Anonymous wrote: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.
You literally cannot teach about Nakba in Israel and you’re faulting the Palestinians for teaching Jew hatred? What exactly did the Jews do to Palestinians to earn love?
How about thousands of Palestinians coming to Israel for work every day before October 7? How about thousands getting medical treatment in Israel? I don’t see Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon welcoming Palestinian workers. How about providing infrastructure for water, electricity, etc? Now they can’t come for work in Israel. Can’t come for medical treatment. I guess in your view it’s all for best.
Israel needed cheap labor. It’s not charity. There are no jobs in Jordan, Egypt or Lebanon.
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.
Armenians have an ancestral connection to Artsakh but Israel was happy to supply Azeris with the latest weapons to expel Armenians from their land. Oh well. Only Jewish pain matters, right?
Israel also helped the CIA dismantle Iranian democracy and install a dictator/monarch which led to the disastrous theocracy they have today. Israel also sold arms and weaponry to the apartheid South African government and helped them hunt down and imprison/kill people like nelson Mandela and other ANC members despite knowing that Nazis thrived there. Israel also sold arms to and supported various dictatorships in Latin America that used Israeli arms to murder pro-democracy Latinos, so yeah a lot of people have beef with Israel that has nothing to do with their religious/ethnic identity.
Happy to supply? WTF. They had an existing arms deal with Azerbaijan. All the purchases were completed by 2020. If not them, Turkey would have provided the arms to Azerbaijan. Nagorno-karabakh was doomed because Armenia stupidly put all its trust into Putin who did not lift a finger in the war of 2020 and 2023. But apparently it’s all Israel’s fault. Space lasers and weather control.
No they weren’t , stop lying.
Who? What? put that shot glass down.
Azeris didn’t stop buying Israeli weaponry in 2020.
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.
Armenians have an ancestral connection to Artsakh but Israel was happy to supply Azeris with the latest weapons to expel Armenians from their land. Oh well. Only Jewish pain matters, right?
Israel also helped the CIA dismantle Iranian democracy and install a dictator/monarch which led to the disastrous theocracy they have today. Israel also sold arms and weaponry to the apartheid South African government and helped them hunt down and imprison/kill people like nelson Mandela and other ANC members despite knowing that Nazis thrived there. Israel also sold arms to and supported various dictatorships in Latin America that used Israeli arms to murder pro-democracy Latinos, so yeah a lot of people have beef with Israel that has nothing to do with their religious/ethnic identity.
There it is, folks! Blaming Israel, blaming Isreal, blaming Israel … seven million Jews in Israel … gotta blame ‘em for something.
Anonymous wrote:There could be no civilian casualties in Gaza, and the same people would still be calling for a ceasefire. Destroying Israel is the goal.
Utter bullshit. I have yet to encounter a single person, online or in everyday life, who has any interest in bridling Israel’s response as it relates to Hamas. Not a single person.
The objections I’ve heard have only to do with innocent, non-combatant civilians being indiscriminately
killed, by U.S. weapons systems, no less.
DP. Really? I have encountered several people who think Israel should not have responded militarily.
If anyone argues inaction after the Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t give them the time of day. However, the collateral destruction in the response is what’s up for grabs in the debate.
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.
Armenians have an ancestral connection to Artsakh but Israel was happy to supply Azeris with the latest weapons to expel Armenians from their land. Oh well. Only Jewish pain matters, right?
Israel also helped the CIA dismantle Iranian democracy and install a dictator/monarch which led to the disastrous theocracy they have today. Israel also sold arms and weaponry to the apartheid South African government and helped them hunt down and imprison/kill people like nelson Mandela and other ANC members despite knowing that Nazis thrived there. Israel also sold arms to and supported various dictatorships in Latin America that used Israeli arms to murder pro-democracy Latinos, so yeah a lot of people have beef with Israel that has nothing to do with their religious/ethnic identity.
Happy to supply? WTF. They had an existing arms deal with Azerbaijan. All the purchases were completed by 2020. If not them, Turkey would have provided the arms to Azerbaijan. Nagorno-karabakh was doomed because Armenia stupidly put all its trust into Putin who did not lift a finger in the war of 2020 and 2023. But apparently it’s all Israel’s fault. Space lasers and weather control.
Artsakh may have been doomed but it didn’t have to fall under the Israeli guns. But it has, oh you, the supplier of dictators, the lover of ancestral rights. Add this to the ongoing settler machinations against Armenians in Jerusalem and the case seems clear. Not for nothing did Israel resist recognizing the Armenian genocide until Turkey pissed in its matzo balls. Can’t have competition in the genocide biz, can we.
Anonymous wrote: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.
You literally cannot teach about Nakba in Israel and you’re faulting the Palestinians for teaching Jew hatred? What exactly did the Jews do to Palestinians to earn love?
How about thousands of Palestinians coming to Israel for work every day before October 7? How about thousands getting medical treatment in Israel? I don’t see Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon welcoming Palestinian workers. How about providing infrastructure for water, electricity, etc? Now they can’t come for work in Israel. Can’t come for medical treatment. I guess in your view it’s all for best.
Steals water from Syria. Transfers a tiny portion of it to Gaza. Demands profuse thanks from everyone.
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.
Armenians have an ancestral connection to Artsakh but Israel was happy to supply Azeris with the latest weapons to expel Armenians from their land. Oh well. Only Jewish pain matters, right?
Israel also helped the CIA dismantle Iranian democracy and install a dictator/monarch which led to the disastrous theocracy they have today. Israel also sold arms and weaponry to the apartheid South African government and helped them hunt down and imprison/kill people like nelson Mandela and other ANC members despite knowing that Nazis thrived there. Israel also sold arms to and supported various dictatorships in Latin America that used Israeli arms to murder pro-democracy Latinos, so yeah a lot of people have beef with Israel that has nothing to do with their religious/ethnic identity.
Happy to supply? WTF. They had an existing arms deal with Azerbaijan. All the purchases were completed by 2020. If not them, Turkey would have provided the arms to Azerbaijan. Nagorno-karabakh was doomed because Armenia stupidly put all its trust into Putin who did not lift a finger in the war of 2020 and 2023. But apparently it’s all Israel’s fault. Space lasers and weather control.
Artsakh may have been doomed but it didn’t have to fall under the Israeli guns. But it has, oh you, the supplier of dictators, the lover of ancestral rights. Add this to the ongoing settler machinations against Armenians in Jerusalem and the case seems clear. Not for nothing did Israel resist recognizing the Armenian genocide until Turkey pissed in its matzo balls. Can’t have competition in the genocide biz, can we.
Anonymous wrote:There could be no civilian casualties in Gaza, and the same people would still be calling for a ceasefire. Destroying Israel is the goal.
Utter bullshit. I have yet to encounter a single person, online or in everyday life, who has any interest in bridling Israel’s response as it relates to Hamas. Not a single person.
The objections I’ve heard have only to do with innocent, non-combatant civilians being indiscriminately
killed, by U.S. weapons systems, no less.
DP. Really? I have encountered several people who think Israel should not have responded militarily.
If anyone argues inaction after the Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t give them the time of day. However, the collateral destruction in the response is what’s up for grabs in the debate.
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.
Not sure what Jesus has to do with this other than to show that Jews were there ... when Jesus, a Jew, was there. Nope--markers are typically higher than that, fwiw. Yes to a two state solution. No need to try to rationalize it--a win is a win. US gives some weapons. Israel uses them well, esp. the planes. Winners win and losers lose. Nope--deals were reasonable. Yes on the last part.
Anonymous wrote:There could be no civilian casualties in Gaza, and the same people would still be calling for a ceasefire. Destroying Israel is the goal.
Utter bullshit. I have yet to encounter a single person, online or in everyday life, who has any interest in bridling Israel’s response as it relates to Hamas. Not a single person.
The objections I’ve heard have only to do with innocent, non-combatant civilians being indiscriminately
killed, by U.S. weapons systems, no less.
DP. Really? I have encountered several people who think Israel should not have responded militarily.
If anyone argues inaction after the Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t give them the time of day. However, the collateral destruction in the response is what’s up for grabs in the debate.
The collateral damage is 100% on Hamas.
How does that work in your mind?
If someone bumps into you in the grocery store, do you feel you then have the right to beat them up in the store? And then you also have the right to get in your car and drive to their house, where you have the right to beat up everyone in their family and their neighbors, too? Bonus points for beating children and infants, and especially women seeking shelter in their neighborhood church?
But all of that is the responsibility of the person who bumped into you in the store? You have no responsibility?
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.
Not sure what Jesus has to do with this other than to show that Jews were there ... when Jesus, a Jew, was there. Nope--markers are typically higher than that, fwiw. Yes to a two state solution. No need to try to rationalize it--a win is a win. US gives some weapons. Israel uses them well, esp. the planes. Winners win and losers lose. Nope--deals were reasonable. Yes on the last part.
Deals were reasonable? 58% of the area for 1/3 the population, most of whom had immigrated to the region in the previous 10 years. That’s reasonable to you, assuming you can imagine the perspective of an indigenous Palestinian at the time?
Anonymous wrote:There could be no civilian casualties in Gaza, and the same people would still be calling for a ceasefire. Destroying Israel is the goal.
Utter bullshit. I have yet to encounter a single person, online or in everyday life, who has any interest in bridling Israel’s response as it relates to Hamas. Not a single person.
The objections I’ve heard have only to do with innocent, non-combatant civilians being indiscriminately
killed, by U.S. weapons systems, no less.
DP. Really? I have encountered several people who think Israel should not have responded militarily.
If anyone argues inaction after the Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t give them the time of day. However, the collateral destruction in the response is what’s up for grabs in the debate.
The collateral damage is 100% on Hamas.
How does that work in your mind?
If someone bumps into you in the grocery store, do you feel you then have the right to beat them up in the store? And then you also have the right to get in your car and drive to their house, where you have the right to beat up everyone in their family and their neighbors, too? Bonus points for beating children and infants, and especially women seeking shelter in their neighborhood church?
But all of that is the responsibility of the person who bumped into you in the store? You have no responsibility?
dp. It is not easy to fight a terrorist group that hides behind women and children. There really is something deeply off about Hamas.
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.
Not sure what Jesus has to do with this other than to show that Jews were there ... when Jesus, a Jew, was there. Nope--markers are typically higher than that, fwiw. Yes to a two state solution. No need to try to rationalize it--a win is a win. US gives some weapons. Israel uses them well, esp. the planes. Winners win and losers lose. Nope--deals were reasonable. Yes on the last part.
Deals were reasonable? 58% of the area for 1/3 the population, most of whom had immigrated to the region in the previous 10 years. That’s reasonable to you, assuming you can imagine the perspective of an indigenous Palestinian at the time?
Yup. Deal was reasonable to Clinton too. That is good enough for me.
Anonymous wrote:There could be no civilian casualties in Gaza, and the same people would still be calling for a ceasefire. Destroying Israel is the goal.
Utter bullshit. I have yet to encounter a single person, online or in everyday life, who has any interest in bridling Israel’s response as it relates to Hamas. Not a single person.
The objections I’ve heard have only to do with innocent, non-combatant civilians being indiscriminately
killed, by U.S. weapons systems, no less.
DP. Really? I have encountered several people who think Israel should not have responded militarily.
If anyone argues inaction after the Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t give them the time of day. However, the collateral destruction in the response is what’s up for grabs in the debate.
The collateral damage is 100% on Hamas.
How does that work in your mind?
If someone bumps into you in the grocery store, do you feel you then have the right to beat them up in the store? And then you also have the right to get in your car and drive to their house, where you have the right to beat up everyone in their family and their neighbors, too? Bonus points for beating children and infants, and especially women seeking shelter in their neighborhood church?
But all of that is the responsibility of the person who bumped into you in the store? You have no responsibility?
Are you analogizing Hamas' massacre of Jews on October 7 to being bumped in a "grocery store"? If so, how odd.
Anonymous wrote:There could be no civilian casualties in Gaza, and the same people would still be calling for a ceasefire. Destroying Israel is the goal.
Utter bullshit. I have yet to encounter a single person, online or in everyday life, who has any interest in bridling Israel’s response as it relates to Hamas. Not a single person.
The objections I’ve heard have only to do with innocent, non-combatant civilians being indiscriminately
killed, by U.S. weapons systems, no less.
DP. Really? I have encountered several people who think Israel should not have responded militarily.
If anyone argues inaction after the Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t give them the time of day. However, the collateral destruction in the response is what’s up for grabs in the debate.
The collateral damage is 100% on Hamas.
How does that work in your mind?
If someone bumps into you in the grocery store, do you feel you then have the right to beat them up in the store? And then you also have the right to get in your car and drive to their house, where you have the right to beat up everyone in their family and their neighbors, too? Bonus points for beating children and infants, and especially women seeking shelter in their neighborhood church?
But all of that is the responsibility of the person who bumped into you in the store? You have no responsibility?
dp. It is not easy to fight a terrorist group that hides behind women and children. There really is something deeply off about Hamas.
The power imbalance requires them to either be cowardly bastards and have a chance, no matter how exceedingly small, of surviving the fight, or just running headfirst into a Lockheed Martin / General Dynamics / Applied Aeronautics avalanche.
I’d like to think most people wouldn’t choose the former, but let’s be serious. Most combatants will do whatever is necessary to extend the life meter …
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