This is a totally despicable action on Israel's part, removes whatever remaining shred of claim they may have had to the 'moral high ground'.

Suicide bombers are bat-shit insane and evil as well, but this action, of top of the continuing prevention of the inhabitants of Gaza from getting access to the basic necessities of a half-way decent life, is also totally crazy and immoral. It is fucking stupid as well, as it will continue to provoke the other side into yet more insane counter-attacks.

Pay more attention. It changed.

I don't see 'genocidal' as a very appropriate description of policies on either side in this conflict. That implies an active 'targeting' of a whole nationality or ethnicity. While there is undoubtedly a lot of of ethnic and religious intolerance on each side, there is much more than that here.

The conflicts in the Middle East strike me more as extreme paranoia and counter-productive actions in responding to real and perceived threats against one's own side, on the part of each side, leading to a viscous cycle of violence and provocation, that has persisted at least since the founding of Israel, and in some form far earlier than that.

When you have the insanity of 'the one true God' of Islam on one side, and the extreme self-important 'chosen-people' attitude of Judaism on the other, trying to live along side each other, such conflict is all but inevitable.

Even if most people on each side would be prepared to just go about their life in peace, the more extreme elements on each side can all too easily play on their fears and any problems that arise to blame the other side, 'and so it goes'...

You are so full of shit. I'm sick and tired of hearing of a genocide or 'slowocide' as idiots on my campus like to claim. The Palestinian population keeps growing. They are not being wiped out. Israel is not following policies that are reducing their numbers. It just isn't happening.

Take a hard look at what I quoted from your post. You think any of that is factually correct or good reasoning?

Appeal to authority. And pick a better authority figure if you are going to attempt an appeal to authority. Finkelstein is, to put it lightly, a controversial figure. At best, he might be a lone crusader for the truth in opposition to mainstream views. At worst, he is a liar and poor scholar that is rejected by others in his field because of the shoddy quality of his work. Read what other scholars have written about his works. Chomsky loves him. Most others denounce him as a liar. This is the paragon of truth you are resting your appeal to authority on? A man recognized in his own field as a hack writer? A man denied tenure by his university? And you are comfortable with singing praises about his great scholarship?

Some new logical fallacy you invented that seems to be an appeal to Jewishness.

Lies about how Israelis are trying to wipe out Palestinians. In West Bank and the Gaza strip the growth rates are 2.2% and 3.4% respectively. That isn't genocide. They just aren't being wiped out. Their population is growing in size rapidly. If anything, their population growth rate is dangerously high.

Come on! We're better than this.

As for the matter at hand:

Are these the peace activists you are talking about? They were attempting to break the blockade. Israeli soldiers tried to board them. They attacked the soldiers with metal poles and knives. 7 Israeli soldiers were injured. 15 to 19 'peace' activists were killed. This wasn't the Israelis gunning people down for shits and giggles. They tried to enforce the blockade. they 'peace' activists started beating the shit out of them. The Israelis opened fire. I don't consider this to be a massacre. The Israelis should have had the sense to wait for the boat to enter the exclusionary zone though. That's my only complaint.

If a group of people were attacking you with metal poles and knives, you wouldn't shoot them if you had the chance?

I'm going to guess the US and Britain knew about Israel's extracirricular (bloody!) activities with Palestinians since the 1950s , swiping the the timeline back a bit further.

You are correct that "nothing has changed", and even more correct in pointing out that nothing WILL change until Americans stop treating Israel as "holy land".

Looks like they'll need more women pumping out lots of babies to replace the people killed in the upcomming wars and famine:

A Problem for Palestine: Gaza's Birthrate Highest in Middle East

Israel is starving Palestinians to lower birth rate

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest meaningful debate is unlikely, simply that it has trouble surviving the double-blind environment of the internet.

I don't think what you've said is correct or good reasoning. It's a kind of consequence intentionality fallacy. That is the erroneous belief that ones intent is evidenced by the results of their behavior. That's not necessarily true. Genocide though is a serious charge. I would have to know why the person thought it was genocidal and in what sense. According to the UN for example an intentional attempt to destroy part of a population, prevent births or curb the birth rates of a population would be genocidal.

For this to be true, the Israelis would have to honestly be attempting a genocide and they would have to be failing so miserably that the Palestinians have a higher population growth rate than any nation in the Middle East and one of the highest in the world. Believing this requires the Israelis to be super malevolent and super incompetent. I don't think that is the case, but I suppose it is possible. But then, we're talking about hypothetical goals they have they aren't attaining. So we can do little more than idle speculation.

Let me say that I don't see any evidence of a genocide. I see just the opposite: dangerously high population growth rates. So accusations of genocide seem ass-backwards to me. I too "would have to know why the person thought it was genocidal and in what sense." This needs to be made more clear.

My school had a "Israel: Holocaust in the Holy Land" week long event recently, so I'm still a little worked up over all the nonsense the Muslim Student Union was spouting off. Apologies if I'm a little short tempered in all this.

Relief workers in third world countries passing out birth control are committing genocide by this definition. I get it that forced sterilization on a large enough scale is genocide. But I would hope that the UN doesn't use that exact phrase in the quotes as a definition of genocide.

I think this issue is just one part of the bigger picture.

Whether the Israelis were right or not on boarding the boats is shifting the focus from the root of the issue which is that Israel only lets in 25% of the required humanitarian aid required to the Gaza strip. The people that suffer the most from the conflict are the Palestinian civilians.

I think that's the most important issue here. Whether Israel is blocking humanitarian aid.

I fear the Israel will use this as an excuse to block even more aid.

I was listening to a commentator this morning suggesting that part of Israeli policy is aimed at pissing off the population of Gaza and hoping that they will direct at least some of the anger at Hasballah for getting Israel annoyed. IOW, their intended message to Gaza is "stop supporting these guys who are attacking us, and we will relax our restrictions".

Israel is definitely blocking humanitarian aid, just as it is blocking or restricting all kinds of perfectly harmless stuff from getting into Gaza, and I think they are trying to make it clear to the people in Gaza that it is a because they are supporting Hasballah.

They have partially confused the issue here by referring to suspicions of possible arms or other restricted items not related to aid being 'smuggled in" as well.

1] Hiz'ballah is in Lebanon, not Gaza

2] It isn't working out for Israel seeing as the people are MORE pissed at Israel.

3] I don't think this is the best way to improve Israel's image.

Oh so the news reports talking about anti-nuke resolutions that for the first time in history include Israel and are supported by the US are lies? Where's that eyeroll emotion....

Doomy's in "favor" of Israels actions, more-a-less

Israel has a military blockade on an enemy nation

Hippies want to supply aid to enemy nation

Hippies think its a good idea to run the blockade of militaryships

Israel's military proves why it was indeed a bad idea

Conclusion; Hippies are morons, and got what was coming to them

Now class, show of hands, who thinks its a good and safe idea to run a fucking military blockade in support of said military's enemy?

Before I answer this, could you like read your first sentence again? Amazing.

If anyone killed 6,348 US citizens on US soil, their country (or an arbitrary country if there was no particular country responsible) would be vaporized, but somehow when it's Palestinians, 6k is just not impressive enough. And the stats - you sure it's not 6,349? Do you count people who die because of lack of vital medicine, clean water and electricity, like dialysis patients who die because their own piss enters their bloodstream? There are at least one or two of those as well, so maybe 6,350-6,351? How many Israeli civilians have been killed for the past 10 years? Dosens? More or less than the number of people who die from bee stings?

Killings are just a part of the ongoing grand scale ethnic clensing initiated decades ago. Both the strategy and tactics might not have the aim of eradicating every last Palestinian, but they certainly are genocidal - it is a controled exodus of a population by any means possible, including starvation, denial of basic necessities like medical assistance, food and water and direct lethal violence.

True - there are millions of palestinians, but only 1,5 million of them are in Palestine. The rest are fugitives in the region (mostly Jordan) and the wider world. I call the tactics genocidal - meaning that they involve various forms of war crimes commited against civilians on occupied soil. The same way serbian techniques of ethnic clensing of regions of Bosnia were genocidal.

No, actually I would ask him for the sources and references in these theologians' work to see the studies that the conclusions are based on. If he provided or referenced those, I would look them up and judge the sources individually and overall and get a better picture of the author's claims.

In the case of the theologians, there would be a lot they could document, but nothing on the necessity of sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the salvation of as much as a hamster. In case of Prof. Finkelstein, you can certainly do that. You can do the same with Dershowits' book - in fact there is a whole book dedicated to one of his books, namely one of Finkelstein's books.

They contribute to destabilization of the whole region and are the source of so much cultural destruction and radicalization, that it boggles the mind. Frequent aggression and threats towards their neighbours saturate the region with fear and distrust, especially because the violence is used for almost anything. For example, Israel has more than once used the excuse of defense against Hezbolah to completely destroy competing industry in Lebanon - competition through destruction. They have a hammer, thus everything must be a nail. Genocidal policies against a localized population is one thing and is bad enough, conditioning a whole continent into destitution and violent reactionarism is quite another. The source of their power is based in the US, there is no doubt about that, but the Israeli complacency and direct involvement is no less damning for their government and military.

Oh, the conspiracy theory counter - that's nice. Can you document that the mainstream media, government and the intellectual circles do not have common interests and create common narratives? Because I can document the opposite, completely without resorting to questioning your mental faculties with tin foils and the rest.

If you think that the way media is organized and consolidated has no effect on anything but your mood at the moment you read a column or see a movie, your view on media is extremly simplistic and egocentric. Do you want to talk about this? Because it deserves a thread on it's own.

Great.

My complaint is that they made a string of decisions that ended up killing civilians. One more complanit is that they prevent humanitarian aid from arriving to Gaza. And I have a few other complaints as well.

I am sorry - I meant to say this is what we should be "better than" - as in we should be better than allowing one of the worlds strongest military forces to molest a population of 1.5 million, half of which are children.

I don't think you are an imbecile. Completely indifferent to the conditions and hardship of the Palestinian people - yes, but not an imbecile. I can like an imbecile.

What? As if there is a position for and against. According to international law it is illegal and in case of occupation a war crime to block access to basic necessities for the civilian population for any reason. You don't get to choose here - being against it is mandatory, because people who do it commit an actual war crime.

You confuse Israelis and their government here. Israelis just supply meat and trigger fingers for the military, so they are not keeping anything from anyone. Their government does just enough to keep Israely casualties insignificant and avoid domestic revolt, while keeping just enough of a threat to maintain a healthy dose of fear and hate against the Palestinian population. Political dynamics are more complex than your meaningless statements about what the Israelis should do can account for. The man on the street has very little say in this. Their government doesn't give a shit about the safety of Israelis, as long as it isn't a political problem.

They should also stop cutting electricity, water, food and medicine supply to the population, but they don't. They should also stop bombing, arbitrary murder and assassinations, but they don't do that either.

Bottom line for me is that I am sick of both sides. They act like a married couple who beat the shit out of each other and then when the cops show up point the finger at the other. I wish we could send that entire region to another planet so that the rest of the world could live in peace without their tribal bullshit.

Palestine has my sympathy that they should have the basics. But I do not condone violence as a political tactic. Israel has my sympathy in that they don't want violence to affect them. But they do not have my sympathy in carpet bombing a poor population with no resources.

I am at my wits end with both sides. Maybe we need to put a nuke at the Waling Wall and Dome of the Rock and say, "Ok motherfuckers, next one, who acts out, EITHER SIDE, both of you are going to get it".

What do parents who have two kids do when they don't share the toys? They send them to separate rooms and take the toys away. I am sick of the childish tribal bullshit from BOTH SIDES. Neither side is doing humanity any favors by continuing this crap.

"I'm Jewish" so the fuck what?

"I'm Muslim" so the fuck what?

"I am atheist" so the fuck what?

"I am Christian" so the fuck what?

If humanity would focus on reaching old age instead of labels and boarders we'd all be better off. Clubs and labels and religion and borders will exist. I accept that. But our priorities as a species are so stuck in a tribal past that we cannot collectively see what is obvious. We all have one life. We all have one planet. We haven't accepted the fragile nature of life and still see ourselves as narcissistic and "special". Humans are as common as taking a dump and no one is special. I am not special either.

If all humans were forced to drive a car with a nuke on the front bumper with a hair trigger button, we'd all drive carefully. But we let ideas and worship and power distract us, as a species from the fact that we are the same species.

If you killed my family member I'd be pissed and most people, when this happens to them, wont give a shit why you did it, they will just use it as an excuse to "protect themselves" or "get even". This is mundane human behavior and happens, and has happened, throughout our species history.

Our species needs to mature to accept labels and clubs and borders WITHOUT making them the priority. We are all capable of the same range of human emotions and actions, both good and bad, and must accept that we are all the same.

What kills me is that you COULD conduct an experiment with a Israeli toddler and a Palestinian toddler. You could put them in a room and because they are too young to understand adult beefs, would play with each other. Adults fuck children up and create future generations of enemies because they cant understand that they are not special. If a Palestinian can understand what it is like to lose a loved one, then they should accept that a Jew is no different. And the same goes for Isrealis. If you can understand what it is like to lose a loved one, then you should be able to understand what it is like for a Palestinian.

FUCK YOUR DAMNED LABELS AND BORDERS AND STOP KILLING EACH OTHER!

Both sides seem to have historical claims and they are intractable foes. Sharing, even becoming a single nation, which would be my hope, is so unrealistic as to be laughable. Given the emnity, what can other nations do? And with what goals in mind?  Force them to share equally on pain of death? You know that's what would be required.

Who should be responsible for this? The Romans/italians for their part in the diaspora in Judea? The Turks, the British, the French? Nazi Germany for stoking Zionism? Israel for casting out citizens of the lands it seized? The UN? America for its long term support of the Jewish state? Germany for given Israel half a billion dollars in arms in the 1950s and 1960s? The arab world for ignoring the plight of palestinians, for refusing them citizenship? For constantly threatening Israel and maintaining a state of tension? Jewish fundamentalists for brazenly stealing land? Every one of the above and more?

Brian's frustration is more than understandable and if you have a solution, ZuS, the world is breathlessly waiting to hear it. Personally, I am sick to death of the middle east and everything in it.

I understand why they do what they do - because they can. Why can they? Because we provide them with weapons, including planes and the choppers. If they didn't have the most powerful military in the Middle East,

they would think twice about every move they make - you know, like any normal country does.

Why we supply them with weapons is a different question, but a valid one - 6 billion dollars of weaponry as a birthday gift every year has a reason and that reason is not knee-yerk anything, but a long term interest.

Sometimes it is hard to have patience with people who see similarities between an expansionist government live nuclear threat armed to the teeth and engaging in radically violent policies for over 60 years and a parent who compulsively comits petty theft to feed his children, but I will try.

Governments have only one type of short-sightedness and it is connected to the degree of democracy in the electorate. Most governments have to put up a show once every four years, but the essential policy is never up for vote - it is decided behind closed doors. When you evaluate whether soe action is compulsive or modus operandi, your first clue is whether the problem the reaction tries to adress is essential for the policy of the country. If it is, chances that it is a knee-yerk reaction decrease significantly. Some part of the tactics might be a mistake or poorly executed, but the strategy is likely to be long term and with very precise goals in mind.

Your second clue should be whether they have done things like this before and here there is no mistake: humanitarian aid to the Palestinian region has been blocked, shot at, boarded, assaulted and torpedoed boat-to-boat repeatedly for years - even a boat with Desmond Tutu on board was threatened with ramming and live ammunition.

This is clearly an M.O., casulties were just a matter of time. They will continue same procedure and there will be more dead - this is without any question.

Most suicide bombers today try to secure livelihoods for their families by selling their services - it is a business like any other and it is only able to exist because of the conditions they live in. Most Israeli soldiers do the same, only their chances of survival of their services are infinitely higher. I am not talking about these people - they do not have knee-yerk reactions that bomb Lebanon industrial centres for 40 days straight or kill 1300 Palestinians in 2 weeks - they just follow orders. In fact NO ONE has those knee-yerk reactions, because they aren't kne-yerk at all. They are just a part of getting things done, a modus operandi made possible by our weapon supply.

Enough has been enough down there from the begining - it's a strategy, not a reaction to some new situation. The only tunnel vision you can talk about is the fact that they do not have to consider alternatives - they have more ready firepower than Nato.

No, those are very rational actions - they want the land and they are taking it, any way they see fit, because they can. What is insane about that? I just want to stop them, because that is the right thing to do. You see, rational and right are diametrically opposite routes to take very, very, very often.

Again, you are missing the big picture. Since this is an M.O., it is not a localised incident. The problem is not friction between Palestinians and Israeli government, this is just a symptom. The problem is the military and economical power of the United States determined to decide the fate of the Middle East and the rest of the world unilaterally and by force, using any means it has on it's disposal.

Ok, then why do the family and friends invoke Allah if it is strictly business?

All the more reason to expose religion as the power scam it is. If they didn't believe in Allah they wouldn't be blowing themselves up.

And if Jews didn't believe that Yahweh gave them the land because they were the "chosen people", they wouldn't have tried to move back there in the first place.

RELIGION is part of it, and there is no way around it.

Ideology, politics and religion allow humans to become inhuman to each other.

Again, to see the absurdity of adult human behavior all one has to do to see how adults fuck life up is to put kids in the same room who don't have knowledge of adult beefs. Hate is taught. Labels are taught. Politics are taught. But we were all kids at one point.

This "business" wouldn't exist if superstition weren't used to make sheep of others.

FUCK the "two state solution". If I can live with Christian neighbors, and Mexican neighors LITERALLY next door to me without killing them because I might not like some of what they do or say, then both Jews and Muslims need to fuck the idea that borders are needed. All that either side should care about is stopping the violence.

Get the damned Crescent moon of your flag. Get the damned Star of David off your flag, and accept that a human is a human and if your neighbor is different than you so the fuck what.

See, that is a problem for Israel. If they just accept Palestinians as a minority, Palestinians will be a majority in no time - they simply breed like rabbits and their numbers accelerate the more empoverished and base their environment is. This would be no problem, if Israel was a state like any other - but it's not. Israel can resist the natural course of things because it has big guns.

Yep, this would be quite acceptable, if Israel was a normal state. But Israel is not a normal state - it has the most powerful military backing it. So why should they sattle for anything less than total dominion? If they are going to play the role of a forward US base in the Middle East, they are going to be well rewarded for it. They will destroy competition and take as much territory as they see fit, while US nods - that's the deal.

Right, but why you rail against anyone who shows the slightest bit of support for another human who might live there  OR in Palestine for that matter proves my point. BOTH sides want to make it out to be either or and the only thing I see from both sides which both seem to fail to is that death is death and you kill and they kill and abuse begets abuse and the cycle continues.

I would suggest that if you want to get the "bully" Israel to stop, maybe a Martin Luther King or Gandhi approach might work. If that is the way you want to view Israel. But don't think that because I don't call them bullies myself means I support their bullshit carpet bombing. I think they are being just as stupid.

I am simply saying if you always put into something that has failed time after time after time, why the fuck to you continue to repeat the same behavior? I would say the same to Israel too.

The bottom line is that the Palestinians, for the reason you stated "outgunned by Israel" then Palestine isn't really in a position to continue to use violence. If they view Israel as the "bully" maybe they'd get more sympathy from the world if they weren't acting out in violence.

I do have sympathy for them, but it stops when they blow up unarmed people. I do have sympathy for Israeli citizens(not so much the government, just laymen) but it stops when their government uses overkill to try to stop violent Palestinians.

Again, there is blame to be had on both sides and it is not a matter of "us vs them".

As it stands now the advise I would give Palestinians is to knock off the violence. I really do think if they do that long term things will change. I promise in that I do not blindly support all tactics used by Israel. I don't and I am just as pissed at them as I am with violent Palestinians.

Ok, so I would consider occupation of North America as a perfectly rational undertaking with a start point, modus operandi and a mission accomplished if you will. We wanted the land, they were on it. We could remove them, so we did. We knew they had feelings and we hurt them, but we also knew that that would last only as long as they live - so we killed them. Today the white man is "native" to the North America and assumes everything in North America as his property. Same is the case with the rest of the world - we own it the minute we have military and/or economic might sufficient to subdue whoever happens to live on our land, wherever that land happens to be.

I don't understand what is so irational about taking resources. That is the most profitable business, bar none.

Why should Israeli government put themselves in Palestinian shoes? No reason. They have no intention of ruling over a group of people who would have allegiance to anyone but the Israeli rulers. For them to accept one state solution they would either have to be crazy, or find a way to effectively enslave and surpress the entire Palestinian population - sort of the way US has supressed minorities through the prison system and second class citizen status on almost all levels.

They don't give a shit about the tribe. Bush never gave a flying fuck about any one American he sent to death. All they want is obedience, one way or the other. And it just so happens that Israeli government can make Israeli people into a nation of soldiers that will shoot almost anyone, but they can't make a Palestinian do anything other than die. So what the fuck are they going to use Palestinians for? A disciplin tool for their own people and an excuse to bomb Lebanese industry to dust once in a while - for security reasons, of course. But never as a part of the Israeli nation - they would have to be completely out of their mind to do that. Either out of their mind or WITHOUT the weapons supplied by the US. The moment those shipments are cut, Israel becomes a valuable neighbor and a great friend of everyone in the region - they wouldn't have a choice.

I don't understand why you can't put yourself in the shoes of the "deciders". They treat nations the way you treat used cars, buddy.

The Israelis don't want to integrate with a hostile population with fertility rates more than double replacement levels, and they don't have to accept any other resolution partly because of this idiotic "well, both sides are bad" rhetoric.