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Hamas is using Ghandi style passive resistance in order to call attention to themselves. Israel is blockading Gaza and will not allow aid shipments into Gaza unless it lands at an Israeli port to the north of Gaza, where all cargo and vessels can be properly inspected.

Gaza is refusing to accept aid from ships that were detained unless all the crew and all equipment confiscated is returned.

Ships running the blockade record events and post them on youtube as well as do direct web traffic into the internet.

Israel claims the blockade is there to keep weapons out of Gaza,

Gaza claims that these ships have no weapons and that Israel is committing a criminal act by seizing these aid ships.

So... what should Israel do and who do you support?

Ok that video...

Explains how the Palestinians are trying to control the court of public opinion.

It's still a 3 ton elephant in the room because not a lot of people get to see things like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI

but still, the only purpose built weapons they show in the video are a 3 inch folding knife and a can of mace, and the package the mace came in.

I'm just saying, that this is something we need to pay attention to.

I am unsure how I feel about this elephant.

What I do know is...

* That Israel & Palestine both have a right to exist.
* That Israeli military are abusing their power. (I'm not saying other military in other countries dont. But no matter who does it, it's shameful)

* I feel sympathy for the casualties of war on both sides.

Why is Israel trying to control Palestine anyway? Like their roadblocks, they wont let anything in Palestine w/o going through Israeli customs first?
I need to find a good book on this subject.

And yet the court of public opinion says otherwise...

ok enough devils advocating...

Palestine is trying to garner public support by playing the victim card, calling Israel, bullies, basically.

So are we bullies? There's evidence here that says we are not... is there any clear evidence we are bullies?

What about those turks who were killed?

Personally, I'm actually starting to wonder if the entire flotilla wasn't just some handy distraction from that ******** big oil spill that's threatening all life on Planet Earth. Turkey is a BP country, after all.

And meanwhile, globs of toxic schmutz are making their way to the wetlands, threatening to eradicate our marine ecology. When there's no life in our oceans and wetlands, we won't have a chance if we did manage to terraform the moon. But who cares about that when there are some Jews practicing unauthorized self determination? Everyone knows that's against international law.


Off the top of my head, I can name Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey as nations willing to arm Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah and any other tin pot Caliph with an ax to grind. I can name ISM and WCW off the top of my head as two organizations similarly willing to supply Hamas with arms and I can name the Red Cross/Red Crescent as an organization that has abused its supposed neutrality in the past and transported weapons through the border. I can even name individuals who either went on record as being willing to bring weapons to Israel's enemies or have actually done so, and a simple google search can back me up.

Now, why should Israel allow its enemies to be armed by third parties? Rice, beans and cough syrup is one thing, but why allow anything that can be used to worsen and perpetuate the violence? Really, the violence has to end. But until then, I'm all for a good old fashioned siege. It's the least bloody way to go about this war. And trust me, I don't want this to continue:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Hamas+war+against+Israel/Operation_Gaza_factual_and_legal_aspects_use_of_force_Hamas_breaches_law_of_armed_conflict_5_Aug_200.htm#B3

Call Me Apple, you're sitting there hitting the nail on the head. I never said that any of these countries were willing to help the Palestinians. Only arm them. Just like America isn't willing to help Israel. Only arm her. Guns and butter cannot exist simultaneously in the same nation at the same time, period. You can have guns and you can have butter. Not both.

Why? No good reason, that's why. Mandatory Palestine wasn't even Herzl and Dreyfus' first choice. Dreyfus actually bought a private island which would be a home for the Jews. He planned to name it Judea. Then the people who were selling him the land found out he was Jewish, kept his money and didn't give him the deed to the land. Jews weren't welcome in Europe and they were dying in the ghettos of America.

So, what's a Jew to do? Well, Muslim propaganda says that Jews were always happier in the Muslim world. So they went to mandatory Palestine. They bought land from Jordanian absentee landlords. European Jews rediscovered Middle Eastern Jews and found a common language. Indigent farmers from Syria, Jordan and Lebanon found employment under the Jews, despite the prejudices of the Labor Zionists. Sounds pleasant enough, right?

Well, that was the 19th century. Fast-forward to the 20th century and things start going sour. Hitler rose to power and more and more European Jews were fleeing to Mandatory Palestine, just because no one in Europe or the Americas would take them. So of course there were quotas limiting the number of Jews who could go there. Meanwhile, Nazism was spreading amongst the Arabs, as is evident from the Phalange party, the Hanzar SS and the Grand Mufti of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Mohammed Amin al-Hussayni.

Speaking of which, you have Mo Hussayni to blame for this war as much as Moshe Dayan. It's under him that Palestine stopped being a decent place for Jews to live. It's under him that the local Arabs got together and for no good reason started yelling, "Jerusalem is our city; Jews are our dogs." This yelling was shortly followed by acts of violence which led directly to the 1948 War of Independence.

What does all this have to do with Palestinians suffering today? I'll get to that in a moment. Pretty soon the Israelis really started kicking serious Syrian and Jordanian a**. The Syrians and Jordanians started urging the Palestinians to pack up and leave. Israelis, such as at least one of my displaced relatives, drove around begging the Palestinians to just stay where they were.

Well, some of the Palestinians stayed and some left. The ones who left are the grandparents and great-grandparents of the refugee crisis. They were kept in camps and treated like animals by their "Muslim brothers." The ones who stayed were Israeli Arabs. The problems they faced were those of employment discrimination more than anything else. And these problems are being addressed to this day by Israeli Arabs in the Knesset.

In conclusion, you're absolutely right. The Arab world is doing nothing to help the Palestinians. Instead, they're keeping them in a state of hopeless and unnecessary war. The Syrians, Jordanians and Lebanese regard Palestinians as little better than Jews because they're the descendants of the tenant farmers they sent to work for the Jews.

But why keep arming them? Simply, there's a lot of prophet to be made from this war, by both AIPAC and OPEC. If the war were resolved decades ago as it could have been, why, the arms dealers would have gone out of business. Maybe this doesn't answer your question. All I can do, though, is give you some background and show you how history agrees with you.

You know what else would end the war? If Jordan changed its name to Palestine. Gaza, the West Bank and most of the disputed territories were Jordanian. After the Jordanian territories became Israeli through diplomacy, land purchases or UN intervention, the Syrians insisted that the Palestinians leave this "Zionist occupied" land while the Jordanians refused to re-absorb their own citizens, hence the Nakba.