Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: WATCH: IDF Soldier Screams At Israeli Activists: 'You Are Worse Than The Arabs' [View all]TheMadMonk
(6,187 posts)...the vast majority of muntions used against Israel are. It's something Israel has more or less boasted about in the past, not quite taunts of: "Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn", but certainly acknowledgement of the inaccuracy and ineffectuallity of those munitions.
Glorified bottle rocket, is also a pretty fair characterisation of the design of the Qassam rocket.
I'll admit to some hyperbole in what I said. But, I might also point, that with no provocation at all, one community has already been razed to the ground in (or in conjunction with) live fire exercises this year, and another is about to suffer the same fate. No bloody brownie points for ordering those people off their land before you shot it to shit either.
Where there is provocation, schools, clinics, and apartment buildings have been blown up by Israeli responses.
And direct, head to head conflict aside, there is no denying that Israel is overly harsh in its punishment of non-Jews, for even the most minor of offences, and all too often flattly refuses to prosecute all but the most egregious of offences committed by Israelis against Palestinians and/or their property, not to mention the odd foreign national or two. Furthermore what punishment it does mete out, is almost always far, far less than if the offense had been committed against another Israeli.
There is no denying that over the years, Israel has driven half the population of Palestine from their lands entirely and internally displaced a huge proportion of those that remain; That it has set as one of its minimum non-negotiable bargaining positions, that those people not be allowed to return to the lands from which they were driven; and to all intents and purposes, that the rest of the world take all responsibility for their final disposition.
Nor can it be denied that Israeli practices, (official policies notwithstanding) are having the effect of continuing the displacement and fragmentation of the Palestinian People. Again, more than a few prominent Israelis have openly expressed a desire to complete the ejection of all Palestinian from the lands currently under Israeli control.
Realistically, why should Palestinians acknowledge the liegitimacy of Israel as a sovereign state, when Israel actively denies them their own Identity?