I am concerned about the lack of media coverage in Gaza - if everything is on the up and up, why not allow reporters in? The International Red Cross has criticized Israel, which is almost unheard of. We are getting only bits and pieces of what is really going on, and of course it is being spun to death.

The Canadian/U.S. analogy would only be valid if you had the U.S. throwing up a blockade which prevented Canada from being able to secure basic necessities and for its citizens to be able to lead some sort of normal life. And yes, if "one hand tied behind your back" means not bombing U.N. schools, then yes, I expect them to do it. All that sophisticated military equipment, and they can't do better?

To achieve any sort of lasting peace, both sides are going to have to make some major concessions, and with the Israeli elections coming up I don't see it happening. I hope I'm wrong.

Because we don't really need to know? Because they know it will be used as propaganda? Israel doesn't care what we think, and I admire that. They know what they need to do to protect themselves and they're doing it.

Israel has already been condemned by most of the "International Community" what do they have to gain with more publicity?

It's a war. The situation is going to be terrible.

We should be allowed to see if Israel's claims are correct. Like, to see if those UN schools truly had weapons, to see if Hamas really is using innocents as shields, or what the "face of Hamas" looks like. Are they 14-16 year olds like AlphaDelta claims?

I would like to see that Israel is not just the big bad wolf that is huffing & puffing and trying to blow Gaza down.

How about when the location of rockets has particularly been chosen because of it's proximity to a school or hospital? Who is to blame for the destruction of the school, the side that takes it out or the side that deliberately used it as a shield?

I think there's been so much spin about the blockade that I can't respond to it with any accuracy. Israel claims they let "basic necessities" through. Hamas claims otherwise.

I would find a US blockade of Canada strange certainly, but if a bunch of terrorist attacks out of that area were focused on the US, and food and humanitarian aid were getting in, it still wouldn't justify rocket attacks and I'd expect the US government to do whatever it took to make the US safe.

So that what? We'd be better able to discuss it on message board about Greek Life?

I don't think anyone disputes that that Hamas intentionally launches its rockets from civilian areas. Have you read the stories about how Israel used to call in advance to let civilians in the area know they were about to hit the area?http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/0...-calls-th.html

It's not that that I deny Israel has innocent civilian blood on its hands from this and other previous altercations.

But I think people hold Israel to a ridiculously high standard considering the situation that it's in. It's basically surrounded by countries that harbor large groups of people who would like to see it wiped off the map. It constantly faces the possibility of attack in a way that most of us can't even imagine.

And furthermore, and this may just be a personal quirk, I have little doubt that if Israel could know without certainty that it wouldn't be attacked, the Israelis would live in peace with their neighbors. I can't say the same for the groups that plague Israel with violence.

Seriously? Since when can we only discuss Greek-related things on here? That isn't even worth discussing.

Seeing has how the Palestinians don't have an army, every area is a civilian area.

So Israel tells Gaza residents they have 10 minutes to leave their house or else it's gonna get bombed. Where are these residents suppose to go? The neighbor's house? A UN school? Make a run for the border?

Israel can't live in peace with their neighbors, because Israel refuses to try and negotiate. Hamas wants Israel to recognize the rights of Palestinians. Hamas wants to gain land back from the 1949 Armistice agreements (which Israel agreed to). Hamas wants those two things for there to be peace.

Do I think that if that stuff were to happen that there would be peace? Who knows, but if that were to happen and Hamas turns around and reneges on the agreements, then at least Israel could say they tried. Then maybe the views of the "International Community" would change, and Israel would gain more favor.

Well, notifying them at least allows them to escape with their lives. It's not an "or else" message as I understand it. It's a "hey, we're going to bomb this building in 10 minutes; get your family out." Which it kind of counter to the strategy of suicide bombing or random rocket fire.

Perhaps I should have said, heavily populated area vs. civilian area. My point is still that the selection of where to fire from and where to store weapons seems to be to intentionally place them in areas that will be troubling to outsiders should they get hit, rather than say a warehouse on the outskirts of town. (Here's a strike on a Mosque: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwP_LusgPAw) Is that Israel's fault? Does that mean Israel should ignore the presence of weapons that threaten its security?

I didn't mean there was anything at all wrong about our discussion. I'm obviously enjoying participating in it. I just think that we all in the US tend to think we should know stuff and that our opinions matter as much to the rest of the world as they do in our country. Knowledge of what was really happening in Gaza could theoretically change our domestic policy towards Israel, but we can probably wait until after Obama takes office to really fret too much about making a change.

ETA: Even if you knew for sure that Israel was absolutely in the wrong, what would you do? Protest? Write a letter to your political representatives? I'm not trying to single anyone out; I'm not planning any pro-Israel actions myself. I just mean there's something a little bit silly about thinking that our opinions should matter to Israel, rather than to each other talking in this thread.

I'm quoting again to address the last part.

I don't think that what's happening is because of a failure of Israel to negotiate; it's a failure to completely give in.

You may hold out more hope that I do, but the cost of "being able to say they tried" is unacceptably high.

Basically, I think that if you fight a war and win that negates having to honor a previous negotiated treaty. If the war you fought can also be cast as being defensive out your part, that's all the more reason why the previous treaty can be null. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Six_Day_War

ETA: To offer another half baked analogy, mentioning the 1949 Armistice and expecting Israel to honor it in regard to Gaza, makes about as much sense to me as if Russia sought to enforce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbentrop-Molotov_Pact.

That is why i'm saying we need more media in the area. All we hear (from Israel) is that Hamas is putting their weapons and people in civilian houses, UN schools, mosques, etc. but is that fact? Has it been proven that those places really did have weapons? If Israel claims there are weapons stored in a certain location, why can't they raid the location instead of bombing it?

I think notifying them is a good thing, it allows the innocent Gazans to escape, but for how long? No place in the Gaza strip is safe, so these people are just gonna keep running from place to place everytime they get a call from Israel. It's a game of cat & mouse, eventually the people aren't gonna have anyplace to run. What's gonna happen then?

800+ Palestians have died since Dec. 27 while only 13 Israelis have died (10 of those being soldiers). You can't tell me that most of those 800+ are actual Hamas militants.


I don't think that us, as Americans, should think our opinions matters more than anothers, but I think it is in our best interest to gain as much knowledge as we can (on both sides) so that we just don't blindly support one side or the other.

Neither side is every gonna win this war. It's just going to be constant fighting over and over.

I maybe do hold out more hope, but there are gonna be high costs of negotiating and high costs of not negotiating. If Hamas is saying, "hey let's go back to the way it was in from 1949-1967, so that we can get more land for our people and everything will be cool" then why not try it? Israel got the land in 1967, and they undoubtly could regain the land back if this treaty failed.


I don't understand why it doesn't make much sense (as you mentioned in your ETA).

Sure, but I can also understand why Israel has some higher priorities right now.

Can you see that you're sort of talking about of both sides of your mouth? On the one hand Israel shouldn't "occupy" the territories; the other hand, they shouldn't use air strikes, they should raid every suspected storage area or combatant hide-out.

And yep, I think the arms storage thing is pretty proven. Did you see the You-tube and the double explosions?

Some of the lopsidedness of the causalities lies with Hamas's methods rather than with Israel's. I'm not sure what more Israel could do, especially as it appeared that Hamas's rockets were gaining both range and accuracy. Having one hit an nuclear plant in Israel was a completely unacceptable risk.

ETA: the reason it doesn't make much sense to me is that it demands a pretty big concession from Israel when there has been absolutely no reason to think it will actually result in increased Israeli security. To the contrary, it exposes Israel to much more risk. Also, it refers to entities that don't really exist as they did in the initial treaty.

Ok, so I said that Israel shouldn't have so many checkpoints in the land occupied by the Palestinians. I also said that instead of bombing places, they should raid the suspected hideouts/storage areas to see if they are in fact hideouts/storage. I don't see those two comments as "talking [out] of both sides of my mouth."

If Israel thinks that epchick's house in Gaza City is housing weapons, instead of bombing epchick's house (and killing her family, and any civilians in the area cause bombs aren't just nice little things that stay contained in that one little area) why don't they send in troops to snoop around and see if there are actually weapons. If no weapons are found, don't bomb the house, and allow epchick's family to continue to stay there safely.

I can understand that.

Israel wouldn't have checkpoints in the Palestinian areas if the Palestinian leaders would keep Palestinians terrorists from constantly harassing the state of Israel...

Attacking with ground troops vs airstrikes... If you send in ground troops, you are putting their lives in major danger... If you send in ground troops, it may take them some time to get there, and by then all these mobile rocket launchers will be gone.

Well, if Israel truly is surrounding Gaza City, I doubt it would take them long to get there.

Israel vs Palestine = New thread

Because you had a lot more to say about t-shirts?

And the only thing you ever contribute to those threads are assinine comments that have no substance.

But the problem, I think, is that the weapons are typically placed in this type locations deliberately.

Here's an old story from 2007 about outcry over a Palestinian mortar launcher being placed on a UN school.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/....N.-School.php

So basically there's a pattern of choosing to put weapons in the very places that Israel will look terrible for striking.

ETA: Here's a link to the recent UN school controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Fakhura_school_strike
I wanted to post it so as not to be seeming to misrepresent what happened most recently since there's debate about whether there were mortar fired from the school recently.

On the other hand, Israel could choose to use ground forces and carefully monitor from within Gaza, but that's going to equal occupation in a lot of people's minds, or they could try to keep weapons from entering from the outside of the area, but then it's a blockade.

Other than relocating the Jewish homeland to Wyoming, I'm not sure there's much that Israel is ever going to be able to do to promote peace and be able to protect themselves at the same time.

That is the topic of the thread...moreso....racial profiling in the US post 9/11


If you read thru all of page four, you would see that I am correct...you all are talking about Israel vs Palestine = not on the topic as indicated by the title of the post.


...nice try at the snark

You may realize that this happens a lot.

By all means, jump back in with an on topic post.

UGA....your thoughts on this from earlier perhaps:

This particluar story shory should home in on the point that the person that threatens to blow up a plane may very well look like you


http://www.ajc.com/services/content/...svc=7&cxcat=13

Video: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?se...les&id=6592616

Sure the person who threatens to might look like any of us. How about the people who have actually blown up passenger jets in the last 50 years? What have they looked like? Are there a couple of IRA guys in the mix maybe? Why don't you dig up the data?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...aft_hijackings

It still wouldn't mean much in terms of how we ought to treat the non-plane blowing up passengers.

And exactly how often does this happen?


How often have planes blown up in the past 50 years?

For that matter, can you say what is the ratio of actual bomb threats and racial makeup of those who are perceived as actually going thru with said threat?

I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that the majority of people who attempt bomb scares are our own non minority US citizens

and BTW...we are talking US hijackings....nice wikipedia source (not 100% reliable mind you) and I am going off the assumption you were talking about actually BLOWN UP planes.

So let's get this straight are you referring to actual BLOWN UP planes or simple hijackings...make it clear.

ETA: Furthermore, after looking over your wiki link hmmm we have

Lebanese, Egyptian, US citizens, Chinese, Indian, Ethiopian, Iranian, Filipino, Sri Lankan, Croatian, Cuban, German, Japanese and so on...

You know what that says, anybody can be a hijacker...

The thread blew up while I was away, but this comment

gets a big fat :rolleyes:

A semi off topic comment but this reminded me of it. Mark Bingham, one of the men credited with stopping the terrorists on United flight 93 from crashing the plane into the Pentagon, was a member of my Alpha. I was looking over the room I'm moving into next semester in the Lodge, and found his name carved into the wall. The whole plane hijacking topic reminded me of it, sorry to do a hijacking of my own. :o

Thankfully nobody died with your hijacking....lol

Why don't you find the accurate list of planes that have blown up?

Sweetie...that's not what we are talking about, please try to keep up.

Racial profiling in American airports is the topic...instead of getting frustrated, snarky and making asinine requests for stats....just talk...that's all...I know you are itching for any chance to put me down but damn, JUST TALK to the topic...


Now...as it is, to the topic, part of the problem with profiling in general is that as the public makes generalizations of a particular group overlooking their neighbors.

Thus the 'shock' when you have that 1 'aberration'.

For instance:

How many people were shocked:

- the Virginia Tech was Asian and not a white man?
- the Beltway sniper was black and not Middle Eastern?
- the Oklahoma bomber was a white male and not middle eastern?
- the anthrax attacker was also a white male and not middle eastern?

In some of these cases notably the last one, people play on the public's fears by making it look like another element 'commonly shown' to commit such acts.

ON another tangent but in the same ballpark, see Susan Smith and Charles Stuart.

that's because your mind is too feeble to comprehend them.

Interesting to note, in that article, is that Israel had no problem training and arming them in the 80s to counter act the PLO and Fatah. Now, their own project decides to bite them back.

"We" being the international community - since when does a country get to decide that the rest of the world doesn't "need to know"? ( and yes, there is a certain irony here,given some of the U.S. actions in and about Iraq, but it's still WRONG) Stalin did a heck of a job of keeping information we "didn't need to know" from us, I guess, as have various African and Asian leaders I can think of. We are coming up on the 20th anniversary of Tienanmen Square - do you think China thought we "needed to know" about that? So we should just forget about the whole news reporting thing - they'll let us know what we "need to know". I propose that we need to know what exactly is going on - there have been reports of Israel violating the Geneva Conventions - so let's see if it's true.

And considering the amount of aid Israel receives from the U.S., and the effort they have put forth in public relations, I think it fair to say that they care a great deal about U.S. opinion. I believe what you are interpreting as not caring about U.S. opinion is actually being so secure in what you think it is that you think you can do anything without impacting it.

My point is more that they currently have higher priorities, like fighting a war, than convincing us that everything they are doing is great. They don't need to ask our permission to defend themselves.

And I also suspect that based on what's happened previously, they have no expectation of getting fair coverage in international reporting.

ETA: I agree with you generally that if you don't have anything to hide, then it makes sense to let the world know what you are doing. But if you know an area is completely unsafe, should you really let journalist in? I don't know, but I don't think the problem with Israel generally is suppression of the press, and if they have strategic military goals to achieve right now, I understand why that's a greater priority. Sure, Israel does get a lot of US support, but that doesn't mean we should expect to exercise prior restraint.
(And I wouldn't be surprised if the US state department had a little better information than you and I are getting. In the short term, I think that's okay.)

I'm missing that in the article. Where is it?

ETA: I see it now. Newspapers articles assert there was funding from Israel, as opposed to Israel having no problem training and arming them threw me off. Even if we accept the reports as true, I get the idea from the article that rather than counteract the PLO and Fatah in fighting Israel that they wanted to be able to use Hamas's attacks as a way of reshaping the issue as purely religious. I don't know what to believe on the funding issue, but it doesn't appear to be "bite them back" situation. They, again if you accept the claims, always knew Hamas would bite:

"Various sources, among them United Press International,[106] Le Canard enchaîné,[citation needed] Gérard Chaliand[107] and L'Humanité[108] have claimed that Hamas' early growth had been supported by the Mossad as a "counterbalance to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)".The French investigative newspaper Le Canard enchaîné claimed that Shin Bet had also supported Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO and Fatah. It speculated that this was an attempt to give "a religious slant to the conflict, in order to make the West believe that the conflict was between Jews and Muslims", perhaps in order to support the controversial thesis of a "clash of civilizations".[109]"

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle10456.htm I really wish they did have named sources.

ETC: it's creepy to me, but it seems a lot lot more involved that the kind of "the US armed Al Qaeda to fight the USSR" kind of stuff. It seems really odd to me that Israel thought they'd be better off with a religious vs. political enemy.

And it appears on further reading that to "counter" or "counteract" the PLO etc, may principally have referred to Hamas's more humanitarian efforts early on with hospitals and schools. It seems like Israel wanted to draw support away from the more political groups within the Palestinian community with an organization they expected to stay infiltrated in. I don't get the sense that they ever expected Hamas to actually fight the PLO with weapons. Going back that far, it would almost make sense for people to see Hamas as the more peaceful group, but at the time they were elected, not so much.

It's not a question of Israel's priorities - letting journalists in requires absolutely nothing from Israel other then them getting out of the way. The idea that it is appropriate for one side of an armed conflict to decide what should and should not be covered is just . . . dangerous. Journalists should decide whether or not they want to take the risks that war correspondents routinely take - that's their JOB. If journalists only went where there was no danger there is a great deal of information we would never have.

I would HOPE the State Department has better information, but I don't share your confidence. After 9/11, it's a little harder to put your trust in government oversight of security information. Let the journalists in - the more you let in, the more likely you are to get a full picture of what is actually happening. "Fair" would mean both sides getting covered, and that's not what is happening now. Let the journalists in, and while you might have some biased towards one side or the other, with the full coverage that would emerge from it you would have much more in the way of information with which to judge both sides' actions.

It seems to me that those who don't want any more information must have already decided who is right and who is wrong. In that case, sure, why bother letting journalists in?

You know that things are being covered by both sides, right? There's a big controversy about a clip at CNN. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/...ons/index.html)

Here's there coverage now, some of it is from people in Gaza right now. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/

Here's Huffpo:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/gaza

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that there's no coverage or that journalists are being kept completely out.

Here's an article on keeping the foreign press out including explanations:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090102/...nalists_banned

It may not be as easy as it usually is, but I suspect that has [ETC] somewhat more to do with not want to be held responsible for killing journalists than it really does with suppressing coverage. But even if it is solely about image control, I don't think Israel has an obligation to let the foreign press in right now. Depending on how long the ban goes on, I might change my mind.

Would you have thought the US obligated to allow foreign press to cover the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima? ETA: or maybe Dresden is a better example.

Interestingly, I guess, if the Israeli press is banned and the international press is banned, Israel is willing to accept the risk that the coverage by completely by people in Gaza, favorable to Hamas.

Journalists have gone into Iraq & Afghanistan when it was completely unsafe. There are some journalists in Gaza (like the reporter from Anderson Cooper 360) reporting, while you can hear gunshots in the background.

"Investigative" journalism like this is dangerous. But i'm pretty sure if the Israelis have only lost 10 people since the fighting began, that the journalists might be a little safer.

But I doubt that Israel could ensure that they'd be safe from Israeli fire, depending on where the press went.

I'm generally happy that we have a free press that we let cover stuff without official approval. That doesn't mean that I think press coverage has to be a high priority for a country engaged in a military action. Our immediate need to know is pretty remote considering the lack of meaningful action available to us.

We want to know so we can decide what we think. At the most, what we think could influence the action of the US government and perhaps a UN resolution or two. We've got some time to figure it out since I'm pretty sure Bush isn't going to do anything before the inauguration, and I think it's unlikely that Obama is going to make a radical change in policy. What a interesting issue for Hillary to manage first.

The article on the ban on foreign press pretty well covers what I mean when I say journalists are being kept out. So I'm sorry I didn't specify "foreign" earlier. I thought it was apparent that only foreign journalists would need permission to enter.

I wouldn't trust a resident's take on the events going on in Gaza anymore than I would trust an Israel resident's take on the events in Israel - I think it important that journalists from all over (meaning ideologically and geographically) have access. Israel knows that most people will take any Hamas/Gaza journalist's account with a grain of salt - so it's a brilliant way to undercut the credibility of any reports from there. Again, if Israel has nothing to hide the best way to prove it is to allow outside journalists in to report what is really going on in Gaza. The question of whether the CNN video is staged or not would not be such an issue if there were more press in Gaza, who would be in a position to act as a check on each other - it's tougher to stage an event if what is going on is actually being covered by a variety of media.


And yes, if journalists had wanted to go in after Hiroshima (and that was dangerous is a way that simply going into an area under fire is not) I'd say let 'em, as long as the journalists are fully briefed as to the risks.