As an Indian and somebody who studied the non violence moment of Gandhi both in South Africa and India. I can talk about the nature of political movements, I studied in quite a great detail. Even in India, the nature of non violence movement was not completely non violent- Its true that non violence came as a overwhelming force for the British. But the British did deal and perceive violent revolutionary sources as a equally big threat. There is always a big debate in India that Bhagat Singh was an equally big threat to British, as much as Gandhi. There were and continued to be pockets of violence till the Indian independence.
Secondly, violent attacks don't often serve any thing more than 'symbolism'.In this case, there is a century long history, of a persecuted community being settled on already existing nation. Now persecuted community has its reasons, but the existing people see why they are being driven out and find no acceptable reason for that. Add to this, a massive refugee problem, being forced to live densely crowded areas. No adequate supply of food, water, medicine, electricity for 50 years now. Sub human sanitation conditions. Having to endow the humiliation to stop at check points to move around in their own country, watch their land being endlessly consumed by settlers. Coupled with this the occupier has, a endless diplomatic, military and financial support of the biggest super power in human history. The oppressed can do nothing about it, because the military option isn't even an option. Diplomatic doors are closed.
If you feel these sort of people to not get frustrated, something is wrong about your understanding of human emotions.
Its in the human nature to empathize with the oppressed. And in fact this is the biggest problem with the kind of activity Anonymous has done. Israel isn't troubled because websites are going down for a couple of hours, they are troubled that there are people with some power and say in their hands, who empathize with the Palestinians. This is dangerous, and even fatal for the Israelis. Far more dangerous than the rockets themselves.
> Even in India, the nature of non violence movement was not completely non violent
It's difficult, if not impossible, for non-violent movements to succeed without the existence of credible threat of violence. Sad, but generally true. This was true of Ghandi and Bhagat Singh's India, as it was for ANC (or MK) and Mandela's South Africa.
The Israelis have little motivation to come to the negotiating table towards a diplomatic solution because the threat of violence against them is not credible enough to act as a deterrent. It is rational for Israel to not show restraint and act in the most aggressive manner possible.
I think it was Thomas Friedman who said this, if the Palestinians resort to terror attacks, Israel will just use that to attack them more. They remain silent, and they will just go on building settlements. Either way they will lose.
Gandhi's non violence movement was successful because he won the PR war by a very heavy margin. Greatest intellectuals of his time were writing essays on him, images of a thin old man, wearing just a homespun cloth marching on streets, giving speeches to keep restraint and never to submit co operate to bend to the British. Combined with his cause for the poor, and fighting against traditional caste based problems in India made him a hero among rural masses. All in all it made the British look very bad to be even putting up a fight against him.
If there is a every a break out of videos or pictures of Palestinians going on mass hunger fasts. Or that of they standing in the line of fire embracing bullets in the face of a F-16 firing on them and they not retaliating back. Things like that can do far more damage than rocket attacks can.
In fact there was some Palestinian guy and a couple of women who fasted in the Israeli jails and got their way some months back. Its surprising who much 'not fighting' can be powerful than 'fighting' provided you get the Press coverage.
Palestine's Gandhi movement can be very dangerous for the Israelis.
The problem is that the offered solution to the conflict (2-state solution) is horribly wrong, and will never work out in the long-term. The only way to solve this conflict is with the 3-state solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-state_solution).
So first, they need to have a proper solution in mind, so that everyone agrees on a trajectory for negotiations, and then do whatever they can to end the conflict. The thing is, whenever talks of a 3-state solution start, the other Arab nations show us that they don't really care about the Palestinians because they tend to reject it.
Many cases like that existed during the Indian Independence movement too. One that is very famous is the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre) In which a general ordered his army to fire at a crowd of innocent women, children and men totally unarmed and assembled to celebrate a festival. Its a very famous lesson taught in history classes in schools here in India. Read the wiki article.
Despite such a heinous act of cowardice.
Dyer was removed from duty and forced to retire. He became a celebrated hero in Britain among people with connections to the British Raj.
It worked in his native country, but by and large it did do a lot of damage and paved a way for national awakening to fight for independence in India.
Actually the best way to help the Palestinians currently is give them cameras, ways to publish their stories. And then teach these principles of non violence. World will listen sooner or later and its far better than firing rockets and killing innocent people at the other end. And it fulfills their purpose very well.
best way to help the Palestinians currently is give them cameras, ways to publish their stories
I've seen lots of videos like that on youtube and read lots of stories like that over the years. It doesn't seem to be helping.
far better than firing rockets and killing innocent people at the other end.
There are 2.5 million people living in Gaza. Do you expect every single one of them to agree with you? And if you don't have perfect consensus from all 2.5 million, can your plan still work? Because it seems to me that if even a small number reject your plan and fire a few $100 rockets, the non-violent efforts of the rest will be ignored and they'll be tarred with rocketers. Right?
There are definetly lessons to be learned from India's struggle but I think a big difference is that Brittain didn't have the religious motivation for occupation that Israel has. It makes it much more difficult for Israel to back off.
Slightly off-topic: I read somewhere once that Ghandi advised German Jewish Leaders that they should have tried his tactic of non-violence against the Nazis. I think they replied that the British Empire, although wrong, weren't monsters like the Nazis.
Actually non violence worked for more than one reason. Its also that the British, after world war 2 had no where the resources to control a massive country like India. It was also there purpose was done, and things were getting way out of their control. And it was better to leave honorably.
I appreciate your analysis, but no, the rockets are more fatal and dangerous than script kiddies hitting "Go" on their LOIC application from the comfort of their homes, far away from danger. Taking down websites and leaking passwords is inconsequential juvenility when compared to the hell that Israelis in S'derot have been living in for years and years and what citizens of Tel Aviv are experiencing now.
Hamas is a homophobic, misogynistic, illiberal, theocratic terrorist organization and Anonymous is supporting them.
Yes, that is the reason why I'm suggesting that the Palestinians must show restraint, despite the frustration. Pursue a total non violent path.
Food, medicine and water is blockaded? sure. Go on a mass hunger strike. Let the world know about it, inform them about your suffering. I guess that has already started to some extent too. Forced into a apartheid set up on your land, forced to go through humiliating check points? March peacefully with full restraint to the check point. Don't get violent no matter what. Show the world what's happening there.
Is there a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip? No.
Israel provides the residents of the Strip with food, water, electricity, medical supplies, etc. The residents respond with rockets aimed at Israeli civilians.
Well that is an interesting proposal but Israel is occupying the West Bank and blockading Gaza out of security concerns, not out of any sort of program of racial subjugation (remember that there are Arabs and other ethnic groups in Israel that have full rights and representation under Israeli law).
By that I mean to say that if there existed the state of affairs, the political will, where a totally non-violent path was desirable and possible for Palestinians to pursue, there wouldn't be a need for these policies which they would hypothetically be protesting against in the first place.
I think your analysis is pretty one sided there. Palestinians have to live with far worse danger - Hamas don't have helicopter gunships or laser guided bombs, for example.
Israel is in a far more powerful position; they should be the ones showing restraint.
As a similar Indian born in Britain, I agree with your observations about the paradox of violence inherent in the movement. I should add that non-violence only works when governments are vulnerable to moral pressure and this was not true in Zimbabwe and it is not true of Israel.
'Anonymous' is a movement, not simply a label for anyone who is not easily identifiable. The movement has a distinct ethos and a set of guiding principles.
When I say the script kiddies conducting these particular attacks are 'not Anonymous' I mean that they are not attacking in accordance with this ethos.
It's rather simple. As a general rule, civilians in the Gaza Strip know if they are near a target. You don't live next to a rocket manufacturing, storage or launch site without knowing about it.
The IDF have gone to great pains to warn civilians not to go near these sites, or to mix with combatants.
They send text messages, drop leaflets, even make phone calls with recorded messages to the affected areas. They perform 'roof knocks' (using non-lethal bombs) to warn civilians they are in the vicinity of a target.
The ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the Gaza Strip is well below that of any comparable conflict as a result.
You are not disputing that they are bombing a densely populated area. You are saying that they have to take precautions because they are bombing a heavily populated area.
Still they are rather humane compared to their enemy who is actively targeting civilians. And have been doing that so for years.
What is your solution to this conflict that doesn't include wiping the only national state for the Israeli people, created by UN, off the map? Hamas has been quite clear there will be no lasting peace until that has happened as far as I know. (Full disclosure: I don't read arabic so I'm have to trust the translations but they seem to agree.)
sorry, but when you look at civilian death rate and compare both sides the story is very different. whatever measures the IDF claims it is taking, it clearly isn't working.
> sorry, but when you look at civilian death rate and compare both sides the story is very different. whatever measures the IDF claims it is taking, it clearly isn't working.
In what sense is it not working? According to the latest figures, more than 500 targets have been hit, with 19 combatants and 10 civilians killed.
In most comparable conflicts, the number of civilian casualties far outnumbers the number of combatant casualties.
Both the parties are to blame here. Killings can't be justified no matter who does it. Its has to stop, terrorizing civilians in large cities is as much a cowardly act as much sending F-16s to bomb a helpless crowd.
And that kills kids, and UN inspectors and civilians. And of course these rocket launchers are wrong too, needless to say their rockets kill kids and civilians too.
Ok, we're moving somewhere. If the F-16s didn't exist, the rockets would still kill all those children. But if the rockets didn't exist, the F-16s wouldn't kill any children! I think we just figured out the solution to the conflict!
Although you never hear about it in most Western media Gaza militants also claim their attacks are responses to IDF attacks. The current escalation started when IDF killed a mentally challenged man and than a kid in an incursion a week ago. You can read about the tit for tats that have been going on here http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-...
To always blame the Gaza side as the aggressors and as terrorists is just to swallow IDF propaganda whole and uncritically.
The basic point, which you're overlooking, is that the Palestinian rockets are pretty crappy, and Israel has overwhelming military superiority - look at the casualty list from 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_War
1) The "unarmed, mentally unfit man" is also seen in a photo posted to a Hamas forum holding an assault rifle and wearing an armored vest. He was buried wrapped in a Hamas flag;
2) According to the IDF, this man ignored calls for him to stop and warning shots from soldiers;
3) EI cite a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (go figure) claim that the boy was fatally wounded by "as a result of the indiscriminate shooting". This is unverified. He was hit during a firefight between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants, while the IDF were disabling explosive devices (two days after two Israelis were seriously injured by a similar such device). The AP reported it was unclear who fired the shot(s) that fatally wounded the boy;
4) EI doesn't mention the explosive device that seriously injured two Israelis on 6th Nov. Nor do they mention the detonation of the explosive-filled tunnel that injured an Israeli soldier on 8th Nov.
Well then, I guess reality has a pro-Palestinian bias too. 38 Palestinians killed so far, 257 wounded, mostly civilians, vs. 3 Israeli civilians killed.
Er, what? Go and look up the history of Irgun and Lehi. Israel is just as bad as anyone else in the conflict. Back in the 30s and 40s they were blowing up buses and shooting civilians every day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks
Israel and Egypt continue to blockade medicine and food into Palestine, and restrict how people can move (bear in mind that there's basically no work in Palestine). How is that not deliberately targeting civilians? http://www.ipsnews.net/2010/07/mideast-israel-chokes-gaza-de...
If you want to see what a solution looks like, just look at Northern Ireland. No aid blockades there...
So you see it an acceptable to slaughter 1,417 Palestinians, for the "feeling" of safety of Israelis. Palestinians on the other hand, shouldn't expect any safety or dignity.
Had you asked about the death of ~500 Palestinian civillians and ~700 Hamas members in exchange for the improved safety of Israelis under the given conditions, my answer would be yes. I can't really explain it over HN comments though.
I've skimmed through the page linked, couldn't find anything relevant to the current situation. I might read further, thanks for sharing.
> I'll repeat the above question, what's your solution?
Responses like this are not aimed to be constructive, but to put a stop to reasonable discussion.
If I see that the current strategy is ineffective, I'm not allowed to say so until I have a fully-formed solution that is better? It's better to relentlessly pursue a course of action that is ineffective and has a significant cost in human lives, because 'we' can't think of anything better to do?
I didn't mean to stop the discussion, I'm simply trying to understand your point of view (I might learn something). Do you think Israel should sit idly by while the 25K citizens of Sderot can hardly live their lives?
The alternatives? Two state solution needs to go ahead. But Israel seems to be in full steam to stop the current UN bid. At the same time they don't want a one state solution either(Which more or less is sort of inevitable now).
Their neighbors don't love them much. No matter who they are, the rulers of those nations might, out of force. And that more or less is only to save their seats. But Arab spring has proven nothing is permanent. Egypt only looked super pro Israel under Mubarak and now is super pro Palestine just months after.
Absolutely the worst sort of geographical location to be and form your nation. Unless you want to be in a perpetual state of war, crisis and fighting. Yes Israel seems to have an upper hand in military wise currently, but as I said what is permanent? But Israel was not formed to be in an infinite state of war, but for Jews around the world to live in peace and without fear.
A big deadlock situation, dominated by massive distrust between both parties.
The problem is nobody on the Palestinian side seems interested in the two state solution. Mahmoud Abbas refused a very generous offer in 2009[1], and since then kept refusing to further negotiate. Hamas aren't much into negotiating either, so there's no one to talk to.
My hope is that one of the locks in this situation is held by Iran, and once it's released we may see new opportunities.
What about the people who "lived their lives" in Najd before being expelled to Gaza in order to install another town with a name in another language and a population from other countries on their own land?
I would be pissed. Very seriously pissed.
Do you think the people of Palestine should sit idly while some foreigners grab their lands and park them like animals in a reserve? Do you seriously think that what was done was right and justified and that the Palestinians don't have valid reasons for being pissed off against Israel?
How would you feel if what happened to Palestine happened to the country you live in?
It's a large-scale armed conflict. Civilians are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Alas, it's a strange sort of conflict in which one side deliberately targets civilians, while the other does everything humanly possible to avoid them.
No, this is pretty much the regular kind of conflict. Looks like apartheid, smells like ethnic cleansing, and ends up with plenty of bodies on both sides.
nope, not the regular kind of conflict at all: for a large portion of our history the greater power would obliterate all resistance in the hostile territory, then settle the area with their own population. The Israelis are showing remarkable restraint.
The land was sparsely inhabited when the Israelis formed their own nation. They spent time, money, and effort making it a better place to live. The Palestinians should call it a day and agree to a truce, before Israel gets serious and wipes them out completely.
Yes, because in Apartheid South Africa, you had black justices on the Supreme Court, just like you have Palestinians Justices on the Israeli Supreme Court. Oh, hold on...
> As a civilian, it is not difficult to avoid those
> targets.
Then you said:
> It's a large-scale armed conflict. Civilians are
> going to get caught in the crossfire.
If it's not so hard for civilians to avoid these areas, then why is it inevitable that they be caught in the crossfire?
The idea that Israel is somehow free of 'blood on their hands' because they try to warn people to leave the area for the bombing doesn't make sense. Both sides have plenty of blood on their hands, yet they continue to butt heads using the same tactics over and over again as if something is going to change. Unless they change tactics it's just a war of attrition at this point.
Your comments about how 'easy' it is for civilians to leave these areas seem to be aimed at placing the blame on the civilians for not having left the area, while absolving Israel of guilt. Even if you believe that Israel is in the right for bombing Gaza it makes no sense to try and deny that innocent civilians are caught in the cross-fire. Their blood is on Israel's hands just as much as the blood of innocent Israelis is on the hands of Hamas.
The comments about how easy it is to avoid targets are in response to those making farcical claims about the density population of the Gaza Strip, and suggesting it is impossible for civilians to escape the conflict.
Israel are engaged in a legitimate military operation, exclusively targeting legitimate military targets.
If you deliberately put yourself in harm's way, then I'm sorry, but you are partially responsible for the harm that comes to you.
There are more than 1.5 million people living on the 45 km^2 stretch of land. Are you seriously asking them to run? Run to where? Sea? or towards the sky?
No wonder it has been compared to a concentration camp or an open air prison.
Classic victim blaming to say the least.
Drop leaflets and then get a free permit to bomb them. If some should die, tell them you are the good guys and people who died are evil for dying from your actions.
No sorry you don't address the point everybody else is making in this thread, which is that you seem to suggest bombing is OK as long you pre-inform the people you plan bomb couple of hours before.
If your strategy is to deliberately hide behind civilians when firing your rockets, when those civilians get hit I don't think the responsibility for it lies with Isarel.
Civilians in the Gaza Strip do not really have a choice. The Gaza Strip is tiny by most geographical standards, roughly 9 km by 40 km[1]. And a very densely populated area. So even if the IDF tries to protect the civilian population ( and I think they do a comparatively good job), they will necessarily fail.
Doing all you can to avoid hitting them except, say, not launching missiles in the vicinity of their houses.
I get it: Hamas is a morally monstrous organization. I agree with that wholeheartedly. But there's such a thing as proportionate response. For every Israeli civilian that's killed, many more (greater than 10, at the least) Palestinian civilians are killed. The fact that Hamas is barbaric and doesn't have laser guided missiles doesn't change the fact that innocent people are being bombed to death.
What should Israel do? Well, frack if I know. But "we're trapped in a conflict with a barbaric organization, so we must be barbaric, too, to compete with them" means you can't complain when people call you barbaric.
I don't think they are being barbaric, though. They are launching pinpoint strikes, and doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas is deliberately hiding amongst their own civilians to generate casualties.
If Canada was no country but a territory where people were denied the right to have a state to live in, and if they were launching rockets at the US, I think the US would colonize Toronto and declare the city part of the US. Wait no, I don't.
"If Canada was no country but a territory where people were denied the right to have a state to live in,"
To make it even more alike the situation, then, we should say if these were people living in Seattle who are illegal aliens from Central America living there because they were kicked out of their refugee camps in Mexico...
"and if they were launching rockets at the US"
Let's say from Seattle at Redmond instead, with restricted access points from Seattle because occasionally they keep trying to destroy Redmond.
"I think the US would colonize Toronto and declare the city part of the US. Wait no, I don't."
And instead of the US as we know it, let's say the US is just the I-5 corridor from Portland, OR, to Everett, WA. And let's transplant all that area into, say, the neighborhood of Nicaragua or Panama. And let's say all the surrounding countries have declared that the people who live around Redmond must be pushed into the sea. They don't want the people in Seattle who used to live in their countries to move back into their countries; no, they want to help them destroy all the Americans.
What would happen? Redmond would launch the Surface.
Can they control what goes through those borders? Can they control what happens in the airspace above their territory? Do they have a seat at the UN?
The answer is no to all 3.
Question: if I want to fly into Gaza, whose permission do I need? Hamas' permission is clearly insufficient: the IDF will shoot down any plane landing there. So they're not at all an independent state.
Being under embargo/blockade is not the same as having no state. When the US did the same to Cuba 50 years ago, Cuba didn't magically disappear or become invalid.
Do you know why the US did that to Cuba? They were smuggling missiles in. See a pattern there?
If you have no control of what enters or leaves your territory, no control over the air above your head or the electromagnetic spectrum, and no international passports, I don't see how you can be a state.
The whole point of a state is that it has some effective control.
The killing of Jaabari was done in response to around 120 missiles thrown at Israel prior to the killing. There might have been peace talks but it seems like they had stock of missiles they wanted to ship out before any peace was signed for. The bottom line is that both sides of this conflict are held hostage to a very vocal and armed minorities of both sides who would like to keep the conflict burning on. Its no wonder that these things happen just before elections. Both sides have an interest to keep a right wing government in place and the best way to do this is by firing missiles and retaliating against them. Fear drives people to elect a right wing government and nothing drives fear like a bunch of missiles and a heavy "disproportionate" response.
Until both sides wake up and realize they are controlled by tiny minorities with guns there is no hope to resolve this conflict.
Interesting and encouraging to see that most of the discussion here on HN is about rockets and bombing, casualties and fear, and not so much about the action.
The anonymous statement however, seems primarily concerned with internet disconnection?! I don't try to underestimate the importance of freedom of speech, and the internet being an essential source of free information. But aren't other freedoms - or human rights (like the right to Life -- not living in terror or fear) even more important to defend?
> And today’s insane attack and threatened invasion of Gaza was more of the same.
> But when the government of Israel publicly threatened to sever all Internet and other telecommunications into and out of Gaza they crossed a line in the sand.
To be fair to them, cutting the internet could be considered a pretty big deal, if in your perspective doing so would hinder the dissemination of information about atrocities being committed.
Is that where the line should be drawn? I personally don't think so, but I can certainly understand the concern over something that might, in other contexts, be just the removal of a nice luxury.
I could understand attacking government websites as a protest, but why go after random civilian sites? They're just associating themselves with the worst part of the Palestinian resistance that way.
Anonymous deserves our kudos on this one. It's true that these dbs may have backups, but as the world just watches, it's nice to see someone at least trying to put Israel's feet to the fire in the capacity they can.
This isn't putting anyone's feet to the fire. You're giving way too much credit to Anonymous. And if they'd done it to a Palestinian company then someone would say the same thing you just said except we'd be switching out the word Israel with Palestine. And I'd still tell you that these people are fools and not doing anyone any good except themselves. Anonymous is now synonymous with being a joke. They come off as immature script kiddies who just reap havoc for the hell of it and think of a reason they did it afterwards. Or better, someone else ascribes meaning to their meaningless acts and then they don't have to do the work. I really don't care who got hacked or what damage it caused. I just hate seeing Anonymous held up as some sort of Internet hero (dis/anti)organization.
I just read it and I can't support them. I am opinionless on Israel/Palestine - there's just too much I don't understand to take a stand. The reason I can't support them is because they operate as if they are the the owners of the truth and the deciders of what is right. Its okay to have strong opinions, think you're right, and stand for what you believe it but the same mentality that allows Anonymous to do just about anything to anyone they deem "wrong" or "oppressors" is the same mentality that promotes people blowing themselves up on crowded subways. I can't support that.
Anonymous has been known in the past to attack first and figure out who got hit and how to spin it later. I am unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt that this was a targeted attack from the get-go.
And why does every Anon press release read like a transcription of a scratchy VHS tape involving several heavy-set balaclava-wearing dudes?
How about putting Hamas' feet to the fire? They have been condemned by human rights groups for widespread arrests, torture, and killing of their political opponents in Gaza.
They have simply been terrible for the Palestinian people. Besides suppressing political opposition, they also purposefully try to launch attacks from heavily populated civilian areas hoping that the civilians will end up acting as human shields.
Why is it so hard to say that one entity is bad without litigating the badness of every other entity? The military wing of Hamas is bad. They shoot rockets at civilians, deliberately, presumably in a bid to draw Israel into unrestrained conflict. They are killing civilians in order to start a war. That's bad. They're bad. Bad is practically their charter.
Are there worse entities? Sure. Now back to the matter at hand.
I guess I don't see why saying they're bad matter in and of itself.
Of course they're bad.
So what? We give weapons and money to lots of bad governments. Should we do so with Hamas? Just saying "they're bad!" doesn't really answer any interesting policy questions.
But hey, if you think foreign policy is about feeling moral superiority by saying "they're bad!" over and over, please don't let me stop you.
Generally, no. I think we should tend to avoid giving money to organizations that fire missiles at civilians in order to purposefully start wars. I think that's a pretty easy line item for our foreign policy rulebook.
Kudos for what? Engaging in illegal activites? Painting a blatantly one sided view of the conflict. Hamas weren't siting by letting their rockets collect dust. You can't claim them as innocent either.
Your responses just sound like the older sibling pointing at the younger sibling and saying, "but he was doing it too!"
To some extent someone has to stand up and be the adult in this conflict. Heavy-handed responses to Palestinian bombs hasn't ended this conflict in the past, and I see no reason that it will do so in the future. I don't have a solution to the conflict, but acting like Israeli responses of this kind are somehow part of a reasonable response aimed at ending this conflict doesn't make sense.
You are obviously talking about Palestinians attacking innocent civilians by launching hundreds of rockets into densely populated Israeli urban areas, right?
Well it's nice to see anonymous now supports a terrorist group :Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel, the UK and the European Union. In the wake of the 2008-2009 Gaza Conflict, in which more than 1,400 people were killed, the United Nations' Goldstone Report found that rocket attacks by Hamas constituted war crimes, and may have amounted to crimes against humanity.
Human Rights Watch has accused Hamas authorities in Gaza of war crimes, of violating international humanitarian law, and of meting out cruel and inhuman treatment to detainees.
I have no specific opinion on Israel attacking Gaza since I don't know the whole story. But if civilian websites are going to be taken down, then what security do we have that our websites will not be affected in future!!! We can't control the decisions our governments make!!
Secondly, violent attacks don't often serve any thing more than 'symbolism'.In this case, there is a century long history, of a persecuted community being settled on already existing nation. Now persecuted community has its reasons, but the existing people see why they are being driven out and find no acceptable reason for that. Add to this, a massive refugee problem, being forced to live densely crowded areas. No adequate supply of food, water, medicine, electricity for 50 years now. Sub human sanitation conditions. Having to endow the humiliation to stop at check points to move around in their own country, watch their land being endlessly consumed by settlers. Coupled with this the occupier has, a endless diplomatic, military and financial support of the biggest super power in human history. The oppressed can do nothing about it, because the military option isn't even an option. Diplomatic doors are closed.
If you feel these sort of people to not get frustrated, something is wrong about your understanding of human emotions.
Its in the human nature to empathize with the oppressed. And in fact this is the biggest problem with the kind of activity Anonymous has done. Israel isn't troubled because websites are going down for a couple of hours, they are troubled that there are people with some power and say in their hands, who empathize with the Palestinians. This is dangerous, and even fatal for the Israelis. Far more dangerous than the rockets themselves.