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[Leafsnail]

Huh, apparently nearly all English news sources reporting this part of the story are proxies of Fox news... I'm getting a feeling like "De Volkskrant", the Dutch newspaper where I got the news from has been sloppy in checking it's sources. Still, Channel 4 news would count as reputable enough for this purpose, no?

Not if it isn't also in more reliable news sources.

The bit you quoted in vague - were the crowd actually being violent while the police were not acting?  If they weren't, then the police employed a perfectly valid tactic (since trying to attack a relatively peaceful crowd will often turn them into a violent one) and changed when it became clear the mob were being violent.

[shadenight123]

Shadenight : thanks for the summary. However there is one or two flaw in your reasoning : first how exactly the fact that there has been a vote (to de-possess the Palestinians of their land) make it justified? Would you agree to loose everything because complete stranger (not even the same nation) decided that we should put a bunch of people where you live?

the vote i'm speaking about concerns the beginning of the everything. it's when the Unscop decided to create two states, one for the jewish, and one for the arabs. the jewish got more land, but principally it was desertic, the arabs got a land which had no way to reach the sea, or the water (really, that map WAS a clusterfuck)
point is, just like the unscop said at those times, it was impossible to make them both happy, and it was immoral to side with one side or the other.
so, when the two "clusterfucks" of states collided, the jewish ended up winning. and in 1948 israel was born. and was declared a state by himself one day before the Onu declared him.
point is, the same 15 may 1948, when england left the country, israel was immediately attacked by all it's neighbours. Egypt, siria, liban, iraq and transgiordania. it's like when three big brothers get together to smash the newborn in the crib, because it's fault was to "take space" from them. point is, the new born turned out to be a superhunked baby on steroids. and in may of 1949, after a year, other 726 thousands arab-palestinians refugee had to run away. BUT in the same time 600 thousands jewish refugee had to run away from where they were, to end back in israel.
*hypotesys follows*
maybe here is were the clusterfuck became truly horrible.
arab palestinian refugee wanted to go back home, and so wanted the israelians one. Point was nobody wanted to risk their necks on it, since they did belong to an ethnicity the rest of their neighbours would have gutted out on sight, thus thats why, maybe, war raged on in the years to come. They wanted to go "back home" but they didn't want to risk their necks on it.
*ends hypothesis, back to wikipedia article*
then, arab states began mass expelling jewish population, and immigration in israel doubled.
i cannot deny nor confirm, what israel did to the inhabitants who had farmland near her. (principally because the wikipedia article does not cite if the ONU survey which was made was successfull to prove the charges or not.)
however it does seem they are quite attached to farmable land (non jewish cannot buy it, and it can only be lent to them for 99 years)
but they do live in a place which is for the most desertic. if it weren't for their continuous work on idrologic resources and the like, they would be certainly starving by now.

Leveryone agrees Caesar brought civilization to europe right?

Dreadfully sorry to derail, old chaps, but; lolwhat?

taxes, roads, acqueducts, cities, castra castrorum. it did also bring corruption and the like, but i suppose civilization comes when laws are established. and romans did bring their laws too.

[Il Palazzo]

Leveryone agrees Caesar brought civilization to europe right?

Dreadfully sorry to derail, old chaps, but; lolwhat?

taxes, roads, acqueducts, cities, castra castrorum. it did also bring corruption and the like, but i suppose civilization comes when laws are established. and romans did bring their laws too.

I think the main problem with your original statement is that it considers present-day France and Belgium to comprise the entirety of Europe.

[Phmcw]

And of course the fact that Gaul were quite civilised. They had town, fortress, metallurgy...

[RedKing]

Leveryone agrees Caesar brought civilization to europe right?

Dreadfully sorry to derail, old chaps, but; lolwhat?

taxes, roads, acqueducts, cities, castra castrorum. it did also bring corruption and the like, but i suppose civilization comes when laws are established. and romans did bring their laws too.

Massive, MASSIVE oversimplification. Kinda ignore that whole Greek civilization that predated the Romans by a few hundred years. And as Il Palazzo points out, Gaul != Europe. Nor did Caesar bring it, the various waves of Roman settlers did. All Caesar did was put his sword to the collective Gaulish neck so that they would get Romanized whether they liked it or not.

Not even going to get into your interpretation of modern Israeli history other than to say it's....interesting.

[shadenight123]

shadenight*tm* "keeping things overly simple since 1991!"
that said, Caesar can also (as i was intending it, but never went far to explain it) as "the roman empire".
like when you say "hitler conquered poland" it's not the single hitler who did it, but his army.
"caesar civilized europe" was more translated into a "the leaders of the roman empire civilized europe" ... not having english as my first language makes me use italian "proverbs" and ays of saying...must be more specific.

and no, i do know that the roman empire spanned all the meditterean coast (at a certain point in history), comprising also what now are the arabic warring states and similar. but as long as the roman empire did stand, everyone was civilized together, wasn't it? >.>

[Virex]

A mob doing property damage is hardly an existential threat to the Israeli people.  Compare that to the killing of 5 Egyptian border guards mentioned in the very article you linked.  Imagine if Israel had responded to the 2006 rocket attacks by Hamas by merely threatening to recall it's ambassador from Beirut rather then extensively bombing southern Lebanon.  I don't believe that all the blame belongs to Israel but the notional that they don't have anyone to negotiate is ludicrous.

Nah I'm not saying that Israel isn't at fault or that Egypt is intentionally trying to sabotage anything, but I just get the feeling, from incidents like this, that neither side is really interested in breaking the status quo and that Israel isn't the only one that can be stubborn. Why would they anyway, Egypt doesn't have much to gain from warming up their relations with Israel right now, especially when a lot of Egyptians are, let's call it rather discontent with Israel

[mainiac]

A mob doing property damage is hardly an existential threat to the Israeli people.  Compare that to the killing of 5 Egyptian border guards mentioned in the very article you linked.  Imagine if Israel had responded to the 2006 rocket attacks by Hamas by merely threatening to recall it's ambassador from Beirut rather then extensively bombing southern Lebanon.  I don't believe that all the blame belongs to Israel but the notional that they don't have anyone to negotiate is ludicrous.

Nah I'm not saying that Israel isn't at fault or that Egypt is intentionally trying to sabotage anything, but I just get the feeling, from incidents like this, that neither side is really interested in breaking the status quo and that Israel isn't the only one that can be stubborn. Why would they anyway, Egypt doesn't have much to gain from warming up their relations with Israel right now, especially when a lot of Egyptians are, let's call it rather discontent with Israel

But Egypt doesn't need to improve their relationship with Israel.  Yes, it would be nice if they could get along better and that would avert potential future problems.  But Israel has a problem right now vis-a-vis it's relationship with the Palestinian people.  Israel's policies right now are something that need to be changed.  I am not saying unilaterally per se, but to quote a wise man "the status is not... quo."

[RedKing]

Israel is a useful political tool for autocrats in the region. It's their equivalent of Emmanuel Goldstein and the Two-Minute Hate.
Doesn't mean that it's entirely baseless, just that it gets trotted out as a distraction quite a bit. The problem is that most of the leaders in the region want to have their cake and eat it too. They want their people to blame everything on the Israelis (instead of on them), but they want their state to have decent relations with Israel as well. The problem is that when the popular anger gets stoked far enough, it's tough to rein in without drawing the ire of your own people.

China has the same problem vis-a-vis the Japanese. They're a frequent target of PRC agitprop (and not without some good cause), but then it gets out of hand and they're in the unenviable position of telling their own people to stop hating on the Japanese.

But then Israel doesn't do themselves any favors when they continue to blockade the Occupied Territories, carry out targeted assassinations, flaunt treaty agreements and international law, etc.

[scriver]

taxes, roads, acqueducts, cities, castra castrorum. it did also bring corruption and the like, but i suppose civilization comes when laws are established. and romans did bring their laws too.

Apart from aqueducts and, arguably, non-permanent military forts, the "barbarians" had all of those. Of course, their cities were smaller the further north you went, but that is because the population grew sparser and the environment more hostile and unfruitful - they didn't have the possibility to sustain large non-self providing settlements. They didn't have large roads because they didn't have need to travel long trips at high pace. But laws and taxes? Of course they had laws and taxes. As said, the Celts had developed further advanced metal-workings than Rome (which the Romans later adopted), being one of the cultures where proper steel was invented.

Oh, and then there's the geographical aspect, as brought up before. Rome didn't even touch the majority of Europe, and most of the parts they did conquer were just as "civilized" as they were.

"caesar civilized europe" was more translated into a "the leaders of the roman empire civilized europe"

Which would still be wrong. The whole thing is a myth, a remnant of Roman elitism, reinforced by the renaissance notion that "everything good is Roman! They were the best dudes in the world!" (which also gave us such misconceptions as the "dark ages", by the way). From my modern perspective, Romans are every bit as "barbaric" as their "uncivilized" neighbours. The only thing one could argue was that they were more technologically advanced, but that does not count as more civilized in my mind, and neither does not speaking in Latin or Greek, having different customs, and different appearance (hair, clothes and jewelry) than the Romans did - which is basically what their definition of "barbarian" comes down to, when it isn't just arbitrarily slapped on whoever was the Enemy at the time.

Hm.. Maybe we should have a thread on what "civilization" means to Bay12. Might be interesting.

[ChairmanPoo]

taxes, roads, acqueducts, cities, castra castrorum....

Yeah, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

[mainiac]

One thing I will say in the romans credit is that by creating a political unity, they created a mercantile unity and a partial cultural unity.  Those things probably helped on the old civilization front as they let knowledge from one area spread to other areas more easily.

[scriver]

Yes, that is true.

[Duuvian]

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-demolishes-palestinian-wells-160339667.html

The U.S. has its own problems to worry about, screw'em.

Yes, let's ignore our enormously powerful existing Navy and the fact that Turkey recently declared Israels actions against the previous flotilla a possible cause for war. Let's ignore that they are assembling a new flotilla including warships and that both Turkey and Israel are American allies more or less. Let's ignore the fact Israel refuses to even apologize about the previous flotilla raid. Let's ignore the situation until the Israelis are forced to choose between war or allowing another country to 'belligerently' send aid to a population that they are seemingly trying to drive off ancestral lands. Let's ignore the upheaval in the Arab world, the fact that the new governments are more likely to band together against Israel should war between Turkey and Israel begin and that the ones who are unchanged could use the old Maoism tactic of 'unite against a common enemy.' Let's ignore the Russian and Chinese ties to countries that would be willing to fight Israel. (Iran anyone?) Who knows how the Russians and Chinese would react to this theoretical war, and who can blame them? The Russian state affiliated newspapers were calling NATO terrorists for intervening in Libya, most likely due to the money the Russians had invested in the country. If the other countries they have significant investments war with Israel, I doubt it would stop with nasty editorials.

Let's ignore the two ground wars we are already in and allow a new one to begin, shall we, my isolationist friend, when with a simple escort we could keep war from breaking out?

[Frumple]

[devil's advocate] USA intervention seems to cause problems pretty regularly. Why not just stay out of it and let the dominos fall as they will? It's pretty inarguable that not messing around will cause problems, but what's to say intervening won't cause worse ones? In any case, is it genuinely our business what other countries do? Its inarguable that other countries don't affect us, but it's sometimes hard to see how it's the US's responsibility to do something about it [/devil's advocate]