How do you feel about the week-long events in Israel/Gaza - does it somehow affect your day - and are you biased towards one side or the other?

Like most wars, there’s guilt enough to go around. Bulldozing homes won’t win Israel any sympathy among the people whose families had lived in Palestine for 100 generations before the UN decided to give their homeland away.

Firing Qassams rockets into civilian centers won’t convince many Israelis they should let goods flow into Gaza freely. Hamas stating that Israel must be wiped from the map and that Jews living in other nations must be exterminated isn’t likely to bring the Israelis to the bargaining table with Hamas. How do you negotiate around that central tenant?

Already moderates on both sides far outnumber the meatheads. But the meatheads rule with intimidation, firepower and shame heaped on anyone willing to strike a conciliatory note. Eventually the population on both sides will grow so weary of the senseless death and carnage they will sideline the meatheads among them, and imprison those unwilling to go silently into the night. Till then, temporary cease-fires will be just that—temporary.

I suggest that all the one or the other pool their money and buy an offshore island to create a new country that they can have all to themselves.

I’ve seen pictures of that part of the world and I can’t imagine anyone even wanting to fight for it.

I went on a news diet after the election, and I don’t really know what is going on. That is the downside to news diets. Something major happens, and I’m clueless.

@YARNLADY Jerusalem is considered the holiest place in the world to all major religions. Nazareth is where Jesus was born. Tel-Aviv is considered a party city par excellence and a city that doesn’t sleep. The south, once a desert, blooms. The beaches are wonderful. The north has skiing in the winter while Eilat’s Red Sea has sun nearly year-round.

@zensky Buddhism and Hinduism aren’t major religions? Really?

Wasn’t my point. But you are correct.

@zensky You’re forgiven. I have been to Israel, and your praise of its beauty is well founded. Still, I believe that revering land should be idolatry.

I don’t think I revere the land. My point to Yarnie, who clearly hasn’t been to the middle east, was that the place is beautiful, relevant and worth fighting for.

Israel has been a state since 1947. After the Holocaust. Where else should the Jews go?

@zensky Yes, I understand so-called sacred land, but as a member of a displaced people myself, I can assure you that it turns out to be a minor consideration.

OK, I will take your word for the beauty of the place.

Where? There are as many Jews in the U. S. as there are in Israel, but I am proposing an other wise unpopulated area.

Why do The Jews need their own country again? And if anyone brings up history that’s 70 years old, spare me.

All that region needs is a visit by Tim Minchin and his problem solving.

Again? And 70 years is a long time, you’re right. Let’s discuss Justin Bieber.

Sorry Zen, I meant again as in “remind me”, not as in a second time.

We’re under rocket fire, in a war, and I am spending time here ready to discuss a real issue that affects almost everyone somehow – and this is what you have to say? Maybe spare me next time.

Sorry Zen, but this doesn’t affect the average American.

Were bombarded with news of this sort from that region of the world that it doesn’t mean much anymore. Another car or bus explosion? Another IED kills 50 people? Another rocket destroys an apartment building? It’s just another news bite to most of us, one that we’ve heard a thousand times before. I know that sounds shitty, but it’s unfortunately true.

Like someone above stated, I have not watched any news (I don’t have TV anyway, can’t watch CNN even if I wanted to) nor have I read any news sites since the election, so I shouldn’t really say anything about what’s going on in Israel. I have no clue at all what’s happening there.

Stay safe, zen.

It worries me, a lot. I wish I understood the whole thing better, but all I really grasp is that lasting peace in the region sometimes seems impossible. I hope a cease fire comes soon, at least. Stay safe.

@zensky I’ve been following the events in the news. The rocket fire from both sides is atrocious in my opinion.

As someone on the ground, what do you feel? How should the crisis be resolved? Why did the crisis start just as Abbas was ready to ask for Palestinians to receive an upgrade in their status at the UN?

Personally, I’m a staunch believer in Israel’s right to exist in peace. It’s a marvel that it has existed this long.

Sorry – there was a suicide bus bomber in Tel Aviv just now. BBL.

It leaves me numb, same as numerous other countries recent “troubles”.
I’m afraid that has to be the case when saturated coverage from various media outlets leaves me conditioned towards apathy, same with Hurricane Sandy…not on my doorstep.

Sorry @zensky, but as the years, the decades pass, and the tit for tat goes on and on and on, it just gets harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys here.

@zensky I’m on the side of peace. How can killing and blowing people up lead to peace? Neither side is right.

Please watch this short video by Nina Paley This land is mine .
It is historically correct and gives references and dates if you care to check. I did not bother to count how many times it has changed hands. But it is a lot. Everyone one the planet including anyone with Neanderthal DNA can argue that they have relatives that once owned that land.

Hey @ETpro Only 150 years ago Native Americans lived on the site where your house is located. What would you do it they claimed they wanted it back and started throwing rocks at you every day. Would you wait a week, a year, a decade before breaking out the Mossberg 500 . Or would you just agree and sign over the deed to NativeAmericans .org?

The whole region is a recipe for disaster. It seems like a psychological experiment designed by a devious mind.
1) Hey, let’s take 4 drastically different religions/nationalities and stick them in 4 quarters of an old city and tell them that thousands of years ago amazing things happened here.
2) Let’s make this city hot.
3) Let’s put a wall around it.
4) Let’s put it in a desert so there is a lot of competition for resources, food and water.
5) Separate the 4 quarters but put entrances on the borders of the quarters so they must bump into each other going in and out of the walled gate.
6) Tell each one that they are the true owners of the whole city.
7) Let any wealth generated by the city go into the hands of a few well off individuals and keep the rest fed by giving them resources.
.
Can you make it worse? I can think of a way! Now you have the Christian, Arab, Jewish and Armenian quarters. I’d get rid of the Armenians since.they not feisty and antagonistic enough and I’d replace them with either Chinese, Koreans or Africans. I’ll go with Chinese . their business practices will get the flares going.
I’d also start growing some Khat derivative genetically engineered to grow in the hot, dry climate.
What will ultimately happen? My money is on the possibility of some nutjob with nothing to lose detonating a suicide nuke and turning the area into glass. Sad.

Israelis have been hit with more than 1700 rockets in the past few days. Before that, there were around 1000(?). Hamas has been launching them from school yards, crowded streets, out of apartment windows. How should Israel respond? At point do you break out the Mossberg 500?
I think Israel has shown amazing restraint. That will not last.

By the way if someone throws a rock at my house, they will not have the chance to throw a second one. My Mossberg Threshold is 1.

My first reaction to the news was a quiet “Eek.” I’ve been busy this week, so haven’t been following the story closely, but unrest in the Middle East is always worrisome, more so because it is founded in religious sentiment – so no one can assume that reason will prevail. I have friends who are Jewish, and also friends who have family ties in Palestine, and it is an issue with no clear right answer. Or, perhaps more accurately, I find myself being genuinely sympathetic to whomever I am talking to in a given moment.

@zensky, how is it for you living there?

Like @augustlan, it also worries me and I wish I understood it better. I felt sadness when I heard the first breaking news report. Several children have been killed, is that right @zensky? I can’t imagine living in such fear. I hope you can stay safe.

I don’t support Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and I think Netanyahu is a horrible leader along the lines of George W. Bush. And I’m horrified of the images coming out of Gaza.

On the other hand, I hope the IDF and Mossad kills as many Hamas fighters as they can. I don’t even feel bad about saying that. It’s what Hamas wants, isn’t it? The organization is basically a death cult.

And this is the whole problem for Israel, tactically. Hamas does want civilians to be killed, they want to become martyrs—this is their whole strategy, provoking Israel by acting like savages and aiming rockets at Israeli civilians and then pretending to be shocked and outraged when Israel counterattacks and kills the Gazan civilians that Hamas fighters hide behind.

I don’t envy Israel’s military, I think it’s important to note that Israelis aren’t aiming for Gazan civilians, and I don’t think they have a lot of options in the near-term. But what also pisses me off is that I’m not seeing any long-term strategic thinking from Netanyahu. Netanyahu torpedoed peace talks with Fatah when he came into office. He refuses to stop Jewish settlements on the West Bank. He refuses to give any concessions to the peaceful Palestinian factions, and says he is comfortable with a permanent military occupation—an occupation that everyone knows is fundamentally unjust. So now, Palestinians and radical Muslims in general see monsters like Hamas’ violent resistance as the only game in town.

Anyway, my two cents. Stay safe, @zensky.

Thanks guys. Waiting on case fire news now.

I just saw there is supposed to be a cease fire.
Israel needs to immediately set up a social media account called Rocket Attack Cease Fire Violations.
It can be on FB, Twitter, Android Apps, Apple Apps, Amazon Kindle, etc. and should be free of trackers, trojans, spyware and backdoors. It should e free and only for getting the word out quickly.

The web site should be tied to google maps and have 4 columns: Data time, Originating GPS location, Destination GPS location and estimated damage. Of course the locations and damage may be obscured a little to prevent Hamas from using it for ranging and targeting info.
The newest attacks should be listed first. A map at the top of the page will show the origin and destination of all the recent attacks over the past day in red, past week in orange and past two weeks in yellow. Origin location could have a mark for School or Hospital within 100 meters. This will help the rest of the world understand how Israel is being provoked.
Set up cameras along the border to take videos of every launch and post them on Youtube. Use motion sensing with 30 seconds of pretrigger to record every single rocket and smoke trail out of Gaza.
Who here believes there won’t be at least another 100–200 more launches of the junk rockets while Hamas smuggles in the higher powered presents from Iran?
Israel needs to get the word out immediately every time a rocket lands on their soil. Right now all people see are Palestinians crying over collapsed buildings and dead babies. It is hard not to feel sorry for them – even if the building housed a rocket factory or was a launch center.
Israel needs the same PR agency the Palestinians use.

@LuckyGuy, the information about Hamas rocket attacks is already there for people who are concerned with facts—not as detailed as you’re suggesting, of course, but it’s widely reported.

The problem isn’t a lack of detailed information about the rocket attacks, the problem is that many people in the region are delusional cultists and conspiracy theorists, who have no interest in facts or “the other side”‘s position, who would dismiss a priori any claim that appears to portray Israel sympathetically. Giving these people more information won’t matter if they are just going to dismiss it out of hand.

This isn’t unique to the Middle East or Muslims—consider American politics. Though I would argue that religiosity makes it worse, and people are pretty religious over there.

I think that far too many people have died & too many of them have been children. My heart aches for the families that have lost people that they love. One has to wonder, do people (men especially) ever get tired of constant warfare? Do all ‘warriors’ look upon civilian deaths as ‘collateral’ damage? Why must the entire mid-east region be so ‘revenge’ minded? Is there not some attitude for ‘forgiveness’ between the Jews & the Muslims & the Christians?

@Linda_Owl “Why must the entire mid-east region be so ‘revenge’ minded?”

Have you read the Old Testament?

@glacial , yes I have read the Old Testament, & I found it to be full of violence & blood-shed. Reading the ‘Bible’ is just one of the reasons that I no longer believe in ‘God’. Personally, I think that Religion is responsible for a great many things that are wrong with today’s world.

Just for a little perspective…....
20,000 men, women and children died of starvation yesterday, but we weren’t too concerned about them, oh, and it happened again today, and will happen again tomorrow.

According to one site: To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.

Dear YARNLADY, we may not be advertising it on a site like Fluther, but some of us indeed might be concerned about the starving and poor of the world. We might even be doing something to alleviate it.

I’m not sure how drawing our attention to a different crisis in the world detracts from the plight of the people in Gaza or Israel.

@FreshlyBaked Thanks for helping. I was referring to the generic we as in the rest of the world. I click on Thehungersite.com every day, and try to keep the daily, yet often overlooked disaster in the public eye.

Drawing attention to an ongoing, daily crisis is meant to counter the big news of the week attention that is paid to some things, while ignoring others.

@YARNLADY , I know these statistics very well & they greatly concern me. I do not spend money for things I do not need & one of the things I do not spend money on is perfume. This is another reason that I no longer believe in ‘God’. A ‘God’ who would allow the humans that he supposedly created, to starve to death is despicable.

@Linda_Owl Like you, I do not use any type of cosmetic products, and live as frugally as I can. I do have several family members who are currently out of work, so my charitable contributions are now at an all time minimum.

Zen, I was thinking about you personally just a few minutes ago. This unrest has made me really uneasy the past week or so. I am against violence. I believe everyone needs a homeland. Tell me more about who is right. Your perspective means much to me.

Please stay safe, with your children and co-workers.

@jazmina88 Thanks again for your well wishes. Who is right? I think both sides are so wrong that they wouldn’t know right if it dropped on their heads.

We are in dire need of sane, courageous leaders – like Begin and Sadat. Or even Rabin who reminded us that peace is made between enemies, not friends. I fear there is no real leadership in the Middle East. Only warmongers and nearsighted politicians.

How its affecting me in Hong Kong: I’ve been sort of dating a guy, a Hungarian Jew who has spent 10 years in Israel, including serving in the military. Recently he’s been posting rather nationalistic/ pro-Israel material on his Facebook, such as a youtube of an aerial view of the asassination of Ahmed Jabari, or jokes of how ‘Ahmed Jabari is now in a relationship with 2000 virgins’
I feel rather uneasy about his posts- it’s a side of him that doesn’t really come out in our interactions. It’s a conversation we need to have, but I feel rather ill equipped as its clearly his culture, not mine (Chinese); but as a human being I feel that celebrating someone’s death, even if its someone like Osama Bin Laden, is not cool. And from the little I know, the treatment of the Palestinians behind the wall is horrendous and has been compared to an ‘open air prison’.
Sigh- how do I open this can of worms? Thoughts, anyone?

We have a political war here, that didnt end with the election as I would have hoped. But no guns as of yet. just nearsighted politicians like in your world.

And you are wise in your answer. Zen.

@lifeflame Not easy. Most men in military have a bit of an agressive side, doesnt it make him a good soldier? I guess acceptance of his opinion may be hard to come by, but he will not change easily. He was fighting for Israel.
I, like you, am against funning the dead. Can you turn a blind eye?

@jazmina88 Thanks.

Re. your reply to @lifeflame Not easy. Most men in military have a bit of an agressive side, doesnt it make him a good soldier? I guess acceptance of his opinion may be hard to come by, but he will not change easily. He was fighting for Israel.

Very true. When you choose a partner and spend 10 years with him – you accept all sides of his character and personality. It might have been just as difficult to have fallen in love with a zen buddhist, no?

Well from what I understand, he wasn’t trained for combat, just drove trucks around as part of the compulsory military service. I wonder how much serving in the israeli military changes you? I was talking to a Chinese guy who did military service in china, and he said that pretty much ‘your thoughts aren’t yours’ when you’re inside; but now that he’s out, he seems to be able to think independently and critique the regime.

Argh- this is a new relationship, two months old, so we’re still feeling each other out. At some point we’re going to have to talk about it- it bothers me enough and it seems like an important enough part of him that we need to do this…

When It Comes to Israel, I Stand for People, Not Policies

Just some food for thought…

I think Israel is gradually losing support in the eyes of the world because of its reliance on military action to resolve problems. Who was it said if you only have a hammer every problem resembles a nail? This, together with its disregard for the international community and its insistence on building settlements in the occupied territories is losing it respect.

Perhaps this doesn’t matter, and maintaining an overwhelming military superiority is what is really important but I would like to see Israel suspend all house building in the occupied territories so it can get into serious discussions with the Palestinians.