Banksy in Palestine
Okem
4,617 Posts
click ere for more info video I know there are some Banksy fans on here, so I thought they might be interested in his latest exploits.
Comments
?? The number of ???successful??? Palestinian suicide bombings within Israel in 2004 was 76.3 percent less than those carried out in 2002, the year that construction on the fence began.
?? In 2004, the security fence helped Israel reduce by 44 percent the annual number of its citizens killed in terrorist attacks.
Banksy: "the segregation wall is a disgrace...the world's most invasive and degrading structure..."
Fuck Banksy.
"the ends": fewer dead Israelis.
"the means": a fence that makes it harder for Palestinians to get to work.
You may feel like Banksy, that Israeli lives are cheap. But I'd say in this case the ends/means justification is pretty clear.
Listen, this thread may not have been intended to be a debate on this topic, but the little video clip was just too provocative for me not to respond. Not trying to drag anyone into anything, but I feel dutybound to remind people about the reason behind this security barrier. It wasn't built in a vacuum, which is exactly the impression given by most coverage of it (including the cute little Banksy story).
1. The Israelis are not the main reason behind these people living in substandard conditions. Corrupt PA, inept UN, oil-rich Gulf States: Show me the money.
2. Lots of people live in shit. Only a few such groups of people decide to kill women and children in response. This whole "they have no choice; they are merely reacting; they are not independent actors with minds of their own" is basically a racist characature of the Palestinians.
Where did you get that dialog from? I never said that. Just to clear that up.
You are right. It's all Palastinian's fault. Isreal had nothing to do with it. NOTHING. What was I thinking? Can America stop sending them money now?
That is not what rootless wrote. If you care to read his post, you'll find he identified two external causes--"inept UN, oil-rich Gulf States". A curropt PA, the one point for which he blames the Palestinians, is hardly contentious.
I wasn't disregarding that stuff. It was the way that isreal's responsibility is shrugged off. Like they're just hapless victims (although some citezens are), it goes both ways. Isreal holds the $$$, power. They can do the right thing but I don't see it happening soon. The hate going both ways is too deep.
aparthied, concentration camps, etc. keep it up: soon enough these terms will have absolutely no meaning at all.
Sounds like you've got your mind made up. I don't know enough about the topic to form an opinion but I do know you need 2 sides to engage in a conflict.
This is soon to be yet ANOTHER 5 page Israel/Palestine thread.
Great. I can't wait.
fact: both the us and isreal have been denying the palestianians their own seperate state for close to 30 years. they have been going against the world opinion on that.
this may have something to do with it.
i'm afraid this will be a five pager by next monday.
dave
Oh yea, that's why I would never put Israel or Palestine in any thread. People have about 2000 years of anger about this topic.
so I guess it's okay for the airport security to racially profile me and derail me from my travel plans because I look middle eastern, even though I'm black. all in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism? it's the same thing...
p.s.
again, I don't know much about the israeli/ palestinian conflict. I'm purely arguing logic here.
mostly due to your fuck banksy statement...
you may have some points, and I don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying. I just don't agree with the logic.
P.
That wall was built two thousand and five years too late.
As far as comments about the wall go. I myself am not for the wall and thought it was a disgrace to put up, however the facts don't lie, suicide bombings decreased sharply after it was put into place.
Should there be a better solution? yes
does anyone know what it should be?
The balloon girl is good, though.
very cool pic.
Day, it sounds like you have your mind made up. Rootless only made a valid point about the misuse and overuse of very loaded words. There is nothing about his statement that implies an unwillingness to consider the issue from any number of possible perspectives. In fact, if he was was willing to embrace phrases like 'concentration camp' as appropriate ways of describing the Palestinian situation it would speak far more tellingly of counterproductive biases than his insistence on accuracy in language and reporting.
A concentration camp is a place where people are held against their will, like a prison, except that you haven't broken any laws. Palestinians are not being held there by anybody - they are free to leave Israel and move to another country, if they like. No one gave the prisoners of Auschwitz that option. Instead, they were gassed to death, raped and starved. I'm sure they would have happily picked up and moved if it was possible.
Yes. That's why they built that wall.
???
i don't believe they kept time based on J.C.
Our calendars span a bit longer.
I'm sure crime would go down in the suburbs, right?... so it *must* be OK to build the walls, right?
Faulty logic is the smallest of the problems with this scenario...
They do have walls around suburbs now, don't they? They call them "gated communities." I think building all wall around your country to keep from being exterminated is different than building a wall around your neigborhood because you don't want your DVD player to be stolen.
h
I just chose that number as being indicative of how long Jewish people have had to struggle under opression in modern times, but you are correct: Opression of Jewish people does predate the modern era. That wall could have been build 5000 years ago. There hasn't been a time where it wasn't needed.
Peace
h
i disagree. i don't believe it has ever been necessary.
your correlation b/w oppression and building walls seems quite faulty. i would hardly say that Israel is oppressed by the Palestinian people. Oppression is about power and i would not say that in Israel, there is anyone holding the power other than Israel and its Western interests.
all those $20 donations to the Jewish National Fund to plant trees in israel in the name of your family- they never mentioned that the forests were built over razed Palestinian villages and communities. There is documentation of families returning home years later and walking amidst lunch tables and white linen family picnics to try to identify their former communities- based on the limited natural landmarks where their homes once stood before they were removed i.e. bulldozed.
making the desert fertile- yes, but at the expense of....
the situation is complex. it is not one sided. but the reality is that a wall was built to further entrench the Palestinian people in ghettos. this IS about oppression.
I've not seen the wall a means of entrenching Palestinians in a ghetto. I saw it as a means of safeguarding the Jewish ancestral homeland. I know that there were Palestinian villages and communities that were razed in the last 60 years. I've always thought those villages were built on the remains of Jewish communities that existed there a millennium before. This is a complicated matter. One that merits serious discussion. I hope you don't read my words & think that I am trying to diminish or disregard your opnion. Its good to talk about this like intelligent people & read posts that are neither flippant or disrespectful. You have given me reason to think. I like constructive discussions.
Peace
h