Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gaza Debate Goes Virtual

Posted by Soulskill on from the fighting-with-tweets-and-mashups dept.

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.

8 of 644 comments (clear)

  1. Second life sim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. correction by alcmaeon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:correction by terjeber · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Israel responded by throwing out anyone inside its borders which seemed to be stabbing them in the back.

      This isn't quite true. The Arab population living in "refugee camps" were generally not sent there by the Israeli, quite the contrary, in the lead-up to the 1948 war Golda Meir traveled all over trying to stop the Arabs from leaving. The Arab population (Palestinians as they call themselves today) fled the area because they were told to do so by the Arab military command leading up to the 1948 war. A handful were expelled from two cities between the Jewish area and Jerusalem to secure the transport of aid to the embattled Jewish population inside Jerusalem.

      The refugee problem was created by the Arabs. It has consciously and cynically been maintained by most of the Arab countries ever since. The reason they do it is simple. With a population angry over the "Palestinian issue" nobody notices that a huge number of these states are run by corrupt, nasty megalomaniacs who only exploit their population for their own gain.

      The reality is that if the Palestinian problem was ever solved with peace the regimes of the middle east would tumble like dominoes as people realized that their own leaders are the source of their misery, not Israel. The leaders of these regimes obviously don't want that, and the easiest way to prevent it is to make absolutely sure that the refugees from 1948 and their descendants live in poverty and misery.

      The main benefactor of a peace with the Palestinians would be Israel, and they desire nothing else. Sadly the Palestinian leaders have never wanted peace and every peace agreement they have ever signed they have subsequently abandoned, some quite immediately.

  3. No actually it isn't by GuloGulo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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...
    1. Re:No actually it isn't by burris · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So the occupation, colonization, and annexation aren't violent? There's a reason why colonizing land you occupy is forbidden by the 4th Geneva convention, it's because it amounts to ethnic cleansing.

  4. I have THE solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. Israel's right to exist? by ZekoMal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why does it have a right to exist? I understand perfectly well that the good ol' Bible tells us Israel ought exist, but it didn't exist for a while because everyone sacked the place and took it as their own. We didn't bring back Rome Israel or Persia Israel; we brought back the first Israel, for the 'league of nations' opted to do it. After the first World War. Now, I'm not that good with math...but from the end of the reign of a Judaism country to World War 1....gonna guess other people lived there.

    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.

  6. Re:Why is it always violence? by ragnathor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try everyday in small villages no one gives a shit about. Read Palestinian media and Arab news and you'll see plenty of non-violent protests (one sided reporting of course).

    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.