• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Israeli air strikes target Gaza

No they don't.

You can be blind to it all you like, but it does not change the fact they want every Jewish person in Israel dead, period. Nothing less will stop it.

Why would those in power in Hamas personally attack Israel and Israeli forces?

"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Thousands of Israeli troops backed by columns of tanks and helicopter gunships launched a ground offensive in Gaza Saturday night with officials saying they expected a lengthy fight in the densely populated territory after eight days of punishing airstrikes failed to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel." - Israeli ground troops invade Gaza to halt rockets - Yahoo! News

"Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said from Damascus Friday that his militant group was prepared for an Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip and could abduct abduct more soldiers if Israel attempts the incursion. - FOXNews.com - Hamas Threatens to Kidnap Israeli Soldiers in Case of Ground Incursion - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

"Two IDF soldiers were moderately wounded and 11 others were lightly wounded Saturday morning at the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, when Hamas gunmen initiated a coordinated attack on the Israeli side of the crossing, which included heavy gunfire, mortar shell barrages and two car bombs." - 13 soldiers hurt in Kerem Shalom attack | Israel | Jerusalem Post

Well that statement is obviously not true.

It is not about the land. It is about the displacement of the palestinians.

You are correct insofar as it is no longer about the land. It is about the extermination of the Israeli state.
 
What were they displaced from?

What I'm saying that it isn't about who owns the land; the conflict originates in the displacements of millions of people. It originates in the act of displacement. To say that it is about land implies that the Palestinians are entitled to some kind of ownership, which completely ignores the very definition of ownership.

You can be blind to it all you like, but it does not change the fact they want every Jewish person in Israel dead, period. Nothing less will stop it.

Yes, because every Palestinian wants to kill all the Jews...:roll:

"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Thousands of Israeli troops backed by columns of tanks and helicopter gunships launched a ground offensive in Gaza Saturday night with officials saying they expected a lengthy fight in the densely populated territory after eight days of punishing airstrikes failed to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel." - Israeli ground troops invade Gaza to halt rockets - Yahoo! News

"Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said from Damascus Friday that his militant group was prepared for an Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip and could abduct abduct more soldiers if Israel attempts the incursion. - FOXNews.com - Hamas Threatens to Kidnap Israeli Soldiers in Case of Ground Incursion - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

"Two IDF soldiers were moderately wounded and 11 others were lightly wounded Saturday morning at the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, when Hamas gunmen initiated a coordinated attack on the Israeli side of the crossing, which included heavy gunfire, mortar shell barrages and two car bombs." - 13 soldiers hurt in Kerem Shalom attack | Israel | Jerusalem Post

Well that statement is obviously not true.

Except those aren't the leaders of Hamas, to which I was referring. Good job completely missing my point.
 
But when Palestinians attack civilians it is a terrible thing? Despite the fact these civilians are actually living on the land that was stolen from the Palestinians.:roll:

That land NEVER belonged to the Palestinians. There has NEVER been a Palestinian state. Hamas indistriminantly sent rockets into civilian areas to kill civilians. Israel MUST attack "civilian" areas because Hamas cowards hide behind them.

Personally I think that we should be consistent and chivalrous and rule out all attacks on civilians even if they may be being used to hide military objects.

The two are not the same.

1. Hamas attacks civilians for the sole purpose of killing civilians.
2. Israel attacks "civilian" areas because Hamas hides their war supplies in those areas.

They are manifestly NOT the same.
 
No they don't.



Why would those in power in Hamas personally attack Israel and Israeli forces?

Because they want to destroy Israel, that is why. READ THEIR CHARTER!

It is not about the land. It is about the displacement of the palestinians.

In Gaza? The Israelis already disbanded their settlements.
 
What I'm saying that it isn't about who owns the land; the conflict originates in the displacements of millions of people. It originates in the act of displacement. To say that it is about land implies that the Palestinians are entitled to some kind of ownership, which completely ignores the very definition of ownership.

They were displaced after the Arabs unsuccessfully tried to exterminate the nascent Jewish State in 1948!

Yes, because every Palestinian wants to kill all the Jews...:roll:

Sadly, a good number of them do, and that is the clearly stated goal of Hamas.
 
Because they want to destroy Israel, that is why. READ THEIR CHARTER!

Come on, why is my point so hard to understand? It is that the leadership of Hamas trains the rank-and-file to actually carry out the dirty work (suicide bombings, rocket attacks, fighting the IDF, etc...) while they sit back and benefit.


No, in Israel-Palestine.
 
What I'm saying that it isn't about who owns the land; the conflict originates in the displacements of millions of people. It originates in the act of displacement. To say that it is about land implies that the Palestinians are entitled to some kind of ownership, which completely ignores the very definition of ownership.
Displacement from the land or area.

I don't really wish to get into an argument about the evils of private property and private land ownership, I think we are though coming from a similar angle.
 
Last edited:
That land NEVER belonged to the Palestinians. There has NEVER been a Palestinian state. Hamas indistriminantly sent rockets into civilian areas to kill civilians. Israel MUST attack "civilian" areas because Hamas cowards hide behind them.
The land belonged to the Palestinians individually and collectively, the fact they never had a nation state does not change this fact unless you are arguing that the right to property comes only from the state. Was there no private property before the rise of the nation state in early modern times?

That belief would certainly be contrary to Catholic social teaching.

The two are not the same.

1. Hamas attacks civilians for the sole purpose of killing civilians.
2. Israel attacks "civilian" areas because Hamas hides their war supplies in those areas.

They are manifestly NOT the same.
However Israel has moved its civilians onto the stolen land, and then claims this land can't be attacked because it is civilian! It is very similar.
 
The land belonged to the Palestinians individually and collectively, the fact they never had a nation state does not change this fact unless you are arguing that the right to property comes only from the state. Was there no private property before the rise of the nation state in early modern times?

It was part of the Ottoman Empire. Check Ottoman land policy.

That belief would certainly be contrary to Catholic social teaching.

This is not a Catholic part of the world. It had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries.

However Israel has moved its civilians onto the stolen land, and then claims this land can't be attacked because it is civilian! It is very similar.

Stolen from whom? The territory belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The League of Nations then assigned it as a Mandate to the United Kingdom. As the successor to the LofN, the UN passed a two-state solution which the Jews accepted but the Arabs did not.
 
It was part of the Ottoman Empire. Check Ottoman land policy.

This is not a Catholic part of the world. It had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries.
You are mistaking statehood for property rights. Catholic social teaching is a general thing, it include respect for private property and a belief it does not come from the state alone.

Stolen from whom? The territory belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The League of Nations then assigned it as a Mandate to the United Kingdom. As the successor to the LofN, the UN passed a two-state solution which the Jews accepted but the Arabs did not.
The land was owned individually and collectively by the Palestinians. Does the fact they did not have a state mean that the house a Palestinian family had owned for centuries was not theirs?
 
You are mistaking statehood for property rights. Catholic social teaching is a general thing, it include respect for private property and a belief it does not come from the state alone.

We are not talking about Catholic social teaching. Since you want to bring it up, even the Catholic church does not teach that private property rights are absolute. In the Ottoman Empire and in the British Mandate, property rights are a function of the law, not religion - and applying Catholic social THEORY to an Islamic empire is rather silly.

The land was owned individually and collectively by the Palestinians. Does the fact they did not have a state mean that the house a Palestinian family had owned for centuries was not theirs?

Again, do you have any idea what private property laws were in the Ottoman Empire?
 
They didn't want it anymore after WWII. Can't say I don't blame them.

See, the two of us can disagree without personal attacks. Some people can learn from that.

Sure we didn't want it but UK did its own part in this conflict
 
We are not talking about Catholic social teaching. Since you want to bring it up, even the Catholic church does not teach that private property rights are absolute.
Right. You keep confusing being absolute with existing, the rights were wiped out. Catholic social teaching believes in property rights and that they aren't just derived from whatever the state wants to grant.

On it (private possessions) he leaves impressed, as it were, a kind of image of his person, so that it must be altogether just that he should possess that part as his very own and that no one in any way should be permitted to violate his right.


Now civil laws, which, when just, derive their power from the natural law itself, confirm and, even by the use of force, protect this right of which we speak. -- And this same right has been sanctioned by the authority of the divine law, which forbids us most strictly even to desire what belongs to another. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his."

LeoXIII, Rerum Novarum

In the Ottoman Empire and in the British Mandate, property rights are a function of the law, not religion - and applying Catholic social THEORY to an Islamic empire is rather silly.
Actual they were a function of custom. You are a Catholic was the point though.

Again, do you have any idea what private property laws were in the Ottoman Empire?
That is not important, the point is they owned the property individually and collectively.
 
Last edited:
How ironic: I'm arguing in favor of the raid on facebook :shock:
 
Well excuse me if it's a bit off topic, but I was discussing about it on facebook with a friend, and we were thinking about that:

It's extremely difficult to reach an agreement between Flemish and Walloons in Belgium (and I guess it's the same in other countries too). If there were Flemish checkpoints in Wallonia, a security fence along the linguistic border that includes Walloon communes on the Flemish side, Flemish colonies in Wallonia or rockets flying over Brussels...well that would simply be impossible.

With this comparison, I understand better why the Israeli want to retaliate, but it also underlines the fact that any attempt of agreement is doomed to fail as long as BOTH
- Hamas does not immediately stop launching rockets
- Israel does not immediately goes back to its side of the Green Line

Something that could help is to consider both parts as equally guilty. As long as you don't do that, you will look down at one part and blame it for everything.
 
How about when that source spouts propoganda without providing credible "evidence?"

How is an image of Israel's control over the land considered propaganda? Or do you deny that Israel has grown since 1946? :doh
 
I don't really wish to get into an argument about the evils of private property and private land ownership, I think we are though coming from a similar angle.

Unless you get into what ownership actually means, you are never going to get to the root of the problem and are going to end up having meaningless debates about whose land it "rightfully" is:

The land belonged to the Palestinians

As can be seen by this quote. Which always leads to going back to see who the "original owners" were, as if that's relevant to today:

It was part of the Ottoman Empire. Check Ottoman land policy.

Ownership of land is the ability to deny someone else access or use of that land. In other words, it implies a threat of force or violence, and in the end that is all that it is based upon. Therefore, the only people that "have a right" to the land are those that are able to successfully deny others access/use of it through force.

This is a poor tactic for a few reasons:

1. It is focusing on the question of land ownership and not on the act of expansionist colonialism, which is the real heart of the issue. It distracts from the real issue.
2. It implies that there is such a thing as "rightful ownership," which doesn't really exist in any meaningful sense.
3. It also implies that, since the Palestinians have a "rightful ownership" of that land, the Israelis should then be displaced in order to return the land. This obviously isn't going to happen.

When you focus on the displacement itself, you are focusing on the very act of expansionist colonialism which started this whole thing. Palestinians weren't mad because they lost their land; they were mad because they were forced to leave their homes and their communities and pushed into refugee camps, lost their ways of life and quality of life and now have to live with Israel at their doorstep.
 
The issue is not land, the issue is Arab hatred of Jews. As long as Jews exhist, Arabs will hate them.
 
Now civil laws, which, when just, derive their power from the natural law itself, confirm and, even by the use of force, protect this right of which we speak. -- And this same right has been sanctioned by the authority of the divine law, which forbids us most strictly even to desire what belongs to another. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his."[/I]
LeoXIII, Rerum Novarum

Do you actually know what the current teachings of the church are regarding private property?


Actual they were a function of custom. You are a Catholic was the point though.

But we are not talking about a Catholic area of the world. Do you think I am one who forces my religious values on other parts of the world?

That is not important, the point is they owned the property individually and collectively.

However, all land ownership is subject to the laws of a particular government/society. Would you care to explain how the Jews gained ownership of the land?
 
Sounds like the issue here is actually your hatred of Arabs.

I love how you put words in the mouths of others. It is PATENTLY OBVIOUS that many Arabs DO hate the Jews. They, along with the Persian regime in Iran, want to drive Israel INTO THE SEA. Hamas's charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Israel on the other hand wants a truce with international monitors on the ground. Hamas refuses. Please tell me, who hates whom?
 
I love how you put words in the mouths of others. It is PATENTLY OBVIOUS that many Arabs DO hate the Jews. They, along with the Persian regime in Iran, want to drive Israel INTO THE SEA. Hamas's charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Israel on the other hand wants a truce with international monitors on the ground. Hamas refuses. Please tell me, who hates whom?

None of this proves at all that "Arabs hate jews". You're defending hate.
 
Back
Top Bottom