i'm extremely confident in my occupation as a college student. because i know i won't have to settle for teaching what i'm interested in, and instead can go out and do actually *** i'm interested in.
deletedalmost 12 years
Hardly - I'm quite confident in my teaching ability, and my students and fellow staff agree. Are you as confident in your occupation? Oh, wait...
deletedalmost 12 years
Who said we were arguing?
Hamas is the elected representative of the Palestinian people, remember.
Besides - in the Gaza strip (an area about twice the size of the District of Columbia), where do you expect the citizens to go? Where can they hide? Where can they evacuate to? Their area gets smaller by the week with every illegal settlement built, every farm destroyed...
israel wants to target hamas. not the palestinians. also, that point has been shown by outsider sources. not just the israeli government and military.
the fact that you are arguing with a teenager on an online mafia forum is really showing me what sort of teacher you are...
deletedalmost 12 years
I have no problem with my students using Wikipedia as their starting point, but I ask them to source whatever Wikipedia has sourced for their points, not the Wikipedia page itself. Seems to work just fine, as all of the students go on and read those original sources... which is what Wikipedia intended to happen in the first place.
deletedalmost 12 years
Again - taking the Israeli government's word as truth shows you can't discern bias. The Israeli government can say that all they want - but events on the ground tell a different story.
An updated ratio: 32 Israelis (29 military) to 695 Palestinians (166 children, 67 women and 37 elderly citizens).
If they are trying to avoid civilian deaths, they are doing a dismal job of it. But the Palestinians have a great ratio.
and once again, i repeat that you're taking the media bias and following the train of thought that these deaths and attacks were merely to kill innocent victims. israel has repeated multiple times that this was not the intent, and have expressed their condolences.
but i guess i'm just arguing with a brick wall at this point, so good day derfel.
deletedalmost 12 years
I dream a dream where the only war causalities are military and 0 civilians!
deletedalmost 12 years
Do I know the absolute truth? No. But I know what a ratio of 650:29 looks like, and when 27 of the 29 are military, but 105 of the 650 are children under 18... well, that's clear.
deletedalmost 12 years
Yes - that's exactly what I did. Mind you, it isn't stealing information. Wikipedia is an open-source platform. It's not like I profit from anything I write here.
But thanks for proving my point.
deletedalmost 12 years
I'm not sure my information is 100% credible. That's why I used multiple sources, most of which were outside of the official governmental reach. When a group of MIT researches do a long study on the effectiveness of the Iron Dome and come up with 5%, and cite their data, etc... I tend to think perhaps the government is lying about their claim of 90% effectiveness... which would in turn suggest that perhaps there are in fact less missiles being launched than the government is warning their citizens about.
It's also a historical study of events over the past 60 years - what each government is guilty of, etc.
Like I said - you can't take the word of the agency about their own actions alone - in this case, the shelling of the beach and the death of those 4 young boys was witnessed by a half-dozen journalists from several different news agencies - all concluding that this was an unprovoked attack in an area that had no warning in place, and that the dead were all innocent civilians. That I will believe.
then aren't you contradicting yourself? how would you then know that ANYTHING you've cited is credible? i think it's safe to assume that around 40% of the information is being churned out by hamas, the other 40% from israel. only approx. 20% is outside information from humanitarian organisations and such.
derfel just compared my original one-liners to stealing information from wikipedia and not citing the original source.
deletedalmost 12 years
I'm sure your two months of travel got you deep into the conflict, and you really got to experience what it's like. But until you realize that a military is not a credible source of information for their own military exercises, there's not much more to be said (or learned).
deletedalmost 12 years
No - I use it for a quick source of information. Lazy? Maybe. It's comparable to your little "fly-by" comments. But where my use of Wikipedia is for a quick fact or source, yours is borne from something else. Your comments, which may be somewhat witty at times, keep you from having to actually attempt an original meaningful thoughtful comment, of which you may or may not be capable of making. In either case, your insecurity limits you to these one-liners.
more experience? i was in the middle east, both israel and surrounding countries, for almost 2 months last year. i think it's fair to say i have quite a decent amount of exposure to what REALLY happens there, and that is not purely based on what lies and propaganda we are fed by our respective media sources. i don't appreciate the "naivete" you're attributing to me purely for being young. just because you're older does not mean that i cannot have a valid point or even, hey, be correct about something.
you have stated your opinion, and me mine. like the conflict, this discussion cannot be resolved simply. i just aimed to widen your horizons a little bit and make you just a TAD more open minded towards the flipside of the conflict.
BREAKING: derfel is a teacher, and uses wikipedia as a reputable source of information.
deletedalmost 12 years
Well gabilauren - you may know some things about Israel that were taught to you in school, or that your elders have been telling you, but you haven't learned enough about critical thinking and questioning. Once you get more experience with that (through your education and other events throughout an independent life) you'll probably see the world in a much different way.
Until then - I'd suggest broadening your horizons a bit past what's given to you from family and teachers. A short journey into longer, more nuanced readings will show you that you've been missing quite a bit of the picture thus far.
All the best in your journey.
deletedalmost 12 years
lol
deletedalmost 12 years
Of course the US votes no. They always vote no. Why would they ever vote yes for this?
Ironic that South Africa votes yes and the US doesn't!
