Taximania said:
What I have said is that the state of Israel has a duty to its people and an absolute right to its self defense and preservation from the terrorists organization that is Hamas.
Apologies for length:
As I've said on here before, Israel is an occupying power and therefore the oft-touted argument that it is acting in "self defense" is not valid. This is an accepted norm of international law. An occupied populace has the inalienable right to defend itself, the occupying power has responsibility to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the occupied people.
You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land. That’s not defense. Call it what you like, it’s not defense.
Gaza has been under seige for a number of years now, with basic supplies and amenities cut off for prolonged periods. Travel is severely restricted and huge areas of Palestinian land are cordoned off by a "defense wall" that was deemed illegal by the International Courts of Justice
ten years ago! Palestinians have had homes and civic buildings destroyed at will by the Israeli Occupation Forces, have had farm land confiscated and cut off by the wall, have had regular air raids for YEARS, have been subject of arrest and imprisonment without trial, have had HOSPITALS deliberately targeted and damaged, have had basic medical and food aid restricted. These are not the actions of a state acting in self defense.
This is the systematic brutalisation and subjugation of an imprisoned populace in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. It is, for all intents and purposes, an apartheid state.
Powerful sections of the Israeli political elite want to extend the borders of Israel further and further into Palestinian land. The ongoing "conflict" (I use quotation marks here because this is NOT a war between two nation states) serves the interests of these hardline expansionists as it provides, in their eyes, justification for further destruction and annexation of Palestinian land. They know that by brutalising another generation, the support within Palestine for armed insurrection will grow, thus ensuring that they can continue ad-infinitum with their military campaign.
I was speaking to a British doctor on Saturday who spent time with the Red Crescent during the last invasion of Gaza. She manned ambulances and described how F16s and Apaches would routinely target ambulances and hospitals, a grave breach of international law. To me, these are not the actions of a state acting in self-defense, but are designed to oppress an defenseless population. Don't forget, Palestine has no army, navy or air force. What it does have unfortunately, are a very small minority of determined fighters whose only recourse is to fire shoddy rockets willy-nilly over the border into Israel.
Please, I'm not going to debase my argument by indulging in left-right political mud slinging. Nor am I proffering support for Hamas or refuting Israel's "right to exist". I just see immense, unending, hopeless, human suffering of an occupied people by an overwhelming military power. And I will always support the little man, the underdog, the oppressed and the subjugated. Some poor deluded soul on here mocked me on Friday when I expressed my intention to attend a Palestinian Solidarity protest in Manchester on Saturday. Well, I remember attending anti-apartheid demos in Manchester in the 80s and the same mud was slung. Thankfully it didn't stick then, and it won't stick now. I won't go into it again here, but just remember Manchester's proud tradition of supporting the oppressed and the sacrifices made by Mancunians over the ages to help their fellow man, wherever in the world they suffer injustice. And please believe me, people are suffering horribly in their millions in Palestine right now. People who but for a twist of fate could be your brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children.
These are people who for generations now have been ignored by the international community, who have no recourse against the illegal acts they are subjected to. Their government doesn't have an army to protect them, the Israeli justice system ignores them, and the world at large seemingly turns a blind eye to their fate. So I ask you, PLEASE, stop the pointless bickering over the minutiae of the decades long situation and find some small vestige of humanity in your soul and recognise that there are literally millions of people who right now need all the help they can get. And yes, you can recognise this fact without/despite having an allegiance to one or the other side.
