Israel's international standing may be plummeting due to its new government, but it would appear to remain unbowed. Today the AP is reporting that Israel is "very unlikely" to cooperate with a UN war crimes probe into the war in Gaza (Hamas has said they will support the investigation). In addition, there is yet another story about Israel preventing necessary humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. From the IPS article "Aid Rots Outside Gaza":
Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars, juice,
chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other humanitarian-
based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points in and around Al-
Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometres from Gaza's border.Three months after the end of the war, much of the aid has either rotted or
been irreparably damaged as a result of both rain and sunshine, and Egypt's
refusal to open the Rafah crossing."To be honest, most of this aid will never make it to Gaza," a local
government official told IPS on condition of anonymity. "A lot of the food
here will have to be thrown away.". . .
All aid meant for Gaza via Egypt must currently pass through either Al-Auja
or Kerem Abu Sellem, Egypt's commercial crossings with Israel, and is
subject to both Israeli-Egyptian trade specifications and Israeli import law.Much of what is being stored in North Sinai – including food items like
lentils, pasta, chickpeas, and juice – has been deemed by Israel to be "non-
essential" to life in the Gaza Strip.Two thousand "family boxes" – containing essential supplies for Palestinian
families and donated by the Italian NGO Music for Peace – were recently
rejected at the Al-Auja crossing by Israeli authorities because they each
contained a jar of honey, the NGO's President, Stefano Robera, told IPS in Al-
Arish.
Nearly two months ago Hilary Clinton reportedly warned Israel about preventing aid into Gaza. Doesn't seem to have worked. It's time for the US to move beyond just giving warnings.
reading this I was reminded – at another post here discussing parallels between Zionism and Nazism where I had to wonder:
so what makes the Shoah so special ? I see that even the most vituperative of the anti-Zionists here persist in letting us know that there is no atrocity in history that can outdo the Shoah. Can someone please explain this to me ?
Is the fact that over a hundred years ago a group of people from a foreign land came to another’s land with the expressed purpose of stealing that land and killing anyone who got in their way, and that they have continued to do so to this day using the most deadly military means the world has ever seen and utilizing their brainwashed masses who are taught to view Arabs as sub human not even comparable to the Shoah ? What, if any event would be considered comparable with the Shoah ? By the criterion of one poster here this seems to be (necessary if not sufficient): “People are not being shoveled en masse into ovens in Palestine, and there are no roving bands of Israeli sondercommandos going from village to village searching them out and shooting every one of them.”
OK – but do we qualify as being a lesser atrocity the raining of bullets, bombs and burning phosphorus into a locked prison, not to mention the preceding pre-meditated starvation of those people? And were there not “roving bands of Israeli sondercommandos going from village to village searching them out and shooting every one of them” during the Nakba ? And all this barely scratches the surface of Israeli terrorism and atrocities going back at least 60 years in both Palestine and Lebanon.
Is not the premeditated and institutionalized starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s or the Irish in the 1840s worthy of comparison to the Shoah ? – to mention only a few other atrocities . . .
I really am curious here – what makes the Shoah THE premier atrocity of all time ? What are the exact criteria that makes this event more horrible than anything else in history ? At least in the minds of some here ?
fultronix:
As "the poster" you reference who talked about how the Holocaust was different from Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands I'd just note that a careful reading of what I said was simply that they *are* different, not that one or the other was "so special" as you put it. And I also noted that one can of course find some aspects of the former that parallels can be validly drawn to the latter. Indeed if you'll recall I started out by saying that the Holocaust does not just "equal" the jews but holds universal humanitarian lessons.
So, this is not to deny that the experience of the Palestinians under the Israelis hasn't had it horrors. Nor that the experience of the Ukrainians nor indeed so many others under communism have not held their horrors too. My point was simply that they are different horrors, each with their distinctive hallmarks. And I think that the victims of all horrors are to a goodly degree owed the imagination involved in recognizing the particular nature of the horror that they went through.
So no, I don't think it's valid to keep drawing blanket-type parallels between what the jews in Europe experienced in the Holocaust with what the Palestinians have experienced. It denies both the imagination I think they are due to envision the nature of what they went through, which was/has been different. Just like I think it would not be right to simply characterize what happened in the Soviet Union's Gulag or in the Ukraine with the simple word "Holocaust" since that would deny those victims their own particular story.
Not that just lumping every state-sponsored horror into the bin of being a "Holocaust" is some terrible terrible thing because of the above; again it's just a matter of hoping that if we ever suffer any horror people will not just unconsciously … dismiss it by saying "oh yeah, that Holocaust" and just move on.
What *does* strike me as a kind of terrible thing though is when the term "Holocaust" or the Nazi experience is *constantly* used as a parallel for the Palestinian experience when it appears that the *intent* of doing so is indeed to somehow dismiss or diminish the particular kind of horror faced by European jewry under Hitler. Again, that's not to say that the Palestinians haven't experienced their own kind. But it has been different.
So like I said, with the Holocaust to me its hallmarks were indeed those ovens and those sondercommandos, and the particular kind of horror that must have been felt by jews of being some small species of hunted animals amidst a sea of other species that at best could seem indifferent and at worst among the hunters.
Just like with the Ukrainian thing the hallmark there to me is just that searing reaction you get when you contemplate hunger so bad people are resorting to cannibalism. Indeed, you can well imagine that *those* victims might well feel that their special horror was being ignored if someone merely said "oh yeah, you lived through *that* Holocaust," because no, just as the Ukrainian's experience had its not-so-bad aspects, it also had its worst.
We MUST look to Israel to understand the lesson of the holocaust. The lesson is, that the very people who should have learned from the experience of violent oppression, use their first available opportunity to impose racism, hatred, xenophobia and violence on another group of defenseless people.
Israel could have identified itself as the world's principled rejection of Nazism and everything it stands for. But israel chose another path. Israel chose to become the CONTINUATION of Nazism. Instead of proving a triumph OVER Nazism, israel represents the triumph OF Nazism, living evidence that Nazism will never die, because it is woven into the fabric of humankind.
Sin Nombre — I did not mean to single you out. A quote of yours was but one example of various attitudes I used as further examples of what I have witnessed as the uniqueness argument regarding the Shoah. If those other examples misrepresent you I didn't intend that to be so.
Call these events anything you like : holocaust , nakba , holodomor , genocide , ethnic cleansing . . . . In our culture I still sense an order of magnitude more importance for the Shoah .
Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli-born British jazz musician, an author and activist wrote an article "The Wandering Who?"
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/09/02/gilad-atzmon-the-wandering-who/
I see that even the most vituperative of the anti-Zionists here persist in letting us know that there is no atrocity in history that can outdo the Shoah. Can someone please explain this to me ?
Posted by: fultronix | April 15, 2009 at 04:25 PM
NEVER BEFORE IN RECORDED HISTORY DID A SMALL CADRE CONVINCE A NATION TO PLUNGE THE WORLD INTO WAR WITH A GOAL OF SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYING A PARTICULAR MINORITY, GOING SO FAR AS TO DEMAND INVADED COUNTRIES GIVE UP THOSE PEOPLE KNOWINGLY INTO DEATH CAMPS. Simple explanation for morons like fultronix.
Er, what about the Gypsies–weren' t they a minority too? And didn't they suffer and get exterminated exactly as the Jews did? And didn't their numbers die just as disproportionately as the Jews in terms of percentage? Chris, shouldn't you at least have said "two particular minorities"?
And, did that subset of that nation really convince the balance it to plunge the world into war with a goal as you describe? Was it all so planned and carried out by all with such intent, as some accuse the Jews of planning to kill or
dispose the Palestinian Arabs of their land?
Or are you, Chris Berel, being a bit of a simpleton?
rykart, well done! Here, let me try to parody Chris HasBerel:
NEVER BEFORE IN RECORDED HISTORY DID A SMALL CADRE [OF NEO-CONS] CONVINCE A NATION TO PLUNGE THE [U.S. TAXPAYERS] INTO WAR WITH A GOAL OF SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYING A PARTICULAR [GROUP OF LANDOWNERS], GOING SO FAR AS TO [USE WHITE PHOSPHORUS WEAPONS AND DIME BOMBS] TO KNOWINGLY [TURN THE GAZA STRIP] INTO DEATH CAMPS.
Chris . . . There was a book called "Hitler's Willing Executioners" about the blind eye that German citizens turned toward Hitler's atrocities. You are no different. You see the Palestinians as subhuman.
Some moron wanted to know why the holocaust stood out in history. I didn't mention the Jews. Some moron named Sheldon mentioned them.
I see go-kart is still drunk.
@
Posted by: Sheldon B | April 15, 2009 at 07:46 PM…….
Yep…Five Million NON JEWS were killed in German camps.
Over all 45 million civilians were killed in WWII.
Russia lost the most, 12 million civilians and 25 million military.
The Nazis thought a lot of people were'undesirable and inferior', and they included the Jews in that assessment.
But listen to the Jewish whine…it's all about Me,Me,Me,Me.
fultronix wrote:
"Sin Nombre — I did not mean to single you out. A quote of yours was but one example of various attitudes I used…."
No no no, I took no offense whatsoever, and indeed I think I responded to you too fast, perhaps even out of a failure to look at what I had written before honestly. Thus, re-reading what I wrote before I think I have to admit you got me a bit in my writing as if the Holocaust was indeed somehow "worse," and it got me to thinking.
In the first place of course and most fundamentally this idea of "bad" and "worse" is just foolish if not evil, unless maybe you want to keep score just in terms of numbers. But even then in terms of all mass murders, they are all carried out one at a time in a sense, aren't they? Because you murder six million along with me does that make my additional murder somehow worse? Or indeed—and more dangerously—*less* worse? Or because you go about murdering mostly jews are the dead gypsies supposed to feel somehow less put upon?
But it's funny how we have this instinct to want to "rate" these things, and how that instinct afflicts even the most sophisticated people. I think it was the great Robert Conquest who of course chronicled the horrors of Stalin and what he did to the Ukraine and who tried counting all the millions killed under the Soviets who still said when asked that he thought that somehow Hitler's Holocaust was "worse." But, he said, he couldn't tell you why he felt that way, he just did.
I think it may be a combination of the maniacal focus that the Nazi's brought to bear on the jews, even if they may have killed far more Slavs ultimately, and then the "industrial" nature of what they did in Auschwitz and elsewhere. And I guess that has made an impression on me too.
On a more abstract level I guess, as with you, I "know" that the difference this makes may not make any difference for most purposes. Nuts, Stalin was bad enough but if Trotsky could have had his way there was a man who easily could have seen it as being okay to kill every single non-communist human he could get his hands on. When he talked about society needing a "new man" he meant it, describing humans as "nasty monkeys without tails," and Lenin wasn't much better by calling all non-communists as "insects."
But, still, Lenin and Trotsky never got their chance which would have necessitated an even more industrialized machine than their Gulag, and so we're left with Hitler and the Holocaust with all its focus and efficiency and non-theoreticalness.
Whatever the intricacies of all this I think that in going into the actual nature and details of some of what has been done to the Palestinians you've done exactly what I think is the right thing in terms of not just lumping their predicament into some short-hand term but truly imagining what they've been through. And I understand completely why you raised the Holocaust too because one thing we haven't talked about is the subtext that runs through so much of Israel's defense saying that "because of the Holocaust somehow we get a pass for whatever we do," or, even worse, to say that "because we don't use ovens everything is okay."
The funny thing is that's not just bogus even *if* the Shoah was somehow "worse" or "more terrible" than any other horror, but as rykart pointed out (kinda brilliantly I think), it makes it even *more* bogus. If you indeed have seen the worst depths humans can plumb, well then what's your excuse for not doing everything in your power to refrain from ever doing any plumbing yourself?
In that sense it seems to me its the Israeli government and its hyper-partisans themselves that have kind of cheapened the Holocaust. I mean … is that all it comes down to? Just an excuse? You learned *nothing* from it? It's just … a playing card of sorts? They keep at it and pretty soon people are going to come to think about it in the same light jokey way one now can regard the Spanish Inquisition since Monty Python made it into such a (great) joke.
I don't mean to over-belabor this; can all of us really say that if we had seen our families and blood go through the Holocaust that we'd come out with some Jesus-like, turn-the-other cheek mentality? But it has been some time now, and like rykart essentially says it's way past time for Israelis to stop using their historical trauma as either a trump card to excuse them from inflicting their own, or to say that anything less than ovens and sondercommandos is inconsequential.
It is true Cris. The jewish holocaust stands out in history. Not because of the extent or the brutality. The extermination of native americans (North and south) was worse. The sad fact is that history is full of atrocities.
What makes the jewish holocaust stand out is the way the zionist have picked up the mantle of their kinfolks oppressors and use their suffering as an excuse to commit the same crime against an innocent population. In a smaller scale, but with equal motivation.-Blood and soil.
In my most humble opinion:
The Holocaust represents a period of time in which new military capabilities from industrialization enabled the viciousness of inhumanity that is a consistent theme of history to be executed in a way so rapacious that it is scary for anyone to contemplate, and it occurred during a time when communication of events globally was a fairly recent accomplishment. As a consequence, there was a greater awareness of what happened than was possible in less technologically advanced times.
The world's sense of conscience changed because of WWII.
The Holocaust forms a modern paradigm for considering genocide; both the Holocaust and the second world war are two of the most thoroughly documented periods of history we have. To ignore the Holocaust when attempting to establish patterns of behavior that are demonstrably anti-social is to lose a reference that has great impact and great importance. It is true that the middle class of Europe allowed the Holocaust to occur; it is true that the danger of repetition is not merely potential but close to occurring, in terms of death dealt for similar causes, in many areas of the world now.
In my opinion, if the policies of the Bush administration had been continued, we would be well down all the slippery slopes that sent pre-WWII Europe into catastrophe – we still are in danger of US involvement in Asia becoming an 'empire-ending' event while the activity of Israel continues to threaten the stability not only of the US but of the world.
One important aspect of the Halocaust, IMO, is that it is not unique in terms of why it occurred. Religious discrimination in previous times was limited not in the scope of prejudicial discrimination involved, but in the ability to execute the lethal impulse of religious authorities when they held social power sufficient to launch pogroms against those they defined as enemies. Surely, the aim of the Crusades was to eradicate Chistianity's enemies.
Those "offending" jars of honey – this cynical use of ever changing excuses and the hiding behind procedures and rules – this is what gets me.
Germany in the thirties used latter to strip it's minority population of its civil rights, the former is native to Israel.
I can't but envisage a secret enjoyment and power head rush that comes from ability to change rules at whim and see UN and all those NGOs jump through the never ending hoops.
I just love this. You know the problem with these people is they are truely stupid. They spend 800 words saying the same thing 12 times because their arguement only consist of three points.
1) you can't criticize Israel because jews live there
2) and jew are the world's victims thru no fault of their own, totally innocent of any guilt or wrong doing thruout history so anyone criticizing jews must be doing it because they are anti semitic.
3) therefore those who criticize Israel are anti semites…which goes full circle back to Number one, Jews live in israel.
That's all this says…and it takes this guy 1000 words ..it's like someone trying to teach monkey's by repeating the same
thing over and over. They are so stupid it's painful to read because you
want to respond and there's no way to respond to stupidity. It's like walking into a mental ward and trying to
communicate with some inmate who only responds to the voices in his own head.
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/06/1004282/when-does-criticizing-israel-become-antisemitic
A persistent pattern of discriminatory criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitic because modern human-rights methodologies are astute enough to examine not only a pattern of impugned behavior but also the likely effects of that pattern. Consider the following: (1) Jews have been an historically victimized People for more than 2,000 years, just as the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada and African-Americans have been historically victimized. (2) Now with about half the world’s Jewish population, Israel is the historic and current homeland of the Jewish People.
When these two points are considered in terms of modern human-rights methodologies, the conclusion is that a persistent pattern of discriminatory criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitic because it is likely to harm Jews.
Anti-Semites aim to portray Israel in a negative light. Their underlying motivation is sinister, in that they seek to defame Israel to fabricate justifications for extreme measures likely to do grave harm to Jews, whether in Israel or abroad.
Why is Anti-Semitism so powerful?
Because of explicit pejorative references to Jews and Judaism, the texts of both the Christian gospels and the Muslim Koran have directly played a role in spawning civilizations with exceptional attitudes towards Jews and Judaism. In the Western and Islamic Worlds, many individuals find it natural to harbor distinctive (often negative) views about Jews and Judaism. However, there is often a lack of awareness that the prevailing cultural software has been so significantly infected by the virus of Anti-Semitism. For this reason, many individuals remain comfortable persistently targeting Jews and/or Israel and persistently applying to Jews and/or Israel a more exigent standard than applied to other Peoples and countries.How did the Holocaust Begin?
Shouting “Dirty Jew!” or attacking Jews in pogroms or sending Jews to die in concentration camps are obviously Anti-Semitic. But many individuals in the Western and Islamic Worlds have a blind spot that prevents them from recognizing Anti-Semitism in other toxic manifestations. Here it helps to recall the Holocaust that killed six million Jews in Europe (1939-1945). That horrendous crime traced its immediate origins to 1933, when Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler began a program of well-organized discrimination that singled out Jews via legal and bureaucratic expedients. In the same way, modern Anti-Semites contrive strategies to support persistent patterns of bitter discrimination against Israel, e.g., in organs of the United Nations. The strategy is to demonize Israel by persistently judging it according to a more exigent standard than regularly applied to other countries. The ultimate goal is to justify the destruction of Israel and the killing of the six million Jews there.Jews tainted by Anti-Semitism?
The ad hominem argument of being Jewish or having Jewish parents (even concentration camp survivors) is no logical defense to a charge of Anti-Semitism. Today, many Jews fail to understand that the meaning of Anti-Semitism includes any persistent pattern of discrimination against Jews and/or Israel. "
I swear this sounds just like witty right down to the use of sentences like this…"To the contrary, the methodologies applied in more than a half-century of modern human-rights law make it clear that a persistent pattern of targeting Israel with discriminatory criticism is Anti-Semitic."
To which we sane pople say what "methodologies"…the methodology that says Jews live in Israel, Jews are victims, therefore criticizing Israel where Jews live and so on and so forth.
Is this unreferenced methodology the same one that makes clear that Jews and Israel criticizing Arabs, Palestines, gentiles, christianity , etc is anti semitic, anti persian, anti gentile and anti christian?
I have to quit reading their stuff, it's so stupid and simpleminded it hurts. I don't know how the zionist ever got called smart…they take their Jews=Israel=anti semitism and add some totally unrelated psycho or political babble and then pretend they have actually make a case or arguement and pass it off as intelligent? It's the damnist thing I ever seen..is it their stupidity that makes them resort to this circular non reasoning or is it their stupidity in thinking the world is stupid instead of just dumb founded at their stupidity or are they actually smart in using stupidity knowing that most people won't waste any time tryng to respond to stupidity so they won't be challenged?
It only hurts because you are stupid and simpleminded. And psychotic to boot. But we are not dumbfounded by it, we expect it from people like you.
We love the fact that you waste time on blogs like this. It keeps you harmless.
The holocaust/shoah has taken on a religious aspect so much so that to question it is blasphemy. The holocaust is not a unique event in history and many popular 'facts' about it simply are not true. What is happening to the Palestinians is not a unique event in history, but because it is happening now WE ALL have an obligation to try to stop it.
It is not surprising that an antisemite would attack the validity of the Holocaust in such a simple way.
Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars, juice, chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other humanitarian- based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points in and around Al- Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometres from Gaza's border. … All aid meant for Gaza via Egypt must currently pass through either Al-Auja or Kerem Abu Sellem, Egypt's commercial crossings with Israel, and is subject to both Israeli-Egyptian trade specifications and Israeli import law.
There are some great posts in this thread. Thanks guys. The following crudity is heartfelt and I think appropriately calibrated. Whatever the responsible historical reason or process, the Israelis who make these decisions are simply dicks. I'll never forget the article I read where it was revealed that Israelis were blocking toilet paper from Gaza. It immediately reminded me of Nazis withholding soap from Jews in ghettos and calling them 'dirty Jews'. Withholding tools of hygiene is fundamentally a deliberate act of dehumanization, and speaks volumes about Israeli racism and contempt for Arabs. And Israeli-firsters want to continue stealing my taxes to give to these dicks? Vocal resistance is a moral imperative.
LOL, you talk'n to me Chris?
Chris…isn't that short for Christ?
RE: "I see that even the most vituperative of the anti-Zionists here persist in letting us know that there is no atrocity in history that can outdo the Shoah. Can someone please explain this to me ?"
Chris Berel directly responded: "
"NEVER BEFORE IN RECORDED HISTORY DID A SMALL CADRE CONVINCE A NATION TO PLUNGE THE WORLD INTO WAR WITH A GOAL OF SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYING A PARTICULAR MINORITY…"
A subsequent commenter asked Chris, basically, why only one particular minority, weren't there at least two, including the Roma?
So Chris writes back he didn't mention which minority he had in mind when it was the Shoah
that he was distinguishing from all other atrocities in world history.
Such a child. Anyone ever recall Chris Berel ever mentioning the Roma/Gypsies before on this blog? Further, the Roma also have their own name for what Hitler did to him.
Citizen, you mean "for what Hitler did to them." The Gypsies' word for Hitler's final solution directed at them is Porrajmos. "Shoah" is a Hebrew world. Chris Berel wouldn't recognize it if it hit him the face. He has only one concern, well-known here.
Colin,
Hamas fires rockets despite any sense of cost-benefit equation because it wages total war.
Do you know what Gaza would look like if Israel waged total war?
You can keep the aid, too, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Seattle, which is where it is spent, can get a little thinner.
Murder-suicide might even be good foreign policy, as long as the victims are Jewish, right?
I mean, I've seen Palestinians do it as family law, but that was on an artisanal scale.
Hamas fires rockets despite any sense of cost-benefit equation …
Their behavior seems pretty rational to me. When the enemy refuses to negotiate, ethnically cleanses and colonizes your land, and oppresses and starves your people, and you have only two choices: surrender to slavery or fire rockets, most folks with spines will fire rockets. Maybe it is that you are simply too self-centered to understand their equation.
… because [Hamas] wages total war.
Their feeble rocket attacks comprise total war? LOL, read some history.
Do you know what Gaza would look like if Israel waged total war?
It would be a lifeless ruin. Do you think that is some kind of revelation to anyone? Am I supposed to be impressed with your magnanimity because you (plural) have chosen not to mass-murder those from whom you are trying to steal?
You can keep the aid, too, …
Awesome!
… Dallas-Ft. Worth and Seattle, which is where it is spent, can get a little thinner.
Are you kidding me? Not all of our 'foreign aid' to Israel gets spent in America. See The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Even if it were, we would be vastly better off spending each of our tax dollars paying our own people to provide goods and service for us, i.e. repairing our decaying infrastructure and better educating our children, rather than paying our workers to build goods that get spent overseas and do nothing to help America. Sure, some defense workers have jobs because of subsidies to Israel, but even more would have them if the money were spent more wisely.
Murder-suicide might even be good foreign policy, as long as the victims are Jewish, right?
I call guys 'dicks' who have deliberately withheld hygienic items from civilians, and you think I am advocating murdering Jews? Eurosabra, you sound like Gideon. I am disappointed, usually you are rational even when I disagree with you.
Great post, Colin but i don't know why you are disappointed with eurosabra. Support for israel requires a racist, exterminationist mindset. Sometimes its couched in false niceties or meandering word-collages a la richard witty, but the upshot is basically the same. Human decency and support for Israel are mutually exclusive terms.
Rykart and american nazism are mutually supportive terms.
There is a constant upgrading of rockets going on. The rockets that hit Haifa from Lebanon, Ashkelon from Gaza, and the ones destroyed in Sudan were state-enders if fired in enough quantity. To give you an idea, Croatia cleared the Military Frontier in response to a few Orkans, analogous to the rockets destroyed in Sudan, which killed 7 and wounded a few hundred(with only single-digits fired). Israel is much smaller than Croatia, and Croatia was allowed to defend itself because a solution was near. Perhaps Catholic states are subject to a different calculus than Jewish ones.
Because it appears that the Hamas government of Gaza will seek to destroy Israel while dependent on it, they are practicing murder-suicide as foreign policy. Bad idea.
The borders open when the rockets stop, Israel has no settlements in Gaza, and its pre-'48 claims are, at least officially, in abeyance. Hamas has chosen not to pursue a non-belligerent non-recognition in order to keep the borders open because it wants to destroy Israel.
Unless you claim that they are waging war to free the West Bank for whose people and Fateh government they do not speak. Then you are asking Israel to gamble a withdrawal on the idea that Hamas does not mean what it says about Gharkad trees and Jews.
Sabra, Phil's Phools, like hamas, want all of the Jews in Israel to be dead. They are willing to do and say anything to cause that to happen.
@Chris
You are accusing us, the anti-zionists and the palestinian freedomfighters to be no better than the jewish terrorists:
That is wrong
We are.
Much better.
Begin was calling for demonstrations to oppose the Ben-Gurion government's acceptance of reparations. At that point, the Herut party was a normal, democratic party, and he was making the point that even when the Irgun was a militia, it refused to use force of arms. However, absolution of Germans through acceptance of German reparations would be opposed, and, frankly, the state "caved" in that it continued to pursue Nazi war criminals through judicial means. Begin ambiguously threatened the Israeli state with violence because he felt that a blanket amnesty in the offing was a social and legal ill so dire that it justified the overthrow of the government. No Germans were harmed or threatened with harm during or after the delivery of that speech.