Does the Middle East need Peace or Freedom?

I have recently read this on a facebook thread "As long as the Palestinian will not have a state of their own, generator of freedom and hopes for young Palestinians, Israeli can never sleep in peace ... Recognizing Palestine is forcing Israel to comply with international law (and then the author of this post added a comments against "jewish lobby" that is not worth being reproduced)"

This kind of conception is very common in Europe where there is a growing wish to "impose" peace on Israel as if this country was the only one reluctant for peace. The best way to counter it is to point out that there is systematic evidence to the contrary:

1) Look how children are raised under area ruled by palestinian entities

Are you truly preparing your children for "freedom and hope" when you raise them like that?

I do not know if there are international laws violated by Israel but any parents who treat its children like that violate human laws that do not need to be written and only "mark" in the blood of their children a desire for war and a hatred of the jewish people. 

Does a people want peace when they let some of their children wow to become martyr against the "jewish dog"?

The fact is that Israel is not responsible for these child raising behaviors which are occurring in Hamas ruled Gaza. In fact these behaviors are, unfortunately, totally congruent with the Hamas Charter (1988), "Israel, because he is Jewish and a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. »

A way of raising children congruent with the Hamas Charter(1988):

"Israel, because he is Jewish and a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. »

It's a bit too easy to then say that peace is not occurring because of the "reluctance" of the Israeli. That reminds me of a joke by an excellent french comic (Pierre Desproges) who famously said: "You can not convince me that during the last world war many Jews did not have a downright hostile attitude toward the Nazi regime"...

2)The only country generator of freedom and hope for Palestinian is Israel. The Arab Israelis have more civil rights than in any neighboring Arab country:

The difference of "fate" between an Arab Israeli child and a child born under the leadership of Hamas is dramatic - as illustrated by this article "Arab Israeli high-tech ace awarded Apple top job

Israel respect freedom and generates hopes for all its population- so what is needed there is not "imposed peace" but movement toward freedom and the rule of law.  Sorry if this undermines some prejudices...

The peace "imposed" are just "coup" made to make feel good those who impose them - no generosity in these "parliamentary vote" for peace that we recently saw in UK and probably now in Europe. In fact they are just only adding to the violence of the region.

There can be no peace between two parties if neither of the two does not recognize its own violence and the impact that violence has on the impossibility of building peace. This applies to Israel too but this is why it is so important that Israeli practice the rule of law: it's a way of making yourself accountable for your own desire for peace. 

Conclusion: Those who wants true peace should insist on respect of human rights and freedom in palestinian ruled territory, on the stop of organized abuse of children and the use of totalitarian method of indoctrination by palestinian entity of its own population. 

The myth of disproprtionate bombings of Gaza by Israel during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

There is several and solid evidence that, during the  2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Israel acted proportionately to the threat posed by Hamas and did not committed an indiscriminate war against the whole Gaza population.

1) The number of casualties among non male inhabitant of Gaza contradicts any possibility of "indiscriminate war behavior" by Israel:

As this revealing NYT article Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead From the Gaza Conflict  explains: "No other number is as contentious as the ratio of civilians to combatants killed, widely viewed, including in Israel, as a measure of whether the commanders in the field acted proportionately to the threat posed by militants — or, in the eyes of Israel’s critics, committed war crimes." In the same article, it is revealed that around 1800 inhabitant of Gaza were killed during this war with the following demographic:

If the military efforts of Israel was this indiscriminate slaughter that was so often "denounced" it seems to me that there would be proportionality between the number of deaths in each demographic category with their percentage in the population. e For example, when the Allies bombed Dresden (so almost undoubtedly indiscriminate) I would not be surprised that the proportion of dead men women children respected their proportion in the population of this city ....

What the table shows are more than compatible with the assumptions that israeli officers acted proportionally to the threat posed by Hamas. As the NYT article explain itself the demographic " least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented" among the known-age casualties and "the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll"

2) The number of casualties among children is significantly lower than what has been caused by European armies in recent conflicts

The same NYT articles explain that 16% of causalities were under 15 (when incidentally they represent more than 40% of the population of Gaza) . To put this in perspective British troops invading Iraq in 2003 made 100,000 dead with 46% being under 15 (source Washington Post which itself source this information from the scientific journal "The lancet").  as Ben-Dror Yemini says in his excellent blog post on this subject :  "Yes you have read well : 3 times more children dead in proportion,(and around 150 times more in absolute number - yes 150 you have read it well"


3) “Israel Went to Extraordinary Lengths” to Limit Civilian Casualties" declare U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey . He said that when participating in a discussion at the Carnegie Council for Ethics was asked to assess “the ethical conduct” of the IDF during Operation Protective Edge. Listen to his full answer: 

Similar praise from other respected anti terrorism expert such as Former Col. Richard Kemp, who was head of British forces in Afghanistan, who declared "No other army in the world has ever done more than Israel is doing now to save civilian lives":

Conclusion: wars are wars and they do create tragedies. That being said, denouncing the israeli war behavior as "particularly inhuman" when there is fairly good evidence that it was conducted with restraint is not a particularly intelligent way of working for peace in the region.

Some media almost give the impression that Israel behaved in a worse way than ISIS jihad fighters do...This is a form of double standard that is just partisan. Peace requires transparency, the avoidance of misinformation and of selective bias like that.

The myth of an Israeli Appartheid

Israel is a country that DOES NOT practice apartheid. This is completely FALSE.

Sometime a picture is worth a thousands words: is this Apartheid?

The Israeli Arab population (20% of the population) has more civil rights than most neighboring Arab populations (with the possible exception of Lebanon).

The Israeli Arabs can practice all the jobs they want, they are recognized at the highest echelon of the administration (including the Supreme Court), enjoy full freedom of worship and movement, can vote and elect their representative the Knesset. These are facts that can be easily checked. 

Israeli Arabs can practice all the jobs they want

The net result is that  the Israeli society is enabling the emancipation and social elevation of many israeli arab as the case of this israeli arab accessing a top job at Apple illustrate:

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/technology/40464-140816-arab-israeli-high-tech-ace-awarded-apple-top-job

Of course Israel is not treating the same way the Palestinian people who are NOT citizens of Israel with whom Israel is in a state of permanent war. Measure such as the wall are defensive: when the erected the French Maginot line it was not, it seems, to discriminate against the Germans but to defend themselves. Its the same here.

Finally two questions are worth asking to those speaking of an Israeli apartheid:

1) Do Jews have the right to exist in the Palestinian territories, for example on the Gaza Strip. No. I recently captured this discussion on facebook that brilliantly summarizes the issue:

-" 000% Jews in Gaza.... Explain that"

- "What's there to explain? I wouldn't want to live in Gaza either."

- "Jews can't live there, not even with a jewish name. They will just get stoned and shoot on the streets. That's why we don´t live there. We shoot warning shoots they do not."

Although  the picture of the left should say "I'm an Israeli and 1,5 Million Arabs live in my state" it does illustrate that segregation is occurring on the palestinian side.

2) Do they know about what was the status of Jews under the so-called tolerance scheme (dimmi) under the Caliphate in the nineteenth century?  Then we will speak of Apartheid...

The Hamas Covenant: a proof that antisionism and antisemitism are closely linked.

In the Hamas covenant two statement concisely summarize the anti semitic ideology of the islamist movement.

"Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors." 

(Hamas covenant - preamble)

"Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslim" (Hamas covenant - article 28).

When is it useful to cite these statements: 

1) When people tries to portray Hamas as a defensive movement that use terror only because of "israeli oppression". This charter was written in 1988 and is fundamental to understand that Hamas is not a movement of resistance but a supremacist movement, fighting for the supremacy of Islam over the Jews. 

2) When statement relative to the possibility of negotiating with Hamas as if it was a simple "resistance" movement. No resistance movement, a little bit worthy of humanity, could say such a thing about his enemies.

3) These sentences (especially the second one) also prove that, for Hamas, antisionism and antisemitism are closely linked.  This is important to notice since many pêople seem to profess that they are antisionist but not anti semitic. Whether its true or not, if theses people support hamas, they do support an anti-semitic movement

Hamas covenant: http://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818.htm

A very good analysis of Hamas can be found here:

This is the peace Jihadist don't want to see occurring in israel

A Jew pray in Arabic with Muslims. In turn these pray in Hebrew ..

The Jew in question is man that a member of Islamic Jihad attempted to kill.

This man is Rabbi Yehuda Glick. He is described, at least in France, as a radical, violent racist, far right-colon. These image should help you assess how true these allegations are.

He is the leader of a coalition dedicated to “reaching complete and comprehensive freedom and civil rights for Jews on the Temple Mount.” To be clear: he advocates freedom of worship for all three monotheistic religions on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. How extreme is that?

When is it useful to cite this video? In at least three circumstances:

1) To demystify the recurring myth of an super powerful Israeli Extreme right. Here we are facing a case of unfounded denigration, if not demonization of any Israeli people.  It's so current that i believe that for some people the expression Rabbi and extreme right are automatically associated.

2)When meeting with people (esp in France) that denies that there is a anti-jewish/ anti zionist bias in the media. For example this is what  could be read in french media just minutes after the rabbi was riddled with bullets ": Israel: a  Jewish extremist wounded by firearm "(RFI)," A figure of the Israeli extreme right wounded by bullets "(BBC)" A leader of the far-right Israeli wounded by bullets "(Médiapart) ... etc. etc. (source http://www.lemondejuif.info/2014/10/video-extremiste-rabbin-yehuda-glick-il-prie-en-arabe-musulmans/)

3) When wanting to illustrates that nothing fundamentally oppose peace between people of good will and that these people exist on both side of this conflict...

Egyptian Child Preacher Ibrahim Adham Longs for Martyrdom, Fighting alongside the Palestinians

Overall impression: horrible videos that shows how endemic is the radical opposition to Israel and how anti-semitic it is.

When is it useful to cite this video: When meeting with people that underestimate the nature of the opposition to Israel's mere existence in the surrounding arabo-muslim population. This video make people emotionally realize how fundamentally racist and radical is the opposition to Israel.