The Peace for Israel and Gaza Rally in Trafalgar Square today

[Zachor]

And Palestinians? Do they have the right to self-defence?

Self defence if they were attacked but not the right to commit war crimes such as herding children onto the roof of a building where fighters are operating from. Hamas are not acting in self defence in this instance. They were offered peace and rejected it. Although I hate war as much as the next sane man a defeat of Hamas would benefit the Palestinians in the long run.

 

[audiotech]

Although I hate war as much as the next sane man a defeat of Hamas would benefit the Palestinians in the long run.

Zionist democracy in action.

 

[quimcunx]

Self defence if they were attacked but not the right to commit war crimes such as herding children onto the roof of a building where fighters are operating from. Hamas are not acting in self defence in this instance. They were offered peace and rejected it. Although I hate war as much as the next sane man a defeat of Hamas would benefit the Palestinians in the long run.

So would you support a proper Palestinian army being set up, one of equal number and strength to the Israeli army so that a (let's say non-Hamas) government could use it to defend Palestine from any potential attacks? This would take away any excuse for herding children onto roofs (link?) or whatever other Hamas activities it is you object to?

 

[Corax]

They were offered peace and rejected it.

O rly?

http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/7191

Self defence if they were attacked but not the right to commit war crimes such as herding children onto the roof of a building where fighters are operating from.

Your source?

Can you go read that article I linked please? It's very short, will only take a minute or two at most. Here it is again:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...ate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

Tell you what, to save you having to click, here's the text:

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

 

[audiotech]

If you are an infantry soldier you will be out in front and there are a lot of boots on the ground in Gaza at the moment.

I know, presumably stepping over the bodies of civilian dead?

 

[audiotech]

I can assure you they were not. These regrets were not just from the stage but were in the conversations of the people around me, regret for the position that Hamas have placed Gazans in by deliberately provoking the Israelis into defensive retaliation because of Hamas rocket attacks on civilian areas and other terrorist activity.

The 'deliberate provocation' was planned and initiated by Israel. All the available information, the seige itself, the attacks in November, the timing of it all points to that.

 

[Dimitris]

Although I hate war as much as the next sane man a defeat of Hamas would benefit the Palestinians in the long run.

With this war, not only you are not exterminating Hamas, but you are creating the framework for thousands new people to join them.

Do not forget that nearly the half of the population of Gaza are children, children that throughout their life they have witnessed war, death and horror.... These children in a few years will be the new Hamas followers.

Violence brings more Violence, this is a fact that it has been proven to be true a hudge number of times throughout history.

 

[CUMBRIANDRAGON]

I wish that civilian lives could have been spared in all this, all sensible and thinking people do but Israel does have a right to self defence and the Palestinians as well as the Israelis would be much better off without the presence of the butchers of Hamas.

If you got rid of Hamas how would this help if you still have the zionists

 

[CUMBRIANDRAGON]

And Palestinians? Do they have the right to self-defence?

No because usa says there not in there gang

 

[Spion]

Zachor is the IDF's self appointed comical Ali.

Just about everything he says is false or a complete reversal of reality

 

[Blagsta]

I wish that civilian lives could have been spared in all this, all sensible and thinking people do but Israel does have a right to self defence and the Palestinians as well as the Israelis would be much better off without the presence of the butchers of Hamas.

Does that self defence include targetting UN aid vehicles, blocking the International Red Cross and deliberately shelling civilians?

 

[claphamboy]

Self defence if they were attacked but not the right to commit war crimes such as herding children onto the roof of a building where fighters are operating from. Hamas are not acting in self defence in this instance. They were offered peace and rejected it. Although I hate war as much as the next sane man a defeat of Hamas would benefit the Palestinians in the long run.

Do you have a link to support this?

Or are you talking bollocks again?

 

[untethered]

fixed it for you

What makes you think women and children can't be Hamas fighters?

 

[untethered]

Regarding the general demonstration, it's good to see calls for peace and respect for the law coming from people acting peacefully and respectfully of the law.

 

[Spion]

Self defence if they were attacked but not the right to commit war crimes such as herding children onto the roof of a building where fighters are operating from. Hamas are not acting in self defence in this instance. They were offered peace and rejected it. Although I hate war as much as the next sane man a defeat of Hamas would benefit the Palestinians in the long run.

Is this more of your lies? Evidence please

 

[Zachor]

Is this more of your lies? Evidence please

I'll have this link with you some time tomorrow. Can't be arsed to spoon feed you at the moment and I've got other things to do.

 

[Zachor]

Regarding the general demonstration, it's good to see calls for peace and respect for the law coming from people acting peacefully and respectfully of the law.

Spot on. I think that the fact that the Anti Hamas Peace for Israel and Gaza demo was uncannily peaceful is going to be noticed and compared favourably with the antics of the clerical fascists and the leftist useful idiots at the anti Israel protests.

Anyway, well done to the protesters at the Anti Hamas Peace rally for standing up for peace, for democracy and for Israel.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Does that include support for terrorising people out of their homes, herding them into a ghetto, embargoing food, medicines, power and water and generally treating them like subhumans?

 

[Spion]

Does that include support for terrorising people out of their homes, herding them into a ghetto, embargoing food, medicines, power and water and generally treating them like subhumans?

Yes, but it was with 'heartfelt' 'regret' and 'dignity' etc

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Honestly, you could make a bingo card.

 

[agricola]

Yes, but it was with 'heartfelt' 'regret' and 'dignity' etc

In fact it is probably impossible to demonstrate more peacefully, more respectfully in favour of a war that is responsible for nearly 900 deaths - short of some kind of silent meditation.

 

[Spion]

Honestly, you could make a bingo card.

Zachor bingo? Now there's an idea

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Zachor bingo? Now there's an idea

'Two Fat (well, not very fat 'cos of the Israeli blockade) Ladies, let's see 'em get away from an Apache gunship, hahaha look at them run *foom* got 'em!

Eighty eight.'

 

[agricola]

Zachor bingo? Now there's an idea

Dont be so ridiculous. Regev would be shouting house within a minute of the game starting.

 

[Blagsta]

Spot on. I think that the fact that the Anti Hamas Peace for Israel and Gaza demo was uncannily peaceful is going to be noticed and compared favourably with the antics of the clerical fascists and the leftist useful idiots at the anti Israel protests.

Anyway, well done to the protesters at the Anti Hamas Peace rally for standing up for peace, for democracy and for Israel.

Standing up for peace by supporting war? What?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

BBC played along nicely. Gave the pro war-crimes demo a lot more coverage than the anti-war crimes one.

 

[winjer]

Regev would be shouting house within a minute of the game starting.

You don't shout house, you shout "hiding place".

 

[Roadkill]

Speakers stressed that peace had been offered to Hamas but they rejected it, they made clear that Israel had done everything it could to avoid this war but had to use its absolute right to protect its own citizens.

So, all lies then.

Regarding the general demonstration, it's good to see calls for peace and respect for the law coming from people acting peacefully and respectfully of the law.

Because, of course, Saturday's march was just one big excuse to throw things at the police.

 

[untethered]

Because, of course, Saturday's march was just one big excuse to throw things at the police.

In fact it was no excuse, but that it was treated as such is a matter for great regret, if not a great deal of surprise.

 

[Roadkill]

In fact it was no excuse, but that it was treated as such is a matter for great regret, if not a great deal of surprise.

What a magnificently slippery answer.

Straight question: do you think that all or most people who marched on Saturday were bent on trouble, or contemptuous of the law?