Monday, June 29, 2009

Numbers - In Proportion

Today's big news:

Israel has approved the construction of 50 new housing units in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.


And on Saturday, we read:

The bombing of a Baghdad bus station yesterday pushed the death toll from a weeklong series of blasts near Shiite targets to about 200,


And five days ago we read:

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply distressed" by the rape and assault of some 20 female inmates during a breakout bid from Goma's central prison in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

...Two persons were killed and some 20 female inmates were raped during the night of Sunday to Monday when detained soldiers mutinied and tried to break out of Goma's central prison which holds 837 inmates, including some 500 soldiers.


And today:

Darfur rebels on Sunday accused Sudan government forces of a bombing raid on their territory which killed at least eight civilians, as mediators step up pressure for a settlement in the violent western region.

Fighters from the insurgent Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) said military planes bombed land they controlled near the settlement of Hashaba in remote North Darfur around midday on Saturday.

SLA founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur told Reuters his commanders reported eight civilians were killed in Hashaba, about 70km (43 miles) west of the North Darfur state capital, El Fasher. Another SLA commander reported over 20 casualties.

2 comments:

Tuvya ben Mordekhai said...

Of those numbers, only the Israeli settlements involved CONstruction... all of the other numbers involved DEstruction and death. Note that in this case the no destructive effect was reported, other than theoretical or ideological was involved in the CONstruction of settlements. This is consistent with the general attitude of the Arabs of Palestine territory. They let Jerusalem and the entire Judean valley to go to waste until the Jews started CONstructing and improving it. Then suddenly it was stealing. If you have ever seen Ma'aleh Adumim, you know it was built on wasteland. They can't stand to see something useful being made out of wasted desert. They would rather see it go to waste then let the Jews improve it.

Dman said...

So let me get this straight. You think that listing other atrocities that you view as worse somehow justifies or diminishes the illegality the greedy Israeli land grab or "settlements"? Or are you trying to use the rediculous argument that because nobody else developed it you had some god given right to just take it and move in a bunch of racist thugs? I would have expected a sounder argument from such educated people. I guess it is hard to defend the indefenseable. These settler people are no better than hamas extremeists and should be treated as criminals. Look up the Bat Ayin Underground and see what nice people these settlers associate with. They botched blowing up an arab girls school. These and those that support them are nothing more than terrorists.

The settlements are wrong, block chances for peace and need to be removed permamently. Here in the US we need to pressure our government to end all aid to israel, boycott thier goods and end using our veto power in the un until israel proves they are commited to peace with real sacrifices...not just rediculous tokens encumbered with stipulations.

We need to stop ruining our moral credibility by supporting such a murderous regime.

So what is it...do you really want peace...or is it land that you lust for?