Of course there are anti Arab feelings but they are not sponsored by any body.
Our kids are not taught to hate Palestynians at school.
No body here is strives to kill civilians while serving in the army.
Using military in careless manner?
What do you know about it?
From what i know when we use army and no civilians get hurt we are aggressors when they do get hurt we are baby killers.
Considering the nature of the struggle here its impossible to keep civilian casualties at zero while fighting enemy who wants them as high as possible for good public relations.
The blockade runners incident should be good example for that.


Total antagonist garbage you cant be more wrong.

Sory MH but you let yourself down again, stick to facts not propoganda.
I know you are only addressing herrings "points" but it doesn't mean you can fly fast and loose on facts as it puts you on a similar page.

They had the sense to wait until the ship was within their jurisdiction this time.

I think I've a hunch/idea why :hmmm:

They've clean run out of virgins so what's the point of becoming a martyr :DL

You mean even the granny from UK "ran out of virgins"?

I don't know exactly what you mean.
Some facts or propaganda here...your choice.
Did you know that Israel has actually mixed Arab Jewish population.
There is also have Druz population whose members serve in Israeli Air Force and SF.
We don't have Arab only buses or restaurants or sidewalks.
If you go to a shopping mall in Jerusalem you will see Palestinian families going about their business without anyone giving them a second thought.
We have friendly Palestinian villages inside Israel whose citizens serve in police forces and some even in military or national service-last think they want is to be part of Palestinian state.
There are Palestinians students at Jerusalem University learning any thing from political since to computer since or medicine.
If you go to Israeli hospital in Jerusalem you will see as many Palestinians doctors and nurses as Jewish ones.
We have Palestinian political parties and Israeli Palestinian Knesset members.
Some of those Knesset members would be charged with treason in any other democratic country but not here(Corrective discrimination?)
All those people are not part of so called occupied territories and have Israeli citizenship.
They are the ones who decided not to run after Israel declared its independence.
Yes we also have Israeli Palestinian haters here who collaborate or sympathize with extremists as we have Jewish haters too.
We have also Bedouins as Israeli citizens who serve with IDF.

The way it went so smooth this time proves that my earlier assessement is right: that there are two types of people aboard these ships: Western activists who may be stupid but indeed want to protest peacefully, and Islamic wannabe-martyrs wanting to provoke as much violence as possible in order to blame Israel. The Irish ship boarded today obviously was manned by just the first.

I'm wondering if the RC was scheduled to carry more of these 'wannabe-martyrs' but they gave further consideration after learning what happened to their colleagues last week :hmmm:

As a vague acquaintance with one of the crew of the Rachel Corrie, I would doubt it.
Also from reading about the general demeanour and quotes from those on board.

Interesting. Give us the details, give us the skinny. :DL No, but really. :)

That's good to know :up:

A thoughtful and thought-provoking article on the current political viewpoint and direction in Israel toward Gaza and the Israeli/Palestinian divide - from the perspective of one Israeli citizen.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/05/lost-tribe.html

Ah, I've spoken to Dennis Halliday a couple of times, nothing more than that really. He doesn't seem like the type :)
My hometown is Dundalk, where the Corrie was bought and outfitted, actually my local pub is located on Brown's Quay :).

I think I've met Fiona Thompson before, but I may be mixing her up with somebody else tbh.

""""""""""""""""
The patterns are clear: more people are getting killed in shorter periods of time, and we care less and less. According to Israeli data, it took 22 days for the Palestinian death toll to hit 1,100 in the last big round of violence between “us” and “them,” the 2008–09 Gaza incursion. The same number of casualties accumulated over a full five years in the first Palestinian uprising (1987–93), which was then the largest Israeli-Palestinian clash since 1949. Over time, our hearts have grown harder. In the first intifada, Israeli military police launched internal investigations whenever Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. Yet there have only been a handful of such investigations during the last decade, and none is likely to take place over last week’s killings.
"""""""""""""""""""

Wow... I'm so surprise that he wrote this -he must be in real dispair....
1987-93 upraising was mostly with stones and tear gas.
Then Israel let PLO and Arafat in and gave Palestinians an autonomy-Oslo agreements.
This turnout into full scale terror offensive against Israel-a bus blowing in city center almost every week.
Israeli government took action since situation was intolerable which caused degradation of all agreement since PLO could not or did not want to take effective action against terrorist.
Military Police was investigating and is investigating complains put forward by Palestinians but it has less and less to investigate since MP dont investigate complains by hammas.


"""""""""""""""""""""""
I think now that we must break through the language of strategic calculations and allow basic human decency to shape our positions. Some of my friends back home may think I’m regressing from our past understanding that we need to deal with the Mideast as it is—hard, brutish, and dangerous—to a more naive approach. But I do not think it’s naive. I think it’s the only way left
"""""""""""""""""""".

This article express feelings of some Israelis.
Some of us may even wonder if its worth to be here with all the violence around but truth is we have no other place to go.
Middle east is harsh and there is no typical diplomacy here.
Diplomacy here is kicking each other in the balls - thats the mentality.

The flotilla incident some days ago: only one of six ships showed people turning violent, or am I getting something wrong?

On those "peaceful activists", two perspectives are possible.

The first is to think they are harmless because they are indeed protesting peacefully.

The other is to keep in mind that if more and more of these ships are coming, peacefully from A to Z, sooner or later that will make an effect in global opinion about those diabolic Israelis that are turning away one peaceful ship after the other. Not that it could become much worse anyway.

So, this kind of protest is anything but harmless for sure. It more compares to a media-war of attrition.

I do not know to what degree the Israelis are prepared to run naval operations like today on a every-couple-of-days-basis, and how much support they will get for that from Israeli public opinion. But they better get prepared for things turning out this way.

At least it provides plenty of training opportunities to Israeli navy commandos.

If this is a genuine lull in violent encounters I hope ALL parties will give it a chance to succeed.

I'm certainly not going to get paranoid and predict eventual outcomes until the situation is given a chance to show a truer, more accurate picture.