Middle East
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Started by joj - May 25, 2021, 4:19 p.m.
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Re: Middle East
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By metmike - May 25, 2021, 7:54 p.m.
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Thanks joj!

It's sad that there appears to be no end in sight. 

No path to negotiate terms that both sides might be happy with. One side is willing to incur tremendous damage to themselves in order to cause any amount of damage to the other side.

This is the most dangerous fighter of all. 

In a bar or street fight, you never want to fight somebody like this. They have no fear of getting their teeth knocked out or being physically damaged in the fight. All they care about is hurting you as much as possible until, either they are unconscious/incapacitated by you...... or you are pummeled enough to require hospitalization........even after you give up. 

This reminds me exactly of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades faction of Hamas.

Nothing short of obliterating Israel seems to be satisfactory to them.........but its 100 times worse than a bar fight, where an opponent can opt to walk......or run away to seek safety.

Israel is physically anchored to it's current location.  In an ideal world, that location would be 2,000 miles away from the Muslim/Arab world. In fact, it's because of that location...close proximity  that it's being attacked. 

Since being a teenager, I was always fascinated by tiny little Israels amazing ability to exist and even thrive while being surrounded by numerous countries that want to wipe them off the face of the earth. 

Just look at this map below. The size of Israel must be less than 1% of the area of all the surrounding Arab countries surrounding it. And the group that has 99% of the land in the region is ticked off about a strip of land that the owners of less than 1% of the land have a stake in?

Pretty messed up if you ask me.


By metmike - May 25, 2021, 8:14 p.m.
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Just to have an accurate calculation, here we go.


The total area of all the Arab states in the Middle East is around 6,265,000 sq km.

This compares with 22,000 sq km for Israel. So the Arab states have 285 times more area than does Israel.

Palestine is around 6,000 sq km. 

So the Arab states have more than 1,000 times the land area than the size of Palestine.

Adding ALL of Palestine to Israel would increase its size by almost 25%

Adding ALL of Palestine to the Arab world would increase their terrain by a minuscule fraction.




https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-largest-countries-in-the-middle-east.html


Re: Middle East
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By GunterK - May 25, 2021, 9:16 p.m.
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Joj, thank you again. This article is an educational addition to the earlier post of yours.

In a way, the Gaza Strip is already a Palestinian place. It is a independent municipality. Why is it so difficult to make it a state?

On the other hand, from reading all this, that wouldn’t be enough for Hamas. They want all the Israelis gone, or no deal.

This means, there may never be a peaceful solution.

There will be more conflicts like the one last week. And short 7-day battles will not make Hamas go away. Hamas will only be silenced by annihilating them.

However, the world will never accept a “total war”.   Israel is also fighting the international “MSM”.

We see the image of an Israeli bus blown up by suicide bombers… the international MSM goes “oh, how terrible”

We see Hamas sending a barrage of rockets towards Israeli cities…. “oh, the poor people of Israel have to run for their shelters”

We see Israel striking back… and they show us pictures of injured children, and everybody screams “genocide!!!”

The fact that Hamas (as well as other muslim countries) want to commit genocide on Israel, is never mentioned.

And Biden now wants to rebuild Gaza with our money???? Why????

Re: Middle East
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By joj - May 25, 2021, 9:22 p.m.
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Agreed MM and worthy of mentioning.

A couple of other points.  Nigeria had 4,000 Christians slaughtered.  Maybe one article about it in The NY Times (one of my preferred sources).  Yemen has had horrific atrocities committed with little reporting (although some).  

Congo war has resulted in millions of lives lost:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

The conservative refrain about little media coverage of black on black violence in America has merit in my view.  But whites killing blacks?  Page one!

My Niece in Israel is 30 years old and not only believes in coexistence with Palestinians but has worked to promote connections with like minded Palestinians.  She created a Zoom connection with a group of Israelis and a group of Palestinians in Gaza.  They were discovered by Hamas and the Palestinians participating were beaten and tortured by Hamas.    That put an end to that.  My heart goes out to those Palestinians.

By metmike - May 25, 2021, 10:03 p.m.
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I was shocked to see that many people were killed in the Congo war.

War is an accepted way of life(and death) in that part of the world. People grow up with it and children are raised to have extreme/zealot, non compromising belief ideologies. Taught to hate those that are not part of their group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_conflicts_in_the_Middle_East

https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/conflict-trends-middle-east-1989-2019

What can be done by the rest of the world that has progressed and applies principles  which respect all human beings, even when they emphatically disagree on the politics or religion?

It seems like an impossible mission.

What do you think?


Re: Middle East
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By joj - May 26, 2021, 1:29 p.m.
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Gunter,

My reply about why rebuild Gaza is because we care about the innocent lives.  Of course  even as rich as we are we cannot possibly take care of all those suffering in the world.  Probably a billion people in extreme poverty facing hunger etc...

My brother told me that even as the bombs and missiles were going back and forth, Israel was sending in humanitarian aid to Gaza.  Crazy world...

By GunterK - May 26, 2021, 1:51 p.m.
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thank you, joj, for your reply

One thing that is easily overlooked, when we look at all the violent palestinian protests, here in the US, is the fact that many people in Gaza do not want to fight the Israelis. Your post has made it clear. Not all Palestinians are Hamas. Most of us here, thousands of miles away, believe they are.

I admire Israel for sending humanitarian  aid to Gaza, in the midst of all the shooting.. This is extraordinary.

My criticism of Biden was wrong.

Yet, I don't believe Israel should be accused of 'genocide" for defending itself.



By WxFollower - May 26, 2021, 2:14 p.m.
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 Biden has handled this very well so far imo. I’ve heard many on the left, including liberal American Jews, being very critical of Biden for not criticizing Israel and a good number of conservatives saying this conflict would not have happened to the extent it did had Trump been President with his more bombastic and threatening tone. As a moderate, when many to the left of me and to the right of me are both very critical of how an issue is handled for different reasons, I realize that that was probably the best way to handle something. Biden has remained a steadfast supporter of Israel but doing so with a quieter demeanor than Trump would have employed and with much more going on behind the scenes as opposed to relying more on bombastic Twitter tweets.


Aside: I did like Trump’s support for moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the way.

By metmike - May 26, 2021, 2:23 p.m.
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I'm pleased with the way Biden has handled it too Larry, especially considering the pressure he's getting from the extreme left. 

I think that pro Israel Trump, even if he was doing exactly what Biden is doing, just by existing as president as Donald Trump, with his position would have attracted alot more venom towards Israel......because of those that view everything thru an anti Trump prism. 


By WxFollower - May 26, 2021, 2:49 p.m.
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Mike,

 Good point. I didn't think of that. I agree that many (mainly on the left) nearly always criticized Trump's positions only because they didn't want to show support for ANY decision he made (tribalism at its worst). As anti-Trump as I've been due to his behavior, I have in some cases voiced my support here for his positions.