Comments

1
The Palestinians voted for known murderers of innocent civilians to lead them. And lead them into launching rocket strikes and suicide bombings on Israeli civilians they did.

Now they cry foul when the consequences of their electoral choices come home?

Yes, sanity appears in short supply on both sides here. Israeli authorities pursuing a true two state solution in good faith is long overdue. But asking them to deal in good faith with the murderous scum of Hamas is laughable. You can't have good faith unreciprocated in diplomatic relations. And Hamas is incapable of it.

As for comparing Israeli to Palestinian deaths, Kid Herz, ask your pals in Hamas to stop using civilian locations as weapons depots and that might just help. Ask them to stop using their own people as human shields and maybe those people won't be hurt as much. Just a thought, Kid Herz..
2
Why I support Palestine and Hamas - If Israel would let Palestinians live normal lives with hope for a future, as opposed to periodically killing them and stealing their land, bombing their infrastructure and not allowing their nation to develop, then it wouldn't radicalize the Palestinians. There's no Palestinian equivalence to what Israel has done to them for decades. Israel is the "bad guy" here, without a doubt.
3
Not a word about the dozens of tunnels Hamas built into Israel with the sole intent of slaughtering Jews on Rosh HaShana.

Not a word about the tens of millions of dollars intended for infrastructure but stolen by Hamas to build tunnels to slaughter Jews.

Not a word about the dozens of Palestinians executed by Hamas for protesting against Hamas.

Shame on you Ansel.
4
Hey Ansel,

Why don't YOU go to Gaza and see how it works out for you.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volok…

5
Slog Morning News: Fair and Balanced
6
@ 3, that story has been circulating on pro-Israel sites, but until I see it reported by reputable media sources, it isn't true.
7
I wish you had a filter so I could erase everything about the middle east. I don't want to even hear about it anymore.
8
War crimes.
9
The notion (one of Obama's favorite words) that Israel must politely endure shelling and bombing because to strike back would kill the human shields that Hamas places in and on its targets (tunnels, weapons) is totally illogical and immoral. Hamas purposely plays the "think of the children card" as it places them in harms way, getting the ear and heartstrings of the anti-Israel left, including the White House.

Hamas is as guilty of child abuse and murder as much as a gun nut leaving a loaded revolver on the coffee table or a dizzy parent leaving kids in a hot car while shopping at the mall.

Not just children, all the Palestinians they can use will do.

For adversary X to use human shields as a way to
prevent adversary Y from attacking it while continuing to attack adversary Y has never been upheld in any sense of morality. Israel has the right to defend itself. To say otherwise is the epitome of anti-Semitism.

The fact is that Arafat, the PLO, and Hamas never have really cared about the Palestinians, nor would they ever want to. The seeds for a two state solution were available for them to go with since the Camp David accords. No, the Palestinians are too valuable to them as tools and pawns heir ultimate wipe-Israel-off-the-face-of-the-earth objective.



10
@4

I notice Bernstein isn't volunteering to go do some on-the-ground research in Gaza himself, in your link there.

It's not a bad idea, though, if handled a bit more apolitically-- I for one would happily back a kickstarter to send American bloggers (on both sides of the debate) into Gaza for some first-hand reporting.
11
Ansel, why don't you start a Hamas support blog and use that to pour out your feelings. We can get news about this area from the NYT and other outlets. We don't need it from the Stranger, which as far as I know doesn't have any reporters stationed in Gaza.
12

Are nearby states taking in refugee children? U.A.E.?
13
Jesus Christ... Have we gotten EVERY conservatroll Slog has on this thread already? Who's left out?
14
@13 - I'm FAR from a conservatroll, but I doubt I'm the only one who agrees in this case with raindrop and seattleblues. (shudder)
15
@13

Maybe that tells us something about the sort of person who spends a Saturday morning in August indoors, posting comments on blogs.

You know, like you and me.
16
Not enough Jews dying for ya??? Too bad.

Ignoring more horrific issues in Syria and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands... and those people did NOT start by firing missiles!

Easy to blame the Jews (Israel). Old story...
17
If the point is to arrive at some clear moral opinion you have to discount extremist rhetoric from both sides. Take all the extremist rants out of the moral equation; count them as evidence with zero weight.

Otherwise, you’re in this spiral to insanity where educated people speak seriously of genocide.

The same goes for the endless tit-for-tat violence. The suffering is real, but no rocket attack or air strike can count as moral evidence because every one cancels every other one out.

I don’t know the answer in the long run. But I can see no way to begin thinking about this mess except to categorize these two broad groups of facts as inadmissible moral evidence and go forward from there.
18
Is the whole "...turn the other cheek" thang considered extreme rhetoric?
19
It is amazing how Ansel can judge Hamas at their hypothetical best with a few cherry picked examples while ignoring countless examples of them acting at their worst and their stated intentions 100% of the time when talking to Arab audiences.

Simultaneously he judges Israelies at their worst and fringe elements only (even when the example includes someone being fired for their extremist views)

Totally fair way to view the situation.
20
The Jewish migration to Palestine was, from the very start, an occupation. It was a migration organized from the outside. The Jews were not invited, and the plan never contemplated showing deference to the Palestinians as a sovereign host. The Jews wanted a place where they would be free from the (truly awful) persecution they faced elsewhere. That meant implicitly they would settle for nothing less than political autonomy within some area. The specific boundaries can be debated, but regardless of which border you consider ‘original’ or ‘legitimate’, some territory had to be taken away from Palestinian Arabs and appropriated by Jewish immigrants. Otherwise the whole Jewish homeland project would make no sense.
22
The conflict rests on a theft of land. The rest is reaction and reaction.
23
@20 & @22 -- You make it sound like the Jews just up and inundated Palestine for no reason, completely ignoring the fact that they lived there for thousands of years in harmony with their neighbors until the UN actually announced that that was to be their place of refuge, at which point the surrounding Arab nations attacked. You also seem oblivious to the fact that Israel's next-door neighbor Jordan is the other, and far larger, segment of what had been British-mandated Palestine (Israel has slightly over 20,000 square kilometers of land; Jordan has a bit less than 90,000). What keeps the Palestinian Arabs from settling in Jordan? For that matter, if they're unable to live in peace with the Jews on that little sliver of the Middle East, why will NONE of the Arab nations controlling 99% of the land area in that region accept them as settlers? Is it because keeping a Palestinian presence on one side and a Jordanian presence on the other side of the main source of potable water in the region, the Jordan River on the eastern border of Israel, makes it difficult for Israel to support its Jewish population? Or could there be some other, less obvious reason?
24
@23 Who cares about your stupid ancient history, half of which you probably got wrong? You could stretch it back to before there was such a thing as Judaism. Different tribes have passed through and settled in that regions since man stepped out of Africa. I'm talking about the here and now. Palestinians want to peacefully go about their lives - grow up, study a trade of choice, start families, go at it alone, screw up, fix it up, have a little fun, and eventually grow old and die and disappear out of memory - all without the threat of an Israeli gunship blowing up their block, bulldozing their farmland and orchards, bulldozing their homes, keeping them from having a normal country - you know, with, like, shipping ports and airports - and interacting with the outside world. They want the same thing Israelis and everyone else want. Instead, what kind of future can they contemplate? They have no future. "Israel will keep this an unbearable shithole without opportunities, the whole world's against us, and eventually the Israeli military will come in and kill me or my family or my friends. So what's the point? What do I have to lose? There's nothing. I don't have anything."

That's why they're fighting. Israel has made them radicals.
25
I don't really want to wade into the Israel/Hamas debate, but I keep looking at the pic of the "unexploded bomb", and I'm pretty sure it is a fake. That shell wasn't dropped from any plane (no fins). It is too big to have been fired from a tank or field artillery gun. There is no impact crater; it looks like it was just placed there next to the road. It looks like a shell from an old howitzer or a battleship. It is almost certainly nothing that Israel has in its arsenal.
26
@6

OK, what's your excuse for the Hamas tunnels? Whether it was an attack during Rosh Hashana or some other day, surely you can't deny the fact they they were built for the sole purpose of killing Jews.
27
@25

you are correct...its a total fake

But AnselMyButtReallyHerz is not educated enough to recognize that fact.

Which is why low education and low skills people like him work at the Sthwanger - they are simply not capable of getting another job that isnt at min wage. They really are pretty pathetic when you think about it.
28
@ 26, what if they're bomb shelters? It could be. We are inly getting Israel's story, and it's not being vetted by reputable media sources. Do they really lead to Israeli areas? How do we know?

As I implied (and as you really should have picked up), I'll believe when reputable media sources say that's what they were doing. Until then, I will not forget that the first casualty in war is the truth.
29
@24 - Get a grip. If the Palestinian people want to go about their lives peacefully, they have plenty of opportunity to stop voting to be governed by Hamas, and even to clamp down on Hamas and get them out of there, like the people in three Iraqi villages did just this week to ISIS. The only thing stopping the Palestinians from negotiating peace and getting their own nation is the governments they elect and the guerrilla warfare those governments enjoy waging.
30
@28
You first casualty is poor arithmetic.
31
@28,

I'm pretty sure I've heard reports of Israeli troops engaging Palestinian militants in those tunnels. What are those militants doing in there?
32
@28 - Please provide us with one or two of what you consider to be reputable media sources.
33
So the majority here basically is saying, "Some Palestinians are jerks, so kill whichever ones you want."
34
@33: I don't see how you deduce that. Anyhow, I trust that tomorrow morning we'll have more of a potpourri of items to banter about. Hopefully.
35
@ 30, those are big words coming from someone who made a complete fool of himself and wouldn't comment on that thread anymore. Hahaha

@ 31, that's possible too, likely even. But that's quite different from the alleged foiled plot @6 shared with us.

@ 32, don't be coy.
36
Where's venomlash when you need him?
37
@35: You thought I was being coy? Good grief man. You could have easily listed NYT, AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, NPR, BBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.
I really didn't expect you to say Fox if that is what you were getting at. Give me a break. I've known you for a long time.
Or maybe you're afraid of someone providing links to the sources you provide that show the legitimacy you asked for?

You accuse me of being coy; I accuse you of being insincere.

(BTW anyone, is the UPI still around?)
38
@36: I would be interested in his commentary as well.

He's probably out slumming with his GF at 'The Mutiny' in Chicago, just a guess.
39
That's no bomb. And photos of the tunnels, lined in concrete, leading into Israel, have appeared in the NYT. CNN, which is not notably a pro-Israel news source, reported that one tunnel's entrance was under the prayer section of a Gaza mosque.

Amos Oz, an Israeli author who is definitely not a warhawk, compared Hama's position as that of a man sitting down firing a rifle at his enemy, wh while a baby is on his lap. Maybe you can figure out that analogy; maybe you can't or don't want to.
40
@ 37, the lady doth protest too much. If you know me like you claim, than it was your query that was insincere. And the UPO went belly up years ago.
41
@26 "surely you can't deny the fact they they were built for the sole purpose of killing Jews."

Surely, fighting off invaders is more likely but you'd first have to acknowledge that Israelis are colonizing Palestine.
42
@39 Enough of that nonsense: when the apartheid ghetto has the size of a postage stamp, children are likely to be found near military positions. The responsibility first lies with the invaders who trapped them there.
44
@43, ear gages?

@41, when Israel enters Gaza, it's by above-ground. It doesn't build tunnels. What Israel's built has been the Iron Dome and bomb shelters, which is why the death toll of Hamas's rocket fire into Israel hasn't been bad. If Hamas had built bomb shelters instead of tunnels to Egypt and Israel, or allowed the population they control to get into those tunnels (which they haven't), there would have been less deaths in Gaza, since Israel has been warning Gaza residents before bombing. But Hamas didn't do so, knowing very well that civilian deaths would get them good press. Every time you see a photo of Gaza residents in rubble, Hamas has succeeded. That political organization simply doesn't care about its people -- they've used internationally-donated funds to buy armaments instead of food and housing -- and that's disgusting.
45
Hi Stranger. We used to have something. A connection. i'd listen and look, and I'd find thought provoking things in what you'd post. I identified with your point of view. revel with you in the joy and culture of our city. take your word for recommendations on new and, frankly, sometimes lackluster activities. your personality was something that cheered me up, showed me something unexpected, encouraged me to have fun, made me think about something a little harder, or just reassured me there were people like me out there living in the world. Lately I feel like I just don't know you anymore. Not sure when you jumped the shark. But all your good content and comments that used to make me laugh or identify with other Seattle residents (and friends), it's just disappeared. Sure, I occasionally hear about a good show, but mostly you just repost ill thought out garbage from the internet. I just don't know who you are anymore. With Savage on perpetual vacation, no worthwhile coverage of national politics (Hey Ansel, Charles, Paul, if you were real journalists, you'd go report from Israel or Gaza. If you were worried about human progress, you'd organize a panel discussion or author insightful editorial), lack of decent local news, and junk like that call to the Blue Angels office, I just don't care to listen you anymore.

I feel like... I've changed. But you've changed, too. And I just don't like the new you.

goodbye.
46
Hey Man, Is That Freedom Rock? Yeah Man. Well Turn it Up, Man!
48
Herz throws out the red meat and y'all gobble it up.

Fuck it, I'm off to seafair!
49
@23 Actually, no, they did not live in harmony with their neighbors for thousands of years. The area was unstable for centuries, subject to occupation, rebellion, and cultural conflict. But that’s irrelevant. If cultural groups have a right to reclaim their ancient borders by UN fiat, America can start packing.

The sad reality is that the damage of displacement is irreversible. And that includes the Jewish settlement of Palestine. I am not saying the Jews should leave now. But we have to acknowledge that the Jewish people’s special historical claim on that territory is a cultural myth and nothing more. It should not be allowed to sway the debate.

I am talking about MY Jewish cultural heritage. It’s vivid and complicated. But I have to accept that MY nostalgic myths don’t supersede the human rights of others. Is that so hard?
50
For a huge piece of metal dropped from a plane, that bomb sure retained its shape pretty well.
51
@36, 38: I'm not sure what I'm supposed to comment on. The situation in Israel and Gaza is fucked up. Hamas continues to target Israeli civilians and use Gazan Palestinians as human shields for the express purpose of getting them killed by Israeli strikes. Israel continues to take the bait and indiscriminately bomb civilians on the off chance that they'll kill a few Hamas fighters. Long story short, Hamas is the real bad guys here but their plan is to paint Israel as the bad guy and Israel, being run mostly by Likudniks, willingly obliges by committing atrocities that, while certainly less brazenly monstrous, manage to kill a lot more civilians than the actions of Hamas.

For the record, raindrop, I'm not a fan of clubs or of live concerts usually. I'm neurotic, obsessive, intensely cerebral, and possessed of unusually sharp senses; the noise, the lights, the press of people, it all gets to be too much for me to enjoy. I prefer to listen to music with headphones on in an otherwise quiet room, preferably alone and commonly with my eyes closed so that I can better enjoy the music.
52
I don't know what is in the picture, it is not an aerial bomb. It is too big to be an artillery shell, (150 mm are probably the biggest)

It could be many things, maybe a cannister from Israeli Defense Forces, but isn't a bomb, and if it was, it would be not making and indentation in the ground... or someone non chanlanty standing next to it...
54
Thanks, Ansel. A beautiful baby was born today in a Gaza school where her family took refuge. Her father named her "Gaza Resists" (not sure what that would be in Arabic). Palestinians will survive and thrive in spite of this horrible disaster Israel has inflicted on them while the world sat by and watched. Thank you for telling their story.
55
Oh gezuz, @54. Gaza is not resisting; Hamas has been attacking Israel since Israel left Gaza, years ago.

But it's useless. No one in this country under the age of 50 has anyhistorical knowledge of the Israel/Arab situation, and considers the Arabs (which is what the "Palestinians" are) to be the new saints -- despite the fact that every goddamn Middle Eastern country is ruled by kings or dictators. The only reason Israeli children are not being killed by the missiles being sent from Hamas is that the Israelis have invested in defense. Since Hamas hasn't, you'd think that if they cared about their population, they wouldn't attack Israel. But evidently they don't care. What they care about is destroying Israel.

You're all idiots, and you're being (apparently willingly) used.
56
@55 You're the idiot, and it's sad, because you're usually not. Hamas *wants* to fight Israel!? Hamas actually thinks that it can destroy the nation with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, supported by the most powerful militaries in the world, with puny rockets and small arms and a hungry, sick, tired, confused population?! Do you really, really believe this? Please say, "No." (I fear the answer is "Yes.")

Or maybe you buy into the zombie theory of Hamas, where they wake up and rise from their beds like transfixed somnambulists, muttering, "Must kill Jews... Must kill Jews..."

"Stop! Don't fire that rocket at the peaceful nation of Israel! The peaceful nation with the militarized population, the massive military hardware, the atomic and chemical, and biological weapons! That peaceful nation! Don't you see I'm sitting here holding my baby? You're going to provoke our peaceful, thoroughly armed nation to attack us! Why are you using us as your human shield? Stop!"

"Must kill Jews... Must kill Jews..."

Any person with a simple combination of neurons knows this is a winless war, a war that will result in death and destruction for them. Any partly reasonable, semi-sane person not out of a horror movie ("Must kill Jews...") would much, much rather stay home, brew coffee, feed the kids, and go to work, rather than LIVE IN A WAR ZONE. Usually, and I'm speaking generally here, living in a war zone is not first choice. If there's an alternative to not getting your city and your family blown up, you'll take that, even at a great personal cost to you. Because just about any great personal cost is better than living in a war zone.

"They elected their leaders! Now let them die!"

If they really could live in peace and reasonable (not extravagant) prosperity by putting someone else in charge, don't you think they would have done so by now?

If the option of peace was *really* up to them, after all these years of Israel using them to exercise their military, try out their latest bombs, don't you think they would have taken that option, like, yesterday?

Or do you really think they like to live like this?

"We can't help it... Must kill Jews..."

Think about this: You are a reasonable person who is rationalizing the wholesale slaughter of civilians, in the thousands (for just this latest campaign), by a military force. Somehow, the corner of your brain that normally recognizes war crimes isn't lighting up. That's what's amazing and what's sad. Why is the "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so mythically hard to formulate? It's not because it's so complex - mutual trust and respect, not cheating each other, giving up a little and letting each other live. (There! Where's my Nobel Prize?) Rather, it's because we refuse to recognize that the more powerful party - Israel, our buddy - is not playing fair, doesn't want to give up anything, only wants to take more and more land, provoke fights with a weaker opponent, and win (something, eventually). I've only been following this since the start of George W. Bush's presidency, and absolutely everything that I've seen is that Israel wants military conflict, likely because it knows it has the upper hand and can keep adding land and control over Palestine. If things are relatively stable, if, God forbid, it looks like peace might break out, then it provokes the Palestinians. It gets the pot stirring again. Every single time.

Why isn't there peace in the Middle East? Because Israel doesn't want it. Bar none. They have the bigger stick and they're happy to use it. Who's going to stop them? The other kids with the biggest sticks are all on their side.

But keep rationalizing. "Israel *had* to blow up those schools, those shelters, those villages, those orchards! They had to kill all those families! *They had no choice!* It's like it was Hamas in those tanks and helicopter gunships pulling the trigger! God gave them that land - all of it (here's the deed) - and now they have to take it. What are they going to do? Say 'No' to God?"
57
Today on Politico.com:

--Earlier, a senior Palestinian diplomat expressed outrage over killings and bloodshed on both sides in Gaza and called for negotiations to end the savage fighting that has gone on for nearly a month. “What we need now is to stop this fighting, to address the tragic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip,” Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding “these things need to be stopped.”

He said that putting the people of Gaza “in a continuous situation of confrontation and fighting” will only lead to more violence, saying “This is an excellent atmosphere for radicalism.”

“But if you give them [Palestinians] hope, you open the borders, you let them go to school, let them look for good jobs, let them look for moderation. And we will succeed in allowing all those who want to have peace
to have the upper hand.”--
58
All I'm concerned about is what should I wear (?) and how do we score the best view (?) whem we shock n' awe those Arab negro asses. Fire up the barbecue!
59
That photo is not of a bomb or an artillery shell.

It's part of an old external wing-mounted fuel tank. And I'm 70% sure it's NOT the kind any of the Israel jets even use currently.

So. Yup. You fell for a fake.
60
Just wanted your perspective, venom. It being valuable and all.

Please wait...

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