Replies to post #456266 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[zab]

It is that last statement that will resonate here and around the world. Israel had a right to retaliate against Hamas, unfortunately the Palestine people are in the way. Hamas is sacrificing an entire population to make its point. I wish Israel would just destroy all of those underground tunnels, but every war is a messy affair.

You also mentioned America's war with Iraq, those first few days I was scared to death for all of those people living in Baghdad as 'shock and awe," became a realization. Then the war began and went on for years, all of those civilians who were in the way found themselves running for their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

America was wrong in that war; it went in on false information, and it stayed in that war for years. I wonder how many American soldiers who fought bravely defending themselves and their comrades look back at their time in the service and feel like they were used. I know the few friends who served in Vietnam that they were used.

Now we watch Gaza getting bombed, and now the southern district. All of those neighboring countries are watching also, it is contained at the moment, but each day something can happen t make it spread.

[sortagreen]

Israel is largely a secular nation. Hamas may have a lot of religious fanatics, but by and large the Palestinian Arabs are more secular than any in the Arab world.

Israel isn't fighting over religion as such. The conflict is tribal, but it's about land and water. The Israelis are committed to driving the Arabs out of their so-called "ancestral lands" though the inhabitants are far more likely to trace their roots to the area than the immigrants are. Oddly, Hitler was similarly motivated, and currently Putin is.

And it would be wrong to think of Israel as a democracy... unless you're willing to consider the more than 5 million Arabs within their borders, non-persons. Apartheid is not democracy.
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Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to cleanse Palestine away from its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution." David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:

In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:

"With compulsory transfer, we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims, Benny Morris p. 144).

In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State, there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)

https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story412.html