Left: One of those evil racist Palestinians gets his just reward
Apparently minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose usual position on any issue is kneeling in front of President George W. Bush sucking Dear Leader's penis, has abandoned the U.N. Conference on Racism because of its insistence upon covering Israeli racism against Palestinians. Because racism is evil. Unless it's Israeli racism against Palestinians, in which case pointing out that racism is evil is, uhm... racism? Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Who does not forget the time he talked to a former Israeli tank commander who said, "Palestinians are two-legged cockroaches. They should all be exterminated."
The main problem with the UN Human Rights Comission (or is it Committee?), is that Israel is all it does. I fully agree many Israelis hate Palestinians and are distinctly unpleasant towards them, to be understated about it; but it should also be remembered that southern Israeli towns and kibbutzim are under daily artillery fire from Gaza - which, incidentally, happens to be a war crime and gains no screen-time at all.
ReplyDeleteYes, the UN conference on Racism chaired by Libya, Cuba and Iran, a country openly calling for the destruction of Israel. How very intelligent of you to come to such an enlighted opinion
ReplyDeleteRegarding the photo without context, a) How do we know that child wasn't killed by bloodthirsty Palestinians? b)If he was shot by Israelis, were they returning fire after being first attacked? Of course you offer no context or details because facts don't matter to people like you.
I have no idea why you believe that Iraeli towns receiving fire from Gaza receives no screen-time at all -- it is the *only* thing that receives screen-time here in the United States. If the retaliation gets covered at all on our television, the newscasters almost rub their hands with delight over the inevitable Israeli retaliation, which generally consists of dropping 500 pound bombs on some residential neighborhood and killing a couple of dozen people who were just trying to get along with their lives as well as whatever leader they were hoping to kill (see my earlier post about bomb blast radiuses, and Gaza City is even more densely packed than Baghdad), because this "proves" that Israel is "tough" and "proves" that the U.S. is right when it does the same actions in Iraq. But oddly enough, the death toll of that retaliation never makes it onto U.S. screens. I must go over to the BBC, CBC, or even the ABC (Australian Broadcast Corporation) web sites to hear about that.
ReplyDeleteYour total argument appears to be "two wrongs make a right". Israel has been using this same strategy/tactic for 25 years now. It's really worked well, hasn't it? (Sarcasm intended). There's a word for people who keep doing the same thing that doesn't work for 25 years straight. It begins with an "s" and ends with a "d" and has 6 letters.
As for the UNHRC, fully agree it is useless. The UN Conference on Racism is useless too. Which still has no bearing on my point that it's okay to point out Palestinian racism against Israelis, but somehow pointing out Israeli racism against Palestinians is... racism?
As for the photo without context, I'll provide context for you. This is what the aftermath of dropping a 500 pound bomb in a residential neighborhood looks like. 500 pound bombs do not stop and ask each person they kill, "are you a terrorist who has fired rockets at Israel?". They just kill everybody in their blast radius and injure everybody hit by shrapnel within their shrapnel radius. Which is going to be at least a couple dozen people in a tightly packed city like Gaza City.
Finally, as for solutions: I will discuss that in another post. I will just say that we here in the United States experienced a very bloody civil war 150 years ago and the story of the aftermath of that civil war, and what stopped the guerilla warfare and violence, is instructive because human nature has not changed in 150 years. And what stopped th e guerilla warfare and violence was *not* collective retaliation against the entire population of the South...
"Your total argument appears to be "two wrongs make a right"" Actually, what I'm saying is that while I am aware of the futility of the solutions suggested by our military geniuses, I can't see a political solution either. Any Gazan faction which will agree to stop lobbing pipes at us will automatically lose popular support, and will not be able to enforce its resolution. Having served two years in Gaza during the old occupation regime (remind me to tell you of our glorious anti-sewing workshop campaign), I never advocated the use of any high explosive aside from a grenade in the region. But the situation, as it is, is untenable.
ReplyDeleteAs for your civil war, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't it end with a rather violent Southern insurgency which succeeded in ending civil rights for blacks for a century?
Yes and no, Yossi. The story of that insurgency and how it was ended is a topic I'm going to write another post about, because it is instructive of what happens when leaders with open minds win out over leaders whose sole thought is "retaliate! retaliate! retaliate!". There were people who were willing to think outside the box of retaliation, they won, and the nature of that win is instructive because it shows how two people who hate each other can live together without killing each other. (And the hate was real, my friend... when I was born 100 years after the war ended, the war was *still* called "The War of Northern Aggression" by native Southerners and the sentiment "Abraham Lincoln was a traitor who unconstitutionally stole our property[slaves] from us" was still rampant).
ReplyDeleteThe sad fact of widespread racism and discrimination against black Americans is pretty much a side note to that, alas, because discrimination against black Americans was not a Southern thing alone, but happened throughout the nation (the bastion of the KKK hate group was not the South, but... Indiana, a Northern farm state which doesn't even *have* many blacks). Ending strife and the death and killing does not, alas, somehow cure racism. All it does is give the opportunity for descendants of current racists to change their mind.