The United Nations Secretary-General Bank Ki-moon must spearhead the world condemnation of Israeli invasion of Gaza.
The failure of the United Nations Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire and the role of the United States government in blocking a United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution must be deplored by all peace-loving nations and peoples.
The United States President-Elect Barrack Obama, who will be inaugurated as US President in a forthnight’s time, should pledge to end all US carte blache support to Israeli aggression under his administration.
The Israeli invasion of Gaza, wreaking death and destruction, chalking up a death toll of more than 510 people, mostly civilian casualties including women and children, is a crime against humanity.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet with roughly 1.5 million people which even prior to the most recent escalation was undergoing a humanitarian crisis as the region has been held under siege for almost 18 months and was already struggling with lack of food, medical supplies, power, and other necessities.
The governments of the world must support all international efforts to condemn the Israeli invasion of Gaza, call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza imposed by the United Nations and backed unequivocally by the United States to create sustainable peace in the Middle East.
#1 by AhPek on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 2:00 am
OrangRojak,I think you have made a very strong case as to why the use of ‘disproportionate military power’ is unacceptable by citing that England even at the height of the Irish Republican Army’s campaign did not resort to the use of bombs and tanks against them, and that England if she had so chosen could have carpet bombed Ireland for a speedy resolution of her problem.Your humanism comes thro when you argue so compassionately against “bombing back to the stone age”.
#2 by undergrad2 on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 2:10 am
“I was detained while walking across London at night in 1990 (as were many) on the basis of a large rucksack and immigrant (to the UK) parents who gave me a name …” OrangRojak
You must be using the Circle Line going back and forth from Nottinghill Gate to Tower Hill (where Jack the Ripper used to walk). I lived at the end of the Central Line. Nowhere near Small India where everybody is a Paki (short for potential terrorist).
#3 by undergrad2 on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 2:20 am
Loh Says:
Yesterday at 21: 41.42
When the term ‘disproportionate use of power’ is used as a basis to condemn a war, would it mean then that a proportionate response is acceptable? It would then imply that a proportionate use of power would be able to keep both parties engaged in a war …”
Stop bloviating!
#4 by ENDANGERED HORNBILL on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 7:39 am
Hey, let’s be honest; let’s not be so simplistic and naive. People kill over a chicken thigh and a dime. There must be rules to regulate man’s orderly existence but will rules ever be able to regulate death tolls in the thrusts of war? This debate is always tough and long. I am totally mind-boggled.
Somw may say it ultimately boils down to this: If u worry about morals, don’t get into a war; and if u worry about a war, there isn’t time for morals.
#5 by OrangRojak on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 7:53 am
“where and when were you objecting when the rockets were fired at Israel where other human beings were being put in danger?”
Right where I’ve always been when small groups have been making life a misery for very much larger groups: wondering what the answer is. I don’t think comparing the situation in Gaza to the UK and the IRA is very useful in the long run – it’s too easy to find any small difference between the two situations. The problem in Ireland was arguably caused by the UK’s expansion, and went on for more than a hundred years. Israel’s formation and expansion is much more recent, and more painful for the amount of information available and how quickly news travels today.
Israel is not the only country in the world, even last month, to suffer misery at the hands of small groups of murdering malcontents. South of Thailand? While I continue to wonder what to do, I observe that very few countries respond to similar problems by blockade and full scale military assaults.
What is so much worse in Israel that full scale military assault is justified there and not elsewhere? I do not claim to have an understanding of the problems in the Middle East as complete as a referee at a chess match. In my ignorance, I cannot equate recent events there with ‘proportionate’.
#6 by OrangRojak on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 10:10 am
alaneth – your wikipedia link regarding IQ is an article about a book funded by an organisation that is regarded as a ‘hate group’. It’s probably not an ideal source of information.
#7 by Tickler on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 10:45 am
IRA had nothing like the Hamas Charter:
Article Seven: The Universality of Hamas
By virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one………
The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).
palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html
#8 by k1980 on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 11:22 am
Are the facts listed below “proportionate”?
More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined.
Islamic terrorists murder more people everyday than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years.
More civilians were killed by Muslim extremists in two hours on September 11th than in the 36 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
19 Muslim hijackers killed more innocents in two hours on September 11th than the total number of American criminals executed in the last 65 years.
#9 by OrangRojak on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 1:32 pm
“listed”
Mao Zedog 43 million
Pol Pot 3 million
and your point is what? Who should we bomb first? I think of Farish Noor as ‘an Islamist’, but I don’t think he kills anyone, although I thought on one occasion he had bored me almost to death. Even if I had actually shuffled off my mortal coil while reading one of his articles, I still wouldn’t wish him any harm.
I prefer to think of people who slaughter perfectly reasonable, normal people as ‘criminals’, ‘the insane’ or ‘idiots’, regardless of their claimed affiliations. It is on this basis I decry military action on the scale of mass destruction against them. It doesn’t matter how many people they kill, a state declaring war on individuals doesn’t make any sense, and it never will. The only consequence of war on individuals is dead non-combatants and a surge in recruitment to whatever idiotic ideal the individuals espouse.
#10 by OrangRojak on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 2:20 pm
Before anybody bombs me out of patriotism or some other heartfelt affiliation, the ‘Mao Zedong’ miss-spelling above is an honest (if unfortunate) spelling mistake – I only just noticed it. Please don’t bomb me, please!
Thanks.
#11 by Tickler on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 5:59 pm
“The stone, which is thrown at the Jews, hates these Jews, these Zionists, because Allah foretold, via His Prophet Muhammad, that Judgment Day will not come before the Jew and the Muslim fight. The Jew will hide behind stones and trees, and the stone and the tree will speak, saying: “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” The only exception will be the Gharqad tree.”
This harangue would be nothing new on television in the Islamic world; in fact, it is commonplace. What is unique about Sultan’s threats against America is that he holds U.S. permanent residency status and, according to one federal law enforcement official, travels regularly on a U.S. passport. And as I have reported elsewhere, Sultan is pursuing U.S. citizenship (the status of his application is unknown due to federal privacy laws). Thus, Salah Sultan has lived quite comfortably for more than a decade under the protections of the very country he now threatens with death and destruction.
pajamasmedia.com/blog/top-american-islamic-cleric-threatens-us-on-egyptian-tv/
#12 by undergrad2 on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 8:48 pm
k1980 Says:
Today at 11: 22.15 (9 hours ago)
“Are the facts listed below “proportionate”? Islamic terrorists murder more people everyday than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years”
If you let KKK have their way, they’d hang you and every Jew, Asian and not just blacks they see from the nearest tree. I don’t believe they will do the same with a white Muslim.
#13 by Loh on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 9:48 pm
Undergrad2,
I told you some time ago that you are free to exibit your knowlege or the lack of it, but please do not involve me. This is just a reminder.
#14 by Tickler on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 - 10:02 pm
History shows that the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party. This ugly fact about the Democrat Party is detailed in the book, A Short History of Reconstruction, (Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1990) by Dr. Eric Foner, the renown liberal historian who is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. As a further testament to his impeccable credentials, Professor Foner is only the second person to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians.
As from Jan.20th, the President of the US will be a black (or colored to be more precise). I very much doubt the KKK will hang their President.
#15 by undergrad2 on Thursday, 8 January 2009 - 9:47 pm
Loh Says:
Yesterday at 21: 48.47
Undergrad2,
“I told you some time ago that you are free to exibit your knowlege or the lack of it…”
Like I said earlier, to equate the Middle East conflict to a game of badminton is to trivialize the deaths of thousands who laid down their lives in defense of what they believe is just and fair. It has nothing to do with lack of knowledge. It is common sense.
#16 by Dr.Ken on Sunday, 11 January 2009 - 12:49 pm
Hamas is militant Terrorist organization. Israeli defense force is against Hamas not the Palestinians. Israel is merely defending its citizen from rockets attack from Hamas