Gaza War, Part 3

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

I’m not here to dispute that Jews lived in the ME region thousands of years ago, or that a small group remained in the region over time.

I’m here to dispute that more than perhaps 10-15% of the worldwide “Jewish” population alive here in late 2023 is actually descended from the Jews who lived in the ME region thousands of years ago. And that’s true of the Israeli population, too. No more than 10-15% of them descend from the tribe.

Nope. Genetic tests of Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, show an admixture of European and Middle Eastern.

You’re not helping your case because genetic tests of Arabs, including Palestinians, show 100% pure Middle Eastern. Now what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Not PP. but the only difference I see if that the analogy should be “ Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my ancestor’s home in Egypt from 1000 years ago”.

Yes, some Jews stayed. Many left. Many converted and are now Muslim. They all share the same genetic ancestor. They are all cousins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

It does not change the fact that Israel is the ancestral home of Jews and that their rightful claim to the land is clearly and inarguably outlined and documented within the Torah.

Any other people who wish to live within Israel can either choose to live by their rules, or find another place to live.

lol torah

Not a good look to laff at people’s religion, right?

It’s a great look when they’re using it to draw borders or write constitutions. Laugh away bc it’s ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

There were people living full multi generational lives for 100s of years that Israeli’s forced from their home. Can you explain your logic than an ancestral tie trumps that? I have ancestral ties to Austria, Ireland, Britain, and Ukraine. Do I get to take over someone’s house there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

I’m not here to dispute that Jews lived in the ME region thousands of years ago, or that a small group remained in the region over time.

I’m here to dispute that more than perhaps 10-15% of the worldwide “Jewish” population alive here in late 2023 is actually descended from the Jews who lived in the ME region thousands of years ago. And that’s true of the Israeli population, too. No more than 10-15% of them descend from the tribe.

Nope. Genetic tests of Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, show an admixture of European and Middle Eastern.

You’re not helping your case because genetic tests of Arabs, including Palestinians, show 100% pure Middle Eastern. Now what?

Yes. This. And middle eastern Jews are more closely genetically tied to Palestinians than they are to Ashkenazi Jews. Literally it’s a cousin war.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

I’m not here to dispute that Jews lived in the ME region thousands of years ago, or that a small group remained in the region over time.

I’m here to dispute that more than perhaps 10-15% of the worldwide “Jewish” population alive here in late 2023 is actually descended from the Jews who lived in the ME region thousands of years ago. And that’s true of the Israeli population, too. No more than 10-15% of them descend from the tribe.

Nope. Genetic tests of Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, show an admixture of European and Middle Eastern.

You’re not helping your case because genetic tests of Arabs, including Palestinians, show 100% pure Middle Eastern. Now what?

Yes. This. And middle eastern Jews are more closely genetically tied to Palestinians than they are to Ashkenazi Jews. Literally it’s a cousin war.

To sharpen that pencil a bit, a cousin war orchestrated by a guy (Bibi) LITERALLY from Ukraine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Longer claim?

I’d ask for their papers, but I don’t read Ukrainian or Polish so I’d have to take most of them at their word that they have an actual claim to the land, despite resembling nobody else from the neighborhood. And despite failing every genealogical test imaginable.

Jews go back 3,000 years there. Kinda a well established thing.

They left. You don't get to leave and then have your descendants waltz back in and demand "your" land back.

Where do you live?

If you live in the USA, you are occupying someone else's land.

Are you just as enthusiastic about Native Americans taking back their lands?

Not hearing it.

Jews have been in the middle east for thousands of years. To suggest they're not indigenous, I mean, c'mon

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Israel has 30,000 Iran-backed Hamas terrorists to deal with in Gaza (minus the 7,000 or so eliminated). Then, there is Hezbollah with its 100K Iran supplied rockets. Throw in the Jew hating lunacy in Syria, the Houthi stuff, the UN, and global antisemitism that has grown especially nasty after (?!) the butchering and rape and desecration of Jews on October 7, and so on, and yeah, sorry, college campus “freedom fighters,” I’m still seeing Jews as the underdog.

Have you ever heard of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safsaf_massacre?

I am horrified of all the atrocities committed by Hamas and their brutality and violence. I also am horrified by Israel and all of their historical and ongoing atrocities. I just wish you could be brave enough to confront and acknowledge history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Longer claim?

I’d ask for their papers, but I don’t read Ukrainian or Polish so I’d have to take most of them at their word that they have an actual claim to the land, despite resembling nobody else from the neighborhood. And despite failing every genealogical test imaginable.

Jews go back 3,000 years there. Kinda a well established thing.

They left. You don't get to leave and then have your descendants waltz back in and demand "your" land back.

Where do you live?

If you live in the USA, you are occupying someone else's land.

Are you just as enthusiastic about Native Americans taking back their lands?

Not hearing it.

Jews have been in the middle east for thousands of years. To suggest they're not indigenous, I mean, c'mon

Do you live in the US? The correct analogy would then be that you would be okay with a Native American family moving into your home in NoVa or MD or elsewhere.

Also, your logic seemed to not acknowledge that Palestinians are also indigenous to the region. as I’ve posted again and again on these pages. The historical and genetic record shows that some Jews stayed. Some went to Europe. And some converted to Islam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

I’m not here to dispute that Jews lived in the ME region thousands of years ago, or that a small group remained in the region over time.

I’m here to dispute that more than perhaps 10-15% of the worldwide “Jewish” population alive here in late 2023 is actually descended from the Jews who lived in the ME region thousands of years ago. And that’s true of the Israeli population, too. No more than 10-15% of them descend from the tribe.

Nope. Genetic tests of Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, show an admixture of European and Middle Eastern.

You’re not helping your case because genetic tests of Arabs, including Palestinians, show 100% pure Middle Eastern. Now what?

Now what? Nothing. Ancestral claims do not begin and end with ‘purity,’ right? Yikes! Plus, I don’t need to make a “case.” Israel is a recognized nation-state that has defeated its enemies again and again and again. And Palestinians have rejected deals again and again and again. I get that Jew hatred runs deep in the Middle East, but I am convinced that broader minded people will prevail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

It does not change the fact that Israel is the ancestral home of Jews and that their rightful claim to the land is clearly and inarguably outlined and documented within the Torah.

Any other people who wish to live within Israel can either choose to live by their rules, or find another place to live.

lol torah

Not a good look to laff at people’s religion, right?

It’s a great look when they’re using it to draw borders or write constitutions. Laugh away bc it’s ridiculous.

Then one has to laugh away at Hamas and its Jew hating jihad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

There were people living full multi generational lives for 100s of years that Israeli’s forced from their home. Can you explain your logic than an ancestral tie trumps that? I have ancestral ties to Austria, Ireland, Britain, and Ukraine. Do I get to take over someone’s house there?

Same dumb house analogy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

This makes a lot of sense

But everyting in each of the rebuttles depends on the actions of others. You can't make anyone do these things.

yes but convincing people to do those things is not inherently antisemitic- however when persuasion and nonviolent political pressure is applied so that the general public. wants to do those things they are immediately presented with the label anti-semite. Europeans are told that they have no moral authority, Arabs that they should have bowed down to their european colonial masters in 1948 b/c they were weak. Israel's supporters cannot react with moral outrage when the palestinian cause is argued for and persuasion is applied and their case is made but that is generally what happens, people do change and opinions change. Many people who get a less mythologized and more fact based history education are capable of seeing that what happened in the mid twentieth century with the Indian Partition, the division of Korea, and the division of the former ottoman territories was injustice rooted in Esurocentric, white supremacy. Our kids know that the Thanksgiving story is bs, they know that we starved the Plains Indians into submission b/c we couldn't defeat them militarily, they know the civil war was fought over the right to own and sell human beings, they know what actually happened- so of course they are going to be more sympathetic than their grandparents who barely thought Arabs are human, grandparents who celebrated the Crusaders and didnt realize that the Crusaders were evil people engaged on an evil mission and basically disgusting criminals and not heroes at all.

[Anonymous]

At the end of this—and there will be an end where Hamas loses (sorry, Israel haters)—people of good faith must overcome ancient hatreds and work for the good of humanity. No more settler violence. No more Jew hating taught in Palestinian schools. No more Netanyahu in charge; no more Jew hating Palestinian leaders in charge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maher with a dose of reality for the Hamas fangurls:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-urges-palestinians-not-believe-myth-from-river-to-sea-israel-going-nowhere

Israel is free to do whatever it damn wants which seems to be to kill as many Palestinians as possible but in that case Jewish people should stop acting shocked when the rest of the world views Israel as a heartless, cold blooded nation with no soul

This is the most common sense thing I have read about what is going on...and a few years ago it would not all have had to been said, but progressives have distored common sense.

Okay. Two things.

1. It is illogical to say "bad things happen and people get moved all the time" but conclude this with "Israel is here to stay". If things change and people move, they can change for Israel too.

2. "Everyone comes to an accommodation" not by hugs and kisses, but through restoration of rights. There is a reason Jews can reclaim stolen and compensated property in many places in Europe - because people acknowledged that what happened to them was unjust. They weren't told to just get over it. Israel restores pre-1948 property to Jews who can prove ownership. Not to Arabs, mind you. Never to Arabs. You come to an accommodation when the party that wronged you acknowledges the wrong and makes an effort to compensate for the wrong. "Get over it" is not an accommodation.

3. I find it terribly ironic when people parrot the line of "Palestinians were offered their own state on three different occasions!" but you press them for details and turns out they don't know crap about what was actually offered.

DP.

I know exactly what was offered on each occasion and think that the following is inarguably true:

1. The Palestinians will not get a better deal in the future than what they’ve previously been offered.

2. The Palestinian people would be FAR better off today had they accepted any of the previous offers.

By any measure of real world impact, the Palestinian leadership has chosen poorly.

Yes they have.

During decolonization, they were given a very nice state that stretched from the border with Lebanon to the Negev. Hills. Forests, a good coastline on the Mediterranean. Towns like Nazareth and Hebron. Olive groves. But they chose war instead.

In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, they were given all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel would have compensated the remaining 3 percent with their own lands. All the West Bank settlers would have been long gone by now.

Instead, Palestinians chose intifada.

I don't mean this unkindly, but Palestinians seem to be incapable of having effective leadership. They choose Hamas. They choose Islamic Jihad. They choose the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt parties in the world. Back on the day, the chose the PLO - murdering Olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, causing a civil war in Lebanon, assassinating Prime Ministers in Jordan, supporting the invasion of Kuwait.

I mean, what is there to say. If they had chosen a Gandhi or a MLK, they would have had a state for a long time now. But they don't. They always choose terrorism, violence, corruption, fanaticism. How do you work with this?

Serious question: How do you keep a straight face pretending that someone like Bibi would have EVER allowed the establishment of a Palestinian state of any kind over the past 27 years? Seriously, how do you do it?

i think Netanyahu and Likud are terrible.

Israelis are genuinely stupid for going with this. There are a lot of extremists in Israel. I mean they murdered Yitzhak Rabin for goodness sake. Israelis are not ipso facto wonderful people.

But Palestinians are dumber

They've had numerous chances for a good, independent state. And they've rejected all of them.

I mean, what is there to do? Who the hell do you even negotiate with?

Palestinians have been idiots for 80 years. That's the problem. They think massacring a 1000+ innocent people and kidnapping hundreds of others is a great idea.

Yeah, well, that was a terrible idea and they are paying the consequences

Israelis aren't wonderful, but Palestinians are literally the dumbest people on the planet. They chose this.

How are Palestinians dumber? Bibi literally funds Hamas while elderly Holocaust survivors barely have enough to eat in Israel. That’s smart ?

Do you think Palestinians would ever support Ben Gvir or the right wing Kahanists/extremists and give them money to create settlements in the West Bank? They wouldn’t but Israel playing with fire until it got burned by Hamas

Your assumption is that Palestinians are docile idiots that got played by Netanyahu. And that Hamas is nothing more than a fabrication created by Israel.

Yeah, well, no.

Israelis made a terrible mistake electing this government. And they recognize that now. Netanyahu is polling at 4 percent presently. He'll be done once there are elections again. And there will be an investigation about the security failures that led to 10/7.

But Palestinians? Optimistically, this war ends when Sinwar is dead. Realistically, nothing ends until Palestinians choose some decent leaders. And they've shown no capacity to do so.

Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza chose war. It's brutal. It's unfair. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose for themselves. If you don't like the consequences, maybe don't invade and massacre and rape and kidnap a bunch of innocent people. And maybe choose better leaders. Every death is on the Palestinians in Gaza. They chose poorly - as they always seem to do.

Israel, because it's a democracy and notably nearly 25 percent Arab, will correct itself. But if Palestinians continue to choose Islamic extremists like Hamas or corrupt dinosaurs like the PA, well, things are going to continue to be a little hopeless. It's all up to the Palestinian people.

Easy to justify your pro-Israel views by calling Palestinians stupid but I doubt that they are any more stupid than you or me. All people want the same thing - safety, security, food, housing, jobs, a future for their children. They were offered bad deals - end of story.

They didn't love their children enough to choose peace, apparently.

I hate what is happening in Gaza - but come on. Palestinians are not babies who never had a choice in their whole lives. Don't belittle them by making them that passive and incompetent. They made choices - and those choices have consequences. I'm not excusing everything Israel did - but do you think for one second that any other country would have done things differently than what Israel did after 10/7? If so please point me toward one example.

I think there were other paths that Israel could have taken. Treating Palestinians like they are vermin to be crushed and pushed out of the way has gone pretty well for Israel but is still causing major problems. Jewish people have gotten far by intimidation. If you speak up against Israel you get silenced or doxed. This strategy is not working as well as it did in the past. Who knows what the future holds?

Well obviously Israel is not going to go with the do nothing in response because we deserve it strategy or the now give Palestinians what they want because they sure showed us strategy.

But you actually didn't respond to the what should have Israel done after 10/7 question actually your response was along the lines of why they deserved it.

What does the future hold--more people in Gaza dying.

They should have gone after Hamas leadership before doing anything else.

But wow, that was a pretty blasé final comment. Your indifference to human suffering is fascinating.

I’m not sure I can ever come to understand how people who were trembling on their knees to be saved by the world just 80 years ago could have taken such a vicious “Hold my beer” strategy to new lows, but I guess some people never learn.

Not the previous poster.

The world is not a James Bond movie. I'm sure the multi-millionaire Hamas leadership in Qatar are dead men walking. Mossad will get them eventually, as they did with the terrorists that murdered athletes at the Olympics at Munich. Eichmann etc. Mossad will kill them in the end. It's probably not a great time for Hamas leaders to get on one of their private jets in Doha. The Prigozhin solution is always there.

But it will take time. These are not simple operations.

In the meantime, getting Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is critical. I'm hopeful that military operations end when he's dead

And Israel is right to defend itself. Palestinians in Gaza invaded Israel and did what they did. They chose war. And war is what they're getting.

You expect Israelis to simply take these atrocities? Yeah, not happening. Palestinians have been given their own state several times. Always rejected. Instead they always choose terror. I mean, 80 years of this. How do you possibly negotiate with Palestinians?

Given

Cool, I wonder what your welcome would look like if someone dropped by to take possession of your property tomorrow morning, magnanimously subdivided it, and “gave” about 45% of it back to you (bad news: the house will have to shared).

I suspect we wouldn’t be able to count on you to organize a ticker tape parade in their honor later in the week.

DP. I reject your flawed framing, but to play along, maybe they should be nicer to people who have an even longer claim to the land. Or at least not go for whatever fascistic fanaticism Hamas is selling.

Israelis have a longer claim to the land in the same sense that I have a right to kick out whoever currently lives in my Italian great -grandfather's pre-immigration home.

Nah, it’s much different from your weird analogy.

Because of the whole god given, chosen people fairytale?

No. Because Jews have lived there for 3000 years.

And now now, if you are going to toss the fairy tale take around, you’ll have to do it for Islam and Christianity too.

Raised Catholic, and happy to join you in labeling organized religion in all forms as fairytales.

Go ahead with that take, but that opinion does nothing to negate Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel.

I’m not here to dispute that Jews lived in the ME region thousands of years ago, or that a small group remained in the region over time.

I’m here to dispute that more than perhaps 10-15% of the worldwide “Jewish” population alive here in late 2023 is actually descended from the Jews who lived in the ME region thousands of years ago. And that’s true of the Israeli population, too. No more than 10-15% of them descend from the tribe.

Nope. Genetic tests of Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, show an admixture of European and Middle Eastern.

You’re not helping your case because genetic tests of Arabs, including Palestinians, show 100% pure Middle Eastern. Now what?

Now what? Nothing. Ancestral claims do not begin and end with ‘purity,’ right? Yikes! Plus, I don’t need to make a “case.” Israel is a recognized nation-state that has defeated its enemies again and again and again. And Palestinians have rejected deals again and again and again. I get that Jew hatred runs deep in the Middle East, but I am convinced that broader minded people will prevail.

Jesus, where to begin?

1. You can’t credibly argue “Hey, at least some of us are at least some part Middle Eastern, with on average around 10-15% markers from this region” as the reason why you deserve title to land that was was inhabited already by people with 100% genetic markers from the region.

2. Israel as nation state. Great, not trying to argue that that fact should change. Some people think Israel should be a true democracy, but I’m not here to argue for what should or shouldn’t happen on that front. I think a 2-state solution is probably the best course of action at this point, but a true 2-state solution, not the weirdo vassal state concept that some Zionists dangle with full knowledge that it won’t be accepted. And yeah, an international presence in both states will be necessary for some time.

3. Defeated its enemies again and again and again. Well, with a vital assist from France, the U.S. and others, without which those victories very likely wouldn’t have been so easy (or certain, I guess).

4. Yes, deals were rejected. All of them were one-sided deals that were designed to elicit a negative response.

5. I hope you’re right that broader minded people will prevail, with the proviso that neither Hamas nor Likud can be part of any peace process.