to end the indoctrination?

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1353161632' post='2511780']
I stand by my feeling that this will continue until either of the two sides are obliterated. There are a lot less Jews...

[/quote]
Look at the history of the conflict. The Jews can hold their own.

[kujo]

[quote name='Roamin_Catholic' timestamp='1353084541' post='2511287']
Right, and Hamas is completely innocent in this.
[/quote]

Did I say otherwise?

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1353131522' post='2511692']

Ideally, the deal would be stacked in Israel's favor. It's not as though there aren't other Arab states in the area...
[/quote]

I wonder if you'd be so cavalier in suggesting your own dislocation should the day ever come when someone decides to usurp your own home. I mean, surely there are other houses or apartments in your area...

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='kujo' timestamp='1353300806' post='2512780']
I wonder if you'd be so cavalier in suggesting your own dislocation should the day ever come when someone decides to usurp your own home. I mean, surely there are other houses or apartments in your area...
[/quote]
Oh right, I forgot that most of the non-Israelis in Israel were personally removed from their homes in 1948 and are still looking for a place to live.

[kujo]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1353301089' post='2512785']
Oh right, I forgot that most of the non-Israelis in Israel were personally removed from their homes in 1948 and are still looking for a place to live.
[/quote]

So, your argument is that it's been so long that it just doesn't matter and that they should just move next door?

[Vincent Vega]

In a very oversimplified way, yes. When the land was given to the Jews by the British, that chunk of land belonged to them. It was theirs to give. I don't see how it could be argued otherwise.

It would be like South Africa launching a war against Lesotho. The British gave some of their (at the time) land to them and granted them sovereignty over it. Now, decades later, South Africa decides that it's actually theirs, and needs it back, despite having 37 times as much area as that bit of land already and the Basotho being established in this country for decades.

Except to really complete the analogy, several million Basotho would have had to been killed in an attempted ethnic extermination before having been granted a sanctuary.

[Nihil Obstat]

Now, this is coming from someone - specifically me - who really has not researched this situation much before, and therefore does not really know all of the story here.

But it seems to me that if people who [i]owned[/i] land were evicted by anyone, for any reason, those people would have every reason to be angry, and frankly they would not be wrong to try to [i]take their own property[/i] back.

To what extent that is relevant here, I do not know, so hopefully someone can fill me in.