Slashdot Mirror
Gaza Debate Goes Virtual
Ian Lamont writes "The war of words over the conflict in Gaza has moved from the real world to the Internet. Besides a furious stream of mini-debates on Twitter between supporters of and critics of Israel's military actions, there have also been demonstrations in Second Life at an Israel-themed sim and a collection of Facebook applications, including 'QassamCount' and 'Stop Israel's war crimes in Gaza.' Another project — 'mapping the war in Gaza' — was launched by Al Jazeera and takes user-submitted reports, tweets, and Microsoft Virtual Earth to track the number of casualties and other developments."
In addition to this, the series of website defacements we discussed a few days ago has now extended to sites controlled by NATO and the US Army.
there have also been demonstrations in Second Life at an Israel-themed sim
...and it's only a matter of time until the virtual Islamic trolls fire virtual rockets and bomb their virtual busses while cowardly hiding amongst virtual women and children.
What, how does this go? Infidel! Terrorist! Am not. Are so! Twitter: insanely useless or just a huge waste of time?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Twitter debate? So Jews and Muslims follow each other on twitter?
It sounds like having a "discussion" about this conflict is a great way to generate traffic to ones website.
I should have said "virtual Zionists" instead of "virtual Jews" since a lot of Jews, including Israeli ones, have courageously condemned Israel's actions.
Israel, the Jewish state, wants to conflate itself with all Jews, and obfuscate the reality, but the fact is, it doesn't speak for all Jews anymore than Saudi Arabia speaks for all Muslims.
Since my side is completely blameless and your side is the obvious aggressor.
"You got to admit though, it's a lot easier to play the victim when you're starving, walled into a tiny area and can only defend themselves with scraps of old military hardware and bits of rubble against a rich country armed with the latest in US air power that assassinates their democratically elected leaders."
What are they "defending themselves" from? Oh right, retaliation from their rocket attacks.
It's a lot harder to play the victim when you chose the path of violence in the first place.
Imagine how this conflict would go if the Palestinian's weren't so cowardly and instead used non-violent protests. You know, like Gandhi.
Nah, that kind of stuff never works.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
No really. The definitive solution : me move all palestinian to say, the south pole. We move all Israelien to the north Pole. We let them cool down there. Then while everybody is gone, we double check no living being are left in the "holy" shitty land. Then we put atom bomb at regular space, to transform the whole shebang in a giant parking lot. Once this is done, we SALT the earth. In depth. Once this is done, we put all kind of traps, mine, bomb, automated gun sentries. Anybody trying to go back on their shitty holy land get blasted to smithern. Problem solved.
As long as I see 10 to 100 Palestinian casualties reported for every Israeli casualty, I will continue to view Israel as the aggressor and the one with the much larger share of the blame.
Sure, wall them in, take away their land by turning your settlers loose all over the place, freeze their bank accounts and turn off their electricity, bomb them with the latest US hardware, and then complain about how you 'just want to get on with your life' and whine about the occasional mortar while ignoring the damage your bombers and tanks do - just don't expect me to buy that.
Why is evacuation of Israeli colonies in the West Bank unrealistic? Israel evacuated their colonies in Gaza, they can do it in the West Bank. The settlements would be good partial reparation to the Palestinians. It's not like Israel and the colonists didn't know that what they were doing was illegal and wrong.
Otherwise, I'm right with you on the one state solution. Don't forget a constitution that's the supreme law of the land (along with treaties) that guarantees equal rights for all persons.
Troll? Sorry, that view of Israel is held by a LOT of people outside the US and Israel (and not just Muslims either), and is certainly not less reasonable than the official US stance over Iraq.
Will I be modded troll too now? OK, go ahead.
When was the last time the Palestinians tried non-violent protests?
It would be very hard for Israel to justify a military response against people who openly acknowledge they have no desire for violence.
They would probably do it anyway, but world opinion would be decidedly different I suspect.
Instead you get geniuses who bring a knife to a machine gun fight, and complain that they're getting shot at for firing rockets into civilian areas.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
States don't have rights, only persons have rights. Instead, States have powers that they justly derive from the people. States also exist or not at the whims of the people. Sometimes the people have a revolution, found a new state and the old state is wiped off the map.
Did Apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?
To give you a faaaaint idea of what I'm hinting at. Imagine if the US wasn't in the UN, and the UN decided that Native Americans needed their land back. So, they gave them the entire east coast of the US, to be their land. They were given basically whatever they wanted, and they began to push the US citizens gradually to the west, claiming various areas that are more desirable than others (IE, they take Yellowstone national park, leave us Death valley). They are far richer than the US citizens, and have far more support (although Canada and Mexico support the US citizens, lets just say the UN has marked them as third world terrorists). So, let's say that the US citizens scrap together some money, and a small group that want to win back their land, bomb the native Americans. The retaliation? The natives start bombing the civilians that didn't have a thing to do with it. They keep bombing, despite the UN telling them to stop.
Seems like a stretch.
Of course, I don't see why Israel was reinstated. People lived there after the Israelites got wiped out, and then the rest of the world told the Palestinians (arguably not the same exact people who did this), were told to shove over.
I'll probably get modded troll though...it's very mean and uncool to be pro-Palestine civilians. Nope, if you think Israel is wrong, you are a pro-terrorist.
The ninjas got me when I tried editing the Neptune article a few months ago. I was changing the sentence "Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than regular observation" to "Neptune was the only planet found by mathematical prediction rather than regular observation". Three different editors reverted me in the space of ten minutes. Here, I've tried again just now, let's see how fast it gets reverted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
"So the occupation, colonization, and annexation aren't violent?"
Uh, yeah they are. Where did I make the argument that they weren't?
Which is why a non-violent response would be so effective, just like it has been in the past. Violence (from the Israelis) would be FAR less tolerated if they were using it against peaceful protesters.
Which was my point.
You seem to have trouble reading for comprehension, try actually reading what you're responding to please.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
You need to ask yourself why Israel has kept the West Bank and Gaza territories occupied for so long rather than integrating them into Israel. For an explanation you don't need to look much further than the demographic makeup and guess how interested Israeli politicians are in having that many Palestinian voters. The same applies to the right of return for Palestinian refugees; integration of the displaced populations would mean the end of Israel as a democratic Jewish state.
Some Israeli politicians even go so far as to suggest administratively transferring Arab Israeli citizens to the West bank to prevent political shifts. So you see, a one state solution is unlikely to happen.
"What happens at these non-violent protests, such as demonstrations against the construction of the "security wall" in the West Bank? The protesters get stoned by right wing Israeli settlers, or are dispersed by tear gas and rubber bullets from the Israeli army
Which is EXACTLY what they want.
Then some fucking imbecile fires off some rockets at Israel and undoes every single bit of sympathy those people who got stoned and shot at earned with their blood.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"So, actually, the Palestinians are trying both violent and non-violent approaches"
No, they aren't.
ANY attempt at non-violence protest is immediately and totally undermined by accompanying violence. You cannot have any credibility when you are protesting non-violently in one place, and using violence in another
It's one or the other, and Palestinians chose violence.
And it's really telling how many people cam out of the woodwork to defend violence, or give lame idiotic excuses for why non-violence won't work.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"A ceasefire is exactly that - an agreed pause in an ongoing confrontation so that negotiations can be held."
And the Palestinians DID NOT STOP. AT ALL.
"At the end of the agreed period, Hamas said they would like to continue the ceasefire with their sole condition being that more food be allowed into Gaza. "
Despite the fact that Hamas had been firing rockets into Israel during the entirety of the "ceasefire".
"But you pick the comments that support your case, not those that are most likely."
And you leave out facts that destroy your case.
That said, I haven't picked ANY comments. Not a single one. You have to pretend I have, so you can accuse me of cherrypicking, but you're simply lying here.
Which makes me say "good day", as I have no tolerance for people who will lie to make their points like you have.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I think it's wrong to try to force someone to live (or not live) within some arbitrary geographical region
And plenty of Arabs (and every other culture) live in Israel. The point of the Israelis is that Jews needed (historically - um, just look it up) a place where they can go live without being slaughtered for being Jewish. Enough of the world agreed with that proposition to actually set it up that way half a century ago.
The Israelis aren't saying who may or may not live in Palestine - they're only saying that whoever it is, or whatever mix of people it is, can't be allowed to shoot thousands of missiles across the border and into residential areas for the specific purpose of randomly killing civilians, for years on end, without a response that finally ends it. The Palestinians have shown that they cannot even form a coherent voice and functioning government within their own population - even when dozens of other countries pay for and help to run their elections. How can Israel have a sustained, peaceful relationship with a neighbor when half of that neighbor's elected government body is willing to shoot the other half down in the street in order to preserve the latitude to act on one of their stated, foundational tenets: that Israel should be destroyed, and its Jewish residents all killed.
There is only one party in the conflict between Israel and the militant, missile-lobbing terrorists in Gaza that operate on a principle of race- and culture-based segregation and extermination: that would be Hamas and its Islmaist backers.
There are millions of people in the region and each of those millions of people has their own unique world view.
So what? Some world views are objectively better than others. Hamas wants to cling to a world view that embraces a backwards-looking, mysoginistic, medievalist militant theocracy-by-sword. They get cash and weapons from groups that think women shouldn't be able to read, or which would stone them to death for having been raped by a stranger. La la la, just another world view, right?
If the Palestinians put down their weapons there would be no Palestine.
Israel pulled every last resident and military person out of Gaza explicitly on the Palestinian promise that the attacks out of Gaza would end, and that Gaza wouldn't be a base camp for Hamas terrorism and violence. The Palestinians never had a better chance to simply take control of that territory through a peaceful and democratic government that wanted to actually become the nation that everyone wants to see. But instead, Hamas took control of it, and the Palestinian people are too scared to put them out of power. Just like the majority of Iraqis were too worn down and scared to death of the Baathists and of Saddam to get rid of him - even when his actions brought more and more sanctions and hardship and death. Israel (and the rest of the world, if they weren't so chickenshit about the faux diplomatic issues) must do to Hamas in Gaza what the coalition did to Saddam. Make them go away so that a working civic society has a chance to take hold, just as it gradually is in Iraq, only a few years later.
Hamas can't survive unless they can posture themselves as the defiant heros, fighting off Israel. But ever since Israel removed everything of theirs from Gaza, Hamas has had no enemy there to valiantly fight. So what do they do? Spend months making thousands of cowardly missiles launches at random civilian targets in order to provoke the military response they need in order to have some way to prove their worth. They're getting more than they asked for, and have mis-interpretted what happened recently with Hezbollah in Beirut. If the Palestinians force Hamas to stop attacking Israel, the conflict will stop. But Hamas kills Palestinians who want it to stop, don't they? So Israel's hand has been forced, and they're doing it the hard way. And they still send out leaflets telling Palestinian civilians to get away from areas wh
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's true, but it's also convenient for Egypt to keep things this way because it gives the Egyptian government (like the other Arab governments in the region) a very convenient distraction from all of its domestic problems. Hey, Egyptians, ignore our mismanagement of the economy, the torture that goes on in our prisons, and the pervasive corruption in our government -- instead, get angry at what the Israelis are doing to our Palestinian brethren! In the end these governments don't really want to help the Palestinians either -- they'd rather have big bad Israel as a convenient punching bag to distract their people's attention. It's the same thing Fidel Castro used to do with the US -- he loved the US embargo for that reason.
None of this excuses Israel, of course -- what they're doing in Gaza is both cruel and counterproductive. Besides the humanitarian tragedy, in the long run it only undermines Israeli security as well.
And the Palestinians DID NOT STOP. AT ALL.
You're a fucking liar. The "palestinians" were never required to stop. Hamas did stop, as evidenced by the massive dropoff in rocket attacks once the cease-fire went into effect. The simple fact is Israel broke the cease fire.
Really, both sides are assholes. It's just Israel is the asshole with US backing and a ridiculous military advantage who is murdering children and other innocents in mass numbers.
If Hamas was smarter they'd cease violence or focus violence strictly on military targets. Israel would be in a shitload of trouble then. As it stands, Israel loves this because they have an excuse to go kill the people who voted in Hamas, even though Israel helped create Hamas in the first place. And we all know voting badly makes you deserving of having your kids blown into 5 parts.
As a European I've got to say that's absolute rubbish. Can't believe you got modded up for peddling such bullshit.
I think your track record proves it. Let's see, prior to World War II, there's 2000 years of anti-semitism. Then, during the war, well, there's plenty of people collaborating on the holocaust, and then, after the war, pretty much every European state unanimously sides with Islamic states in continual condemnations of Israel, no matter what she does. I can't how many times the only reason some resolution condemning Israel made it through the General Assembly on a unanimous vote, and that really means, Europeans sided with the Arabs to curry favor with the muslims. And, you did it again in opposition to Operation Desert Storm, and you bitched at the USA until the world is going to basically let Iran get the atomic bomb!
This is my sig.
This is not a matter of multiple world views, all jostling for an equal share of turf and air time. This is militant, murderous thugs (Hamas) willing to kill anybody in order to prevent a modern, civil, democratic society from taking shape in their neighborhood.
It's quite a bit more complicated than that. I'm going to avoid the point-counterpoint monotony, but in general, the problem with your viewpoint is that you assume that Hamas is the will of the Palestinian people, which is true only in the current circumstance.
For instance, you could reason that all Japanese are murderous bastards for what they did to the Chinese in the 1930s. But that is not the will of the Japanese people, nor is the rise of Mexican drug gangs the will of the Mexican people, nor was the rise of the Nazi party the will of the German people.
Hamas was voted into power because the Palestinians had given up on diplomacy, because Israel refuses to work for peace. Israel refuses to work for peace because if there is an establishment of a Palestinian state, three things are probable. One is that they will not be able to seize any more land that they want to have. Two is that they won't get all of Jerusalem. Three is that eventually, and I'm talking in a hundred years, the Israeli state would cease to exist due to immigration and the natural progression of democratic demands for freedom from religion. Israel is "officially" Jewish, officially for one ethnic group and one religion, and the only state in the world with such a status. It's likely that under normal democratic functions, this will disappear, and that is something unacceptable to the hard liners who are currently running the country.
Blaming the Palestinians for voting Hamas in is like blaming the Black community for forming the Black Panthers. After your home has been taken, after your friends have been killed indiscriminately, after you see your children grow up in total poverty, after being under a foreign occupier's iron grip for sixty years, a society becomes quite damaged. But this is the goal for the occupier. As Ben-Gurion said, he hoped time would heal his wounds. He hoped the world would excuse Israel for the heinous acts it has committed to get what it wants, however much you agree with their goals.
All Israel is doing in Gaza right now is guaranteeing there is no peace, because peace means the end of their acquisition of Palestinian property. They destroyed Lebanon, they got Hezbollah. They destroyed the PLO, they got Hamas. These are predictable outcomes, and the planners of Israel are not stupid.
By that logic, the first Gulf War would have been the fault of the US/coalition rather than Sadaam Hussein, as there were far more Iraqi than coalition casualties.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it