Richard Rowland

This article shouldn't surprise anyone who has been following Israel's actions. However, the point being made that Israel is imbolden in its egregious actions because of the Trump Presidency isn't an imagined one.

Not only are the Palestinians being s**t on, but the Jewish Lobby is also attempting to crap on America's First Amendment. There's a push for America's legislators to create a law making it illegal to protest Israel's actions, when-and-if participating in the BDS boycott movement. The punishment, if a law is enacted, is a fine and prison time.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/31/with-criticism-crushed-in-the-west-israel-can-enjoy-its-impunity/

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/in-america-the-right-to-boycott-israel-is-under-threat-1.5457148

Seth

Ha'aretz is Israel's left wing newspaper, sort of like our own NYT, and they spew nothing but anti-conservative drivel on every level.

It's pitiful that letftists, to pursue their own dubious agendas, ignore the real causes of problems wherever it's convenient in order to condemn those who would truly fix the problems if given enough leeway to do so.

The "Palestinian" leadership, especially in Gaza, is infinitely more "oppressing" of their own people, including "small," "insignificant" items like censorship, brutal imprisonment and torture, they are more responsible for poverty and disease among their own people than the Israelis could ever be, but their warlike agenda of pushing out the Jews dictates that they promote misery and blame it on Israel.

Their propaganda works really well on profoundly stupid, gullible western "liberals" who remain utterly clueless as to the true state of affairs over there and therefore support the terrorists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others by ignoring reality and focusing on bulls**t.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever spent any time in Israel?

proud republican Loc: RED CALIFORNIA

Richard Rowland

No, I haven't been to Israel. I suppose it depends on what one wants to believe, but there are presently laws in Germany against protesting against Israel. Perhaps other European countries, as well. I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination that the same types of laws are being talked about, by the Jewish Lobby, here in the US.

Accusing the Palestinians of causing their own misery just to present a picture of being persecuted is a bit of a stretch. Also, just because one is a liberal doesn't mean they automatically lie.

I also think there are too many accounts of the type of treatment being dished out by the IDF against the people held in those little more than outdoor prisons, to be ignored.

Perhaps, you can provide some material to back up your positions of the treatment dished out by Palestinian leadership against their own people.

Seth

Only what I've seen for myself during a couple of consulting jobs over there and from an earlier trip than those.

But there are true accounts out there, which I'll look for.

Seth

Here's an interesting one from March, for starters, from your good friends at the "venerable" Gray Lady (NYT), no less.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-hamas.html

Seth

And here's a little tidbit from Amnesty --

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/gaza-journalist-facing-prison-term-for-exposing-corruption-in-hamas-controlled-ministry/

proud republican Loc: RED CALIFORNIA

You mean Palestine's crimes against humanity???

Richard Rowland

This was at the end of the example you submitted.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2019/02/human-rights-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-2018/


I think what has to be realized is there are people forced by Israel to live under conditions that none of us would want to live under. The fallacy is that the Palestinians bring it on themselves. This is pure nonsense.

It's been documented that time and again the Palestinians have been willing to accept a s**tty deal that would have, never-the-less, created a two-state solution. Israeli's sabotaged every plan. Let's cut the baloney, Israel has no intention of ever being part of a two-state solution.

What they have is a plan for grabbing more land. The map of greater Israel ain't hangin' in Synagogs for decoration effect.

By the way, what's your opinion of the Congress considering laws that compromise the First Amendment. Also, do you believe the article I posted is total fiction?

You may have the last word on this subject.





.

Seth

I've actually read the article before.

What most of the media don't dwell on is the actual history behind the access blockade of Palestinians into Israel.

I know Palestinians who live in New York and San Francisco who have nothing untoward to say about the Israelis -- at one time they had total access to Israeli territory, commuted to work or lived there and were treated like any other citizens.

Them Hamas and other terrorist orgs began their massive attacks, most entering Israeli municipalities as workers, and the Israelis had to protect their own people by tightening down on Palestinian admittance, heavy checkpoints, etc.

When Israel ceded Gaza, the first thing Hamas did was wreck a lot of vital infrastructure and blame the Israelis for the resultant suffering of their own people. In more recent years, the Israelis trucked in humanitarian supplies, which were immediately confiscated by Hamas for the purpose of denying their people and blaming Israel.

All the while, Hamas was using Gaza as a staging area for rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas, including hospitals and schools, and the infiltration of terrorists into Israel.

Everything the Israelis have done that the anti-Israel crowd yells about have been necessary for their own self defense, yet no one seems to mourn when Israeli women and children are butchered by these terrorists.

When much of the media publishes accounts of IDF soldiers k*****g "protesters" they never seem to mention that a regular strategy of Hamas is to use their own people as human shields, putting Israelis in a position to either return fire or die. Then in come the claims of the IDF murdering, say, ten Palestinians, absent from the report that 6 or 7 of them were Hamas guerillas.

The Palestinian acquaintances I mentioned above migrated to the U.S. not because of anything the Israelis did, but to escape their own corrupt, fanatical and oppressive leadership.

It's a real shame that the western media is so gullible as to accept such intense brutality coming from Israeli soldiers while depicting the Palestinians, terrorists included, as innocent victims.

If Hamas and their associates weren't forever terrorizing, using human lives as pawns and causing suffering among their own people in playing up to a very gullible and/or partisan global media, the Palestinians would be fully assimilated into Israeli society by this time.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

I have an idea, a couple of female Israel hating anti-Semites recently elected to the House of Reps are planning to go to Israel next month to tell those damned Jews a thing or two. Why don't go with them and protest, see what happens.

How Hamas exploits the people of Gaza: Protests clarify their cynical tactics

Hamas has never put the people of Gaza first. Hamas rejects Israel's existence and treats all of the land as an Islamic trust. The Palestinian people are instruments in the struggle to reclaim it.

For the struggle, for the cause, the people can be sacrificed.

Why else would Hamas build tunnels to protect its weapons and its fighters but not its people during conflict with Israel? Why else, when Gazans desperately needed reconstruction, would its leaders divert short supplies of cement, electric wiring and iron away from badly needed housing construction to build the tunnels?

Why else would it store, deploy and fire its rockets in or next to schools, mosques and hospitals? In conflicts with Israel, Hamas seeks to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties — preferably women and children. That brings international opprobrium on Israel and makes it harder to engage in its self-defense.

Recent mass marches on the border fence with Israel are a case in point. The Hamas leadership in Gaza announced that starting March 30 and continuing every Friday until what they call Nakba (catastrophe) day, demonstrations at the Israel border fence would take place. The symbolism was lined up perfectly for mobilizing public passions.

But, of course, that was not the real story. Life in Gaza is terrible, and Israel is not to blame: There are four hours a day of electricity, insufficient to power sewage treatment plants. Roughly 96% of the water is undrinkable. Unemployment runs close to 50%, medicines in the hospitals are consistently in short supply and people cannot leave and feel imprisoned. With little money to pay for anything, trucks from Israel carrying material goods and humanitarian supplies are down from 1,000 a day to less than 200.

True, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has deepened the economic deprivation by no longer paying Israel to provide electricity to Gaza and cutting payments to former PA employees there. His purpose was to pressure Hamas, and he did — so much so that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' leader in Gaza — sought to hand governing responsibility back to the PA.

While reconciliation talks resumed, Abbas saw them as a trap because Hamas refused to disband its Qassam brigades or disarm its fighters — and with the recent assassination attempt on the PA's prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, he is threatening further economic sanctions on Hamas.

For the Hamas leadership, with popular dissatisfaction growing, the only thing to be done was divert attention to Israel and, thereby, pressure Abbas who cannot appear indifferent to Palestinians being k**led by Israelis. As one European diplomat told me, Hamas leaders acknowledge privately that Abbas is the source of their current difficulties, but shifting the focus to Israel is a proven, if cynical, tactic.

Hamas knows that the world will see Palestinian casualties and tie them to the wretched conditions in Gaza — conditions that are blamed on Israel's blockade of the Strip.

Of course, it is Israel and Egypt that control what can go into and out of Gaza. Unlike Israel, Egypt keeps its border closed to the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza except on rare occasions.

Hamas leaders have little interest in breaching the Egyptian border, knowing the casualties would be high and the international response minimal.

The risk now is escalation and another conflict between Hamas and Israel, leaving Gaza even more devastated. With its leaders believing they have little to lose, just one thing could change the Hamas calculus: the prospect of real change on the ground in Gaza.

The Trump administration needs to t***slate its recent pledging conference for projects in Gaza into a plan of action and a public challenge.

Since it lacks credibility with Palestinians, it would be smart to get Europeans and Arabs to issue a joint public statement declaring that they are ready, immediately, to implement projects on electricity generation, water and sewage treatment and reconstruction, provided there is no risk of escalation with Israel. No one is going to fund infrastructure projects that will be destroyed in another conflict.

It is time to create a stark public choice for Hamas: stop escalating tensions, and important rebuilding work will begin. Hamas leaders may treat the Palestinian public as pawns, but they are not indifferent to public pressure. It is time to create it.

Hamas murdering their own people (includes footage of Palestinians celebrating 9/11.

Son of Hamas: Mosab Hassan Yousef Stuns the UN Human Rights Council Pay attention to the UN council reps protesting Israel's human rights violations--PLO, Syria, Qatar, North Korea, Pakistan, Venezuela, Iran.

How Hamas Exploits the People of Gaza: Protests Clarify Their Cynical Tactics

Seth

Peewee Loc: San Antonio, TX

Dang, late to the party but let me add this. Soda stream employed Jews and Palestinians at their factory and was boycotted. The Palestinians lost one of the best paying jobs they could get. Palestinians flew kites into Israel and set vineyards and orchards on fire. Their kids are taught from birth to h**e the Jews and to k**l them when they can. Israel has never attacked them first. Yes, Israel does have a deep state just like every other nation. We have a really deep state here at home.

promilitary

There should be NO law prohibiting protesting.
Having said that the Palestinians are not being s**t on. They are constantly lobbing rockets
into Israel......and Israel responds in kind as any nation would do. All they have to do is
stop lobbing rockets and they can live in peace.

Richard Rowland

I have a suggestion of what you, also, can do. It involves your lips on my backside.

Any human reasonable person who follows this issue surely must sense the injustice of keeping a people imprisoned in these places.

What kind of life is it when one can't leave or enter the areas where they are forced to live, without being given permission? On top of that, when their imprisonment becomes unbearable and when they protest out of sheer frustration, due to conditions that can only be imagined by those not subjected to such treatment, they are used as ginny pigs for testing the latest crowd control weapons.

However, the question no one seems to be asking that I'm hearing: what is to become of the Palestinian people? Those who deal in reality realize a two-state solution ain't gonna happen. If the Jews continue their quest for a Greater Israel, and that's what they're up to, then where are the Palestinians supposed to go?

Perhaps, as has been shown throughout history, their plans will be foiled. The countries that contain portions of the land that Israel covets, for their dreams of a Greater Israel, will probably have something to say about that.

I also suspect that the people of the US will, at some point, wake up and refuse to be used as Israel's enabler. Listening to the Democratic debates, we heard Tulsi Gabbard explain her thoughts on the wars in the Middle East. That the US wakes up could be nearer than thought, especially when considering those who have hijacked the Democratic party.