The “Tottenham Ayatollah” isn’t so keen on martyrdom, after all. More.
79 Replies to “Those Fickle Islamists”
These Islamists are actually pretty pathetic. Get a gun and get to the southern border, there are Israelis to fight, you sad excuse for a jihadi!
What a loser. The should’ve but a bullet in his head.
Cowardly vermin that strap explosives on SOMEONE ELSE and send them off to kill and die but are afraid of death themselves. Pathetic. This trash is beyond contempt.
Well, well…what goes around has come around for Islamofascist Omar Bakri.
Guess he’s not ready for his 72 virgins.
I really hope the Brits don’t relent on his expulsion and I hope some PC leftist bureaucrat doesn’t somehow let him into Britain.
Wonder if Louise Arbour, aka “Louey the Slabhead” will champion his cause and sanction Israel, the Royal Navy, Tony Blair and George Bush for offending his peaceful muslim feelings ???
What a total lib/left frog bitch that one is. She sure fits right in with the Nazi reasoning and mentality towards Jews.
This is what Bakri said, as he was refused on board the British ship:
“I know myself I am not welcome in the UK … but I have the right like everyone else to safety,”
Now wait, Estemmed Imam Bakri, you assert that you have the right like everyone else to safety???
Then, why were you kicked out of the UK for preaching violence against non-Muslims?
Some of us hope Isreal has a bomb with Bakri’s Beirut address on it….!
Well, we can hope can’t we..?
Why am I nervous that he is going to end up in Canada with a fake passport?
Revealing themselves for the cowards & bullies they are. I have absolutely no empathy for this war mongrel & human bomb suicide enthusiast.
I say leave him in the pit he helped design.
After all Mullah there s all those Virgins waiting for your corpulent touch.
Say hi to Bo & Peep for us will yeah? As well as your fellow cultists. David Koresh & Jim Jones.
Gee I wonder how many virgins they have?
Those who can, DIE, those who can’t, CRY.
(reference: those who can do, those who can’t teach).
“…tried to board a ship full of women and children…”
“…but his bid to sneak on one of our ships was blocked at harbour gates by sharp-eyed officials…”
Sharp-eyed indeed!
TrustOnlyMulder: I’m nervous that he is going to end up in Canada with a REAL Canadian passport!
Remember when Yassir “That’s My Baby” Arafat was always yelling about being a martyr, knowing full well the Israelis weren’t trying to kill him?
Shaken:
I thought that the further left you went, the less racist you become! And this is the axis for which our MSM apologizes!
Too bad those liberal Jews control the media, huh?
I’m beginning to doubt the sincerity of Bakri’s religious convictions. He should be proud to be martyred by an Israeli bomb, it will guarantee him an eternity in paradise.
btw, does he still get the black eyed virgins if he’s snuffed by an Israeli F-16?
“”…tried to board a ship full of women and children…”
“…but his bid to sneak on one of our ships was blocked at harbour gates by sharp-eyed officials…”
Sharp-eyed indeed!”
bet it was his miniskirt and six inch spike heels disguise outfit that gave him away. Probaly wore the wrong bling with the threads and didn’t blend in a as a homey.
Bunch of Zionist War criminals!
History Lesson for ya’ll
Issued on 16 August 2004
Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Considering the fact that the majority of those detained are male, the number of Palestinians detained forms approximately 40% of the total male Palestinian population.
As of 15 August 2004, there are approximately 7,500 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons. Over 750 of these are administrative detainees, held without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time. 380 of the political prisoners are aged 18 and under, 78 of whom are 16 years and under. There are 106 Palestinian female political prisoners, 20 of whom are mothers and 2 of whom gave birth in prison, with their children remaining in prison with them. Of the total 7,500 political prisoners, 3,800 are being held in civil prisons, with the remaining political prisoners held in Israeli military detention centers and prison camps.
The arrest and detention of Palestinians living within the OPT is governed by a wide-ranging set of military regulations that govern every aspect of Palestinian civilian life. There are approximately 1500 military regulations governing the West Bank and over 1400 governing the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military commander of the region issues military orders, and the issuance of new orders often remains unknown and become apparent when they are implemented, as the military commander may issue new military regulations at any moment.
Palestinians are tried within Israeli military courts located within Israeli military centers in the OPT. These military tribunals are presided over by a panel of three judges appointed by the military, two of who often do not have any legal training or background. These tribunals rarely fall within the required international standards of fair trial.
Israeli prisons and military detention camps are primarily located within the 1948 borders of Israel. There are a total of 5 interrogation centers, 6 detention/holding centers, 3 military detention camps, and about 20 prisons in which Palestinians from the OPT are held. The location of prisons within Israel and the transfer of detainees to locations within the occupying power’s territory are illegal under international law and constitute a war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that “Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.” (Article 47) Most of the Palestinian Prisoners are being held in detention facilities located outside the OPT.
As a result of an arbitrary permit system which governs Palestinians movement within the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and to and from the 1948 borders of Israel, family visits to detainees are often not possible, extremely infrequent, or impossible. Since the beginning of the current Intifada in September 2000, family visits have been prevented repeatedly and for long periods at a time.
Under Israeli military regulations a Palestinian can be detained for up to 8 days without the Israeli military informing the detainee of the reason for his/her arrest and without being brought before a judge. Between April and June 2002, this period of time was increased by Israeli military order 1500 to 18 days. Following or during the 8 days of detention, a detainee is sent to an interrogation center, charged with an offense, given an administrative detention order, or released.
A Palestinian detainee can be interrogated for a total period of 180 days, during which he/she can also be denied lawyer visits for a period of 60 days. During the interrogation period, a detainee is often subjected to some form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment ranging in extremity, whether physical or psychological. The use of practices that constitute torture during interrogation has been legalized within the Israeli judicial system and permitted in individual cases in which the GSS deems a detainee a threat to state security or a “ticking bomb”. In some instances, detainees have died while in custody as a result of torture. Confessions extracted through torture are admissible in court and/or military tribunal.
Administrative detention, arrest without charge or trial, has been used as a form of collective punishment by the Israeli military against Palestinians, illegal in this form under international law. For example, during the period of March 2002 to October 2002, Israeli occupying forces arrested over 15,000 Palestinians during mass arrest campaigns, rounding up males in cities and villages between the ages of 15 to 45. In October 2002, there were over 1,050 Palestinians in administrative detention.
Administrative detention is indefinitely renewable under military regulations. A detainee may be given an administrative detention order for a period of between 1 to 6 months, after which the order may be renewed again. Administrative detention is based on secret evidence brought forward during military tribunals, to which neither the detainee nor his/her lawyer have access to. One of the longest Palestinian administrative detainees remained in custody for over 8 years, without being charged with a crime.
Under military regulations in force in the OPT, a child over the age of 16 is considered an adult, contrary to the defined age of a child as under 18 in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory. In practice, Palestinian children may be charged and sentenced in military courts beginning at the age of 12. Between the age of 12-14, children can be sentenced for offences for a period of up to six months. For example, a child who is charged for throwing a stone can be sentenced to six months imprisonment. After the age of 14, Palestinian children are tried as adults. There are no juvenile courts and children are often held and serve their sentences in cells with criminal prisoners and are often not separated from adults, illegal under international law.
Prison conditions in Israeli military detention camps are inhumane. Detainees are held in overcrowded prison tents that are often threadbare and do not provide for adequate shelter against extreme weather, are not provided adequate food rations, neither in quantity nor quality, not provided with clean clothes or adequate cleaning supplies. Many of the detainees currently being held in military detention camps were injured during their arrest and have not been provided the necessary medical attention, in addition to those who suffer from chronic illnesses.
Palestinian lawyers from the OPT are not permitted any special travel privileges in order to defend their clients. They are subjected to the same travel restrictions as all Palestinians in the OPT. Those lawyers who are able to access detainees have extremely high case loads and are often subjected to strip searches and humiliated when visiting their clients.
—
ADDAMEER Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association
P.O.Box 17338, Jerusalem
Ramallah Office: Al-Isra’ Bldg., 7th floor, Al-Irsal St.
Tel: +972-2-2960446 Fax: +972-2-2960447
E-mail: addameer@planet.edu
And all Hammas took was one soldier which they’ve been doing for years trying to get Justice.
Maybe Jordan while exercising with the US, during next weeks war games, will attack Israel as they aren’t happy about what’s going on.
He is a cheeky devil.
Neutralsam,
Don’t bother. According to the moral judges on this site, Israel can do no wrong.
Israel could probably massacre all of Lebanon, and you’d see comments saying, “Israel has the right to defend itself”.
ahh, another day and more hatred spewing from Hicksville, Canada.
lots of farmers and hayseeds with their chests puffed out and spell check busy supporting Israel because they hate Islam.
you ever wonder why so many eductated people are liberal and why so many liberal people are educated? because they know the truth, and if you bother to find the truth and think for yourself you would not support the views of the right wing warmongers currently laying waste to Lebanese families.
A plague i wish on you redneck cracker hacks.
My that was painful to wade through…
Enough of this “neutral s***”…on one side there is a civilized country daily threatened with annihilation if they relax their vigilance, on the other a stalking goat of a state whose sole reason for existence is the bloody-minded barbarism of the uncivilized nations in the region.
Universalism and “equal rights” are concepts that only function in a civilized society without significant destabilizing elements (i.e., nutters that wear the latest in TNT styles; punks that care only for their little group and hate anyone that disagrees). There are some home for sale in Caledonia if you find this point hard to grasp.
The last I check, the Geneva convention (US supreme court nonsense not withstanding) was written to civilize war (an inanity in itself), not to give a cop-out to criminals.
nolongerproudtobecanadian and j,
Why don’t you pull your heads out of your asses and compare Israel’s reaction to having a few thousand rockets fired at it, hundreds of suicide bombings, 6 wars waged against it to Russia’s total annihilation of Chechnya for a miniscule fraction of the offence.
Then the next time you comment you’ll add to the discussion with something more than smug, self-righteous idiocy from a weak minded fool. Neither of you have done that. If you have nothing to add piss off.
And for the record, most of us aren’t from the “hicks.” Also note that being from a big city hasn’t improved your collective IQ’s past about 60. Also note that there are lots of educated people here. I presume you’re PhD (ya right) is in Sociology or something equally useless. Most educated liberals have degrees in useless humanities degrees or law. Not too many liberal engineers…
Speaking as a highly educated classical liberal, I am unabashedly on Israel’s side. Why? Well, just as NLPTBC says, I know the truth. Oh, and I’m an engineer. Now that I’ve dealt with the pathalogical over-generalizers, may we have the next question, please?
Speaking of warring Jihadis, they’re on the rampage in Somalia again: http://tinyurl.com/e9obr
No! Jihad means “inner struggle” Numb Chimpsky told me so.
/Leftist MSM
I echo Vitruvius’s statement in every respect.
For all those who would castigate Israel for its behaviour, your arguments would sound a little more convincing if they were “universally” applied. Want an easy test to see who is generally in the right? Check who is held to a higher standard of behaviour…
Wow the 3 lefty’s are all just spewing the venim this morning.
Sam that’s a remarkably biased source. I’m sure they got no axe to grind. Maybe you could have found a unbiased source and not wasted anyones time.
J nonbrain the folks that attend this site regularly are some of the most industrious educated really smart people I have ever had the pleasure to associate with. Judging by your comments you would do well to shut up and listen
they have tangible talent in real skills and are willing to educate the rest of us on their specialty regularly when a story of interest falls under their expertise.
I have learned a amazing amount since visting here.
Vitruvius – what an absolutely perfect reply. Thanks.
The reduction of Hezbollah by seek and destroy for missile caches will proceed notwithstanding Kofi’s call for the cessation of hostilities.
Israel is in no mood for further vacillation on UN resolution 1559. http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/498/92/PDF/N0449892.pdf?OpenElement
Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon, in particular resolutions 425
(1978) and 426 (1978) of 19 March 1978, resolution 520 (1982) of 17 September
1982, and resolution 1553 (2004) of 29 July 2004 as well as the statements of its
President on the situation in Lebanon, in particular the statement of 18 June 2000
3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-
Lebanese militias;
4. Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over
all Lebanese territory;
Gee, they have only been ‘considering’ these proposals since 1982. Obviously, a pressing concern.
Israel is in its full rights to prosecute the weapons caches and their oversight personnel given their violation of international boundaries.
24 years, a declaration of annihilation by Hezbollah and Hamas, 8 dead soldiers, 3 kidnapped soldiers and fusillades of rockets and we say to Israel ‘we council patience’.
I am afraid that river was crossed some time ago. The next river is the Litani river which will be reached by Israeli ground forces in the near future.
The only thing “Smokin” is the far side of Hades.
As they say war is Hell.
Looks like the cannons will be firing a few more rounds yet until the Hezbollah reduction is complete. The ‘wipe Israel off the map’ proposition is getting short shrift.
Israel is not ‘negotiating’ its annihilation; they are getting off the damn train.
Vitruvius,
Classical Liberal and today’s def’n of liberal are different. Classical Liberal is usually described as Libertarian or some such (small gov all the way around.)
That said, my point stands. I’ve never met an engineer who could be described as a modern liberal/socialist/lefty (to be perfectly clear.) I know a lot of engineers and none are logically challenged which is a prerequisite to be a lefty.
NLPTBC… the Islamofascist Victim Meme died the day Hezb’allah snatched the Israeli soldiers.
Warmongers? No. Realists.
I am behind Israel 100% because I have concluded that Israel will perish if they don’t crush Hezb’allah, and crush them now, before Iran gets a nuke.
The loss of Israel is not an outcome I find acceptable in any way.
I have an edjumacation and can boast more letters behind my name than David Suzuki. However, I don’t, preferring to recognize that the prime part of my education came through the school of experience.
I take liberal arts classes at night school to expand my mind, but must admit there are some strange things from those that work from the right side of the brain.
to brag about having to be trained to be a liberal is unfathomable to me.
I’m also an educated liberal who unabashedly supports Israel – as most do. They have the right to defend their turf, and I shed no tears for the evil-doers.
That being said, support is not an unconditional thing. It is a logical fallacy of “begging the question” to say that everything a country does is right (or wrong, for that matter) just because it’s Israel, or just because it’s Canada, the U.S. etc. There has to come a time when a line has been crossed and it is your responsibility to speak up and say that there has been a wrong committed. That doesn’t make you “against” the country or government in question, but rather indicates that you think it can go about things differently for the good of its own people. I’m sure the Clinton bashers here didn’t consider themselves America-haters when he was president.
So far, I don’t believe that Israel has crossed that line. But apart from those who advocate Islamic genocide, most will agree that there is a line somewhere because there has to be something that makes us morally superior to those who want to destroy us. I don’t begrudge a reasonable argument. (Which we definitely did not see from sam and nolonger…)
Earl McCrae of the Ottawa Sun does himself proud: http://www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists/McRae_Earl/2006/07/21/1695085.html
“Israel decided enough’s enough Hezbollah, you’re not going to take us for patsies; try this on for size, let’s see if you’ll learn something. If somebody’s continually slapping you in the face, kneeing you in the crotch, the right message is to erupt back with double, triple, the ferocity — that is the “measured” response, a long and effective “measure,” not the pitty-patty, tit-for-tat “measure” the quaking anti-Harper jackasses wanted.
Some Lebanese-Canadians demanded Harper “apologize” for the Lebanese-Canadian family killed in the Israeli bombing. Tragic? Of course.
Harper apologize? No bloody way. Why should he apologize? Get real, for God’s sake.
If anyone should apologize, it should be the Hezbollah. It’s a sorrowful fact of war that innocent civilians get killed. War is messy and often unprecise. Is Israel deliberately targeting civilians? No. But don’t think for one second that the Hezbollah — knowing the soft mind-set of the west –isn’t delighted that civilians are being killed; don’t be surprised if this group that places such a low value on human life doesn’t engineer the placement of civilians in harm’s way.
How sick and shameful it is that — instead of rising above politics and winning human respect by praising the Harper government for doing the best it can logistically in this moment that caught everyone off guard and that could have dire consequences for us all — small, sad minds like Liberals Scott Brison and Dan McTeague and NDPer Alexa McDonough are flaunting their terrifying lack of leadership quality and brains by saying the Harper government didn’t respond fast and effectively enough to the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon, that it’s unacceptably chaotic.
Has anyone informed these dunces that this isn’t a fictional TV drama where problems are identified, addressed, sanitized, and fixed in less than an hour — that this is the complexities and bureaucracies and frustrations and confusions of real life?
The bindlestiffs are attacking Harper for showing true compassion by diverting his plane to Cyprus to help evacuate Canadians. Publicity stunt, they’re calling it. What pathetic sickos.
Good on you, Stephen Harper — at last we have a prime minister with Churchillian guts, strength, resolve, and leadership and not the dithering, stammering, wusses who, sadly, fostered a national culture of withering, acquiescent, shilly-shallying weakness when confronted by major crises.”
There are lots of slightly left-of-center engineers Warwick, although arguably less so than in most other fields. But as a libertarian, I care far less whether someone is slightly left of center or slightly right of center, than I do whether they are less or more authoritarian. I abhor authoritarians.
I can overlook your moving the goal posts by changing your argument from liberal to left, but the broader problem remains, which, as I elucidated above, is: overgeneralization. It is one of the single greatest axiological errors commited by most of the comments in web logs.
People say “liberal” when they mean “Liberal” (Party of Canada), they say “liberal” when they mean “left of center”, or even “socialist”, they say “right” when they mean “conservative”, “conservative” when they mean “capitalist”. They even say “right” when they mean “correct” 😉
Drago, on the other hand, eloquently expresses his comment with almost no use of political weasle-words. Well said, sir. About the only comment I have is that if you are going to say “as most do”, then I think it would be better if you were more clear as to which version of “liberal” you are referring to.
Vitruvius,
From your comments, I believe that we are on the same page. I might be slightly further left than you, but as you said, that’s irrelevant. The important thing for anybody, wherever they are on the spectrum, is to be fair-minded. I’ve made a number of posts here and elsewhere expressing the same concern about over-generalization.
Without over-generalizing 🙂 – when I said “as most do”, I was referring to liberals as opposed to radicals – people who are what you would consider to be mainstream and who make up the majority of those who usually disagree with the positions expressed on blogs like this. For example, most Jews (like myself) consider themselves liberal, and most support Israel, so that in itself tells the more extreme posters here that the two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive. As I’ve said before, the issue here has nothing to do with left and right, because supporting social programs has nothing to do with opposing wars.
I doubt there were many other people who didn’t catch my meaning the first time.
Do we have to debate common usage all the time? If so, debate gets absurdly tiresome very quickly.
Here and now, liberal is left of center. Libertarian is “classical liberal.” The term liberal still means libertarian in Europe but on this side of the pond the word (like “progressive”) has been hijacked by the left. No small-government person calls themselves liberals over in North America where I presume we all reside.
Using a term in common usage isn’t a weasel-word, it’s common English – without which we can’t communicate.
As for over-generalizations, if you want to be picky, I said there were not too many liberal engineers, not none. I’m sure you could find yourself at least engineer that was a big fan of Franco if you looked hard enough. But I would be willing to bet that the voting patterns of engineers is way out of whack with that of the general population in conservative/right/capitalist/whatever direction and the same could be said about the humanities but in the liberal/left/socialist/whatever direction. Use whatever language you care to use to describe the point. I think I was clear enough the first time…
Thanks for the explanation, Drago. I think then that for practical purposes when you said liberal you were referring to those who I understand to be slightly left of center, politically. I certainly have no problem with such people, we negotiate fine.
Fair enough, Warwick. I guess it’s just a pet peeve of mine. But I get so tired of people using, without due care, generalizations like left and right, and in particular using proper nouns for groups, like Canadian, or American, without due consideration for the individuals nominally included under said label but who are in fact opposed to the claim being made in their name.
You should see the bruises I have my slapping myself every time I’m tempted to gratuitously denegrate the French 😉 Sorry I dragged us off topic, Kate. Can I just say, in passing, that Hans’s use of the word “bindlestiffs” was, in context, brilliant.
You do know that Israel is bombing and Killing Christians?
A list of UN Resolutions against “Israel”
1993 to 1995 Just a few
UNGA Res 50/21 – The Middle East Peace Process (Dec 12, 1995)
UNGA Res 50/22 – The Situation in the Middle East (Dec 12, 1995)
UNGA Res 49/35 – Assistance to Palestinian Refugees (Jan 30 1995) l
UNGA Res 49/36 – Human Rights of Palestinian Refugees (Jan 30 1995)
UNGA Res 49/62 – Question of Palestine (Feb 3 1995)
UNGA Res 49/78 – Nuclear Proliferation in Mideast (Jan 11 1995)
UNGA Res 49/87 – Situation in the Middle East (Feb 7 1995)
UNGA Res 49/88 – The Middle East Peace Process (Feb 7 1995)
UNGA Res 49/149- Palestinian Right- Self-Determination (Feb 7 1995)
UNGA Res 48/213 – Assistance to Palestinian Refugees (Mar 15, 1994)
UNGA Res 48/40 – UNRWA for Palestinian Refugees (Dec 13, 1993)
UNGA Res 48/41 – Human Rights in the Territories (Dec 10 1993)
UNGA Res 48/58 – The Middle East Peace Process (Dec 14 1993)
UNGA Res 48/59 – The Situation in the Middle East (Dec 14 1993)
UNGA Res 48/71 – Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Mideast (Dec 16 1993)
UNGA Res 48/78 – Israeli Nuclear Armanent (Dec 16 1993)
UNGA Res 48/94 – Self-Determination & Independence (Dec 20 1993)
UNGA Res 48/124- Non-interference in Elections (Dec 20 1993)
UNGA Res 48/158- Question of Palestine (Dec 20 1993)
UNGA Res 48/212- Repercussions of Israeli Settlements (Dec 21 1993)
Traditional Jews Are Not Zionists
Although there are those who refuse to accept the teachings of our Rabbis and will continue to support the Zionist state, there are also many who are totally unaware of the history of Zionism and its contradiction to the beliefs of Torah-True Jews.
May 1998 marked the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Zionist state called “Israel”. True Torah Jews held a rally in Manhattan to demonstrate their opposition to Zionism. Several reknowned Rabbis addressed the crowd, in English and in Yiddish.
“Deeply distressed” by the current escalation of the Israel/Palestine conflict, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia called on the international community “to take bold and novel actions to uphold international law and break the vicious cycle of violence” in the region. Both parties should engage in “equitable negotiations,” he said.
Don’t say you didn’t know about:
Israel and international law
Drafted by Richard Kuper and Daniella Jaff-Klein with thanks to Azem Bishara.
Text posted 7th December 2004. Addition to section C posted on 22nd August 2005.
Israel is in daily breach of its obligations under international law. Some of these breaches probably amount to war crimes. http://www.jfjfp.org/factsheets/geneva4.htm
What started it this time, Israel strikes First, breaking International Law twice going in and taking the prisoners out.
Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the “World in brief” section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to “detain” two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas.
The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing this as “the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago”. More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.
As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention from the British media – and prompt far more concern.
Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza.
Whereas the Israeli “arrest raid” had passed with barely a murmur, the Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC’s correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as “a major escalation in cross-border tensions”. (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25 June 2006)
Everyday Israel breaks the law by building more settlements and arresting and detaining palestinians without charges. http://www.ussliberty.org/report/report.htm
Tell all the families of the USS Liberity that Israel wouldn’t kill Christians.
The ship suffered thirty four (34) killed in action and one hundred seventy three (173) wounded in action. The ship itself, a Forty Million ($40,000,000) Dollar state of the art signals intelligence (SIGINT) platform, was so badly damaged that it never sailed on an operational mission again and was sold in 1970 for $101,666.66 as scrap.
I was a transgendered dwarf with pacifistic and vast liberal tendencies until I was mugged. And now I also support Israel. /sarc and lol
More of the big tough Israeli’s fighting a just war.
‘Human shields’
Israeli soldiers continued to use Palestinians as “human shields” during military operations, forcing them to carry out tasks that endangered their lives, despite an injunction by the Israeli High Court banning the practice. A petition against the use of “human shields” submitted by Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations to the Supreme Court in May 2002 was still pending at the end of 2004.
* In April, Israeli soldiers used 13-year-old Muhammed Badwan as a “human shield” during a demonstration in the West Bank village of Biddu. The soldiers placed the boy on the hood of their jeep and tied him to the front windscreen to discourage Palestinian demonstrators from throwing stones in their direction.
Attacks by Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories
Israeli settlers stepped up attacks against Palestinians and their property throughout the West Bank and also increased attacks on international human rights activists. They destroyed and damaged trees owned by Palestinians and frequently prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their crops.
* On 27 September, an Israeli settler shot dead Sayel Jabara, a Palestinian taxi driver, as he was driving his passengers between Nablus and Salem. The settler claimed that he shot Sayel Jabara because he thought that he might attack him, even though Sayel Jabara was not armed. The settler was released on bail less than 24 hours after the killing.
* In September and October Israeli settlers, wearing hoods and armed with stones, wooden clubs and metal chains, assaulted two US citizens, members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), and AI delegates as they escorted Palestinian primary school children to school near Tuwani village in the Hebron area. CPT members Kim Lamberty sustained a broken arm and knee as well as bruising, and her colleague Chris Brown sustained a punctured lung and multiple bruises. The attackers came from the Israeli settlement of Havat Ma’on and returned there after the attacks. Israeli settlers from Havat Ma’on continued to attack Palestinian children on their way to school with impunity.
Impunity
Most members of the Israeli army and security forces continued to enjoy impunity. Investigations, prosecutions and convictions for human rights violations were rare. In the overwhelming majority of the thousands of cases of unlawful killings and other grave human rights violations committed by Israeli soldiers in the previous four years, no investigations were known to have been carried out.
Israeli settlers also enjoyed impunity for attacks on Palestinians and their property and international human rights workers. The Israeli army and police consistently failed to take steps to stop and prevent such attacks and routinely increased restrictions on the local Palestinian population in response to attacks by Israeli settlers.
Are these the cowards you stand up for?
I have been able to locate ONE pic of the youth sitting on the hood of a stationary vehicle. He does not appear to be tied; he might, however, be photoshopped. Howcum there isn’t video?
I do recall, however, the staged photos of a Palestinian boy and his father, supposedly showing the child being shot by Israeli troops. It was fake.
Perhaps this is another non-existent Jenin ‘massacre’?
Let’s see, according to neutralsam’s post, there are approximately 3 million Palestinians in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. Then he says 7,500 of them are political prisoners.
This works out to one quarter of one per cent of population (0.25%). In other words, 99.75% of the Palestinians are not political prisoners. Gee, what scum those Israelis are. I bet not a single one of those prisoners had anything to do with helping suicide bombers or the like. I’m sure they are all fine fellows who would like nothing more than a nice game of chess.
Sam – there is a longstanding rule here about excessive quoting. If you can’t limit yourself to a teaser quote and a link to your source, then start your own blog.
KevinB,
Instead being a statistical nerd, why not acknowledge or address neutramsam’s other points?
Jeff nonbrain the folks that attend this site regularly are some of the most industrious educated really smart people I have ever had the pleasure to associate with. Judging by your comments you would do well to shut up and listen. – Hey, Jeff, that’s what you wrote. Typical. Having nothing smart to say, you reply with insults. Warwick can’t muster much either, it seems.
Both of you, including lil ‘penny’, appear to be pieces of meat sitting in front of a monitor, because you reply in the same fashion over and over. It’s very poor.
In summary, what you collectively insist: “Yeah, yeah, bomb the crap out of dem Lebanese, as long as it don’t cost me money.”
These are the same cowards that would run at the sound of a pop. Easy to mouth off about war hiding behind a computer, thousands of miles away.
I work with lots of engineers and recently encountered a rare one, a long-hair who rants about Bush and Harper and makes all kinds of remarks about greedy capitalists and rampant corruption. He has some real anger management problems and, outside of his technical speciality, demonstrates some frightningly irrational thoughts. I asked some fellows who’ve known him for a long time what his problem is – waaay too many hallucinogenic drugs in his younger party years. There must be a thesis in this for some bright scholar.
To address sam’s rant, simply insert the word Palestinian where you see Israeli and Israeli where you see Palestinian. There are indeed bad things coming out of both sides, the main difference is the avowed committment of the various Muslim groups to accept nothing but the total destruction of Israel (hard to negotiate with that) and the Israeli intent to survive as a nation.
off topic. “Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says Canada has asked the Israeli foreign ministry about an unconfirmed report that a ship carrying Canadians from Lebanon was attacked. ” Hezbollah terrorists do not like it when their shields run away.
These Islamists are actually pretty pathetic. Get a gun and get to the southern border, there are Israelis to fight, you sad excuse for a jihadi!
What a loser. The should’ve but a bullet in his head.
Cowardly vermin that strap explosives on SOMEONE ELSE and send them off to kill and die but are afraid of death themselves. Pathetic. This trash is beyond contempt.
Well, well…what goes around has come around for Islamofascist Omar Bakri.
Guess he’s not ready for his 72 virgins.
I really hope the Brits don’t relent on his expulsion and I hope some PC leftist bureaucrat doesn’t somehow let him into Britain.
Wonder if Louise Arbour, aka “Louey the Slabhead” will champion his cause and sanction Israel, the Royal Navy, Tony Blair and George Bush for offending his peaceful muslim feelings ???
What a total lib/left frog bitch that one is. She sure fits right in with the Nazi reasoning and mentality towards Jews.
This is what Bakri said, as he was refused on board the British ship:
“I know myself I am not welcome in the UK … but I have the right like everyone else to safety,”
Now wait, Estemmed Imam Bakri, you assert that you have the right like everyone else to safety???
Then, why were you kicked out of the UK for preaching violence against non-Muslims?
Some of us hope Isreal has a bomb with Bakri’s Beirut address on it….!
Well, we can hope can’t we..?
Why am I nervous that he is going to end up in Canada with a fake passport?
Two words:
Spineless Philistine!
In case there is an doubt about anti-semitism in DPRK: http://songun-blog.blogspot.com/2006/07/jews-join-japs-in-lame-libellous-lies.html
I thought that the further left you went, the less racist you become!
And this is the axis for which our MSM apologizes!
Such a great story wish it was a Canadian one
Revealing themselves for the cowards & bullies they are. I have absolutely no empathy for this war mongrel & human bomb suicide enthusiast.
I say leave him in the pit he helped design.
After all Mullah there s all those Virgins waiting for your corpulent touch.
Say hi to Bo & Peep for us will yeah? As well as your fellow cultists. David Koresh & Jim Jones.
Gee I wonder how many virgins they have?
Those who can, DIE, those who can’t, CRY.
(reference: those who can do, those who can’t teach).
“…tried to board a ship full of women and children…”
“…but his bid to sneak on one of our ships was blocked at harbour gates by sharp-eyed officials…”
Sharp-eyed indeed!
TrustOnlyMulder: I’m nervous that he is going to end up in Canada with a REAL Canadian passport!
Remember when Yassir “That’s My Baby” Arafat was always yelling about being a martyr, knowing full well the Israelis weren’t trying to kill him?
Shaken:
I thought that the further left you went, the less racist you become! And this is the axis for which our MSM apologizes!
Too bad those liberal Jews control the media, huh?
I’m beginning to doubt the sincerity of Bakri’s religious convictions. He should be proud to be martyred by an Israeli bomb, it will guarantee him an eternity in paradise.
btw, does he still get the black eyed virgins if he’s snuffed by an Israeli F-16?
“”…tried to board a ship full of women and children…”
“…but his bid to sneak on one of our ships was blocked at harbour gates by sharp-eyed officials…”
Sharp-eyed indeed!”
bet it was his miniskirt and six inch spike heels disguise outfit that gave him away. Probaly wore the wrong bling with the threads and didn’t blend in a as a homey.
Bunch of Zionist War criminals!
History Lesson for ya’ll
Issued on 16 August 2004
Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Considering the fact that the majority of those detained are male, the number of Palestinians detained forms approximately 40% of the total male Palestinian population.
As of 15 August 2004, there are approximately 7,500 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons. Over 750 of these are administrative detainees, held without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time. 380 of the political prisoners are aged 18 and under, 78 of whom are 16 years and under. There are 106 Palestinian female political prisoners, 20 of whom are mothers and 2 of whom gave birth in prison, with their children remaining in prison with them. Of the total 7,500 political prisoners, 3,800 are being held in civil prisons, with the remaining political prisoners held in Israeli military detention centers and prison camps.
The arrest and detention of Palestinians living within the OPT is governed by a wide-ranging set of military regulations that govern every aspect of Palestinian civilian life. There are approximately 1500 military regulations governing the West Bank and over 1400 governing the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military commander of the region issues military orders, and the issuance of new orders often remains unknown and become apparent when they are implemented, as the military commander may issue new military regulations at any moment.
Palestinians are tried within Israeli military courts located within Israeli military centers in the OPT. These military tribunals are presided over by a panel of three judges appointed by the military, two of who often do not have any legal training or background. These tribunals rarely fall within the required international standards of fair trial.
Israeli prisons and military detention camps are primarily located within the 1948 borders of Israel. There are a total of 5 interrogation centers, 6 detention/holding centers, 3 military detention camps, and about 20 prisons in which Palestinians from the OPT are held. The location of prisons within Israel and the transfer of detainees to locations within the occupying power’s territory are illegal under international law and constitute a war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that “Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.” (Article 47) Most of the Palestinian Prisoners are being held in detention facilities located outside the OPT.
As a result of an arbitrary permit system which governs Palestinians movement within the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and to and from the 1948 borders of Israel, family visits to detainees are often not possible, extremely infrequent, or impossible. Since the beginning of the current Intifada in September 2000, family visits have been prevented repeatedly and for long periods at a time.
Under Israeli military regulations a Palestinian can be detained for up to 8 days without the Israeli military informing the detainee of the reason for his/her arrest and without being brought before a judge. Between April and June 2002, this period of time was increased by Israeli military order 1500 to 18 days. Following or during the 8 days of detention, a detainee is sent to an interrogation center, charged with an offense, given an administrative detention order, or released.
A Palestinian detainee can be interrogated for a total period of 180 days, during which he/she can also be denied lawyer visits for a period of 60 days. During the interrogation period, a detainee is often subjected to some form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment ranging in extremity, whether physical or psychological. The use of practices that constitute torture during interrogation has been legalized within the Israeli judicial system and permitted in individual cases in which the GSS deems a detainee a threat to state security or a “ticking bomb”. In some instances, detainees have died while in custody as a result of torture. Confessions extracted through torture are admissible in court and/or military tribunal.
Administrative detention, arrest without charge or trial, has been used as a form of collective punishment by the Israeli military against Palestinians, illegal in this form under international law. For example, during the period of March 2002 to October 2002, Israeli occupying forces arrested over 15,000 Palestinians during mass arrest campaigns, rounding up males in cities and villages between the ages of 15 to 45. In October 2002, there were over 1,050 Palestinians in administrative detention.
Administrative detention is indefinitely renewable under military regulations. A detainee may be given an administrative detention order for a period of between 1 to 6 months, after which the order may be renewed again. Administrative detention is based on secret evidence brought forward during military tribunals, to which neither the detainee nor his/her lawyer have access to. One of the longest Palestinian administrative detainees remained in custody for over 8 years, without being charged with a crime.
Under military regulations in force in the OPT, a child over the age of 16 is considered an adult, contrary to the defined age of a child as under 18 in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory. In practice, Palestinian children may be charged and sentenced in military courts beginning at the age of 12. Between the age of 12-14, children can be sentenced for offences for a period of up to six months. For example, a child who is charged for throwing a stone can be sentenced to six months imprisonment. After the age of 14, Palestinian children are tried as adults. There are no juvenile courts and children are often held and serve their sentences in cells with criminal prisoners and are often not separated from adults, illegal under international law.
Prison conditions in Israeli military detention camps are inhumane. Detainees are held in overcrowded prison tents that are often threadbare and do not provide for adequate shelter against extreme weather, are not provided adequate food rations, neither in quantity nor quality, not provided with clean clothes or adequate cleaning supplies. Many of the detainees currently being held in military detention camps were injured during their arrest and have not been provided the necessary medical attention, in addition to those who suffer from chronic illnesses.
Palestinian lawyers from the OPT are not permitted any special travel privileges in order to defend their clients. They are subjected to the same travel restrictions as all Palestinians in the OPT. Those lawyers who are able to access detainees have extremely high case loads and are often subjected to strip searches and humiliated when visiting their clients.
—
ADDAMEER Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association
P.O.Box 17338, Jerusalem
Ramallah Office: Al-Isra’ Bldg., 7th floor, Al-Irsal St.
Tel: +972-2-2960446 Fax: +972-2-2960447
E-mail: addameer@planet.edu
And all Hammas took was one soldier which they’ve been doing for years trying to get Justice.
Maybe Jordan while exercising with the US, during next weeks war games, will attack Israel as they aren’t happy about what’s going on.
He is a cheeky devil.
Neutralsam,
Don’t bother. According to the moral judges on this site, Israel can do no wrong.
Israel could probably massacre all of Lebanon, and you’d see comments saying, “Israel has the right to defend itself”.
ahh, another day and more hatred spewing from Hicksville, Canada.
lots of farmers and hayseeds with their chests puffed out and spell check busy supporting Israel because they hate Islam.
you ever wonder why so many eductated people are liberal and why so many liberal people are educated? because they know the truth, and if you bother to find the truth and think for yourself you would not support the views of the right wing warmongers currently laying waste to Lebanese families.
A plague i wish on you redneck cracker hacks.
My that was painful to wade through…
Enough of this “neutral s***”…on one side there is a civilized country daily threatened with annihilation if they relax their vigilance, on the other a stalking goat of a state whose sole reason for existence is the bloody-minded barbarism of the uncivilized nations in the region.
Universalism and “equal rights” are concepts that only function in a civilized society without significant destabilizing elements (i.e., nutters that wear the latest in TNT styles; punks that care only for their little group and hate anyone that disagrees). There are some home for sale in Caledonia if you find this point hard to grasp.
The last I check, the Geneva convention (US supreme court nonsense not withstanding) was written to civilize war (an inanity in itself), not to give a cop-out to criminals.
nolongerproudtobecanadian and j,
Why don’t you pull your heads out of your asses and compare Israel’s reaction to having a few thousand rockets fired at it, hundreds of suicide bombings, 6 wars waged against it to Russia’s total annihilation of Chechnya for a miniscule fraction of the offence.
Then the next time you comment you’ll add to the discussion with something more than smug, self-righteous idiocy from a weak minded fool. Neither of you have done that. If you have nothing to add piss off.
And for the record, most of us aren’t from the “hicks.” Also note that being from a big city hasn’t improved your collective IQ’s past about 60. Also note that there are lots of educated people here. I presume you’re PhD (ya right) is in Sociology or something equally useless. Most educated liberals have degrees in useless humanities degrees or law. Not too many liberal engineers…
Speaking as a highly educated classical liberal, I am unabashedly on Israel’s side. Why? Well, just as NLPTBC says, I know the truth. Oh, and I’m an engineer. Now that I’ve dealt with the pathalogical over-generalizers, may we have the next question, please?
Speaking of warring Jihadis, they’re on the rampage in Somalia again:
http://tinyurl.com/e9obr
No! Jihad means “inner struggle” Numb Chimpsky told me so.
/Leftist MSM
I echo Vitruvius’s statement in every respect.
For all those who would castigate Israel for its behaviour, your arguments would sound a little more convincing if they were “universally” applied. Want an easy test to see who is generally in the right? Check who is held to a higher standard of behaviour…
Wow the 3 lefty’s are all just spewing the venim this morning.
Sam that’s a remarkably biased source. I’m sure they got no axe to grind. Maybe you could have found a unbiased source and not wasted anyones time.
J nonbrain the folks that attend this site regularly are some of the most industrious educated really smart people I have ever had the pleasure to associate with. Judging by your comments you would do well to shut up and listen
they have tangible talent in real skills and are willing to educate the rest of us on their specialty regularly when a story of interest falls under their expertise.
I have learned a amazing amount since visting here.
Vitruvius – what an absolutely perfect reply. Thanks.
The reduction of Hezbollah by seek and destroy for missile caches will proceed notwithstanding Kofi’s call for the cessation of hostilities.
Israel is in no mood for further vacillation on UN resolution 1559.
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/498/92/PDF/N0449892.pdf?OpenElement
Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon, in particular resolutions 425
(1978) and 426 (1978) of 19 March 1978, resolution 520 (1982) of 17 September
1982, and resolution 1553 (2004) of 29 July 2004 as well as the statements of its
President on the situation in Lebanon, in particular the statement of 18 June 2000
3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-
Lebanese militias;
4. Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over
all Lebanese territory;
Gee, they have only been ‘considering’ these proposals since 1982. Obviously, a pressing concern.
Israel is in its full rights to prosecute the weapons caches and their oversight personnel given their violation of international boundaries.
24 years, a declaration of annihilation by Hezbollah and Hamas, 8 dead soldiers, 3 kidnapped soldiers and fusillades of rockets and we say to Israel ‘we council patience’.
I am afraid that river was crossed some time ago. The next river is the Litani river which will be reached by Israeli ground forces in the near future.
The only thing “Smokin” is the far side of Hades.
As they say war is Hell.
Looks like the cannons will be firing a few more rounds yet until the Hezbollah reduction is complete. The ‘wipe Israel off the map’ proposition is getting short shrift.
Israel is not ‘negotiating’ its annihilation; they are getting off the damn train.
Vitruvius,
Classical Liberal and today’s def’n of liberal are different. Classical Liberal is usually described as Libertarian or some such (small gov all the way around.)
That said, my point stands. I’ve never met an engineer who could be described as a modern liberal/socialist/lefty (to be perfectly clear.) I know a lot of engineers and none are logically challenged which is a prerequisite to be a lefty.
NLPTBC… the Islamofascist Victim Meme died the day Hezb’allah snatched the Israeli soldiers.
Warmongers? No. Realists.
I am behind Israel 100% because I have concluded that Israel will perish if they don’t crush Hezb’allah, and crush them now, before Iran gets a nuke.
The loss of Israel is not an outcome I find acceptable in any way.
I have an edjumacation and can boast more letters behind my name than David Suzuki. However, I don’t, preferring to recognize that the prime part of my education came through the school of experience.
I take liberal arts classes at night school to expand my mind, but must admit there are some strange things from those that work from the right side of the brain.
to brag about having to be trained to be a liberal is unfathomable to me.
I’m also an educated liberal who unabashedly supports Israel – as most do. They have the right to defend their turf, and I shed no tears for the evil-doers.
That being said, support is not an unconditional thing. It is a logical fallacy of “begging the question” to say that everything a country does is right (or wrong, for that matter) just because it’s Israel, or just because it’s Canada, the U.S. etc. There has to come a time when a line has been crossed and it is your responsibility to speak up and say that there has been a wrong committed. That doesn’t make you “against” the country or government in question, but rather indicates that you think it can go about things differently for the good of its own people. I’m sure the Clinton bashers here didn’t consider themselves America-haters when he was president.
So far, I don’t believe that Israel has crossed that line. But apart from those who advocate Islamic genocide, most will agree that there is a line somewhere because there has to be something that makes us morally superior to those who want to destroy us. I don’t begrudge a reasonable argument. (Which we definitely did not see from sam and nolonger…)
Earl McCrae of the Ottawa Sun does himself proud:
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists/McRae_Earl/2006/07/21/1695085.html
“Israel decided enough’s enough Hezbollah, you’re not going to take us for patsies; try this on for size, let’s see if you’ll learn something. If somebody’s continually slapping you in the face, kneeing you in the crotch, the right message is to erupt back with double, triple, the ferocity — that is the “measured” response, a long and effective “measure,” not the pitty-patty, tit-for-tat “measure” the quaking anti-Harper jackasses wanted.
Some Lebanese-Canadians demanded Harper “apologize” for the Lebanese-Canadian family killed in the Israeli bombing. Tragic? Of course.
Harper apologize? No bloody way. Why should he apologize? Get real, for God’s sake.
If anyone should apologize, it should be the Hezbollah. It’s a sorrowful fact of war that innocent civilians get killed. War is messy and often unprecise. Is Israel deliberately targeting civilians? No. But don’t think for one second that the Hezbollah — knowing the soft mind-set of the west –isn’t delighted that civilians are being killed; don’t be surprised if this group that places such a low value on human life doesn’t engineer the placement of civilians in harm’s way.
How sick and shameful it is that — instead of rising above politics and winning human respect by praising the Harper government for doing the best it can logistically in this moment that caught everyone off guard and that could have dire consequences for us all — small, sad minds like Liberals Scott Brison and Dan McTeague and NDPer Alexa McDonough are flaunting their terrifying lack of leadership quality and brains by saying the Harper government didn’t respond fast and effectively enough to the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon, that it’s unacceptably chaotic.
Has anyone informed these dunces that this isn’t a fictional TV drama where problems are identified, addressed, sanitized, and fixed in less than an hour — that this is the complexities and bureaucracies and frustrations and confusions of real life?
The bindlestiffs are attacking Harper for showing true compassion by diverting his plane to Cyprus to help evacuate Canadians. Publicity stunt, they’re calling it. What pathetic sickos.
Good on you, Stephen Harper — at last we have a prime minister with Churchillian guts, strength, resolve, and leadership and not the dithering, stammering, wusses who, sadly, fostered a national culture of withering, acquiescent, shilly-shallying weakness when confronted by major crises.”
There are lots of slightly left-of-center engineers Warwick, although arguably less so than in most other fields. But as a libertarian, I care far less whether someone is slightly left of center or slightly right of center, than I do whether they are less or more authoritarian. I abhor authoritarians.
I can overlook your moving the goal posts by changing your argument from liberal to left, but the broader problem remains, which, as I elucidated above, is: overgeneralization. It is one of the single greatest axiological errors commited by most of the comments in web logs.
People say “liberal” when they mean “Liberal” (Party of Canada), they say “liberal” when they mean “left of center”, or even “socialist”, they say “right” when they mean “conservative”, “conservative” when they mean “capitalist”. They even say “right” when they mean “correct” 😉
Drago, on the other hand, eloquently expresses his comment with almost no use of political weasle-words. Well said, sir. About the only comment I have is that if you are going to say “as most do”, then I think it would be better if you were more clear as to which version of “liberal” you are referring to.
Vitruvius,
From your comments, I believe that we are on the same page. I might be slightly further left than you, but as you said, that’s irrelevant. The important thing for anybody, wherever they are on the spectrum, is to be fair-minded. I’ve made a number of posts here and elsewhere expressing the same concern about over-generalization.
Without over-generalizing 🙂 – when I said “as most do”, I was referring to liberals as opposed to radicals – people who are what you would consider to be mainstream and who make up the majority of those who usually disagree with the positions expressed on blogs like this. For example, most Jews (like myself) consider themselves liberal, and most support Israel, so that in itself tells the more extreme posters here that the two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive. As I’ve said before, the issue here has nothing to do with left and right, because supporting social programs has nothing to do with opposing wars.
I doubt there were many other people who didn’t catch my meaning the first time.
Do we have to debate common usage all the time? If so, debate gets absurdly tiresome very quickly.
Here and now, liberal is left of center. Libertarian is “classical liberal.” The term liberal still means libertarian in Europe but on this side of the pond the word (like “progressive”) has been hijacked by the left. No small-government person calls themselves liberals over in North America where I presume we all reside.
Using a term in common usage isn’t a weasel-word, it’s common English – without which we can’t communicate.
As for over-generalizations, if you want to be picky, I said there were not too many liberal engineers, not none. I’m sure you could find yourself at least engineer that was a big fan of Franco if you looked hard enough. But I would be willing to bet that the voting patterns of engineers is way out of whack with that of the general population in conservative/right/capitalist/whatever direction and the same could be said about the humanities but in the liberal/left/socialist/whatever direction. Use whatever language you care to use to describe the point. I think I was clear enough the first time…
Thanks for the explanation, Drago. I think then that for practical purposes when you said liberal you were referring to those who I understand to be slightly left of center, politically. I certainly have no problem with such people, we negotiate fine.
Fair enough, Warwick. I guess it’s just a pet peeve of mine. But I get so tired of people using, without due care, generalizations like left and right, and in particular using proper nouns for groups, like Canadian, or American, without due consideration for the individuals nominally included under said label but who are in fact opposed to the claim being made in their name.
You should see the bruises I have my slapping myself every time I’m tempted to gratuitously denegrate the French 😉 Sorry I dragged us off topic, Kate. Can I just say, in passing, that Hans’s use of the word “bindlestiffs” was, in context, brilliant.
You do know that Israel is bombing and Killing Christians?
A list of UN Resolutions against “Israel”
1993 to 1995 Just a few
UNGA Res 50/21 – The Middle East Peace Process (Dec 12, 1995)
UNGA Res 50/22 – The Situation in the Middle East (Dec 12, 1995)
UNGA Res 49/35 – Assistance to Palestinian Refugees (Jan 30 1995) l
UNGA Res 49/36 – Human Rights of Palestinian Refugees (Jan 30 1995)
UNGA Res 49/62 – Question of Palestine (Feb 3 1995)
UNGA Res 49/78 – Nuclear Proliferation in Mideast (Jan 11 1995)
UNGA Res 49/87 – Situation in the Middle East (Feb 7 1995)
UNGA Res 49/88 – The Middle East Peace Process (Feb 7 1995)
UNGA Res 49/149- Palestinian Right- Self-Determination (Feb 7 1995)
UNGA Res 48/213 – Assistance to Palestinian Refugees (Mar 15, 1994)
UNGA Res 48/40 – UNRWA for Palestinian Refugees (Dec 13, 1993)
UNGA Res 48/41 – Human Rights in the Territories (Dec 10 1993)
UNGA Res 48/58 – The Middle East Peace Process (Dec 14 1993)
UNGA Res 48/59 – The Situation in the Middle East (Dec 14 1993)
UNGA Res 48/71 – Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Mideast (Dec 16 1993)
UNGA Res 48/78 – Israeli Nuclear Armanent (Dec 16 1993)
UNGA Res 48/94 – Self-Determination & Independence (Dec 20 1993)
UNGA Res 48/124- Non-interference in Elections (Dec 20 1993)
UNGA Res 48/158- Question of Palestine (Dec 20 1993)
UNGA Res 48/212- Repercussions of Israeli Settlements (Dec 21 1993)
Traditional Jews Are Not Zionists
Although there are those who refuse to accept the teachings of our Rabbis and will continue to support the Zionist state, there are also many who are totally unaware of the history of Zionism and its contradiction to the beliefs of Torah-True Jews.
May 1998 marked the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Zionist state called “Israel”. True Torah Jews held a rally in Manhattan to demonstrate their opposition to Zionism. Several reknowned Rabbis addressed the crowd, in English and in Yiddish.
“Deeply distressed” by the current escalation of the Israel/Palestine conflict, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia called on the international community “to take bold and novel actions to uphold international law and break the vicious cycle of violence” in the region. Both parties should engage in “equitable negotiations,” he said.
Don’t say you didn’t know about:
Israel and international law
Drafted by Richard Kuper and Daniella Jaff-Klein with thanks to Azem Bishara.
Text posted 7th December 2004. Addition to section C posted on 22nd August 2005.
Israel is in daily breach of its obligations under international law. Some of these breaches probably amount to war crimes.
http://www.jfjfp.org/factsheets/geneva4.htm
What started it this time, Israel strikes First, breaking International Law twice going in and taking the prisoners out.
Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the “World in brief” section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to “detain” two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas.
The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing this as “the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago”. More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.
As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention from the British media – and prompt far more concern.
Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza.
Whereas the Israeli “arrest raid” had passed with barely a murmur, the Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC’s correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as “a major escalation in cross-border tensions”. (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25 June 2006)
Everyday Israel breaks the law by building more settlements and arresting and detaining palestinians without charges.
http://www.ussliberty.org/report/report.htm
Tell all the families of the USS Liberity that Israel wouldn’t kill Christians.
The ship suffered thirty four (34) killed in action and one hundred seventy three (173) wounded in action. The ship itself, a Forty Million ($40,000,000) Dollar state of the art signals intelligence (SIGINT) platform, was so badly damaged that it never sailed on an operational mission again and was sold in 1970 for $101,666.66 as scrap.
I was a transgendered dwarf with pacifistic and vast liberal tendencies until I was mugged. And now I also support Israel. /sarc and lol
More of the big tough Israeli’s fighting a just war.
‘Human shields’
Israeli soldiers continued to use Palestinians as “human shields” during military operations, forcing them to carry out tasks that endangered their lives, despite an injunction by the Israeli High Court banning the practice. A petition against the use of “human shields” submitted by Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations to the Supreme Court in May 2002 was still pending at the end of 2004.
* In April, Israeli soldiers used 13-year-old Muhammed Badwan as a “human shield” during a demonstration in the West Bank village of Biddu. The soldiers placed the boy on the hood of their jeep and tied him to the front windscreen to discourage Palestinian demonstrators from throwing stones in their direction.
Attacks by Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories
Israeli settlers stepped up attacks against Palestinians and their property throughout the West Bank and also increased attacks on international human rights activists. They destroyed and damaged trees owned by Palestinians and frequently prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their crops.
* On 27 September, an Israeli settler shot dead Sayel Jabara, a Palestinian taxi driver, as he was driving his passengers between Nablus and Salem. The settler claimed that he shot Sayel Jabara because he thought that he might attack him, even though Sayel Jabara was not armed. The settler was released on bail less than 24 hours after the killing.
* In September and October Israeli settlers, wearing hoods and armed with stones, wooden clubs and metal chains, assaulted two US citizens, members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), and AI delegates as they escorted Palestinian primary school children to school near Tuwani village in the Hebron area. CPT members Kim Lamberty sustained a broken arm and knee as well as bruising, and her colleague Chris Brown sustained a punctured lung and multiple bruises. The attackers came from the Israeli settlement of Havat Ma’on and returned there after the attacks. Israeli settlers from Havat Ma’on continued to attack Palestinian children on their way to school with impunity.
Impunity
Most members of the Israeli army and security forces continued to enjoy impunity. Investigations, prosecutions and convictions for human rights violations were rare. In the overwhelming majority of the thousands of cases of unlawful killings and other grave human rights violations committed by Israeli soldiers in the previous four years, no investigations were known to have been carried out.
Israeli settlers also enjoyed impunity for attacks on Palestinians and their property and international human rights workers. The Israeli army and police consistently failed to take steps to stop and prevent such attacks and routinely increased restrictions on the local Palestinian population in response to attacks by Israeli settlers.
Are these the cowards you stand up for?
I have been able to locate ONE pic of the youth sitting on the hood of a stationary vehicle. He does not appear to be tied; he might, however, be photoshopped. Howcum there isn’t video?
I do recall, however, the staged photos of a Palestinian boy and his father, supposedly showing the child being shot by Israeli troops. It was fake.
Perhaps this is another non-existent Jenin ‘massacre’?
Let’s see, according to neutralsam’s post, there are approximately 3 million Palestinians in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. Then he says 7,500 of them are political prisoners.
This works out to one quarter of one per cent of population (0.25%). In other words, 99.75% of the Palestinians are not political prisoners. Gee, what scum those Israelis are. I bet not a single one of those prisoners had anything to do with helping suicide bombers or the like. I’m sure they are all fine fellows who would like nothing more than a nice game of chess.
Sam – there is a longstanding rule here about excessive quoting. If you can’t limit yourself to a teaser quote and a link to your source, then start your own blog.
KevinB,
Instead being a statistical nerd, why not acknowledge or address neutramsam’s other points?
Jeff nonbrain the folks that attend this site regularly are some of the most industrious educated really smart people I have ever had the pleasure to associate with. Judging by your comments you would do well to shut up and listen. – Hey, Jeff, that’s what you wrote. Typical. Having nothing smart to say, you reply with insults. Warwick can’t muster much either, it seems.
Both of you, including lil ‘penny’, appear to be pieces of meat sitting in front of a monitor, because you reply in the same fashion over and over. It’s very poor.
In summary, what you collectively insist: “Yeah, yeah, bomb the crap out of dem Lebanese, as long as it don’t cost me money.”
These are the same cowards that would run at the sound of a pop. Easy to mouth off about war hiding behind a computer, thousands of miles away.
I work with lots of engineers and recently encountered a rare one, a long-hair who rants about Bush and Harper and makes all kinds of remarks about greedy capitalists and rampant corruption. He has some real anger management problems and, outside of his technical speciality, demonstrates some frightningly irrational thoughts. I asked some fellows who’ve known him for a long time what his problem is – waaay too many hallucinogenic drugs in his younger party years. There must be a thesis in this for some bright scholar.
To address sam’s rant, simply insert the word Palestinian where you see Israeli and Israeli where you see Palestinian. There are indeed bad things coming out of both sides, the main difference is the avowed committment of the various Muslim groups to accept nothing but the total destruction of Israel (hard to negotiate with that) and the Israeli intent to survive as a nation.
off topic. “Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says Canada has asked the Israeli foreign ministry about an unconfirmed report that a ship carrying Canadians from Lebanon was attacked. ” Hezbollah terrorists do not like it when their shields run away.