MrSid, Jews have been persecuted, murdered, hated and loathed for several centuries. They've been scape goats in european countries for a long time and suffered horrendous crimes.
After WWII, for understandable reasons, the victors felt guilty i gather and decided to use what colonial powers they still had.
Gave the Jews a small perch of land and said "now, defend yourself". They've done *exactly* that since then. In its short life, Israel has been through three wars of survival.
Compared to how tough they could have decided to be vs the Palestinians, they're really softies. Compared to how nations think such a situation should be handled (despite said nations not having a clue what the situation is like) it's a very rough and unfair treatment.
Compared to how its neightbors have handled such situations in the past, they're angels.
It ain't right. It's not right to collectively punish the Palestinian people for the cowardly acts of terrorism carried out by military extremists. It's not right to kill young children with rubber coated bullets. It's definitely wrong to surgically assassinate the political leaders of the other side. This we can probably agree on.
But what can the Israelis do? It is a democracy and barak pushed the peace VERY hard - so hard in fact that when Arafats organisation continued the Intifada to gain momentum at the negotation table, Barak lost his position. To a hard line right wing politician notorious for his involvment in a crime against humanity.
The current situation was quite predictable, and Arafat should have seen it coming. He got Barak out of office, and now has to deal with a right wing hardliner. When he finally decided to start working more seriously with Barak, it was too late.
So far israel has carried out assassinations on high level Palestinian figures through the use of chopper based weaponry. In the daily clashes, they've used rubber coated bullets against what they see as aggressors.
It's a combat situation - soldiers make mistakes, and shoot first and ask later. It is my opinion however, that the soldiers did not place 12-14 year olds on the front line - their parents failed to exercise the proper control or even condoned such activities. By now, everyone knows the drill. Israelis aren't surprised when one of their soldier gets killed, or when a bus load of Israeli civilians gets blown to smithereens. The Palestinians aren't surprised when yet another young boy gets killed while throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at agressive and probably scared Israeli soldiers. One must remember that every male in israel serves a mandatory three years in the armed forces. Some probably shouldn't be there at all, but necessity dictates such extreme measures.
It's not an easy situation. The Israelis might be (in our eyes) overreacting, but to their defense must be said that they tried the other approach. The Palestinians have once again resorted to "state" (or "authority in this case) sponsored terrorism.
While I feel for the Palestinian people, I do not for the terrorists. While I can appreciate the severity of the situation seen from the Israeli side, I do not condone it.
But I can understand it and Israel could respond in a much more brutal way, but has elected not to.
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Von Santa
Staffelkapitän 9./JG 54 "Grünherz"
"If you return from a mission with a victory, but without your Rottenflieger, you have lost your battle."
- D. Hrabak, JG 54 "Grünherz"
