[Vision2020] The War in Gaza: "Bombing 1.5 Million People in a Cage"

Fri Jan 16 21:54:54 PST 2009

I am in favor of eventually giving Palestinians a homeland. However, I am also 100% in favor of bombing Hamas out of existence. It is a terrorist organization that targets innocent civilians.

Dr. Gier has lost his grounding in comparing Hamas to the Bush administration. While I have no love for the Bush Administration, it doesn’t target children with suicide bombings. If he did and we kept him in power, any nation we bombed would have right to bomb any and all US Citizens. If the Palestinians want to end the bombings, they need to remove the Hamas from power. If they don’t, Israel has no choice but to continue bombing for its own existence. 

I don't think you can blame Israel for trying to remove a regime that is bombing it and has a mission statement of removing Israel from the planet. Hamas doesn't believe the holocaust even occurred. 

I would pray that our government would also bomb the crap out of a government that was launching missiles at US civilians and that the world would support us.

I think Dr. Gier, is incorrect to assume that Israel is intentionally killing innocent people in Gaza. They are not. They are trying to defend themselves from an enemy that is killing their civilians and they have every right to bomb Gaza until all of Hamas is either dead or captured. 

You cannot negotiate with someone that only wants you dead.

Best Regards,

Donovan

--- On Fri, 1/16/09, nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:

From: nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com>
Subject: [Vision2020] The War in Gaza: "Bombing 1.5 Million People in a Cage"
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Friday, January 16, 2009, 10:50 AM

Greetings:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  This was the most difficult
column I've ever written, and I'm sure people firmly on one side or the
other of this tragic conflict will not be satisfied.

The 2,000-word version is attached. The Idaho State Journal would have
published the full version in their Sunday Insight, but the page was already
taken for this Sunday, so much of this would be old news by Jan. 25.  A
1,100-word version was published today in the Los Cabos Daily News, an expat
newspaper in Cabo San Lucas.

May the suffering in Gaza soon end!

Nick Gier

THE WAR IN GAZA: "BOMBING 1.5 MILLION PEOPLE IN A CAGE" 

By Nick Gier

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind
--Gandhi

Ever since its founding in 1948, Israel has been fighting enemies who are
committed to its destruction. Because of weapons provided by the U.S. and their
own grit and determination, the Israelis have won every battle, even though it
is now widely believed that they lost, at least politically, the 2006 war in
Lebanon. 

The Lebanese Shi’ias of Hezbollah are actually stronger than
ever--politically as well as militarily--and the Israelis now want to make sure
that the same does not happen with the Sunni Hamas in the current Gaza War.  

After 21 days of bombing, shelling, and ground assault, Hamas has been weakened
but it is definitely not defeated.  There are between 15,000-20,000 Hamas
fighters, and only about 550 have been killed. Furthermore, 15-20 rockets are
still being launched into Southern Israel every day.

There is world-wide condemnation of Israel’s bombing and shelling in Gaza,
one of the densest populations in the world. Civilian deaths are approaching 600
and about 2,250 have been wounded. The Quds hospital was set on fire, evidently
with artillery shells containing white phosphorous, the offensive use of which
is banned by international law.  

The Israelis are being charged with killing a UN driver and attacking three UN
schools where Palestinians were seeking refuge.  Even though the GPS coordinates
for UN buildings have been given to the Israelis, UN headquarters in Gaza was
shelled repeatedly on January 15, and a UN food warehouse burned to the ground.
UN officials reject categorically the Israeli claim that Hamas fighters have
been shooting from their buildings. 

When Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that "there is no humanitarian
crisis in the Gaza Strip," she was obviously not helping Israel's
already badly tarnished image in the world.  Also unfortunate was the comment by
the Israeli Interior Minister that it is necessary to "break the will of
the Palestinians." 

Some say that the Palestinians have no excuse because a majority of them voted
for Hamas in 2006, and they allow Hamas fighters to hide in their houses,
schools, and mosques. Blaming all Palestinians for this war is as absurd as
blaming all those who voted for Bush for his incompetence.

Just as insensitive as those who blame all Palestinians are those who dismiss
the 30 Israeli dead in seven years of rocket attacks as the equivalent of one
weekend of deaths on Israel's highways. Israelis still have memories from
the Gulf War, when the entire nation wore gas masks awaiting what they thought
would be chemically laden Scud missiles from Iraq. The warheads carried
conventional explosives, but it was just as terrifying then as it is now.

George W. Bush’s naïve ideas about democracy and pushing for elections when
people are not ready for them has had disastrous results. Early elections in
Iraq led to the rule of a corrupt Shiite majority and a deadly civil war. Both
Israeli and Palestinian leaders wanted to postpone the 2006 elections in which
Hamas was the big winner, but Bush insisted that they go ahead.

The Bush administration has now joined Israel in refusing to recognize Hamas’
legislative mandate and has supported Israel’s brutal blockade of Gaza, which
has led to the malnourishment of 75 percent of its children.  The tunnels have
not only been dug for the transport of weapons, but also for basic supplies for
survival.

Just as the bombing of Lebanon did not force the Lebanese to disown Hezbollah,
so, too, even if Gaza is completely leveled, the Palestinians will not give up
their support for Hamas. In fact, Fatah, which has been cooperating with the
Israelis in the West Bank, may lose credibility because they are now perceived
as giving insufficient support to their brothers and sisters in Gaza.  

Over 80 percent of the residents of Gaza are refugees, 60 years removed from
their ancestral homes in present day Israel. Some of the elders still have keys
to the original locks on those residences. 

In 1978 I met a Christian Palestinian in Denmark and for he first time I
learned what it meant to be stateless. Israelis have a right to be safe in their
homes, but the Palestinians also have a right to return to the land and houses
that were theirs long before the state of Israel was founded.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.
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