On our motorcycle ride today we passed by a church sign that said "PRAY FOR ISRAEL".

As if the citizens there are being besieged or something awful.

We also saw a church sign that said "THE FEAR OF GOD IS THE FIRST STEP TO UNDERSTANDING".

As if we want any interaction we have with anyone to be based on fear.

:mike:

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;380987]On our motorcycle ride today we passed by a church sign that said "PRAY FOR ISRAEL".

As if the citizens there are being besieged or something awful.
[/QUOTE]

You may want to use [URL="http://redcolormapweb.azurewebsites.net/english"]this handy web app[/URL] to have an alarm sounded at your desktop every time an air raid siren goes of in Israel and you have 15 seconds or a little more to go to the shelter.
I don't know if you count incoming missiles from Gaza to Israel, but I stopped following the counting at 10,000 and that was already quite some time ago.

[QUOTE=tha;381012]You may want to use [URL="http://redcolormapweb.azurewebsites.net/english"]this handy web app[/URL] to have an alarm sounded at your desktop every time an air raid siren goes of in Israel and you have 15 seconds or a little more to go to the shelter.
I don't know if you count incoming missiles from Gaza to Israel, but I stopped following the counting at 10,000 and that was already quite some time ago.[/QUOTE]

This is such unadulterated bull shit. Remind me again how many Israeli civilians have died in this conflict this year? And how many Palestinian civilians. So spare me the sympathy apps.

An excellent article on Israeli military policy and ethics.

[url]http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/israel-s-assault-on-gaza-is-an-expression-of-the-dahiya-doctrine-1.1902934[/url]

[QUOTE]Surrender or we will keep killing your children.[/QUOTE]

Given that a lot of missiles have been fired into Israel yet there have been very few casualties, do the people there live in constant fear? If they do, is it a rational fear?

Is there a "handy web app" that beeps every time a person in Gaza dies?

[QUOTE=garo;381018]This is such unadulterated bull shit. Remind me again how many Israeli civilians have died in this conflict this year? And how many Palestinian civilians. So spare me the sympathy apps.[/QUOTE]

Once again, this is a very asymmetric war. Very different objectives on both sides, very different values, and very different type of warfare. If this war was about killing as many people as possible, or just removing them from one place to another the entire Gaza strip could be stripped of its population in two to three days. Israel tries to protect its citizens and the civil population of the Gaza strip to a level that no other army in Europe is capable of.

The app is not a sypathy app. It was developed for actual use in Israel itself. (That is why it is in Hebrew). The English version is for relatives and friends abroad. If you have no direct link with the conflict you can use it as an awareness app.

And the link to the newspaperarticle you gave makes me understand your position. It could not be any further from the reality than it is

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;381022]Given that a lot of missiles have been fired into Israel yet there have been very few casualties, do the people there live in constant fear? If they do, is it a rational fear?

Is there a "handy web app" that beeps every time a person in Gaza dies?[/QUOTE]

The very few casualties are because of the actions taken by the Israelis. Like building a shelter in each house and every other building and by making sure that the warnings from the Israeli army are a given in due time. (You got 15 seconds, sometimes more to get into the shelters.) Also, most of the people in the area around Gaza have moved to other places.

There is also a "handy web app" available for the Palestinian people. If the house of your neighbours gets bombed (leveled) you get a number of warnings in advance and you have 5 minutes to take appropiate action. First is the famous phone call by a live operator. (The house of your neighbours will be destroyed in 5 minutes, please leave the area.) Then there are the knocks on the roof, in case there are people without phones present. Palestinians don't need shelters. They usually climb on the roof of their own building, grab their phones and film the bombing of the house of their neighbors.

[QUOTE=tha;381056]Once again, this is a very asymmetric war. Very different objectives on both sides, very different values, and very different type of warfare. If this war was about killing as many people as possible, or just removing them from one place to another the entire Gaza strip could be stripped of its population in two to three days. Israel tries to protect its citizens and the civil population of the Gaza strip to a level that no other army in Europe is capable of.[/QUOTE]

These are just your opinions and you have failed to provide absolutely any evidence to support these claims. The Israeli propaganda that you repeat about asymmetric war are hasbara talking points to distract from the fact that Israel has killed thousands. It requires some chutzpah to claim that the other side doesn't care about its dead so we can kill as much as we want. Disgusting!

The war is not about killing as many people as possible. Simply because if Israel carried out a large scale genocide or forced eviction, even the US public would be revolted and Israel will lose US support. So they calculate how far they can go without losing support and stop at the limit or just beyond it.

Let us forget for a second about your utterly spurious and unproven claims that Hamas doesn't care about its dead. Do the people whose family members are being killed also not care. What about the relatives of the thousands who have died? Hasn't Israel caused far far more suffering than Hamas?

[QUOTE=tha;381061]
There is also a "handy web app" available for the Palestinian people. If the house of your neighbours gets bombed (leveled) you get a number of warnings in advance and you have 5 minutes to take appropiate action. First is the famous phone call by a live operator. (The house of your neighbours will be destroyed in 5 minutes, please leave the area.) Then there are the knocks on the roof, in case there are people without phones present. [/QUOTE]

Leave and go where? Out of Gaza? Because that is what the Israelis want. The "famous" phone calls are just another form of psychological warfare. And in any case, do you have any statistics - not supplied by the Israeli army - that tell us how many bombings are preceded by these terror calls? Yes terror calls because that is what the motive is, to inspire terror in the populace. Like the other infamous "shock and awe".

[QUOTE]
Palestinians don't need shelters. They usually climb on the roof of their own building, grab their phones and film the bombing of the house of their neighbors.
[/QUOTE]

Nice one. Worthy of Goebbels really. The enemy are not like us. They don't need shelters they don't care about their dead. They are less than human. So let us kill them with impunity. Hats off to you tha-Goebbels!

When they were kidnapping slaves from Africa they said: Blacks don't need shelters. They don't care about their lives like we do.

During the second world war they said: The Jews are unter-menschen and dirty. They don't need shelters. They don't care about their lives the same way that we do.

During the Vietnam war they said: The Gooks don't need shelters. They are happy to die. They don't have the same regard for life as we do. So keep killing them.

And now they say: The Palestinians don't need shelters. They usually climb on the roof of their own building, grab their phones and film the bombing of the house of their neighbors.




Anyone else detect a pattern?

[QUOTE=garo;381282]Anyone else detect a pattern?[/QUOTE]
Certainly. The dehumanising tactics which you describe so eloquently are effective and widespread propaganda methods, whether applied to war zones as in the Gaza conflict and other historical wars you mention, or merely to repress whole groups of people in areas of the world where there is no war. The Goebbels reference seems over the top though when applied to people discussing the issues here, I think. I can certainly imagine myself reading one of the many articles you see if you google something like "Palestinians don't need shelters" and then naively repeating what the article says here on this forum.