The Israeli Flotilla incident

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Fair enough, my wording was overly simplistic, but the fact remains that Britain waged a military campaign to conquer and occupy the region. It's true that much of the world has been subjected to military occupations and campaigns. None of that is right, but in an area where there is currently an open wound and continued conflict, the matter is of urgent importance and can't be dismissed by saying that the world is unfair.
That's a bit like saying. "Look at at all the people Israel didn't kill." Criminals, whether individuals or states, are judged by their crimes, not by the crimes they refrained from committing. Boarding and searching vessels as part of an unjustified blockade is not something anyone should applaud in any case. If Israel were to end the blockade, that is something that the international community could applaud.

I am pretty sure that Britain's military campaign was waged to contain Austro-Hungarian aggression in the Balkans. Nobody held a gun to the Ottomans' head forcing them to take an opportunistic stab at Russia.

Even before Britain assumed jurisdiction over the Mandate, Britain had made clear her intentions, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The League of Nations endorsed the declaration, including specific reference to it in the Mandate of 1922 that established British Rule over the Mandate.

Israel is not some partition idea cooked up by the UN in 1948, it was a matter of multilateral agreement a full quarter century before.



I agree with your first sentiment. But your assumption that the blockade is unjustified is a statement of opinion rather than an established fact.

As for your final sentence, far from international applause, were Israel to end the blockade, tomorrow, I think you would see four very nervous Arab states looking on in bewilderment (and trepidation), a superpower scrambling to prepare to reposition its forces, and an international oil market that would go completely volatile (no pun intended), with resulting liquidity loss to the financial services sector. In short, there would be utter chaos.

I am not sure this is true. I have heard the Israeli's are know to use hollow rubber bullets, which explode and create shotgun like wounds.

Your descriptions of Israeli Arabs isn't quite right. They can do some things, but overall they are second class citizens. Ownership of land by Palestian Arabs in Israel is precarious: land that lays fallow can seized. Furthermore, Israeli Arabs can't get citizenship for their spouse. That means that an Israeli Arab can marry the grandchild of a Palestinian shepard or farmer who was forceably evicted from the territority of modern Israel and that person still won't be a citizen. On the other hand, my relatives in America of German Jewish extraction can wake up one day and decide to emmigrate to Israel ("aliyah" it is called) with almost no questions asked.

Let's give every religious cult its own country and see what happens when the original inhabitants rise up!

It's called Iran, the Vatican, and Israel.

Clearly, none of them are doing well right now.

Where's sci/fientology's? Oh wait, let me guess!

Yeah, a "multilateral" agreement that excluded the wishes of the Palestinian people from the outset.

Yeah, bloody politics. Let's remember that Palestinians are semites, don't let the propaganda get to you!

You're still sticking to the over-simplistic, misleading and incorrect term "conquer", which still gives the wrong impression of a deliberate attempt by Britain to take the area "for keepsies". As for the occupation of the world by other parts of the world, its not that it is unfair, merely that it is not a reasoning unique in history or to the area. Plenty of other places have had similar issues and resolved them in myriad ways.

It is a fact that Israel gets attacked from Gaza. Why is it so unreasonable for them to engage in activities designed to restrict these attacks? I'm confident that places like the USA would not hesitate for a second to impose a blockade or sanctions in similar situations, and in fact already has. (Cuba?) The blockade is not unjustified at all. At worst it has been badly handly, and even then not often.

Now you're the one who is being simplistic. That Britain waged a military campaign and occupied Palestine in 1917 is an undisputed fact, and saying so does not imply that Britain intended to incorporate Palestine as a British territory, since there were fairly complex geopolitical issues that involved a number of nations. If you don't like the word "conquered," we can stick with "occupied," but that is just playing at semantics. The fact remains that decisions on the control of the area did not include the wishes of the Palestinian people.

If by "myriad ways" you mean that in most cases the conquered people just gave up because they were overpowered, that is true. I suppose you wish the Palestinians would do exactly that.
The blockade has restricted the flow of all kinds of needed supplies and even some of the most basic foods. The blockade is a way to place the people of Gaza under siege, in a strong-arm attempt to force them to give up, it has nothing or very little to do with Israel protecting itself from attacks.

If you want to read more, I suggest these articles:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -Gaza.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ju ... ian-crisis
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 92076.html

Yet more revisionist history. The lie is put to this from the existence of the Faisal-Wiezmann Agreement. Both the Hashemites (in the person of Emir Faisal) and the Jewish population of the mandate territories asked for a British Mandate after World War I, by which point the first Balfour Declaration had long since been made.

Now, in the fullness of the establishment of the Allies' establishment in the Middle East, and the development of Anglo-French spheres of influence, much of Faisal's goodwill was squandered--but that fault lies not with the Zionist movement, but with the governments of France and the UK.

Faisal in no way represented the wishes of the Palestinian people and was indeed contemptuous of them. The British only dealt with Palestinian elites who were out of touch with (and didn't care about) the perspective of the majority of the Palestinian people, who in fact revolted against Zionism long before the creation of the state of Israel. No matter how you try to frame it, the creation of the state of Israel was rammed down the Palestinian people's throats.

Bandying around terms like "conquered" and "colonised" not only implies, it outright states that Britain intended to incorporate Palestine as a British territory because that's exactly what those words MEAN. It is not semantics, its simply you using the wrong terms. Occuppied Enemy Territory is simply not the same as a colony.[/quote]

Myriad ways MEANS myriad ways. Plenty of conquered nations stay conquered, and as many do not. Regimes change, peoples migrate back and forth, interbreed or are destroyed.. Presumptuous of you to assume that I wish these people ill. I'm just pointing out the historical inaccuracies of your previous statements, statements which give a misleading impression of the history of the area. [/quote]



And other articles and materials suggest that Gaza is in no way as starved as some articles suggest. Which ones should be considered accurate? Only the ones that support YOUR view of the conflict? Maybe if Hamas et al were not so busy demanding the destruction of Israel and the Israelis (who have been knocking around the area for a substantial length of time historically speaking) maybe a more constructive solution could be found? Demanding the complete destruction of your neighbours is NOT going to provoke a sudden outbreak of peace and friendliness. Demanding it of a race who have already been party to an extensive campaign of industrialised genocide is clearly NOT going to make them sleep easy in their beds. I don't think I would be to inclined towards people who supported the genocide of my race either.[/quote]

I never used the term "colonised" so clearly you are just intent on using semantics to try to misrepresent what was a military campaign that gave Britain control of the region, which is what later allowed for the formation of the state of Israel,. It would have been more accurate if I had said "imperial power" or "military power" rather than "colonial power" and I have already conceded as much, so I'm not sure what you're harping on.

It is a fact that Gaza has been attacked from Israel, and that Israel has much greater force at its disposal.

Israel is the much more powerful member in the conflict. Israel is the one that needs to stop its attacks, stop building new settlements in the occupied territories, and stop blockading supplies to Gaza., and it is the one who needs to initiate a peace initiative. I agree that the Palestinians have used the wrong tactics by answering violence with violence, and I said as much in my first post, which I will not repeat. The articles I linked are not opinion pieces, they are chock full of facts. But f you are not interested in facts, from respected mainstream sources, then...?

Personally, I have no horse in this race. I am only interested in justice and peace, and that needs to come from both sides.

"It was created through the colonial power of Britain, which had conquered then-Palestine by violent means and had no legitimate claim to the land and no right to turn it over to create of the state of Israel." Your use of the term Colonial creates the implication that it was an action taken in the interests of Colonialism. The tone of your original statement and your use of such terms ALL create the false impression that Britain somehow conquered the area when in fact it was more like liberation: the removal of a colonial power by military force. Just like the removal of Iraq from Kuwait or the removal of Germany from the rest of Europe. Finally in THIS post you have managed to create a reasonable statement of what actually happened: A military campaign which gave the UK control over the area.

As for the idea that Israel as the more powerful person in the conflict is somehow responsible for ending the conflict: If Israel suddenly ceased all interdiction, do you really believe that Hamas would not IMMEDIATELY take advantage of lifted restrictions to ship in as much military material as they possibly could? If Israel were to halt counter-battery fire, do you think that Hamas would not simply deploy more rockets in the open?

Perhaps a more sensible solution would be for a third party, such as the UN, to take over the aid supply situation. Not to take over searching ships, but to provide a marshalling area outside Gaza, where supplies could be delivered, unloaded, checked for military goods, then transported to Gaza, instead of the current "private" system which forces Israel to have to stop the ships of other nations. If this process were correctly administered and open, then Israel (and the world) could see quite clearly that only humanitarian aid got through. No doubt this would also free up Israeli resources for policing landward borders and perhaps create funding for a more substantial anti-missile system. (Something along the lines of the Royal Navy Goalkeeper system perhaps.)

Israel is the better equipped and more powerful part of the current conflict because since the day of its inception Israel has been under continuous military attack, because the surrounding Arab nations do not wish Israel to exist. There is no reason for this other than spurious religious reasons. Any nation can be run fairly for ALL its citizens, with religious freedom and tolerance, and as fair a governance and taxation system as is available anywhere else, if people STEP BACK from the "Genocide or nothing" mindset. Israel is there, accept it, come to terms with it, and start thinking about how people can be allowed to live day to day without the constant threat of war by either group.