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MIT's Ted Postol Presents More Evidence On Iron Dome Failures
Lasrick (2629253) writes In a controversial article last week, MIT physicist Ted Postol again questioned whether Israel's vaunted Iron Dome rocket defense system actually works. This week, he comes back with evidence in the form of diagrams, photos of Iron Dome intercepts and contrails, and evidence on the ground to show that Iron Dome in fact is effective only about 5% of the time. Postol believes the real reason there are so few Israeli casualties is that Hamas rockets have very small warheads (only 10 to 20 pounds), and also Israel's outstanding civil defense system, which includes a vast system of shelters and an incredibly sophisticated rocket attack warning system (delivered through smart phones, among other ways).
TFA is very interesting & I'm smarter for having read it...
I'm glad people are looking at this kind of thing...it is *one* way to get some unbiased information
So, "5% effective"...
As TFA description reads, the number of Israeli casualties is mostly due to a combination of factors, including bomb shelters and early warnings...
I think the "Iron Dome" people would respond to TFA thusly:
"Yes, but **the program** is effective. "Iron Dome" is our missile defense system, which is one part of our civil defense, which is an entire program of things to keep people safe...if you look at the program in its entirity it's a success"
Thank you Dave Raggett
Postol has a long history opposing any form of missile defense. While his assessment may well be correct, it should be viewed with considerable skepticism until data from opposing viewpoints is examined against his. Postol's view can be summaraized as: "No missile or rocket defense can work, therefore we should not try."
As opposed to perfect precision strikes on that evil Palestinian hospital? Or is this "jew hating" somehow?
https://twitter.com/search?q=%...
but there are extremists on both sides, like parts of Hamas, (and similar on the other side, see the "settlers") that want to murder each other. Something tells me your are one of these extremists too.
story
20 rockets were found in a UN owned school in the Gaza strip. The UN is caliming they were not using the building and did not know the rockets were in the building. What happened to the rockets once the UN discovered they were hiding munitions for Hamas in a school? The UN did the only responsible thing possible and handed those rockets over to Hamas.
His perspective is that success requires in-air destruction of the warhead. That is not what the system is designed to do. No system has successfully hit warheads in the air with any frequency. Second, Postol (and Lloyd and others) assert that the falling warheads aren't large enough to do damage. But mortar shells do substantial damage and then contain, even using Postol's numbers, perhaps 1/20th the TNT. That's enough to blow big holes and kill a lot of people. Where are the holes? Where is the structural damage to buildings? Where are the casualties?
I guess since I used to raise money for Israeli medical research and investments in Israeli industry, that would qualify me as an anti-Semite.
But let's look at what the real anti-Semites are saying -- the Jews who actually live there:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/di...
Reaping what we have sown in Gaza
Those who turned Gaza into an internment camp for 1.8 million people should not be surprised when they tunnel underneath the earth.
By Amira Hass
Jul. 21, 2014
A book on Israeli military psychology should have an entire chapter devoted to this sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy: A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away.
In contrast to the common Israeli hasbara, Hamas isn’t forcing Gazans to remain in their homes, or to leave. It’s their decision. Where would they go?
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion...
What does Hamas really want?
Read the list of conditions published in the name of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and judge honestly whether there is one unjust demand among them.
By Gideon Levy
Jul. 20, 2014
we should stop for a moment and listen to Hamas; we may even be permitted to put ourselves in its shoes, perhaps even to appreciate the daring and resilience of this, our bitter enemy, under harsh conditions.
Read the list of demands and judge honestly whether there is one unjust demand among them: withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces troops and allowing farmers to work their land up to the fence; release of all prisoners from the Gilad Shalit swap who have been rearrested; an end to the siege and opening of the crossings; opening of a port and airport under UN management; expansion of the fishing zone; international supervision of the Rafah crossing; an Israeli pledge to a 10-year cease-fire and closure of Gaza’s air space to Israeli aircraft; permits to Gaza residents to visit Jerusalem and pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque; and an Israeli pledge not to interfere in internal Palestinian politics such as the unity government; opening Gaza’s industrial zone.
These conditions are civilian; the means of achieving them are military, violent and criminal. But the (bitter) truth is that when Gaza is not firing rockets at Israel, nobody cares about it. Look at the fate of the Palestinian leader who had had enough of violence. Israel did everything it could to destroy Mahmoud Abbas. The depressing conclusion? Only force works.
True, after Hamas started firing rockets, Israel had to respond. But as opposed to what Israeli propaganda tries to sell, the rockets didn’t fall out of the sky from nowhere. Go back a few months: the breakdown of negotiations by Israel; the war on Hamas in the West Bank following the murder of the three yeshiva students, which it is doubtful Hamas planned, including the false arrest of 500 of its activists; stopping payment of salaries to Hamas workers in Gaza and Israeli opposition to the unity government, which might have brought the organization into the political sphere.
It seems that Ted Postol defines a successful intercept as one where the opposing warhead is completely destroyed in mid-air and doesn't count a rocket being damaged enough to be knocked down over an area where it can detonate harmlessly. He also relies on personal and public photos and reports to draw his conclusions. This would miss a good portion of the rockets fired as most are fired at night, when photographing rockets and interceptions are much more difficult.
I'm not going to argue that he is right or wrong. It just seems to me that his extrapolations are not based on enough factual evidence to draw a conclusion with any amount of confidence.
It would be cool to find out just what the real statistics are. I'm pretty sure, though, that Israel classifies this information as a state secret and we may never know in our lifetimes.
Why should anyone believe a person with a clear agenda, no access and no evidence?
Wake me up when you have actual data to collaborate your (conspiracy) theory Israel's estimates are lies.
Israeli's collect the rockets and rocket parts they are able to find. The answer is knowable and evidence obtainable. Have you even tried?
My parents are both in Israel. I go there frequently. Since the start of the rocket attacks I have talked with them daily. I can tell you Iron Dome works. Otherwise there would be far more destruction to property. Yes there are bomb shelters. I can tell you in Tel Aviv many people don't bother to go to them when the sirens go off. My dad says more people get hurt running to the bomb shelters because they trip/fall/etc. than from bombs.
Iron Dome is highly effective. Without it there would be not only significant casualties but also significantly more property damage. In fact my dad reported seeing an actual missile intercept over our building in Bat Yam.
I'm sure Iron Dome has it's flaws but the fact of the matter is the system has been saving lives almost daily for years. One other thing I am not sure if Slashdot readers are familiar with: The rocket attacks aren't a thing that happen every year or so. They are in Tel Aviv. In cities like Ashdod or Ashkelon they are a daily or weekly occurrence. You don't hear about it on the news but they have been going on for years. Iron Dome is continually operating and defending against these threats.
Despite all of this the problem remains: Rockets are being fired into a sovereign country. I don't think the US would build and use such a defensive system is say, for example, Mexico launched rockets into the US for years. I don't think there would be a Mexico after around one month. To that end the (hypothetical) US solution here is far more effective than Iron Dome. Sadly I think the only long term solution here is for Israel to use its full military might against the attackers.
If Israel is not willing to do the above, then don't complain when Hamas have to improvise just to have a fighting chance of defending themselves.
Two points: First, their improvisations are war crimes; second, Hamas are the aggressor. This is not particularly complicated.
Don't tell anyone, but Iron Dome causes autism because it contains gluten! It's all part of a secret Illuminati plot, of course...
(Seeing as I live in Rishon Le Ziyyon, and watch interceptions every single day, and hear the distinctive sound of an interception (as opposed to a rocket hitting a building) several times a day, I reckon that the esteemed Mr. Postol would do well to loosen up his foil hat a bit)
The way he defines success and failure is framed to say all missile defense fails.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
You don't have a single clue what "genocidal" means, you twisted evil tool.
I did RTFA, and he makes two real claims. His primary claim is that the iron dome system must be failing, because when the interceptor approaches the target from anything other than head on, the interceptor will fire its warhead at the wrong time. He implies that this failure is an inevitable consequence of geometry, but I don't see it. If you actually look at the diagrams, the interceptor has just a good a shot when approaching (say) from behind as from in front. In fact the odds look better to me from behind or the side, as the crossing speeds are lower and the shrapnel fan might actually run down the length of the target. The interceptor just needs to fire its warhead at a different moment. But his diagrams all show the warhead firing at the wrong time, for reasons that are not made clear.
Is the iron dome system smart enough to account for basic geometry? I would think so, since the problem is pretty simple, and the approach angle will be known by the radar even before launch. But I don't really know. And I don't think he does either.
His second claim might be more credible. He says that in hundreds of pictures of intercepts, only one clearly shows detonation of the incoming rocket. I don't know if this is true, and I don't trust his claim. But if it is true then it cries out for explanation.
The problem is it is not sustainable. Each intercept missile cost $60,000, a rocket launched by hamas costs $800. Hamas can DDoS the hell of out Israel. All they need is decently trained soldiers and decent supply of rockets.
The root cause of this mess is that the Palestinians want their land back (after it was taken off them first in the post-WW2 UN partition plan that broke up Palestine into a Palestinian section and a Jewish section and then later further taken by the new state of Israel in various wars)
Of course, if you put an entire people inside an area more akin to the ghetto of Warsaw then a real country. An area with an insanely high population density an almost no way in our out for armed forces of their own the what did you expect really?
I am not condoning the firing of any weapon or participation in any combat activity amongst civilians but really... What do the Israeli expect??
On the other hand, where are the other Arab countries when it comes to really help out the Palestinians?
It ll never get solved, this conflict will stay a global source of misery for as long as we live probably.
The problem is it is not sustainable. Each intercept missile cost $60,000, a rocket launched by hamas costs $800.
Israel's GDP is the equivalent of about US$250 billion. They can easily afford tens of thousands of intercept missiles if it keeps the population safe.
Hamas can DDoS the hell of out Israel.
DDoS attacks generally rely on multiplier effects, getting someone else to do most of the work for you. Botnets, service vulnerabilities like the NTP reflection attack, that sort of thing. Hamas don't appear to have any such advantage.
All they need is decently trained soldiers and decent supply of rockets.
And if they had three fully-equipped tank divisions and a carrier group, that would help too.
second, Hamas are the aggressor. This is not particularly complicated.
Israel bulldozes Palestinian homes and builds settlements, Hamas fires rockets into Israel.
"Both sides" is usually a shitty argument to make, but in this case, both sides have been aggressors for decades.
If it wasn't complicated, we'd have peace by now.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
> Here it comes, all the reactionary Jew hatred posts...
They are coming because you wrote that, practically a first post even.
It makes me wonder if your goal is to derail any thoughtful analysis of the story.
Isn't that one of the tactics from the recently revealed GCHQ/JTRIG "Disruption Operational Playbook?"
Extreme would be to drop a nuke on them. See? Isn't it fun using strawmen to argue your point.
may be i'm a bit picky, but i'd say robbing their land, expelling them, denying access to water and healthcare, imprisioning them indefinitely with no warrant, and killing them at will or bombing them with white phosphor is quite extreme.
They're not at war? Are you high? Hamas has declared war on Israel from day one. At this very moment Israel and Gaza is exchanging rockets missiles and bombs and hundreds of people are being killed every day. If, as you say, "Israel could wipe them out in a matter of days", then do it and get it over with.
Israel are trying to minimise casualties on both sides. Hamas are trying to maximise Israeli casualties, and use Palestinian casualties to their political advantage. It's a perfect example of asymmetrical warfare; the capabilities and aims of the combatants are completely different.
Israel has the military capability to destroy Gaza, just as the US had the military capability to destroy Iraq or Afghanistan back in 2003. But doing so is not in their long-term interests.
They didn't steal the land, they bought it. They didn't expel them, the arabs left with the intention to come back with arab armies to steal back what they sold. Those who didn't leave became israeli arabs.
If you view either side as clearly in the right, you're a fucking fool.
Israel is clearly in the right.
That doesn't mean that Israel is without fault. Clearly, they're not. But we have one side ready for peaceful coexistence and the other side who wants only the total destruction of their enemies.
The situation is not complicated. That doesn't mean solving it is easy; there are many simple problems that are hard to solve. But we can say for sure that false equivalencies do not help.
As much as I have sympathy for the Palestinians, their land is gone and it isn't coming back, no more than the Roman Empire is going to rise again and reclaim Palestine as a province for the Romans.
Is it fair that the land has left the hands of the Palestinians? Probably not. Did it happen? Yes. Will they ever get it back? Not in any meaningful way.
For their own sake, it is time to move on. If their answer is getting their own civilians killed, I'd think even unconditional surrender and exile would be preferable to any group that is actually concerned about their civilian population.
The Israelis are there. They aren't going anywhere, and they don't like the rhetoric that has been thrown at them about being cast into the sea. They remember genocide, and they aren't going back to Diaspora. The rocket attacks on the cities will only increase the resolve of a people who have the history that the Jews have.
Peaceful protest does work, probably better on a country that is a democracy like Israel than a war ever would. We've seen it work elsewhere. Israel can hold a hard line while rockets are shooting at their cities, but they cannot hide behind that excuse if the rockets stop falling. Violence has failed the Palestinians and their Arab allies for 70 years, and that isn't going to change now.
The time for what is "just" is over. It is now time to do what it takes to improve the future for everyone in Palestine. The bombs and rockets need to stop falling, and someone has to do it first. I think the Palestinians would have the most advantage from ending the struggle and adopting a policy that might actually net them more gains and fewer deaths of their own people. If Israel persists in extremist settlements and reprisals when there is nothing to reprise against, they will lose the support of their allies, and they need their allies. Painful as it would be, there is no military option for Palestine worth considering and so those actions should be set aside.
Israel has never shown themselves to be ready for peaceful coexistence (and neither has Hamas). The closest they've come to that is being agreeable to peacefully doing whatever they want; there have been plenty of times during ceasefires where they continue with illegal actions, knowing full well it'll result in return illegal actions by the other side.
Of course, if you put an entire people inside an area more akin to the ghetto of Warsaw then a real country. An area with an insanely high population density an almost no way in our out for armed forces of their own the what did you expect really?
I expect Israel would gladly hand the Gaza Strip back to Egypt at this point. It doesn't seem that Egypt wants it back.
First evidence from the article is shown in figures 4 and 4a ... As can be seen by inspecting the photograph in figure 4, there is significant damage in the area where the rocket fell. This damage was almost certainly due to the detonation of the rocket’s small warhead."
"Figure 4 and figure 4A show the consequences of a failure in the fuse timing
However, the figure is a cropped version of an image taken from Ynet article
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4541542,00.html
and the picture title is "The shrapnel that hit the Tel Aviv synagogue.".
As clearly seen in the full picture, there is very little damage that is easily explained by a steel tube falling through the roof. The picture clearly shows that there were no explosion. This was the only direct evidence of Iron Dome failure that is provided by the article. This "evidence" is malicious manipulation of an image that is easily available online.
The images and more facts can be found in ...
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?239702-An-Explanation-of-the-Evidence-of-Weaknesses-in-the-Iron-Dome-Defense-System
Since slashdot is not very graphics friendly
More than 500 Palestinians dead and climbing and you say Israel is trying to minimise casualties? Do you seriously expect people to believe that?
Absolutely, yes. If Israel were actually out to cause casualties, rather than to prevent them, the death toll would be enormous. If they were merely careless of civilian casualties, the death toll would not only be higher, it would be statistically correlated with the demographics of the Palestinian people, with deaths of women, children, and the elderly roughly in proportion to the size of those groups in the general population.
Instead, the Palestinian death statistics are massively skewed towards males aged 18-38. That can't happen if you're killing civilians either deliberately or carelessly. But it's exactly what you'd see if you were carefully targeting enemy combatants.
So, please tell me.What do you think happens then?
That Israel will stop blocking humanitarian support for Palestinians?
Give them access to the resources that have been cut off?
Stop bulldozing their towns to make room for 'settlers' bought in from overseas?
Perhaps they will share some of the countries rather fine wealth with the people who have been forced out of the way?
They have a great track record of allow those things previously, haven't they..
No, they want the Palestinians gone, end of story - preferably wiped out so they cannot return.
How can you see that playing out? remember, these are PEOPLE here, not some kind of disease.
Israel wants only one outcome, and that has been quite clear for 30+ years, unfortunately.
And they call themselves people of god. disgusting.
Not the stuff Hamas has, it's very old technology that makes a SCUD look like something out of Science Fiction. They started off with stuff the Shah bought in the 1970s which Iran was giving away as being useless for Iranian purposes. They have moved on to cheap knockoffs off the same old technology. Since they get the stuff for free (via Saudi's etc stumping up the cash) and are trying to hit a country instead of specific targets they put up with it instead of somthing that can be aimed with precision like a SCUD or newer.
As long as they keep firing rockets at people, using their own people as human shields, they might as well let Israel block humanitarian aid, because humanitarian aid isn't going to get through anyway.
What happens is that some of the stuff you mention will likely happen. No one is suggesting that the Israelis are saints here. It will take time for a peaceful solution to turn the tide. Is that worse than not only death, but decades of deaths that have been completely ineffectual?
The realization needs to be made that there will never be improvement while Hamas is shooting rockets at Israeli civilians. It is simply PR cover for hardliner Israeli politicians to keep circling the wagons.
You need a peaceful Israel that feels safe enough to not have to circle those wagons for them to purge the extremist elements that they can't quite get rid of now.
Palestine as a current state is the worst kind of place carved out of completely impractical considerations. It's a failed state before it even had a chance to succeed. It needs peace more than it needs anything else to even have a chance.
Hamas, is more like a gang that thrives from exploiting the misery and anger of its people more than it is an organization for freeing them. If Hamas was serious about protecting its people, it would unilaterally stop the rocket attacks and only use defensive measures, even if ineffectual. They *know* that the rocket attacks won't stop the Israeli reprisals, its just that they can only seem to respond to any crisis with violence, possibly because it is the only way they can maintain the backing of their supporters.
There is no war to be won here. Just constant bombing into the distant future. The Palestinians can't conquer their ground back, and the Israelis won't budge unless the Palestinians stop pretending that it is still 1949 and they have addresses in what is now Israel. The Israelis grabbed that land by right of conquest, and then defended it against all comers, pretty much like every conqueror before them. Israel is there to stay, and Palestine is a shithole that will only improve if they stop pretending and get on with their future.
This isn't the fair way for them to move forward, it's merely the only way they will move forward. Peace, even if unilateral, is the best option for the Palestinians as a people.
Amira Hass and Gideon Levy are by no means unbiased reporters.
Sure the demands to not seem unreasonable but what has Hamas offered? Nothing at all. Until Hamas changes their views on the existence of Israel there will be no peace.
I would also like to point out that you have no references for what you call the Hamas conditions. As far as I can tell you might be making them up and/or embellishing them to make them look better.. Lets assume they are true look at a couple of demands
allowing farmers to work their land up to the fence;
So tunneling can be done without discovery.
release of all prisoners from the Gilad Shalit swap who have been rearrested
The swap which should never have been done as it rewards kidnappers.
expansion of the fishing zone
So fishing vessels can meet ships at sea and return with a "catch" of missiles
an Israeli pledge to a 10-year cease-fire
No pledge of a 10 year Cease fire from Hamas. A one sided cease fire is no cease fire at all.
closure of Gaza’s air space to Israeli aircraft;
So Hamas can fire rickets without danger of air strikes.
Lets look at the next few statements
Go back a few months: the breakdown of negotiations by Israel;
Maybe the refusal to even talk about removing their insistence of the destruction od Israel might have something to do about it.
the war on Hamas in the West Bank following the murder of the three yeshiva students,
Did the Palestinian Authority or Palestinian people do anything to catch the criminals?
stopping payment of salaries to Hamas workers in Gaza
According to this it was Fatah that cut off the funds and not Israel.
As to the opposition to a Hamas/Fatah Unity Government, who is to know which faction will come into control. It is just as likely Hamas will gain control and start up attacks again. Would you trust a government where one faction wants the destruction of your country? Again, as long as Hamas holds to the objective of the destruction of Israel all violence in the conflict is on their heads.
Yeah, those damned terrorist children in their terrorist-loving hospital beds. Good riddance!
Oh, but Israel warned them, right? Yeah, great how that goes down!
Gaza has been since the beginning like a giant open-air prison camp. Where the heck are the impoverished people trying to flee the conflict supposed to go? And for that matter, for everyone criticizing Hamas for fighting and storing weapons in or near civilian areas... there is nowhere in Gaza not near a civilian area, certainly nowhere further than a stray tank shell can fly - it's one of the most densely populated places on Earth, over 5 times denser than Taiwan and 11.6 times denser than Japan. Israel forced as many people as possible into as little land as possible. And not accidentally. What little farmland there is can be overrun in a matter of minutes. Israel could fill the entirity of Gaza with tanks and artillery at a density of over 100 per square mile.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Unprovoked? You really are deluded. When was the first rocket fired by Hamas? I'll tell you, it was on 28 June 2014. Unprovoked means Israel did nothing before that. Is this true? How about when Israel demolished the homes of two suspected kidnappers on 26 June? In what civilised country do you demolish people's homes for punishment of an alleged crime without even holding trials to prove their guilt? Or even before that, when Israel detained 300 Palentinians without even offering any proof of their involvement in the kidnapping of the three boys? Unprovoked, you say?
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
That is a combination of revisionist history repeated in mainstream publications and outright lies.
Sure, some properties were sold. But does China have sovereignty over California because many Chinese nationals bought land there?
If Israel where not trying to minimize casualties they would just carpet bomb the whole of the Gaza strip back to the stone age. Would be a lot cheaper than the current effort.
But we have one side ready for peaceful coexistence and the other side who wants only the total destruction of their enemies.
Unfortunately, "peaceful coexistence" means land that families have farmed for generations being progressively taken away and given to Israeli settlers.
In recent times, there has been so significant violence directed at Israel from the West Bank portion of the occupied territories. In fact, it seems fairly clear that the people who live there are ready for peaceful coexistence. How has Israel thanked them for this? Just take a look at the changing map of the West Bank and it is obvious how it is being broken up and separated by Israeli settlements.
Israel could go a long way to maintaining the moral high ground if they just respected the 1967 borders.
So, we can see that Hamas is just following what it was organized to do. It's not difficult to understand.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I actually agree with this, but two things. Nearly 70 years have passed. The UN drew a line in the sand. What if Germans decided they wanted their land back, which they lost in war? Pakistan was founded at a similar time, largely for a religious group. The UN partly created this problem, the UN needs to solve the refugee crisis which is the Palestinian people, regardless of what their "leadership's" ideas are about changing history.
Sure the demands to not seem unreasonable but what has Hamas offered? Nothing at all.
What exactly are they supposed to offer? Perhaps they could stop making Israel look bad by just not telling us when Israel systematically half-starves them. Palestine is under attack every day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem there is that Gazans procreate like rabbits. This is why the population density is so high and this is why they don't value human life that much.
You have this entirely backwards, I'm not surprised you didn't log in to associate your name with your abject ignorance. Making people live like animals makes them act like animals. When you force any animal into a space too small and too poorly to support it then it will always behave badly. In this case, it's an instinctive survival mechanism built into all living things. When you kill them, they make more. Forms of life which don't do this tend to be driven to extinction by forms of life which do.
A similar mechanism can be seen at work here in the USA. The education system was compromised, whether simply for profit or intentionally to keep down the plebes. Now we're making more unwanted children. The difference is that we oppress ourselves, we don't need anyone to do it for us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No. The stated goals of hamas and other groups is to exterminate jews and wipe israel off the map. a "peace" agreements are just time to plan for those goals.
Yes, and the goal of Israel is to claim the entire region for the Israeli state. Two border expansions and an ongoing campaign of semi-starving the besieged populace next door suggest that this is in fact the case. And there is a sizable group of people who suggest that all Jews who do not feel the same are some sort of traitor, and that anyone who does not support Jewish dominance of the region is not just anti-Zionist, but an anti-Semite, making rational discussion impossible just as surely as invoking Godwin.
Meanwhile, this war is really not between the Jewish people and the Palestinians. The entire conflict has been reframed as a battle in the war between "The West" and Islam, or perhaps simply a shot, fired by the UK when they created the nation of Israel. You will note that the Jewish people already got kicked out of that region once. They laid claim to it, they attempted to take it away from the people who lived there already, they met with some success but were eventually ejected. The history of that region going back as long as we know about has been people killing other people for control of it, and now just look at it. Formerly lush and rich, now it's a bunch of sand and rocks over which people kill one another. It's lost all practical meaning, since it's now not particularly good for supporting human life. Of course, one meaning remains. As long as the people living there are fighting over some shitty sand in the shitty desert, they're not causing problems for anyone else.
This situation was deliberately engineered and now Israel and Palestine are playing precisely the game they were meant to play, for our benefit. Why else do you think the USA pours money into that hole? It's not because the leaders of the USA give a shit about Jews. They're largely the same camp of assholes who presided over WWII and delayed our entry into that conflict for economic reasons. Notably, we were selling Aluminum to Japan so they could make it into Zeroes, and selling fuel to Germany so they could drive across Europe — and yes, these profits were a minuscule drop in the bucket compared to the subsequent benefits of building up our manufacturing systems while our "allies" were bombed.
tl;dr: $
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Please stop throwing about the claim of "genocide". You're insulting all those that actually suffered through a real episode of genocide.
Read what I wrote again - iron dome doesn't have to be good enough to stop SCUDs to stop these things. Clear enough yet?
What exactly are they supposed to offer?
There's two concessions that would grease the wheels to allow peace to happen. Either Hamas is barred from any government capacity in Palestine or Hamas recognizes Israel's right to exist. Barring either of those concessions, any cease fire will only last until something else relights the powderkeg. You cannot negotiate with a party that doesn't recognize your existence unless you have leaders in that party that can see the forest for the trees like Anwar Sadat following the Yom Kippur War who was, incidentally, assassinated by Islamic jihadists for signing peace with Israel. That peace treaty also lead to Egypt getting kicked out of the Arab league until 1989.
Israel has demonstrated in the past that it wants peace. It has removed Israeli settlers from Gaza, forceibly. It returned the entire Sinai pennisula to Egypt once the peace treaty following the Yom Kippur War was concluded. However that requires that the other party will engage honestly in negotiations that are seeking lasting peace. I cannot honestly say that will ever occur with Hamas.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
How about the following;
1. Recognize Israel's right to exist
2. Stop shooting rockets across the border
3. Stop sending assassins over the border
4. Stop building tunnels under the border
5. Actively stop their people from attacking Israel.
Obviously the most important one is the first one. There can be no peace when one side is still trying to destroy the other.
Israel's pre-1960 borders? The ones were the West Bank belonged to Jordan and Gaza belonged to Egypt?
If it brought a real chance at peace, I believe Israel would agree to that. But Jordan doesn't want the West Bank anymore. Egypt doesn't want Gaza. Israel's pre-1960 borders still would not create a country called Palestine.
Jordan and Egypt don't want to deal with the Palestinian problem anymore than Israel does.
Yes, I'm sure you read every source that anyone ever throws at you, for anything. What happens in the real world is that we make assessments on the probability of a source providing actual insight. Thereligionofpeace.com is a site that is identical in insight and accuracy as Stormfront is. I've read both sites a while back, and both are idiotic, wrong, and scary in very similar ways. As a result, I don't read them anymore, and I don't pay attention to people using them as sources.
If you want me to take you seriously, you'll provide references that won't waste my time.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's not the Israelis who are blocking the border crossing into Egypt. Which is one the problems overlooked in the media: even other Arab states, like Jordan and Egypt, won't allow Palestinians to immigrate.
If you want to follow international law, Israel has to return to the 1967 borders. If they don't return to the 1967 borders, they're not following international law.
I support international law. If you don't support international law, don't complain when the other side commits massacres (like the ones the Israelis are committing on the Palestinians, even in the West Bank).
Just like in the 'stans', if their brothers in arms retrieve the weapons they are counted as 'civilians'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Its time to return most of California to Mexico, and the lands back to the native indians.
Jerusalem and Jordan and the current land of Israel were always inhabited by Jews. For over 100 years Jews were buying up land in that area. There is no way that Israel will tolerate terrorism against it.
Hamas has refused to recognize peaceful co-existance. Their charter says to have muslim world domination and death to infidels and Jews. Had Hamas concentrated in building infrastructure, schools, universities, roads, etc, the hundred of millions of dollars poured into cement walls for tunnels was a theft from their citizens.
Israel wants peace. Trade with neighbours would have helped Lebanon,Jordan, Gaza, Palestine, and more to improve the life of all residents. Shame on power blind leaders--only 1 religion allowed, and Christianity is amoungst many excluded.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada