Johann Hari: The True Story Behind This War Is The One Israel Is Not Telling

[stranger81]

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says: we withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Some 16 civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice? It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it - but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years, and view the runway to this war dispassionately.

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Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means they can keep the slabs of the West Bank on 'their' side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements, and control of the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today - and compromise with them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-true-story-behind-thi_b_153825.html

[Vegasaurus]

1. Israel is the only side that has done any compromising at all

they were willing to give up all but the largest settlement blocs.

Gaza was a chance to make a state; instead, the Palesinians trashed that chance completely.

If there is ever to be peace, there will have to be recognition of Israel and renouncing terrorism.

Nothing will happen until the two Palestinian sides agree on this.

Just more and more death and misery.

[atreides1]

3. Read the article

Israel by rejecting Hamas outright showed that it wants compromise on its terms, which isn't really compromise.

[Vegasaurus]

4. How do you compromise with a poltiical group

that is sworn to your destruction>

That is a serious question.

[Donnachaidh]

6. I think the Palestinians can ask that question just as well

But hey, when the answer to rocks and bottles has historically been rockets and mortars, I guess the ones with the big guns get to play *victim* when the cameras are on, yes? :eyes:

[HeraldSquare212]

9. Why should you compromise with a state actor that is sworn to your destruction?

Oh, sure, those of you who can survive by grubbing a living off a small plot of the worst available land will be allowed to survive. For now, anyway.

[truedelphi]

11. Would there be a political group sworn to another's destruction

If there had not been an occupation that drove out those who previously lived in Palestine, forcing them into Syria, or refuge camps or even to the United States??

Palestinians remember how they were driven from their homes. Some were given a warning and a chance to move away. Others were not.

I believed all the stories that I heard: stories told from the Israeli side of things, until I lived in California where there are people who know the other side of the story.

One woman who owned a convenience store I often visited told me bout her mother in law - whose wedding ring finger was ripped off her hands by Israelis.

In the last twenty years, for every single Israeli who has been killed, thirteen Palestinians have been killed.

[StudsT]

5. thats not how it looks to me... it looks like they take more and kill more civilians

than the palestinians... and it has gone on for decades... reminds me of how we treated the indians... lie and cheat, steal and murder, all in the name of the preservation of our way of life.

and so it goes...

StudsT

[stranger81]

7. a little reading comprehension goes a long way . . . .

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security services Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet - high with election-fever, and eager to appear tough - rejected these terms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-true-story-behind-thi_b_153825.html

and that was just last week.

[The Stranger]

8. Sheez, where is this stuff coming from?

Is there another web site organizing this campaign?

[atreides1]

2. Good Article

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. Mixed at best IMO

[DogPoundPup]

12. The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

by Johann Hari

It is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim to speak for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The world isn’t just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall — as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 — there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, “We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?” It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 â•„ in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon’s senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians… this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.”

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn’t have been my choice — an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas’s sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population.

Continue reading ... http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2008/12/29/2270/

[bemildred]

13. Dupe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x231544

[Smarmie Doofus]

14. Whatever else it is, it is not a *war*:

>>>>>The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: “Israel’s war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth… If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas’s court ; it is in ours.”>>>>>

Interesting analysis.

[4dsc]

15. Very true analysis none the less.. nt

[The Second Stone]

16. Gaza is occupied territory

Israel hasn't "withdrawn" so much as abdicated responsibility for the millions of people who are malnourished in a country that it has for all intents and purposes occupied. If they have withdrawn, then somebody in Gaza can seek to form a real government and be recognized and do trade. Israel will only allow such things on terms that it dictates and which are not up to international law. The United States must stop funding this crime against humanity.