Quote from a_person:
1. I'm speaking for myself, I don't represent the government, nor anybody else.
I know that but you sound exactly the same, your government is silent when Israel is attacked, so are you when Israel is bashed on this forum, your government whines, moans and screams bloody murder when Israel retaliates, so do you when I respond to an Israel hater.
Israeli politicians' animosity towards any form of criticism has clouded your medias portrayal of these condemnations. No Norwegian politician has ever screamed bloody murder, and in fact they very often add that they condemn terrorism as well, every time they condemn an Israeli attack that kills a dozen innocent civilians. They do this because they know how the oversensitive sissies in the Israeli government reacts if they don't.
2. This is not an opinion, it's history. The entire right wing of Israeli politics OPPOSED the Oslo Accords.
The accords were heavily favoring the palestinians demanding Israel to make virtually all concessions, mostly unilaterally. And yet despite these valid objections Israel for the sake of peace signed it and held its end of the bargain. Of course the arabs did not. Let me remind you that the palestinian militants were supposed to be disarmed, terrorism was supposed to end, instead the number of terror attacks against Israel skyrocketed, there were dozens of other commitments which the Pals completely ignored. Your blaming it all on Israel is the best proof of the hostility and bias I was talking about.
Israel was supposed to make virtually all concessions because Israel had all the power; they occupied the entire area with the fourth strongest military power in the world. Yet, from the perspective of international laws and rights, they hardly agreed to make any concessions. From this perspective, the PLO made all the concessions. Arafat agreed to go along even with the great risk of losing his support. And he did hold up his part of the agreement, the PLO laid down their guns.
The PLO was also supposed to stop other fringe organizations from attacking Israel. Before they got a fair chance at doing that, Israel assumed attacks on civilians and demolitions of random homes, making innocent people homeless and building up the hate again. Israel said this was revenge for terrorist attacks by these fringe groups, but obviously you can't hold an entire village responsible for the acts of a fringe group. That's not how you make peace, that's how you make enemies.
This lead to the terrorist attacks on Israel skyrocketing, which again lead to more attacks from Israel.
So one can say that the single most destructive issue during these years was the attacks by fringe groups. That's attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers as well mind you, who also very much wanted to stop the negotiations.
Did you honestly believe Arafat would be able to singlehandedly stop every single group from day one? No, obviously no one did. All parties knew this was going to be very hard and take time, everybody knew there would still be attacks. Yet, the Israeli government seized the very first chance they got to end the peace process, by attacking innocent people and infuriating palestinians. This is what makes it so clear that they didn't want peace to begin with; it was all a show for the international media.
trying to tell both parts to take it easy on the civilians.
Bullshit, when rockets were falling on Israel you were nowhere to be found, you barely paid lip service and more often than not tried hard to justify and excuse those attacks.
I'd ask you to document this claim, but I know that as always, you're talking out of your ass rather than reality.
In fact, per capita, Scandinavia is at the very top in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_laureates_per_capita
Well, it's a typical case of lies, more lies and statistics
. I was talking about modern science, not ancient history. Sweden got one award in the last 27 years. Norway got 2 in the last 36 years, 6 after WWII. Tiny Israel got 9 awards in its 60 year history, the US got 82 awards after WWII. In other words during the last quarter of century you'd be all the way at the bottom.
Besides dividing by the population today is statistically invalid. Israel did not have the population of 7.5 mln when it was winning those awards. It went from 600,000 to 7.5 million people in 60 years. The population of the US has quadrupled in the last 100 years while the population of the Scandinavian countries have been relatively stable. The US fought in WWII while you did not and Israel did not even exist. This must be taken into account and it would significantly degrade your rating.
The amount of factual errors in the above statement is stunning. Look, I'm not interested in this contest. Let's just agree that by western standards, Scandinavia is as sub-standard in science and technology as Israel is honestly trying to achieve peace. I'm sure we can agree on that
I'm sure the rockets raining over Israel are a real pain in the ass...But, compared to war-torn and isolated life in Gaza, it's freaking heaven.
From Israel's perspective it would be a pain in the ass if they were fired at Oslo or Stockholm. But they are fired at Israeli towns and therefore to Israel they are not a pain in the ass, Israel views them as a mortal threat and a major disruption of hundreds of thousands of lives.
These rockets killed six or seven Israelis from 2005 to 2008. During that same period, traffic accidents killed a couple of thousand Israelis. Per each 10 000 cars in Israel, there's 2,7 deaths. That means that even for people who live in Sderot or Ashkelon, the risk of dying by driving the car is gargantuan compared to that of getting hit by terrorist rockets. The risk of being murdered by a fellow Israeli is even much greater. Let's face it, those rockets, although completely unacceptable, are a major propaganda hit from your perspective. They're not much more than that.
More importantly though, it's very easy for Gazans to avoid their troubles - stop firing fucking rockets at Israel. They actually got the message loud and clear in January this year and now they have absolutely nothing to worry about. All is quiet on the southern front when Hamas polices borders and arrests terrorists.
Terrorists will -always- find ways to attack their perceived enemies, no matter what Hamas or Israel does. The quiet will only last until they figure out new ways to harm Israel. The only way to stop terrorism is to remove their reasons for attacking. One can start by halting the murdering of innocent people and demolitions of innocent peoples homes, which is almost always the motivating factor for a terrorist.
Seriously though, let's leave these issues for a more relevant thread. This thread is about why Obama got the peace prize. Can you mention one single person who has done more for peace the past year?
