Itâs still not clear whether the attack on the Israeli tow truck driver near Hebron last Sunday can be attributed to criminal intent or a terrorist plot. Often these motivations are intertwined and not readily distinguishable. In the end, therefore, it doesnât really matter what impelled local Palestinian Arabs to phone for a tow truck and then set upon the Israeli who responded to their purported call for help, pounding his head with metal pipes and wrenches. That attack didnât raise much commotion in the Palestinian Authority. What did cause outrage was that the driver, bleeding profusely from his wounds, dared defend himself. He pulled out a pistol and shot at his three assailants, killing two and wounding a third who escaped. Itâs what happened next that is most instructive about our situation. After the driver, a 52-year-old Ashkelon resident, was taken to the hospital, he was interrogated by police and a comprehensive forensic investigation was launched. No such moves were necessary for the PA. Its spin was instantaneous and unambiguous. In an official statement, PA President Mahmoud Abbas decreed without hesitation or inspection that âsettlers commit crimes under the auspices of the Israeli government and the IDF.â This contention resonated in the international media. The attack on a middle-aged Israeli civilian disappeared under the radar overseas, but his reaction generated indignation without question. It was man bites dog. Yet Abbasâs unsubstantiated declaration couldnât be more skewed. He willfully disregarded the fact that a trap was set for an unsuspecting victim. This could have been a scheme to heist his vehicle or a kidnapping attempt (of the sort tried of late several times in Judea and Samaria). Not only didnât this prevent Abbas from asserting that it was the Israeli who had committed a crime, but he ascribed malevolent involvement to the Israeli government and army. This vilification constitutes incitement to more violence and vendettas, in keeping with the PAâs traditions. But the slander extends further. Without a second thought, Abbasâs knee-jerk inclination was to identify the Israeli shooter as a settler, thereby casting aspersions on all so-called settlers and giving increased legitimacy to violence against them. Itâs immaterial that the driver in question hailed from Ashkelon. The bottom line is that all Israelis, regardless of their place of residence, are considered settlers and that any accusation may be leveled at âsettlers,â the facts notwithstanding. If any additional evidence were needed of the PAâs official succor for anyone who attacks Israelis, it was furnished by Abbasâs official news agency, WAFA, which lamented the two deceased attackers as âmartyrs.â WAFAâs report cited unidentified âspeakersâ who âdenounced the crimes of the settlers under the continued support and protection of the Israeli occupation army, demanding the international community to intervene to end the occupation and to end crimes against our people and land and property.... âThey stressed the importance of national unity and closing ranks and activating the popular resistance against the occupation and the settlers to leave our land and establish an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.â In other words, a foiled onslaught against a Jew becomes the pretext for calling for âactivating the popular resistance against the occupation and the settlersâ â a code phrase for terrorism. This is disconcertingly reminiscent of the calumny Ramallah disseminated following the February 16 overturning of an Arab school bus outside Jerusalem. Israeli paramedics risked their lives by venturing into the still-burning bus to rescue trapped children. Yet IDF servicemen were vehemently accused of malice and of âintentionally foiling Palestinian rescuers.â There was no note of the cutting-edge resuscitation and subsequent treatment accorded the injured in Israeli trauma wards. Not only werenât there even grudging hints of gratitude, but the accident was turned into another blame-Israel fest. Anyone who genuinely desires peace must ponder hard whether unbridled, cynical incitement is at all compatible with lip-service to coexistence. Can a credible peace momentum materialize from such callous manipulations of information? When no opportunity is missed to deepen the deception, it gains a raison dâêtre of its own.
The state of Isreal has no right to exist in its present state. All the rightful goodwill the Jewish people had after the attempt to destroy her people has been cast away by those who have governed Isreal from its inception. Harsh but true.
For what it's worth I think you are one of the best posters on here - in terms of actual genuine good quality football content. In other ways though it's obvious that your mind is very engaged with the current conflict in Israel/Palestine. I include myself in this description, I've met many people from conflict zones who have a weird desire to try convince everyone outwith the conflict that they are right and the other side are evil - look at Medro's big thread of ****e for a perfect example. I feel you are doing a bit of a Medro here, you are giving us a story which paints a certain people in an unfavourable light, maybe they are fully deserving of such a painting, I'm not sure - but I am pretty sure that you are not giving, and will never give us, the other side of this particular argument.
No surprise that all the pro palestine people are ganging up on a pro israel post. Mick both the israelis and palestinians are idiots for the way they act, the same as loyalists and republicans in Ireland. There is, absolutely, 100%, no difference.
The problem is that the Western Media, especially the BBC, automatically believes anything the Arabs say without question, despite their appauling track record of being proved liars time and time again. By the time the truth comes out, it's no longer reported as a 'front page' item, but is invariably buried away - if it's reported at all.
I think to try and portray the 2 conflicts as the same is ludicrous really Th eproblem here is that in isolated incidents you cant judge the whole issue/problem based on that 1 incident
I think you will find that the head of the BBC actually agreed that the pressure is there to 'hide' the israeli side of things or was that ITV or both?
To say 'they are both as bad as each other' is the lazy way to sit on the fence with such issues - I'd prefer maybe to say that people in these conflicts are doing some equally horrifying crimes against each other, which might sound the same but it's not. When you have a conflict such as Israel or Northern Ireland it's most often about the perception of power within the society - in Northern Ireland the Protestants had all the power of the state and were kicking and screaming to hold on to it, even to the point where the incumbent leaders of the DUP still didn't accept the theory of sharing power with Catholics until well into the 21st century (seriously!). In Israel we have a modern western democratic state with a third world non-state within it's very own borders - one ethnic people are much more powerful than another within the same geographical territory - and this is completely based on culture and ethnicity, to be a successful Arab in Israel you have to declare yourself as an 'Israeli Arab' rather than a Palestinian. So while they blow each other up and hack each other to death it's easy to think that they are both as bad as each other - but as much as that might be true of brutality, it's not true to the actual causes of the conflict - and that is gaping inequality between two different ethnicities. The only way to solve it is to create a Palestinian state and to help it to move towards being as proud and productive as it's Israeli neighbour - this is hugely unpopular within Israel, because it's seen as giving an inch to the enemy - and that's our main sticking point today.
such delusion its unbelieveable like how they believed Israel when they said they had information stole from their computers by the recently uncovered Flame virus? Now if there was a suspicion of criminality well why wasnt there an investigation in order to bring the killers to justice, but like a good fascist state Israel just sent in the gunships straight away. How many civilians have they killed since?
or how the western media believe that Israel only bulldozes empty unoccupied houses please log in to view this image
Or only killed "militants" in its attacks. Israeli definition of militant = if it moves its a militant [NSFW] please log in to view this image [/NSFW] please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
How many times am I going to have to correct this ****. It is not democratic. at the very least it is an ethnocracy, at the worst it is a fascist apartheid state. No academic can even begin to make the case for Israel being a democracy.
I got it off google image search, I know the image well. It is available from thousands of different sources. Does that diminish its content? No! Its is a Palestinian child buried alive, be it from an islamist site or any other the picture still tells the same story
I can't have your debates on the issue at all because you insist on posting horrifying images - I'm sure we could find some pictures of blown up Israeli buses to balance it out - but I'd rather leave the who-has-done-what out of it and ask why are people doing such things to each other and how do we fix it?
