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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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"And what you also ignore is the reason Hamas may be fighting. Most of you in their shoes would be every bit as blood thirsty."
No. I would never, NEVER train my children to be terrorist. I would never teach my children to hate others and to have the desire to kill them because of ethnic, religeous, or any other differences.
Look up the children of Hamas
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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This whole thread is really creepy and psychopathic.
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WBraun
climber
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Talk is cheap .....
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UncleDoug
climber
No. Lake Tahoe, CA
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"No. I would never, NEVER train my children to be terrorist. I would never teach my children to hate others and to have the desire to kill them because of ethnic, religeous, or any other differences. "
Yeah right.
I'll post the example again....
If someone bashes in your door while you are having a nice evening with your family and....
1. You are bound up.
2. Your wife is raped and killed in front of you.
3. Your son is sodomized with a gun and the trigger is pulled.
4. Your penis is cut off.
The perp leaves.
And amazingly you survive.
What are you going to do?
How are you going to feel?
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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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Uh, Uncle that has NOTHING to do with teaching my children anything. A piss poor analogy of what is going on in the ME as well. In your scenario I would have my justice and with good cause. One must defend their family. You can do this by retaliating against those who threaten and use terrorism against your family or maybe by not engaging in terroristic activities that would jeprodize the security of your wife and children.
If you truly believe the state of Israel as a whole is an evil entity raping, sodomizing and torturing the palestinians then you are believing in your own twisted fairytale.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Talk about believing twisted fairytales.
Jewish leaders planned the Holocaust to kill "disabled and handicapped" Jews to avoid having to care for them, according to a Hamas TV educational program. As much of the world prepared to commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hamas TV presented its latest sinister twist on Holocaust denial.
The Hamas TV educational program, broadcast last week, taught that the murder of Jews in the Holocaust was a Zionist plot with two goals:
1- To eliminate "disabled and handicapped" Jews by sending them to death camps, so they would not be a burden on the future state of Israel.
2- At the same time, the Holocaust served to make "the Jews seem persecuted" so they could "benefit from international sympathy."
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Folks on this thread, and perhaps a bit new to this issue, should know that Hamas is a very recent phenomena in this history of this issue, having been created with the help of Israel to foil the PLO.
So ideas that's wiping out Hamas will do anything to solve the issues are short-sighted. ALl of Hamas could go away tomorrow, the Israelis would just take three big steps in consolidating illegal settlements into "Facts on the ground" and then work on demonizing the Palestinian Authority or provoking the Palestinian population to strike out by using some quiet targeted assassinations, land seizures, or checkpoint closings.
Because the real name of the game is squeezing as many palestinians into the open air prison of Gaza as possible and making the West Bank a non-viable economic reality so that over time, Palestinians are basically suffocated out of there.
And that's why Hamas keeps launching rockets even though they do little damage. They need to keep the issue public and dramatic because simply letting peace stick doesn't work because the intent of Israel isn't to let life get good for Palestinians. It's to keep it sucking so hard that, family by family, they gradually move somewhere else until finally, Israel will have what they vision.
Wish it wasn't true. They try to hide it. But if you look at what is actually done, that's the plan
No other plan would be accepted by the powerful voting block of settlers, and sadly, they have come to matter deeply
Peace
Kal
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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JBar posted;
"If you truly believe the state of Israel as a whole is an evil entity raping, sodomizing and torturing the palestinians then you are believing in your own twisted fairytale".
No JBar I don't think any of us supporting the Palestinians of Gaza think that.
I believe most of us think the majority of Israelis want a just peace for the palestinians and freedom and security for both Semitic peoples. I believe most of us are saying the same about the Palestinians. Even those of Gaza.
Oddly, you are the people desperately clinging to debunked notions and cheering death.
For the record there has not been one credible shred of evidence that Hamas was operating out of, let alone firing rockets from, the schools that were destroyed by Israel. They were just shelters for displaced families. Mostly dead women and children.
Surgical precision at it's most deliberate.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Meet Assud the rabbit. Is there a creature like this on Israeli TV?
Assud the rabbit is the newest star of "Tomorrow's Pioneers," a Hamas-authorized kids show that airs on Gaza TV and is beamed around the Arab world.
The 6-foot bomber bunny appeared on camera in recent days with a head-scarf-wearing little girl named Saraa.
She sits listening entranced to the rabbit's rants.
"I, Assud, will finish off the Jews and eat them," he hisses.
"Allah willing!" Saraa says.
It's the latest use of cuddly figures by Hamas terrorists "to teach hate and violence," said Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch.
"This program is telling us that they see children as tools in their propaganda and their war," Marcus said. "They have no problem stealing their children's youth."
Before Assud, Hamas' use of a Mickey Mouse character called Farfur to preach hate gained worldwide condemnation.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Allah Akbar.
Jody's evil twin
You sounds lak a turrareeist boy. I ama callin' fatherland seecureiti. Gonna tourn ewe in.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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I'm curious, Philo, how do you feel about Assud the rabbit program? It is well documented to be true, among other indoctrination programs.
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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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"No JBar I don't think any of us supporting the Palestinians of Gaza think that.
I believe most of us think the majority of Israelis want a just peace for the palestinians and freedom and security for both Semitic peoples. I believe most of us are saying the same about the Palestinians. Even those of Gaza."
I don't like quoting others but I'm gonna do it one more time. I like what Philo says here but I would never have guessed it based on his prior posts. Much like politics I'm not on either side but the side of truth and fairness. Most palestinian "supporters" believe everything and anything al jazeera says, get their entire knowledge of the issue from the same media or maybe their college proffesor and don't bother to look into the history of the palestinian people or the state of Isreal and/or have never seen Gaza with their own eyes.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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For those who think "if just the Palestinians would accept peace" is the solution to the problem, check the record of Palestinian terrorism between 1948 and the first suicide bombers and intifada, many decades later.
You'll see that being peaceful (although that's always my policy) didn't keep settlers off their land or otherwise advance their cause
Fatty, you should see and know that what remains of the West Bank is not a viable Palestinian state but is rather like the way they castrate animals: Put a rubber band on the testicles and let time do the rest.
Peace
Karl
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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It seems pretty clear that all the players - especially Israel and Hamas - know that things will change after January 20th. They don't know how, but fear their scope of action would be limited, and so are doing their best to set the stage for what follows.
The convenient intransigent foolishness of both parties will allow Obama greater freedom of action to promote a workable solution that is in the interests of the world and the US, if not Israel and the Palestinians. He's probably tempted to wash his hands of a Gordian knot, but can't trust the Israelis not to escalate things out of control - at least for now, the US-Israel relationship is symbiotic, which gives him some leverage. Especially with regard to Iran's apparent nuclear ambitions, and possible Israeli pre-emptive action.
Few if any of the Arab and Muslim nations, and their leaders, would be likely to list Israel and a solution to the Palestine problem amongst their top five or even top ten problems. (Overpopulation, education, human rights, water, resources.... All way more important.) It's a convenient distraction for their people, and a way to unite them, but they know there's little if anything they can actually do about it except stir things up. Which is mostly now the job of Iran.
Any overt action by Iran against Israel would probably cause a crisis that would lead to the fall of the Iranian government, and that the big challenge would be preventing an over-reaction by Israel.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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In the US, Gaza is a different war
By Habib Battah
The mainstream US media has been careful to balance images of Gazan suffering with those of Israelis, leading to accusations it is not reflecting the unequal death toll [EPA]
The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.
On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.
As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.
The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.
Arab frustration
To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.
IN DEPTH
Latest news and analysis from Gaza and Israel
Send us your views and videos
Watch our coverage of the war on Gaza If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?
When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.
What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians - would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?
Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.
For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.
To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?
Context stripped
Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.
By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.
Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC's Martin Fletcher on December 30: "In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket - while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fourth day of this battle."
Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days.
When number of deaths did appear - sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen - it was identified as the number of "people killed" rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians.
No wonder the overwhelmingly asymmetrical bombardment of Gaza has been framed vaguely as "rising tensions in the Middle East" by news anchors.
With the lack of context, the power dynamic on the ground becomes unclear.
ABC news, for example, regularly introduced events in Gaza as "Mideast Violence". And Like NBC, reporters excluded the Palestinian death toll.
On December 31, when Palestinian deaths stood at almost 400, ABC correspondent Simon McGergor-Wood began a video package by describing damage to an Israeli school by Hamas rockets.
The reporter's script can be paraphrased as follows: Israel wanted a sustainable ceasefire; Israel needed to prevent Hamas from rearming; Hamas targets were hit; Israel was sending in aid and letting the injured out; Israel was doing "everything they can to alleviate the humanitarian crisis". And with that McGregor-Wood signed off.
Palestinian perspective missing
There was no parallel telling of the Palestinian perspective, and no mention of any damages to Palestinian lives, although news agencies that day had reported five Palestinians dead.
For the ABC correspondent, it seemed the Palestinian deaths contained less news value than damage to Israeli buildings. His narration of events, meanwhile, amounted to no less than a parroting of the official Israeli line.
In fact, the Israeli government view typically went unchallenged on major US networks.
The US media has been accused of prioritising Israel's version of events [EPA]
Interviews with Israeli spokesmen and ambassadors were not juxtaposed with the voices of Palestinian leaders. Prominent American news anchors frequently adopted the Israeli viewpoint. In talk show discussions, instead of debating events on the ground, the pundits often reinforced each other's views.
Such an episode occurred on a December 30 broadcast of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, during which host Joe Scarborough repeatedly insisted that Israel should not be judged.
Israel was defending itself just as the US had done throughout history. "How many people did we kill in Germany?" Scarborough posed.
The blame rested on the Palestinians, he concluded, connecting the Gaza attacks to the Camp David negotiations of 2000. "They gave the Palestinians everything they could ask for, and they walked away from the table," he said repeatedly.
Although this view was challenged once by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US official, who appeared briefly on the show, subsequent guests agreed incessantly with Scarborough's characterisation of the Palestinians as negligent, if not criminal in nature.
According to guest Dan Bartlett, a former White House counsel, the Palestinian leadership had made it "very clear" that they were uninterested in peace talks.
Another guest, NBC anchor David Gregory, began by noting that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, "could not be trusted", according to Bill Clinton, the former US president.
Gregory then added that Hamas had "undercut the peace process" and actually welcomed the attacks.
"The reality is that Hamas wanted this, they didn't want the ceasefire," he said.
Columnist Margaret Carlson also joined the show, agreeing in principal that Hamas should be "crushed" but voicing concern over the cost of such action.
Thus the debate was not whether Israel was justified, but rather what Israel should do next. The Palestinian human tragedy received little to no attention.
Victim's perspective
Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel's dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering.
For US networks, the bombing of Gaza has largely been limited to two-minute video packages or five minute talk show segments. This has usually meant a few snippets of jumbled video: explosions from a distance and a momentary glance at victims; barely enough time to remember a face, let alone a personality. Victims were rarely interviewed.
The availability of time and space, American broadcast executives might argue, were mitigating factors.
On MSNBC for example, Gaza competed for air time last week with stories about the economy, such as a hike in liquor sales, or celebrity news, such as speculation over the publishing of photographs of Sarah Palin's new grandchild.
Most US networks have reported exclusively from Israel [GALLO/GETTY] On Arab TV, however, Gaza has been the only story.
For hours on end, live images from the streets of Gaza are beamed into Arab households.
Unlike the correspondents from ABC and NBC, who have filed their reports exclusively from Israeli cities, Arab crews are inside Gaza, with many correspondents native Gazans themselves.
The images they capture are often broadcast unedited, and over the last week, a grizzly news gathering routine has been established.
The cycle begins with rooftop-mounted cameras, capturing the air raids live. After moments of quiet, thunderous bombing commences and plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Then, anguish on the streets. Panicked civilians run for cover as ambulances careen through narrow alleys. Rescue workers hurriedly pick through the rubble, often pulling out mangled bodies. Fathers with tears of rage hold dead children up to the cameras, vowing revenge. The wounded are carried out in stretchers, gushing with blood.
Later, local journalists visit the hospitals and more gruesome images, more dead children are broadcast. Doctors wrap up the tiny bodies and carry them into overflowing morgues. The survivors speak to reporters. Their distraught voices are heard around the region; the outflow of misery and destruction is constant.
Palestinian voices
The coverage extends beyond Gaza. Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region. As angry protests take place on a near daily basis, the crews are there to capture the action live.
Even in Israel, Arab reporters are employed, and Israeli politicians are regularly interviewed. But so are members of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions.
The inclusion of Palestinian voices is not unique to Arab media. On a number of international broadcasters, including BBC World and CNN International, Palestinian leaders and Gazans in particular are regularly heard. And the Palestinian death toll has been provided every day, in most broadcasts and by most correspondents on the ground. Reports are also filed from Arab capitals.
On some level, the relatively small American broadcasting output can be attributed to a general trend in downsizing foreign reporting. But had a bloodbath on this scale happened in Israel, would the networks not have sent in reinforcements?
For now, the Israeli viewpoint seems slated to continue to dominate Gaza coverage. The latest narrative comes from the White House, which has called for a "durable" ceasefire, preventing Hamas terrorists from launching more rockets.
Naturally the soundbites are parroted by US broadcasters throughout the day and then reinforced by pundits, fearing the dangerous Hamas.
Arab channels, however, see a different outcome. Many have begun referring to Hamas, once controversial, as simply "the Palestinian resistance".
While American analysts map out Israel's strategy, Arab broadcasters are drawing their own maps, plotting the expanding range of Hamas rockets, and predicting a strengthened hand for opposition to Israel, rather than a weakened one.
Habib Battah is a freelance journalist and media analyst based in Beirut and New York.
The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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"I'm curious, Philo, how do you feel about Assud the rabbit program?"
Well, how about it Philo?
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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I heard he is practicing some new cajun style recipes.
I present you information about children's deaths and you give me a children's show.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Philo has said more then once that he doesn't support the whack job hatred and the rocket attacks, so why would you expect that he would dig this rabbit?
Mercy people. Please try to understand. This isn't a black and white situation where one side is ALWAYS GOOD and the other side is ALWAYS BAD.
Some Hamas actions are bad. The Palestinians had a more passive government. Israel treated them like sh#t, taking more land, putting in more sanctions, starving them, beating them, ect.. . So they voted in a more radical government.
At no time in the last 20 plus years has Israel treated these people well. So they fight back with the only weapons that they have. Is it wise? No.. Is it good? no..
but neither is Israel's actions toward these people.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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"I present you information about children's deaths and you give me a children's show."
Philo, you are really blind if you don't see the link between the two. The children are dying in a war with Hamas. That children's show is produced by Hamas indoctrinates children to hate Jews, to believe in the extermination of Jews, and to become suicide bombers. Hamas is waging jihad against Jews and using those children as human shields.
This does not release the Israeli army from all moral responsibility. But the blood of those children is also on the hands of Hamas and those who support them.
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