1. Don't get me wrong: when I was 14, sadam fired "scud" rockets on Israel one of them hit 3 streets away. School was out for 2 months. You can't imagine how happy I was to see that scum hanged. But if I were american I would still oppose the iraq war: it just can not be justified under no standard. 2. I saw a very interesting discovery channel program, about how the development of the bomb was accelarated after news from japan arrived, claiming the japan is close to surrender. The goal was: make it operational before they surrender. This discovery channel program brought me to the above conclusion. 3. I really hope he would! Its about time that our best friend will not be our puppy, but stand up to what he believes. Obama should say: settlements, or U.S. fonds. 4. hehe
I will attempt again to explain why I believe that Holocaust Day is an important time to reflect on the Palestinian situation and particularly Cast Lead. I did not enter this thread from hate, but to emphasize that Israel, more than any country on Earth, has a responsibility to ensure that the evils of the Holocaust never recur. I have been in so many back-and-forths with Israelis lately that I tend to get confused. At the time, we had young Ohad defending the IDF. The point never seemed to get across. For a few weeks in January, Gaza was beginning to look like Warsaw...and had it not been for the pressure of world protest, who knows how much worse it might have been? I made a commitment to "never forget"...because no people on Earth deserve what happened in Gaza. The worst part is that the peace process will be that much more difficult now.
So it seems we agree on must topics except for the parallel you find between the holocaust and Cast Lead. Gaza did not look like warsaw, not even close. At the end of world war II, not a single building was left standing there. After Cast-Lead many pictures of destruction were released. very few pictures of the 99.95% of the building who are still standing.... The jewish ghetto in Warsaw was a death factory for many from hunger, typhos, and other diseases (later, the gas chambers were "invented"). That has been its pre-destination. This evil, no matter how you look at it, is not the case of Cast-Lead. My friends in uniform were not given orders to shoot arbitrarily, but only when fired at. The goals were well-defined, mapped, and discussed prior to operation: to get the people of the Hamas, and to dry out their weapons factories and storage. You know very well that if indiscriminate killing would have been our goal, than there would have been very little palestinians left today to tell the story. My brother who took part in the operation and told me that he saw in his bare eyes a hamas member with weapon in one hand, and a baby in the other hand. you can believe it if you wish, or not. You see, bringing again and again the parallels you find between Cast-Lead and the holocaust, just gives your other legitimate, sometimes correct, critisism over the Israeli politics in gaza less "weight". It draws you as a person who can't think clearly and/or filled with hatred, and makes it less attractive for people to try to convince you that you are wrong. In other words, you diminish your good arguments just by constantly bringing up this miserable, incorrect, parallel. I apologize for Ohad, he is young and his posts are filled with patriotic, nationalist crap. once he has some kids and spend some time out of Israel (where life can get you mad), he might express himself differently. The world did protest. Fact is, remarkably, the protests in the west bank during the operation were much less intensive and violent than the demonstrations in London, Ankara, and Barcelona. during cast-lead, there were couple of small demonstrations at the beginning in Jenin and Hebron, a small one in ramallah, but only in the first two days. Then, nothing more. Think about what that means.