What started the Israeli invasion-Gaza tunnels

[PhilipA]

I have been critical of the role of the media in the Gaza/Conflict but I came across this article in a USA on line publication.
The propaganda is quite in evidence but the basic facts supported by photo evidence appear to be hard to deny.

Stories From The Battlefield: Hamas Tunnels Used To Target Israel's Kindergartens | The Daily Caller (http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/27/stories-from-the-battlefield-hamas-tunnels-used-to-target-israels-kindergartens/)

Regards Philip A

[Nick S]

Guess it shows that people will do desparate things when they have been invaded and dispossesed of their land like the Palestinians

[spudboy]

Whoa - that's a lot of explosives!

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2014/08/1032.jpg

[Chucaro]

An article in Aljazeera with good info as well.

Gaza’s underground: A vast tunnel network that empowers Hamas (http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/23/gaza-undergroundhamastunnels.html)

[Lotz-A-Landies]

My opinion.

The gaza tunnels were caused by the 1948 partition of Palestine by the UN, essentially caused by feelings of guilt over the actions of the Nazis and innaction by the European nations and US.

Just look at the number regions of instability caused by European nations drawing lines in the sand of places where they should have never been.
Cyprus
India/Pakistan/Bangladesh
Korea
Vietnam
North Africa
Messopotamia/Iraq/Syria/Iran/Lebanon
Ukraine

[Chucaro]

No to mention if we add the colonies, but then again that is another topic.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

No to mention if we add the colonies, but then again that is another topic.I hope we're not talking about a previously uninhabitated group of islands in the South Atlantic, colonised by the Brits?

At what point do claims of sovereignty end?

Maybe Russia could claim that the sale of Alaska to the US was illegal? Perhaps the Moors from North Africa could claim the Iberian peninsula because of their invasion in 711AD? Maybe the Greeks could lay claim to Afghanistan because of Alexander the Great? Perhaps the Chinese could claim the whole of North and South American continents? Are we to expect Indonesia to claim sovereignty over Australia because 40,000 to 60,000 years ago a group of humans walked across from Java to populate what is now Australia?

[AndyG]

DNA wise it seems the original folk came from theIndian sub continent.

[frantic]

So getting baaacccckkkk to the topic and continent, you have had the Gaza strip Palestinians screaming poor, malnourished, no medical,etc siege site, yet they pour tens of millions into an attack method whilst letting their kids starve and die of disease directly above.:eek:

[bob10]

Know your enemy, Bob


THE COVENANT OF THE HAMAS - MAIN POINTS (http://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm)


HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) (http://fas.org/irp/world/para/hamas.htm)

[Lotz-A-Landies]

So getting baaacccckkkk to the topic and continent, you have had the Gaza strip Palestinians screaming poor, malnourished, no medical,etc siege site, yet they pour tens of millions into an attack method whilst letting their kids starve and die of disease directly above.:eek:Not disagreeing with you here, but I doubt that Hamas is buying the munitions, most of it will be provided by supporters like the outlawed "Muslim Brotherhood" as well as others including countries and then smuggled into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt.

Most of the cost of hospitals and social infrastructure comes via humanitarian aid much of it through the United Nations across the Israeli controlled border and schools built, funded and operated by the UN. We know that Australia has significantly reduced its international aid budget and so has much of Eurpoe and the US. Gaza exports no commodities to the rest of the World and often relies on individuals working in Israel for foreign currency.

So what do you expect the non-Hamas people in Gaza to use to buy medicines and education etc with?

[sashadidi]

[error

[JohnF]

I would love to get involved with this discussion, but Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning I an headed down to Coffs Harbor as a volunteer guide for an Archaeology Exhibition [it is starting on the 17th but I am helping set up.]

But the aims of Hamas is the same as the aim of ISIS. The slaughter of all who are not Muslim.

[JohnF]

In Iraq there is a picture of a seven year old holding up a human head, etc. They are killing Christians who refuse to convert to the Muslim religion, etc. Homosexuals are being killed, etc. And girls enslaved, and being forced to marry Muslims.

No if a wants to complain about what I say I can access the pictures. It is a sad day. And they say the Western world will be next.


And Hamas plans the same thing.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

I would love to get involved with this discussion, but Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning I an headed down to Coffs Harbor as a volunteer guide for an Archaeology Exhibition [it is starting on the 17th but I am helping set up.]

But the aims of Hamas is the same as the aim of ISIS. The slaughter of all who are not Muslim.Not everyone in Gaza is a Hamas supporter, however the occupation, suppression and Israeli incursions of Gaza is better at making new Hamas recruits than any poster or radical imam could hope for.

Its a dysmal spiral for everyone.

[Chucaro]

Every time that I read more about Palestine and Israel, the more that I realize how complex the issue is and how hard will be for any of us to pass and educative opinion about it.
Have a look this:
WHY ORTHODOX JEWS ARE OPPOSED TO A ZIONIST STATE (http://www.nkusa.org/aboutus/zionism/opposition.cfm)

[PhilipA]

I posted on another thread how I was disappointed by the Australian media's biassed coverage of the Israel /Hamas war, and how they never did any in depth reporting, as to the reasons that say buildings were destroyedeg did they have tunnels in the basement.
This article shows why.
Hamas Concealing Role In Gaza Deaths By Threatening Reporters | The Daily Caller (http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/31/hamas-concealing-their-role-in-innocent-gaza-deaths-by-threatening-expelling-reporters/)
Regards Philip A

[Bigbjorn]

The Palestinian refugees are the descendants of the Israeli Arab Muslim citizens who fled Israel in 1948 to get out of the path of what they hoped were to be the victorious Arab armies then massing on the borders whose aim was to kill the Jews and drive into the sea any who survived. Then they could return and take over the Jews property. Meier and ben Gurion begged them to stay and fight for their country of which they were equal citizens. Well, we know what happened. The Israelis spanked soundly the Arab armies and sent them home with their robes between their legs. The Israeli Arabs who tried to return were surprised to be told they were regarded as traitors (and still are) and to go away and bludge on their Arab mates. They returned the hospitality extended to them by Jordan by trying to take that country over and have caused endless trouble in other Arab countries in the region. Most of these countries wish they would go away and never return. They are certainly not welcome in most places in the Middle East.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

You miss the bit where most of the Arabs were previously living in the British governed Palestine Mandate (it wasn't called Israel under the British rule) had been living in the area all their lives and had continual ancestrial links to "Palestine/Israel" going back hundreds and in some cases thousands of years, some possibly before the Jews arrived (in the promised land) from Egypt. The original Jewish Kingdom in the area we know as Israel or Judah only had a period of about 400 years in the period 1100BC to 700BC. It was called Palestine in Roman and Greek times.

A large proportion of the Israelis were refugee European Jews fleeing the Nazis (before, during and after WWII).

Much of the Jewish property you speak of was only recently appropriated from all the races and religions (including Christians, Muslims and Jews) previously living in the area.

I don't want to be an apologist for the Palestinians, and I don't support the actions of Hamas, but I wonder how the Ottoman Empire managed to run the place for over 600 years while it included Jewish, Christians and Muslims amongst others.

[PhilipA]

It really is tragic what is happening now.

Under Saddam Hussein there were over AFAIK 100,000 Jews living peacefully in Baghdad. I don't think there would be 100 now.

In Amman you walk down the street and pass many Jewish money lenders and currency traders coexisting with the Hashemites. I hope the west never finds something to fight Jordan about. Even in Damascus there were many Jews living as well as Christians.

One part of this argument about the Palestinians that has not been ventilated here is that most arabs dislike them. They just use them as a proxy to fight Israel. Palestinians find it very hard to enter Saudi Arabia except for the Bedouin who are a special case.
The Palestinians seem to have a knack of picking the wrong side. They backed Saddam Hussein in Kuwait and subsequently were all expelled .

They tried to take over Jordan, and even now live in vast refugee camps after almost 70 years!!!! You have to ask why Jordan has not integrated them but the Jordanians don't like them either.

I recall talking to a Palestinian waiter in about 1987 at Aqaba. I was very reticent to say anything , as I knew there were Saudi spies around and I had to go back. However the gist of what he said was that he owned land in East Jerusalem and some had been resumed for a road.

"And the Israelis PAID me!!!" he said with wonder in his voice. It is incidents like this that have formed my views about the current conflict.

What rocked me is that many Jordanians were watching Israeli TV and even Knesset sittings which were as boring as the Aussie parliament.
Regards Philip A

[Bigbjorn]

A large proportion of the Israelis were refugee European Jews fleeing the Nazis (before, during and after WWII).

I wonder how the Ottoman Empire managed to run the place for over 600 years while it included Jewish, Christians and Muslims amongst others.

A large proportion of the "Palestinians" were from what is now Jordan and Saudi Arabia and taken there by the Ottomans as serfs and slaves during their rule and abandoned there on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of WW1. The Hashemi clan that now rule Jordan are the result of British interference. The Hashemis lost the fight against the Saud tribe who formed Saudi Arabia after their win. The poms had an unemployed "royal family" and the poms needed someone to rule Transjordan under their thumb so the poor bloody Jordanians got the Hashemis as kings. As an aside, the Hashemis called themselves "the guardians of the holy places" and the Sauds regarded themselves as "the noble desert warriors". The Hashemis reckoned the Sauds were a bunch of bush niggers, and the Sauds said the Hashemis were a bunch of mosque gatekeepers.

Hamas and Hezbollah are bunches of terrorists and murderers and need to be ruthlessly subdued. The Ottomans wouldn't have hesitated. They ruled their empire by brute force.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Hi Brian

The whole mess is the result of European colonialism and their Western ideas of monarchs, maps and boundaries which they have imposed on what were tribal cultures. As you say the Saudis were the desert rulers, and the Hashemis town dwellers who once co-habitated across tens of thousands of miles of territory with the Jews, Christians and numerous cultural and religious groups. The West has imposed these ideas without care for Middle Eastern understanding (even the term Middle East is Eurocentric).

What is more the migration of European Jewery into Israel leaves us with an Israeli hegemony with European understanding against a whole region based upon their continuation of Arab tribalism and Middle Eastern understanding.

Who in their right mind would have encouraged the colonisation of huge numbers of Europeans into an already occupied land. Sounds a bit like Terra nullius and the colonialisation of another continent by the Europeans (in a race to plant flags everywhere) :(

A large proportion of the "Palestinians" were from what is now Jordan and Saudi Arabia and taken there by the Ottomans as serfs and slaves during their rule and abandoned there on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of WW1. The Hashemi clan that now rule Jordan are the result of British interference. The Hashemis lost the fight against the Saud tribe who formed Saudi Arabia after their win. The poms had an unemployed "royal family" and the poms needed someone to rule Transjordan under their thumb so the poor bloody Jordanians got the Hashemis as kings. ...I neglected to answer this point.

The Palestinians were in Palestine, not "from Jordan", to be more correct the area of Palestine from the West bank of the Jordan River into Jerusalem. The Europeans just called it trans-Jordan when they were drawing more lines in the sand for convenience. We now call that part of the Palestinian State the "West Bank".

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2014/08/981.jpg
British map from 1924.

Not that movies are much to go on but you can see the portrayal of European meddling in "Lawrence of Arabia", they had not even kicked out the Turkish remnants of the Ottoman empire when France and Britain were carving up their own bits.

[Chucaro]

.................................................. .....
Hamas and Hezbollah are bunches of terrorists and murderers and need to be ruthlessly subdued. The Ottomans wouldn't have hesitated. They ruled their empire by brute force.

No justifying or defending the Palestinians , but can be what your mention one of the reasons why the Palestinian acting in that manner?
History of suffering have a lot to do IMO.
Now, all the children that suffering and living the Gaze conflict will be terrorist and enemies of Israel . you can bet on that and I wonder if we can judge them for that.

Regarding Israel and the Jews many people do not know that the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law but then again this is religion and people accommodate their beliefs according to their greed :(
Are people aware that The Talmud in Tractate Kesubos (p. 111a), teaches that Jews shall not use human force to bring about the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the universally accepted Moshiach (Messiah from the House of David). Furthermore it states that we are forbidden to rebel against the nations and that we should remain loyal citizens and we shall not attempt to leave the exile which G-d sent us into, ahead of time.


Very complex issue IMO.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

...
Very complex issue IMO.Absolutely!

Did anyone watch "Media Watch" on ABC this week? I find it telling that a cartoon about Israeli Jews watching the bombing of Gaza like it was a sporting event, received much derision when another cartoon depicting a Paelstinian father sending his son out to get killed as a PR exercise received deafening silence.

Both ideas are hideous and should have both been condemned in similar manner.

[Chucaro]

Absolutely!

Did anyone watch "Media Watch" on ABC this week? I find it telling that a cartoon about Israeli Jews watching the bombing of Gaza like it was a sporting event, received much derision when another cartoon depicting a Paelstinian father sending his son out to get killed as a PR exercise received deafening silence.

Both ideas are hideous and should have both been condemned in similar manner.

I agree, it is sad :(

[PhilipA]

To gain a better appreciation of teh issues, I commend this article in todays Australian.
Now before you go into a hissy fit, the author was the AGE editor who knocked back a previous cartoon which denigrated Palestinians.

His explanation of what is wrong or right is very concise.
iIf you cannot see it , it is titled "Media watch a waste of time "

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/barrys-muddled-media-watch-a-waste-of-time/story-e6frg6zo-1227022269037)

Regards Philip A

[Ferret]

To gain a better appreciation of teh issues, I commend this article in todays Australian.
Now before you go into a hissy fit, the author was the AGE editor who knocked back a previous cartoon which denigrated Palestinians.

Can't read that article - pay wall.

However, I got the impression one got more attention than the other because a rival newspaper picked up on the Jewish cartoon with the object of damaging Calton and the other newspaper concerned. Faux outrage connected more with commercial gain than any sense of decency.

What is the gist of the Australian's defence to Media Watch program.

[PhilipA]

On Media Watch on Monday, Paul Barry tried to
examine the ethical issues for journalism — and I suppose, the limits of free
speech — raised by the controversy over a column by Mike Carlton in The Sydney Morning Herald and the cartoon by Glen Le Lievre that
accompanied that column.


The cartoon was of a fat big-nosed old Jew, sitting on a couch with
a Star of David on the back using a video game box to shoot missiles into
Gaza.


The SMH had apologised for the publication of the
cartoon and accepted that it traded in anti-Jewish stereotypes at best and was
offensive and brought pain to many people. In my view, it did much more. It
recycled the sort of cartoon image of Jews that was standard fare in Nazi
publications in Germany throughout the Nazi era.


Mike Carlton resigned from the paper after a messy process in which
he was first asked to apologise for his abusive responses to readers who had
emailed him about his column. Some of these emails were vigorous, to say the
least. No doubt some were abusive. Carlton apparently was prepared to issue such
apologies but then a more senior executive at Fairfax decided Carlton also had
to be suspended. At that point, he resigned.


It was all this that Barry set out to examine. That’s a role Media Watch should play, examine the ethical issues involved when
editors decide what is acceptable for publication and broadcast and what is not.
Editors make those decisions every day. On what basis these decisions are made
is well worth examining.


The trouble is that Barry’s examination was extremely muddled. At
the end, it was impossible to say just what he was arguing except that he liked
Carlton, that the SMH over-reacted in dealing with his abuse of
readers, that perhaps some powerful people were involved in the way he was dealt
with, and using quotes from Carlton himself, that maybe Fairfax had caved in
because of a campaign against him by News Corp.


For what it’s worth, I think Carlton should have been allowed to
apologise to those he abused and then gone on writing his Saturday column.
Instead, we have this ludicrous situation where it is being widely suggested he
was somehow nobbled for the column, that this was yet another successful strike
by powerful groups to silence the critics of Israel and its actions in Gaza. I
believe that whether he meant to or not, Barry played into this notion of
powerful forces able to silence journalists.


They silence cartoonists too, the argument goes, and this is really
where it became impossible to understand what Barry was arguing. He said a few
perfunctory things about how the cartoon may have been offensive but then he
quickly went on to contrast the strong reaction to the Jewish cartoon to what he
called the much milder reaction to a cartoon by Bill Leak in which he portrayed
a Hamas fighter telling a child “There now, you go out and play and win the PR
war for daddy’’. Barry suggested the cartoons were equally challenging or
offensive but one had caused a huge fuss that resulted in an abject apology by
the SMH and the other the mildest of possible responses and a
robust defence of Leak and his cartoon by the editor of The
Australian.


How pathetic then was the SMH, Barry implied. How
powerful was a certain group in the community and a certain media organisation
that a cartoon considered offensive to Jews gets so widely lambasted while an
equally offensive carton by Leak about Palestinians is largely ignored and gets
the support of his editor.


To reinforce all this Barry recalled the cartoon by Michael Leunig
thatThe Age had refused to publish. He quoted Leunig at some
length about how he has been abused and vilified by people who dislike his views
on Israel and the Palestinians and how it was a pity that the SMH apologised for the fat Jew cartoon because such an apology
makes it harder for cartoonists to tell the truths that some people do not want
to hear.


Barry did not show the cartoon that The Age
refused to publish, which I imagine made it hard for people to know what he was
on about.


Well I was the editor of The Age at the time and I
refused to publish the cartoon. I refused because the cartoon clearly suggested
that the Israelis were dealing with the Palestinians the way the Nazis had dealt
with the Jews. The Jenin refugee camp was the equivalent of Auschwitz.


Barry said nothing about this. One of his researchers had called me
to ask why I refused to publish the cartoon. I told her I refused to publish it
because suggesting Israelis (Jews) were the modern-day Nazis was not just
factually unjustifiable, to put it mildly, but a form of vilification that no
editor should accept.


Clearly what I had to say was of no interest to Barry. Instead, he
canvassed a few cartoonists who confirmed that they found it most difficult to
draw anything about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Barry
inferred this was because of the response they got to cartoons on this subject
from …. well who knows?


So what about the Leak cartoon? Well Barry himself said that had
the fat Jew been taken out of the cartoon in the SMH and
replaced by say Netanyahu (and I’d say an Israeli soldier) the cartoon would
have been edgy but OK to publish. It was the fat Jew that made it unacceptable,
the fat big-nosed Jew gleefully firing rockets that made it clearly
anti-Semitic.


In that case, why is Leak’s cartoon ethically equivalent to one the
published in the SMH? It is clearly a Hamas fighter in the
cartoon and not any sort of representative image of Palestinians. He is not
suggesting that long -suffering Palestinians are sending their children off to
be human shields or to die for the cause. He is saying that this is a strategy
employed by Hamas. Is that not at least arguable?


It is important to examine all these issues, issues I believe a
program like Media Watch ought to tackle. Unfortunately,
Barry’s attempt to tackle these issues was muddled and in my view, in the end a
waste of time.


Michael Gawenda is a former editor-in-chief of The
Age.

Regards Philip A

[Lotz-A-Landies]

First up, as is demonstrated by News Corps paywall around premium content, the press controlled by the Rupert Murdoch is in a war to silence free news content particularly publically funded institutions like ABC. (IMHO it is a bit like the Church battling to retain knowledge and dissemination of the content of the Bible after the advent of the printing press.)

Therefore any criticism of ABC should be understood in this context first before we even consider left wing or right wing media organisations.

Michael Gawenda continues this fine News Corp tradition of shooting the messenger rather acknowledging what Paul Barry was presenting (whether or not the presentation was muddled as suggested by Mr Gawenda.) Its that both cartoons were offensive or neither were offensive, and/or that freedom of the press should or should not be censored.

[nugge t]

maybe you get what you pay for and there is a good reason why the ABC is free :D

Sorry but I don't see why you expect free online what is normally paid for in a newsagent. Very skewed view from where I sit but I am sure you will think the same in reverse.

I pay because it is more convenient than going to buy a paper not because I want a free bible:D

[Lotz-A-Landies]

maybe you get what you pay for and there is a good reason why the ABC is free :D

Sorry but I don't see why you expect free online what is normally paid for in a newsagent. Very skewed view from where I sit but I am sure you will think the same in reverse.

I pay because it is more convenient than going to buy a paper not because I want a free bible:DThese days information is not restricted to media corporations, everyone can desseminate information good or bad.

What is represented by News Corp is an information oligarchy, I pay for Foxtel but while Fox News and ABC 2/4 are provided as part of the package, I can only receive ABC News 24 if I pay for HD even though ABC 2/4 is switched off overnight. I do not see any benefit in paying an additional premium to acquire a free service through Foxtel.

I do pay for Fairfax, but I can forsee that won't be available in the near future.

[FeatherWeightDriver]

Ah politics and religion in one topic - what could possibly go wrong?!?!?!

Here's a sobering list of ongoing conflicts around the world:

List of ongoing armed conflicts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts)

Some of the number of deaths are staggering.

Possibly more interesting, however, is where the media chooses to focus it's attention: less people have been killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948 than were killed in the Syrian civil war so far in 2014 alone.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Ah politics and religion in one topic - what could possibly go wrong?!?!?!

Here's a sobering list of ongoing conflicts around the world:

List of ongoing armed conflicts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts)

Some of the number of deaths are staggering.

Possibly more interesting, however, is where the media chooses to focus it's attention: less people have been killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948 than were killed in the Syrian civil war so far in 2014 alone.And that list doesn't even mention the current ISIS/ISIL/IS in Northern Iraq.