Yuku free message boards

I'm from Israel and left winged, and this whole thread is very jarring to read. From the left we have cries of "un-provoked genocide" and from the right we have "destroy all turbans!!!" It's dumb. Nothing is ever simple. If you think it is, you're really fucking wrong.

On one hand:

• Israel is still building and maintaining settlements that rob Palestinians of their land, their basic freedoms and are populated with right winged evangelical-like whacko's. I think we will be willing to rip them all out for a chance of lasting peace, but this doesn't seem to be the current trend.
• Israel has made just about every mistake possible in its war on terrorism. We basically built Hamas up from the ground, we made more people turn to terrorism by breeding hatred and hurting civilians in retaliation-operations that had no strategic value beyond "get 'em", our policy on assassinations of terrorist group leaders is ridiculous and does not hold up to any kind of international law standard.
• Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip a year a go, in which we rooted up a lot of settlements, was rushed, one-sided and un-cautious.
• Civilians are never allowed targets, on either side of the equation. The idea of idf soldiers as "kids" took strong root in Israel, probably since 18 year olds are babies and the draft is mandatory (well… kind of). It resulted in some kind of weird over-prioritizing of soldiers in the whole great scheme of the conflict, which more or less cost us the war we had just two years a go in Lebanon, and is probably the reason the strikes have been air-borne until now. I expect the civilian death count to sharply rise once Israeli soldiers are in actual danger.
• This "operation" is only going to get more tangled up from here, and Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth. Eventually something really horrible is going to happen.

On the other hand:

• Hamas has been firing missiles at Sderot for the past EIGHT YEARS. Read that fucker again. It doesn't make news, even in Israel hardly, but it is going on constantly. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where an alarm goes off a couple of times a day\week that means "you have 15 seconds to run for cover. Good luck!". I've been, twice, visiting a friend. Kind of terrifying. So let's drop "unprovoked". You either do not know what the word means, or you don't think missiles being shot at population is a provocation. Either way you should re-think some stuff.
• People from both sides debating weather or not "Israel should talk to Hamas" should work on their powers of deduction. Israel HAS BEEN talking to Hamas. Do you think the cease fire happened by coincidence? Israel wanted to continue the cease fire, even though it knows it's a chance for Hamas to pull together more weapons, but Hamas kind of went "No thanks, we'd rather throw some more missiles". And… okay, then?
• Hurting civilians is not in Israel's interests, at all, and while combat in civilian population will always have civilian deaths, Israel is taking a lot of measures to make that number as small as it can be. Not just because we're not monsters, which we're not by the way in case the notion makes it easier for anyone to hate a large group of people indiscriminately, but because it makes sense for us to do so. In the first day of the attack, out of the 230 killed, about 15 were civilians, according to the Palestinians themselves. That, while unfortunate, does not in any way indicate indiscriminate bombings. If the numbers were reversed, I'd be against the operation as anyone.
• Israel is dropping flyers warning civilians to leave areas that are about to be struck. Most of the times they leave, sometimes they go up on the roof of the building to be a human shield, in which case an attempt is still made to fire at the side of the roof, causing the people to scatter. Mostly works, sometimes doesn't. Again, the accusation of indiscriminate bombings is ridiculous.
• Hamas has been known to trap civilians in buildings it knows will be hit. I know it sounds conspiracy-ish and over the top, but I saw that on Al Jazira and a palastinian was talking about it, running away from a building, coughing and cursing at Hamas. Take from that what you will.
• Hamas was democratically elected, and does not recognize Israel's right to exist. At all. Ever. We have a large part in breeding that hate, but that doesn't mean we can or should ignore it. I try to reassure myself that most people, being people, just want to live their lives, but it gets kind of hard while watching Hamas people talking. They are easier to ignore when you don't live 50 minutes away, I guess.
• The Palestinians are not children. They make choices as a people, and they are responsible for them. They have, again and again, chosen leaders that fuck them over and escalate the situation. They are as responsible for understanding that terrorism, at this point, leads to more occupation as we are to understanding that occupation leads to more terrorism. They cannot hide behind the mantra of "Human nature makes them do it!" any more than we can. They are not children.

So basically, I think while Israel has its share (probably the big part of it) of the blame in the overall situation and that it should have stopped the operation and made a public effort to move towards a cease fire, like, yesterday. I also think that the original strike was both justified and necessary. Folding to the Hamas at that point and kind of going "Uh, I guess I can live with some rockets thrown at me" would have crushed any deterring power Israel has, which is basically the only thing is holding us together. It's all a fucking mess, and both sides are fucking up constantly, but don't be absurd.

Ah, and all of the solutions that have been offered have been very simplistic and kind of ignorant of the actual region. Offering to put up concerts and influence things with TV shows? Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how deep this goes?

Don't simplify things. If you think things are simple (the word "evil", for example, is always about simplicity), you are really fucking wrong.