In France, Most Comments on Gaza Conflict Yanked From Mainstream News Sites

An anonymous reader writes with an unpleasant statistic from France, quoting David Corchia, who heads a service employed by large French news organizations to sift through and moderate comments made on their sites. Quoting YNet News: Corchia says that as an online moderator, generally 25% to 40% of comments are banned. Moderators are assigned with the task of filtering comments in accordance with France's legal system, including those that are racist, anti-Semitic or discriminatory. Regarding the war between the Israelis and Hamas, however, Corchia notes that some 95% of online comments made by French users are removed. "There are three times as many comments than normal, all linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," added Jeremie Mani, head of another moderation company Netino. "We see racist or anti-Semitic messages, very violent, that also take aim at politicians and the media, sometimes by giving journalists' contact details," he added. "This sickening content is peculiar to this conflict. The war in Syria does not trigger these kinds of comments."

Comments

maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, if you could say the word Israel... without being called an anti-semite....

This entire conflict is Evil... it doesn't matter, if one side is Jewish and the other side is Islam...

It has nothing to do with that...

Having said that... the Israeli apartheid state needs a wake up call... because they are doing what the south african's did before them.

And, yes I am going there... and what the Nazis did before that.

Re:maybe

[angel'o'sphere]

That mandate is false and debunked since two weeks already, it never existed.
Hint: genital mutilation is not an islamic thing but an africans natural religions/tribal thing.
I don't know many 'arabs' got killed in this YEAR in Syria, but I know the death toll in Palestine was over 1000 in the last two weeks, perhaps you can enlighten us how that will scale for the rest of the year?

Re:maybe

[Attila Dimedici]

Well, the death toll for two days in Syria during those same two week was 700, would you care to guess how that will scale over the rest of the year? My guess is that it will be significantly higher than the death toll in Palestine over the same period.

Re:maybe

[Clsid]

I would say the Russians were victimized a lot more than the Jews, and maybe even in a more cruel way like in the case of the starving of Leningrad. Israel is being fascist at the moment and I agree, it is awful to consider that Jewish people in Israel are today doing the same thing to others that they suffered in the not so distant past. Perhaps it is time to think about this whole hatred and land grabbing mentality again. Those Palestinian rockets are being launched for a reason.

Re:maybe

[war4peace]

My non-jewish family was victimized by fascism. But I don't run around yelling "I'm offended!" every time the subject is brought up. My family moved on 5 decades ago, and I still think it took the a bloody long time to do it.

Seriously, stop it. Just let it go and move on. You're doing nobody any good.

Re:maybe

[TFAFalcon]

The problem right now is that the West Bank and Gaza are in a kind of limbo. They aren't part of Israel (so the inhabitants don't get any rights as citizens) and they aren't allowed to become a separate state (if they try they get bombed and 'settled' some more). So Israel should decide what it wants to do, not just keep killing civilians whenever some religious idiots decide to fire of more rockets.
If it wants the land ,it should give the inhabitants citizenships and enforce it's laws - not by bombing innocents but by actually occupying and policing everything.
If it does not want to do that it should get out of the area completely. Not just say that they left and leave the hundreds of miles of fences and checkpoints everywhere so the people can't even go to work without being harrased.

Re:maybe

[Attila Dimedici]

Have you noticed what their neighbors are doing to their citizens? I would rather be a non-Jewish citizen of Israel than a citizen of the neighboring countries.

Re:maybe

[TFAFalcon]

It is quite similar to what the Nazis wanted to do. Not the Holocaust, but Lebensraum - they wanted to remove the 'inferior' Slavs from the land they wanted to occupy. Just like what Israel is trying to do now to the Palestinians (with none of the German 'efficiency').

Re:maybe

[cold fjord]

The "fun" part is that being anti-Israel currently is less antisemitic than it is antifascist...

The "fun" part is how thin that beard is, especially when European Jews are being threatened and attacked as part of the rioting and violence in various European countries when the object of the protests is supposedly Israel.

‘Gas the Jews!’: European anti-Semitism during the Gaza crisis

"They are not screaming 'death to the Israelis' on the streets of Paris, " Roger Cuikerman, head of French Jewish political group CRIF, said. "They are screaming ‘death to the Jews.'" ....

According to the Associated Press, anti-Semitic slogans have popped up in protests inside Germany. "Gas the Jews," has been chanted at some protests, according to the Associated Press

Well, many people have a hard time "thinking straight" when it comes to Israel.

Re:maybe

[sociocapitalist]

Umm, have you paid attention to what the people in charge on the Palestinian side of this have done, and are doing? You know, things like killing people for being homosexual? Such that Arabs who have homosexual desires often seek, and receive, asylum in Israel. Or perhaps you have not noticed that their compatriots is Iraq have mandated female genital mutilation in at least one city which they control? Perhaps you have not noticed that the Syrian government has killed more Arabs this year than Israel has, by a wide margin?

You are lumping all muslims and arabs together and even if you were right to do so, itstillwould not justify the way that Israel is conducting themselves.

40 Israelis dead, almost exclusively soldiers.
1,000 Palestinians dead. About 80 percent of them civilian and about 20% of them children.

This is not war. This is not a justified use of appropriate force. This is shooting fish in the barrel and, quantity aside, is disgustingly like what the Germans did to the Jews in WW2.

Re:maybe

[sociocapitalist]

Read up on Sherman's March to the Sea or about German and Japanese casualties during WWII. From the standpoint of fighting a war for survival, which the state of Israel is doing (read the stated goals of Hamas and other Arab organizations which are waging wars of terror against Israel), Israel has inflicted insufficient casualties on the Palestinian Arabs. For that matter, why should Israel be condemned just because they do everything they can to protect their civilians, while their opponents do everything they can to maximize casualties among their own civilians?
Hamas, and other Arab groups fighting against Israel, intentionally take actions so as to maximize the deaths of civilians, and particularly children. They store the missiles they fire at Israeli civilians in schools and hospitals. They use civilians, including children, as human shields while firing on Israeli soldiers. It is Hamas that is responsible for the death toll of civilians in Palestine.

You're saying that it's okay to use terrorism to fight terrorism.

Didn't your mother teach you that two wrongs don't make a right?

I disagree with Hamas methods and I do not in any way support them. But I disagree with Israel's methods as well. Hamas hiding weapons in a school does not justify shelling that school when it is full of children.

Israel is no longer fighting a war for survival. At one point that argument would have been valid but to say so now is ridiculous as no country in the middle east - and most likely not the entire middle east all together - could defeat Israel's military might.

On top of that, Israel is not protecting their own civilians as killing Palestinian civilians will not stop Hamas. It will, in the long run, make Hamas stronger as more Palestinian families lose their loved ones and will do anything to strike back at Israel. Hatred begets hatred, as you should know as you evidently have been begot of hatred.

Per your statement "Israel has inflicted insufficient casualties on the Palestinian Arabs" and the general content of what you are writing it appears that you do not care if those casualties that you wish to inflict are against valid military targets or against civilians. Is that correct?

Re:maybe

[war4peace]

There's also a huge difference between BEING victimized and SAYING you're victimized.
Here's how I see the situation:

During WW2, multiple nations and groups were savagely "victimized" (that's an understatement but we'll go with that as an euphemism): Jews, Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, etc. It is clear that the most affected were the Jews.
WW2 ended, the deeds were documented, everybody eventually moved on. Everybody but Jews.
Not that I have a problem with that, not at all, people are free to remember the bad things that happened to them, and are free to do that until the end of time. What i have problem with is the fact that their cries became increasingly strident over time. We're currently facing positive discrimination, which is even more ridiculously emphasized that the one regarding black people.

Couple years ago, a lesser government person from my country, due to his severe lack of historical knowledge, said something about the Holocaust, namely he played it down. I don't remember exactly what he said, because I read the statement back then and said "that guy's dumb. So, honey, what do we have for breakfast?" That's exactly how much attention that retard got from me, because that was the attention he was worth. People say dumb things all the time, we don't really pay attention.
BUT! The Jewish association was outraged. How dared he? So they squirmed and pushed and lobbied until that guy was publicly reprimanded by the government and had to go visit the Holocaust Museum in the States, then come back and issue an apology. We, the whole people from my country, had to apologize through our Government for what some dumbass said, and he didn't even really mean it. The poor bastard was uninformed. But nooo, let's not let it go, hurrah, time to rub this in a whole nation's face! said the Jewish Association.

Last Christmas (or Easter? I don't remember. probably Easter) there were some traditional songs being broadcasted over some local county TV station. All nice and good until some song was played which said something about jews, I don't remember what because it was a traditional song (centuries old) and the verses were recited verbatim. It's a documented song, not something made up recently. Anyway, nobody realized it might be offensive to anyone until the very same Jewish association jumped 9 yards and declared that song OFENSIVE and squirmed and pushed and lobbied until the TV station manager was fired and again a public apology had to be issued.

So my advice to Jews and anyone else who acts like that: stop blowing things out of proportion! Your stridence pisses people off and people remember you for being what you don't want to be, rather than what you really are. And to me, you're normal, regular people, not to be hated, not to be looked down at, and to be honest I never ever asked anyone I met what their religion was, because I DO NOT CARE.
But when you act like damsels who faint when they hear the word "spider", you cover yourselves in ridicule. So please, my plea to you is: talk to your representatives ant tell them that not every word issued out of ignorance is a direct attack on your nation.

One more thing: I have a colleague whose last name is Bernstein. I never made the connection until last year when we had a conversation about recent international events and I kept talking about how fascinating is the tech behind the Iron Dome and the Merkava tank, at which point he casually mentioned "yeah i have family in Israel" and only then i realized he was Jewish.
My opinion on him didn't change a bit. It was just a fact, nothing to it.
But if he would have said "yeah we're the best and anyone who messes with us should be put down like a dog" then I would have said "dude you're crazy" and probably wouldn't have talked to him again.
Oh and his manager is German. Heh.

I loathe fanaticism, extremism, the sense of superiority some groups have, etc. And that's valid for ALL groups, regardless of skin color, religion, traditions, past history, etc. And I stop here because most people don't read this wall of text anyway.

Re:maybe

[nbauman]

The "fun" part is that being anti-Israel currently is less antisemitic than it is antifascist...

Please explain why Israel or Jews are fascist.

Because they do things like this:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/...

773. At about 12.50 p.m., Khalid Abd Rabbo, his wife Kawthar, their three daughters, Souad (aged 9), Samar (aged 5) and Amal (aged 3), and his mother, Hajja Souad Abd Rabbo, stepped out of the house, all of them carrying white flags. Less than 10 metres from the door was a tank, turned towards their house. Two soldiers were sitting on top of it having a snack (one was eating chips, the other chocolate, according to one of the witnesses). The family stood still, waiting for orders from the soldiers as to what they should do, but none was given. Without warning, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their grandmother. Several bullets hit Souad in the chest, Amal in the stomach and Samar in the back. Hajja Souad was hit in the lower back and in the left arm.

[The IDF refused to let an ambulance bring them to the hospital, so they walked. Amal and Souad died. Samar had a spinal injury and was left paraplegic for life. The Israeli government never investigated this event or prosecuted the soldier responsible.]

Re:maybe

[cold fjord]

Because they do things like this:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/... [ohchr.org]

That isn't an indication of fascism, which is a particular political organization of the state. If that allegation is true is may constitute a war crime - if it is true and there are no mitigating factors. The truth of that allegation isn't clear, and it is completely unrelated to the organization of Israel's government.

Let's check another source.

HRW’s Credibility Gap: 14 Versions of the Abed Rabbo “White Flags” Incident

Such highly-charged moral accusations, and the repeated use of terms like “war crimes”, are largely based on Palestinian “testimony”, while the ability to verify these allegations is very limited or impossible. Although HRW repeated the misleading claim (in its Sept 10 statement) that its “on-the-ground investigations found no evidence of Palestinian fighters in the area at the time”, HRW had no researchers in Gaza until weeks after the fighting. Their entirely non-transparent, “investigations” apparently consisted of recording Palestinian statements in an interview process that is readily subject to manipulation, conducted by HRW officials who lack professional credentials and have a clear bias, (in this report, Joe Stork ) and are therefore impossible to evaluate.

As in numerous other examples of highly flawed HRW “investigations” (Gaza Beach, the 2006 Lebanon War, etc.), as documented in detail in NGO Monitor’s report “Experts or Ideologues ”, the evidence shows major inconsistencies and contradictions in the Abed Rabbo incident. NGO Monitor, CAMERA , and other researchers have documented at least 14 significantly different versions of the story. NGOs have published 6 distinct accounts, and 8 others are from the media. The evolution of these accounts also suggests motivations for promoting allegations that may be far from the truth.

Should Hate be left alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with most of these comments is that they are vile and hate-filled toward not just a country, but an entire religion.

Europeans have laws against hate speech. That's why these comments are being deleted.

Personally, I'd leave these comments in place. It shows the hatred that is being fomented in many Islamic middle eastern countries. We should know what they really think and why.

I think deleting those comments is actually masking a terrible problem.

Re:Should Hate be left alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the moment you don't blindly side with Israelis you are labeled as racist nazi sympathizer.

Or maybe you're not so good at math

[popo]

The problem is that in terms of mathematical relativity, the fighting in Gaza is not a terribly important ongoing conflict.

There are an *exponentially* larger number of ongoing casualties in Syria. Where is the outrage?

There are more ongoing casualties in Sudan, Pakistan and other non-reported conflicts as well. Where are the street protests?

Selective outrage is inherently indicative of a motivation *other* than humanitarian concern.

Great stats here: http://notquant.com/the-israel...

We must care about civilian casualties. But we must not care more about some casualties over others.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument fails absolutely in moral terms. You are attempting to value civilian casualties differently based on the motivation of the killers.

And your summation of the Syrian conflict is grossly ignorant. It is not just a "guy who wants to stay in power". It's a proxy war between the US and Russia.

There is *real* genocide happening in Syria. There is a relatively minor conflict (mathematically speaking) in Gaza.

Keep on hating.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[Anonymous Coward]

"Israel is supposed to be a civilized Western country, so..."

Dead. Wrong.

Israel is a civilised *Middle Eastern* country. It is where it is, surrounded by enemies who have sworn to exterminate every last Jew. It doesn't have the luxury of being thousands of miles from the actual conflict, and it can't afford to "try one more time" because any mistake could be fatal. The day that militant Islam starts launching rockets onto the territory of the continental United States -- and it is coming -- people like you will wake up and start baying for blood like so many "savages". How many people did America kill in response to the Twin Towers? How many billions of dollars did it spend on vengeance?

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[NicBenjamin]

You're about half right here.

The fact these comments are banned probably means they're anti-semitic. But the closest thing the French have to a major anti-Semitic party is the national Front, they never get more then 25%, and that high-point only was only after their leader denounced anti-Semitism. Which indicates the Anti-Semitic percentage in France is probably under 5%. They seem to talk a whole lot, but in my experience the more a political ideology talks about itself the less relevant it is to reality. So Anti-Semitism is a problem France has to deal with, but that's true in every western nation and a lot of the non-western ones.

What's extremely unusual is the total lack of pro-Semites. Nobody in France is taking the view that Israel is being totally reasonable in attacking Gaza. Nobody is even taking the view that Israel is a respectable nation who should be allowed to do what needs to be done. They may think Israel's policy of "mowing the lawn" is justified, but clearly they don't like it so much that they'll take 15 minutes and write an online comment saying that.

Israel's core problem is that, while the Israeli people seem to have abandoned the Oslo process as unworkable, and adopted a policy of constant low-level attacks mitigated by occasional brutal offensives into Arab-controlled territory, literally the entire rest of the world is still a fan of Oslo. Re-invading Gaza every few years reminds them that Israel and the Palestinians are not making progress, and it also makes Israel seem like the roadblock. If all you hear about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that two Israelis died, and then Israel started a campaign killing 900-odd Palestinians and a couple-dozen Israeli troops, you ain't gonna come away with the impression Israel isn't the bad guy.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[kyrsjo]

This.

Israel is in western countries (Europe and US) regarded as "one of us" - and we hold them to a higher standard than some dictator in small far-away country we don't have very tight relations to. Also, because of these relations, and because Israel is somewhat dependent on support from the west and many Israelis have tight connections to (family, business), we regard it as more likely that they would listen to protests in the rest of the west, than whoever is fighting in Sudan would listen.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[HiThere]

It's not a very moral attidude, but it's a very human one. I'm sorry if your species disappoints you. (I wish it didnt' regularly disappoint me.)

People tend to care more about a friend's daughter's puppy being rescued from a well than they do about 100.000 people they've never heard of being tortured to death. It's not exactly moral, but it's the way people think. They can empathize with the friend and the daughter, and even with the puppy more than they can with the "larger number than I can picture" number of strangers they've never met.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[IamTheRealMike]

My memory is a bit foggy, when was the IRA importing mass shipments of long range artillery rockets from Iran and firing them at the UK?

They never did. They got the shipments from Libya instead.

Note that these weapons included rockets propelled grenades, surface to air missiles, flamethrowers, explosives and lots of machine guns.

By the way, a big source of IRA funding and support was the USA. But everyone has conveniently forgotten that post 9/11. Given the constant US wailing over the funding of terrorism, it'd be impolite to recall the open IRA fundraising activities that occurred in places like Boston.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[grcumb]

Ireland didn't do anything remotely like what Hamas is doing to Israel. If it did, you would have seen the relevant bits of Ireland flattened like what England helped do to Nazi Germany.

I don't really have a side in this argument. But I do feel compelled to mention that England absolutely did terrible, terrible things in trying to quell the Irish problem. Oliver Cromwell famously said that Catholics were welcome to go to 'Hell or Connaught' as he drove them from the Pale. (Those of you who can see beyond the postcard photos will know that Connaught is close enough to Hell when you're trying to work a farm.)

The potato 'famine' was a direct result of predatory practices put in place by the British and Anglo-Irish to keep the Irish poor and desperate. Over a million people died. But this practice had been going on for years and years beforehand. Deacon Smith's A Modest Proposal , considered one of the greatest examples of satire in the English language, was a direct response to the appalling depredations of the landlord class in Ireland.

In fact the intransigence of the problem of Northern Ireland is a direct result of the British relocating large numbers of people (mostly Scots) to Ulster in order to create a 'buffer' population. Now, 400 years on, they have a very similar problem to that experienced by the Israelis, who tragically are using almost exactly the same tactics to deal with it, proving that they've failed to learn a thing from the fight for Irish independence.

Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math

[dbIII]

The problem is that any suggestion that the current government of Israel is imperfect is taken as "anti-semitic".

I like Israel, it has a lot of good things going for it. However currently it is run by a bunch of fucking fascists who have timed yet another pogrom into Gaza to coincide with an election. That seems to run contrary to everything Israel is supposed to stand for.

Re:This is not a religious problem.

[dskoll]

It *used* to be that the religious issues were just a distraction, but that is no longer the case. Islam is reverting to what it was originally: A fascist political movement aimed at world control, masquerading as a religion. It is utterly impossible to compromise with hard-line Muslims because their very religion rejects the idea of compromise with non-Muslims. Non-Muslims are to be killed or subjugated; that is prescribed directly in Islamic religious writings.

On the Jewish side, there has been a similar move to hard-line positions, though to a less dangerous degree than in Islam. The hard-line Jewish extremists want to take over the whole of "Eretz Yisrael." They are not interested in subjugating the entire world.

Re: Like China och USSR

[Anonymous Coward]

They are being forced to filter "illegal" eg hate/racist/defamatory comments.

The not-so-ironic thing is that a French media moderator is moderating comments on a conflict that is hate-based.

My personal opinion on the entire thing is "there will never be peace in the middle east", Not till those petrodollars run out. Like the thing that I find stupid is the sheer amount of waste Burj Khalifa (Dubai,UAE) and the Mile-high tower (Kingdom Tower,Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) are to their local economy. They build these enormous wealth-measuring buildings, but have none of the support infrastructure (The Burj, has all it's sewage, trucked out) for it to be functional. For the same price, they can build an entire city of smaller, efficient buildings, with all the support infrastructure to make Manhattan look like a dump.)

So all these conflicts in the middle east, are just proxy wars between the uneducated "have-not"'s. The entire Gaza thing is the middle eastern states playing a high-stakes form of chicken with Israel. Nobody wants to be caught funding the terrorists, but "looking a blind eye away" while things are allowed to happen, over and over again, it's getting old. I'd sooner believe Iran is building a peaceful nuclear plant, than there ever being peace between Israel and any of it's neighbors. At some point this is all going to boil over and the "holy land" gets nuked by someone playing the "if I can't have it, you can't have it either" card.

Re:It's obvious.

[dskoll]

From the Israeli Declaration of Independence:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

From the Hamas charter:

Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed.

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.

It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.

Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."

The Islamic Resistance Movement consider itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road. The Movement adds its efforts to the efforts of all those who are active in the Palestinian arena. Arab and Islamic Peoples should augment by further steps on their part; Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should also do the same, since all of these are the best-equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews.

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

Scale and proportion.

[pla]

This sickening content is peculiar to this conflict. The war in Syria does not trigger these kinds of comments.

The war in Syria doesn't involve a nuclear state casually bulldozing civilian houses, complete with civilians inside, all because a handful of pesky terrorists keep lobbing ineffective bombs into empty fields.

Israel's problem really boils down to a matter of proportion. Yes, they have an unenviable situation to deal with; but they have chosen to respond in a way that makes them look like monsters (to the point that even many Jewish Israelis consider their government's behavior nothing short of reprehensible). When you cook ants with a magnifying glass, no one blames the ants, even if one or two do manage to sting you.


As for the FP's hypothetical French forum moderator - You count as part of the problem. When people can freely say things such as what I wrote above, they can contribute to the discussion, sometimes even vent a bit, and move on. When, however, fairly peaceful discussion vanishes under some bullshit pretense of racism - People then feel the need to escalate the impact of their few words making it through to other eyes.

Re:Scale and proportion.

[Uberbah]

That "handful of pesky terrorists" happen to be the elected Palestinian government. This is what happens when people elect terror organizations as their representatives...

More like....lies repeated by those who are useful fools at best and racists at worst. The storyline put forth goes like so: this all started when Hamas kidnapped three teenagers and then killed them in June. Israel launched a search and rescue mission, and Hamas responded by firing rockets.

But it's all bullshit. The month before the teens were kidnapped, the IDF straight up murdered two Palestinian boys in the street. And the month before that Israel tried to provoke Hamas by murdering one of its members the same night that Hamas and Fatah announced a unity agreement. Despite Israel's repeated violations of it's own cease fire agreement with Hamas, no rockets were fired.

But Bibi found the excuse he needed with the kidnappings of the three teenagers. Despite being pretty damned sure they were all dead - you can hear gunshots over one of the teens cell phones and the car was soon found full of blood and bullet casings - they spent weeks arresting Palestinians and bulldozing homes in Gaza for a kidnapping in the West Bank even after the Palestinian Authority was helping search for the missing teens. And even Israeli outlets admit that rockets were only fired in response to IDF attacks:

1. At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

Since then, a thousand Palestinians have died, many of them children, for which the population equivalent would be over 200,000 people getting killed in the U.S. On the Israeli side, almost all of the ~35 deaths have been soldiers, with only three civilians dying, and only one via rocket. Scale and proportion? Get some.

Eisenhower was right

[Calavar]

If ever there was a state that was consumed by the military-industrial complex, it was Israel.

If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP, Israel spends 1.5x as much as the US. 2% of Israel's population is active military. If you include reservists, that goes up to 9%. Compare this to 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively, for the US.

Israel is a country that is largely lead by war heros from the 60s and 70s and their acolytes. Let's look at the recent PMs of Israel: Netanyahu (former IDF commando), Ehud Barak (former chief of staff of the IDF), Shimon Peres (former defense minister), Ariel Sharon (former IDF general, former minister of defense), Yitzhak Rabin (former chief of staff of the IDF), Yitzhak Shamir (former Mossad agent). The only PM in the past 40 years who didn't have significant connections to the Israeli defense establishment was Ehud Olmert. (He didn't do anything significant beyond the compulsory military service.) If you look at the financial ties between Israeli government officials and major defense companies, things get even more mixed up.

The fact is that ever since the Camp David Accords and the agreement with Sadat, Israel was never again in danger of being wiped off the map. Sure, there were sporadic threats from groups like Hezbollah, but in these conflicts, Israel was always orders of magnitude more powerful than it's opponent. The Israeli government should have begun massively downsizing it's military, but it did not.

When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. When you have a huge military, every problem begins to look like one that should be solved by force. When you're country is led by dozens of ex-military and next to no one that was, say, ex-foreign ministry, macho man diplomacy becomes the rule. When you have a former commando negotiating prisoner swap with Palestinians rather than a former diplomat, you end up with commandos going in and rearresting the released prisoners. This incident is just once symptom of a larger problem. The Israeli government hasn't just fallen victim to the pressures of the military-industrial complex; it is the military-industrial complex.

Re:The proofs

[gomiam]

Why would you post the photos and no the whole article which includes quotes by several muslim heads condemning those placards or asking for that demonstration to be banned? Is reality perhaps more complex than what you want people to think?

Re:The Muslim world cares so much for the Palestin

[Jason Levine]

Bit of history in the "creation" of the Palestinians (as they stand today): When Israel was formed and the Arab nations that surrounded it declared war, the Arab nations told the Arabs who lived in Israel: "Flee from Israel to us. When we drive Israel into the sea, we'll give you your land back."

Many fled, but not all. When Israel won the war, the Arabs who fled found they were blocked from returning. (Would you allow someone back if they supported the people who just tried to destroy you?) The Arabs who stayed, though, kept their land and businesses. Today, they (or their descendants) own businesses, are full citizens, and one even is on the Israeli Supreme Court.

The idea that Israel kicked the Palestinians out is completely false.