Well, this post has been coming for awhile. My life is not totally about seagulls and christmas balls and light reflections and Holland.
It was really easy for me to decide about the war, even though I have friends, child and adult, on both sides of the Separation Wall. Whose lives I care deeply about. Three of them are in my LJ Family.
Sure this is a tragedy. The sign starts out "Gaza on our Minds... In Remembrance Of" ... the attacks by Israel on Gaza. That's her former father and his blood on the wall. Her life is forever changed, now, and probably much shortened. This was before the ground offensive started last Saturday; it's part of the result of one of the IAF airstrikes.
Demonstrators / peace activists in front of the Ministry of Justice:
It's also a big tragedy that Israeli kids in kindergarten have to run for bomb shelters while rockets scream in, and their teachers have to cope with PTSD as well as being a five-year-old.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that should be wiped off the face of the earth equally as much as the nineteen hijackers of the 9/11 airliners were [they did the wiping themselves, saving a lot of trouble.] Not all Palestinians support Hamas, by a long shot.
And not all Israelis support their military, either. Surprise?
Israeli civilian children should not be put in fear for their lives.
Palestinian civilian children should not be put in fear for THEIR lives, either.
Hamas has never stopped firing rockets at civilian targets inside Israel, cities and towns, and they never will, because they are sworn to deny Israelis the right to exist as a people. By killing all of them.
So somebody has to stop them, or agree to keep on with the sacrifice of Israeli innocents. That is why, after Israeli restraint fails and international diplomacy fails, the F16's must start flying and the tanks must start rumbling and the ground troops must start shooting. And they must keep on doing all that until Hamas' threat is gone forever.
Holland is part of the European Union, and the EU has condemned Hamas just as America has. And I'm proud of that.
Hamas does not stand for half-assed measures so Israel cannot either.
Hamas is bringing down fire and flame onto its own people who elected it to govern.
In Tel-Aviv on 04 January, Sabbath evening, there was an antiwar demonstration of 10,000... that's in Tel-Aviv, the Israeli capital.
Tell it to the criminals firing the rockets.
It was really easy for me to decide about the war, even though I have friends, child and adult, on both sides of the Separation Wall. Whose lives I care deeply about. Three of them are in my LJ Family.
Sure this is a tragedy. The sign starts out "Gaza on our Minds... In Remembrance Of" ... the attacks by Israel on Gaza. That's her former father and his blood on the wall. Her life is forever changed, now, and probably much shortened. This was before the ground offensive started last Saturday; it's part of the result of one of the IAF airstrikes.
Demonstrators / peace activists in front of the Ministry of Justice:
It's also a big tragedy that Israeli kids in kindergarten have to run for bomb shelters while rockets scream in, and their teachers have to cope with PTSD as well as being a five-year-old.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that should be wiped off the face of the earth equally as much as the nineteen hijackers of the 9/11 airliners were [they did the wiping themselves, saving a lot of trouble.] Not all Palestinians support Hamas, by a long shot.
And not all Israelis support their military, either. Surprise?
Israeli civilian children should not be put in fear for their lives.
Palestinian civilian children should not be put in fear for THEIR lives, either.
Hamas has never stopped firing rockets at civilian targets inside Israel, cities and towns, and they never will, because they are sworn to deny Israelis the right to exist as a people. By killing all of them.
So somebody has to stop them, or agree to keep on with the sacrifice of Israeli innocents. That is why, after Israeli restraint fails and international diplomacy fails, the F16's must start flying and the tanks must start rumbling and the ground troops must start shooting. And they must keep on doing all that until Hamas' threat is gone forever.
Holland is part of the European Union, and the EU has condemned Hamas just as America has. And I'm proud of that.
Hamas does not stand for half-assed measures so Israel cannot either.
Hamas is bringing down fire and flame onto its own people who elected it to govern.
In Tel-Aviv on 04 January, Sabbath evening, there was an antiwar demonstration of 10,000... that's in Tel-Aviv, the Israeli capital.
Tell it to the criminals firing the rockets.
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silverplate88- Moonfire Marion Bridge / Brad
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Although I am now Christian by religion, my ethnic origin is still Jewish and when it comes right down to it, I have to remember that the Palestinian leadership has never really accepted the concept of peaceful co-existence with Israel; they have never let go of the ultimate goal of wiping Israel off the map.
There is nothing good about civilian casualties in war, nothing to be proud or happy about when non-combatants are injured or killed, whether it is in Gaza or in Iraq or anywhere else. It happens and it sucks. If someone can come up with another way to stop the attacks on Israel, something that hasn't already been tried and failed, something that doesn't involve Israel ceasing to exist as the ultimate answer, I'd like to hear it.
I met both Lois and John, and her mother, under the most extraordinary of circumstances, and they are very special to me, and they do not deserve any of this to be happening to them. I really worry.
You're right, the leaders think that. At least all of the Hamas leaders do, as well as some Fatah too. I do not think anywhere in our own history there's an instance of us yowling to another nation / culture they have "no right to exist"... even as anti-Oriental and racist as we got there for awhile in World War Two.
I also don't like it when military accidents happen --- it seems that some Israeli troops have been killed by their own ordnance --- there's another cost of the senselessness of war.
But anything short of war is going to fail if leaders can't or won't compromise in good faith, and my view is that Israelis have repeatedly held out an olive branch only to get their fingers torn and scarred and bloodied.
I see Israeli citizens as being forced to fight for the freedoms to be left alone, and to build their nation in a very inhospitable desert [for the most part], and to be safe in their homes, and to go about their lives peacefully where the only rockets are in history books or museums. (I would fight for that.)
And it's obvious to me who is preventing any and all of the above.
And Hamas was democratically chosen by the people of Gaza. Hamas never hid its intentions and inclinations regarding Israel. Palestinians knew what they were choosing. They made the bed they are now sleeping in.
The view from America that I got was that Hamas and the more moderate Fatah party both received about equal votes (?) so they had to share power, because many Palestinians were irritated that moderation was not getting them anywhere [improving their squalid living situations and their backward economy, etc.] Some of the Palestinian kids I met this summer were pretty polarized in their thinking, and aggressive against Israel, but some were not. I did not go anywhere near Gaza, Bethlehem and Ramallah were quite enough... and it was even the French Consular Cultural Attache' from Gaza who told me to stay out, *he* didn't even want to go back there to his office!
Is that political view wrong? Please correct me... wait, it sounds like you just did :)
I am sure that sniper activity and terror attacks are a threat in the West Bank as well as Gaza, I lived in it for far too long. I am also sure that not every single Palestinian living in the West Bank areas is picking up a gun.
Rocks... maybe x.x
Only that like I said, it's a skillful work of PR. To which Israel would never resort, because we respect our wounded, we respect our dead, and we do not spread photographs and videos of our blood and bodies all over the media. There are notoriously few videos showing the stuff you can't show on TV, on the Israeli side. On the Palestinian side, they thrive on those - again, not always showing the truth about what happened.
As for that Palestinian girl, whose photo you started this entry with - you may want to know that Palestinians use their women, children and elderly as human shields. There are witnesses. There are videos. We shield our children and our women and our elderly and infirm; Palestinians use them as shields, grown men hiding behind the skinny backs of their own little girls and then shouting about their deaths - which they themselves are responsible for.
It's really the other way around: I am basically pro-Israel and have been for a long time. But, I actually had more contact with Palestinians when I was over there [even to the point of staying in a Bethlehem refugee camp overnight.]
"We do not spread photographs and videos of our blood and bodies all over the media." No, they're not there --- yes, it's lopsided. Aware of that.
But it angered me deeply when there was that prisoner exchange when Israel walked its prisoners across the border and Hamas sent theirs back home to you in coffins.
There's your basic respect for human life, right there. And lack of it.
Not only does it not surprise me that Pals use their own kids and elders as human shields, the IDF said as much when they blew up mosques in Gaza --- secondary explosions from missiles and fuel stored there inside, guarded by civilians.
One reason I love this icon is that Neta and I walked right along beside missile damage in Haifa from the 2006 war. Missiles had hit the train station and some nearby houses. The icon shows schoolchildren in the area north of there, writing special messages to Hezbollah terrorists, onto artillery shells soon on their way to Lebanon.
So should we just expect them to go to school and learn their lessons and arithmetics and sit there and listen to the rocket motors screaming in?
Absurd.
++++++++++
Thank you for posting this, Lois =)
In fact you are having some of that experience right now, in fact...
A couple days later, their fraud was revealed.
Just to let you know what we're dealing with. Don't believe their claims.
You've also made me wonder, in my posted picture, where and what the truth is behind the screaming...
I care BIGTIME that there are any more rockets still capable of being fired at you in the first place. Hopefully Israel will put a FULL stop to this ASAP. Like, yesterday.
Edited at 2009-01-13 12:06 pm (UTC)
Historically we have never been doing very well with that, indeed. Caught in a spiderweb.
I think it was you who once told me that "wild" animals only kill others to survive [as a source of food] or to protect their family. Man is the only animal who kills for other reasons.
Greed, theology, oil, money, Lebensraum, fill in the blanks.
Tel-Aviv's our capital? Good to know. :P
Off-topic: could you put the photos behind a LJ cut please? They've been messing around with my f-list page.
|Meduza|
Off-topic: of course. Sorry for the mess. Go back to do that, or just in the future?
|Meduza|
Guess there's not much of anywhere secure to hide now, but please keep as safe as you can :)