Arafat urges UN to end Israeli folly

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has urged the international community to bring pressure on Israel to end the "military folly" after a series of deadly air strikes in Gaza.

The Palestinian movement Hamas has vowed to avenge the deaths caused by five separate air strikes across Gaza on Monday.

<snip>

Eleven people were killed in five separate raids on Monday in Gaza while another 70 were wounded. Two of those killed were known members of the Hamas movement, but the vast majority of the victims were civilian.

Writing in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot, Alex Fishman said Israel had descended into fighting "a war without questions."

"We've deteriorated to a point in which we've stopped asking questions and that those who dare raise questions are immediately branded traitors," wrote Fishman.

Fishman warned that such attacks could be proven counter-productive and "actually intensify and broaden the circles of hatred for generations."

"Is it conceivable that somebody on our side has decided that all of Palestinian society is the target? Because if so, then there truly are no limits and all we are left with war for the sake of war, with killing for the sake of killing."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/97499062-14D1-4FFA-A33B-300B0E33BB5B.htm

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Resistance]

2. well

It's not exactly "killing for the sake of killing" -- it's killing for the sake of stealing someone else's land.

[Fight_n_back]

3. Hmmm

I don't think the Palestinian Terrorists think thats why they are doing it. I think most of them just want to rid the world of Jews. So I think you may be a bit off base in your view of Arafat's henchman.

[Sesquipedalian]

4. Then they are just wasteful and dumb

To be honest there really is a certain "idealism" to the pro-Palestinian side here. A belief that this is an issue between the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza sueing for independence from a repressive Israeli state. This is simplistic.

It's not quite as simplitic as your formula but it's certainly inadequate.

Take a stroll through Ramallah. Hit the town square. What you will find is a statue of a woman. Her headress is shaped like a map of historic Palestine. She holds in her hands, cradled like a baby a key and she faces West. The street she stands on is Acre Street (Acre St. get it?). Why is this important? You can grab onto it and see perfidy or whatever you want, but here is what it really represents: An idealized past, a house which may have been a shack demolished and scorned by it's Israeli successors but grown in importance and magnified by their own present squallor. They didn't ask to wind up where they were and in asking why there is only one real answer. The Israeli's ran them out.

To reduce this to simple sectarian hate is horribly simplistic and either an excercise in propaganga or to display a lack of perspective.

The greater point is realized when you ask the residents of the city if they will ever see any sort of justice from the Israeli's. The only people who believe at all are the Islamists who make up a much smaller part of the population than one is lent to believe. Even they don't believe this is something they will see in their lifetime unless God intervenes and it corresponds neatly with their opposite numbers in the NRP and their sypathizers on the Israeli side who believe the same thing.