Fred1new
- 06 Jan 2009 19:21
Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?
If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?
Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?
What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?
cynic
- 12 Aug 2009 19:06
- 1256 of 6906
only one thing wrong with the Poland analogy -the Poles were not a willing party to it!
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 11:03
- 1257 of 6906
I can see the difficulties in negotiating with the Israeli government:
A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics has taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu.
About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars.
The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it", Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper"
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 11:03
- 1258 of 6906
I can see the difficulties in negotiating with the Israeli government:
A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics has taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu.
About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars.
The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it", Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper"
cynic
- 13 Aug 2009 11:29
- 1259 of 6906
swine flu only attacks gentiles or those of the Chosen who have fallen by the wayside!
btw, i did not think that Kabalists were really in the mainstream of life even in Israel ..... but of course if the papers print something, it must be true
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 13:18
- 1260 of 6906
Especially, if supported by a bulletin board.
But it is an odd old world.
Bye the way, what are the differences between, childish, childlike and primitive when relating to behaviour?
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 13:19
- 1261 of 6906
Especially, if supported by a bulletin board.
But it is an odd old world.
Bye the way, what are the differences between, childish, childlike and primitive when relating to behaviour?
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 13:19
- 1262 of 6906
Edit. ISP problems!
hilary
- 13 Aug 2009 13:26
- 1263 of 6906
The problem is more likely to be between the chair and the keyboard!
Isaacs
- 13 Aug 2009 13:26
- 1264 of 6906
LOL
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 14:07
- 1265 of 6906
I thought somebody was leaving the country!
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 14:07
- 1266 of 6906
I thought somebody was leaving the country!
Fred1new
- 13 Aug 2009 14:08
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PS Social services won't upgrade my ISP.
I said they should raise taxes!
Fred1new
- 15 Sep 2009 19:25
- 1268 of 6906
Just in case there are any posters who have not read the below.
~And also the possibility that some might have the humility to retract some of their offensive remarks.
"UN condemns 'war crimes' in Gaza
Richard Goldstone comments on 'crimes' committed by Israeli and Palestinian forces
There is evidence that both Israeli and Palestinian forces committed war crimes in the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip, a UN report says.
It accuses Israel of deliberately using "disproportionate force" in the three-week operation in December and January.
The report also condemned rocket attacks by Palestinian groups, which sparked the Israeli offensive.
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166.
Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
The report said Israel must be held accountable for its actions during the war, a process which could lead to the conflict being referred to the International Criminal Court.
The military operation was a result of disrespect for the fundamental principle of 'distinction' in international humanitarian law
Key extracts from UN statement
Israel, which had refused to co-operate with the UN fact-finding team, said the report was "clearly one-sided".
It reiterated that it was "committed to acting fully in accordance with international law and to examining any allegations of wrongdoing by its forces".
The investigation, led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, found evidence "indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict", a UN statement said.
Israel also "committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity".
Israel said the conflict was to end rockets attacks from Gaza
The report accuses Israel of imposing "a blockade which amounted to collective punishment" in the lead-up to the conflict.
It "concludes that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population," said the UN statement.
Statement by the Israel military that its operation involved very few errors showed, said the report, that its failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets was "the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions".
'Arbitrary arrests'
The report found there was also evidence that Palestinian groups had committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated rockets and mortars attacks on Israel.
It said there launching of rockets which "cannot be aimed with precision at military targets" breaches the fundamental principle of sparing civilian lives.
ANALYSIS
Tim Franks, BBC News, Jerusalem
If this report is to matter, it will be for a number of reasons. One is its length. There have been a slew of reports into the war in Gaza. This is the lengthiest, weighing in at 575 pages.
There is the man who wrote it: Richard Goldstone is a judge and judicial investigator with an impressive record. The UN Human Rights Council, for whom he wrote this, is also no longer a body which is quite as easy for Israel to dismiss as a congenitally biased. The US has recently run for, and been elected to a seat on its council.
Mr Goldstone has also shown a measure of political astuteness. This is not the first time that Israel, or Palestinian militants, have been accused of war crimes - and in Israel's case, crimes against humanity as well. But previous allegations have quickly begun to moulder on the shelf.
Mr Goldstone recommended that the Security Council require Israel, and the Gaza authorities, to report in six months about its own investigations into the alleged crimes. If they did not come up to scratch, then the International Criminal Court should become involved. Who, said Judge Goldstone, could object to that?
"Where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population," it said.
It called for the immediate release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier seized in a Palestinian raid in 2006 and taken to Gaza.
Both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities are criticised for the treatment of their own civilians during the conflict.
Israel's interrogation of political activists and repression of criticism of its activities had "contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent was not tolerated", it said.
Meanwhile, the alleged "arbitrary arrests" and "extra-judicial executions" of Palestinians by the authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank were also criticised.
The 574-page document recommends that authorities in both Israel and Gaza be required to investigate the allegations and report to the UN Security Council within six months."
cynic
- 15 Sep 2009 22:23
- 1269 of 6906
maybe in a few days time i'll tell you all about my visit today to Dachau ...... now that was REAL and scary and sickening experience and not just sabre-rattling propaganda hocus-pocus
Fred1new
- 16 Sep 2009 10:30
- 1270 of 6906
Cynic,
Dachau was appalling and should be remembered.
I would have hoped that governments would have learnt from this horrendous period in history and not repeated the abuses of one race/community against another.
This pattern of abuse, although at a lesser degree, appears to happening in the Middle East at the present time.
Also, although the majority of those persecuted at Dachau were of Jewish religion, they were not the only group persecuted during that period.
I think one should learn from history, but not use it to justify present actions.
Present actions should be based on the information of the present period, although understanding "should" based or previous experience.
ahoj
- 16 Sep 2009 14:17
- 1271 of 6906
They are tired of fighting. Should be ready to compromise, sit and talk.
Those who are not tired of killing each other will join the rest soon I hope.
cynic
- 16 Sep 2009 15:55
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Fred - you actually rather miss the point, though it is not absolutely clear ...... photographs and newsreels are easy to stomach, as they come across rather like cinema - i.e. unreal ..... it was all quite fine, even seeing the ovens in all their g(l)ory, apart from a guy treating it all as a photoshoot with his pal, until i reached the "shower room" ..... it was at that point that the full horror became all too apparent.
i had had enough, and left feeling pretty shell-shocked and sick, though there was still a museum and film to watch - not for me there wasn't.
===============
the close proximity (just 2/3 miles away) of the sleepy little medieval town of Dachau was alo a bit of a shaker ...... i have no intent to stir up enmity, but my goodness, how on earth could the locals pretend that they knew nothing, not least because the prisoners were marched from the local station to the camp ..... surely they couldn't have imagined the "visitors" were off on a jolly to Butlins
Fred1new
- 16 Sep 2009 18:16
- 1273 of 6906
I made no attempt to diminish the "horror" or the extent of the "crime" at Dachau. I have not visited the site or objected to it being a memorial to the events of that period.
However, over the last ten years, I have visited on two occasions:
" Oradour-sur-Glane is a town and commune in the Haute-Vienne dartement, Limousin rion of west-central France.
The original village was destroyed on June 10, 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants were murdered by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built post-war on a nearby site and the original has been maintained as a memorial."
At the first visit I thought I knew what to expect, but was horrified when witnessed the results and recollected on the "barbarities" which occurred in 1944 or German occupied Europe.
What surprise me that on my second visit, while extremely interested in the detail of the massacre and the reasoning behind it, I seemed to have become to a certain degree desensitise and more dispassionate. I was more interested in observing the reaction of others at the scene.
Probably, doesn't say much for me, but on reflection it did give me a little more understanding of how others could carry out such actions with seemingly little remorse.
If you are in that part of France, pay a short visit to the Village. I respect the French for keeping it as a memorial.
Likewise, I feel the mass graves of civilians in the woods in other parts of Europe.
The veneer of civilisation is very thin.
Haystack
- 16 Sep 2009 18:26
- 1274 of 6906
My mother's brother was a wartime photographer and one of his jobs at the end of the war, after doing secret underwater photography, was to go to Auschwitz and a few other camps to record images of the places. I am in no doubt as to the extent of the holocaust and I think we should never forget what happened.
However, I do agree with Fred to quite an extent about the current behaviour of Israel. There are also many Israelis who have condemned their government over Gazza. I am no supporter of Israel and will continue to support the Palestinians certainly while Israel still has land that does not belong to them. They are still building on stolen land even now.
cynic
- 16 Sep 2009 18:43
- 1275 of 6906
i was not suggesting israel's actions are in any way justified by what happened 70 years ago ..... more than anything, i just wanted to post something about Dachau and this seemed a sensible (i never said that!) place so to do