Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Hamas wants to kill the Jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the Muslims.

Really? This is your defense for the loss of life and property that Israel has brought on innocent civilians? This is your explanation? Here is the only thing that matters: what Hamas DOES and what Israel DOES. Both are heinous, as evidenced by their actions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Hamas wants to kill the Jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the Muslims.

Really? This is your defense for the loss of life and property that Israel has brought on innocent civilians? This is your explanation? Here is the only thing that matters: what Hamas DOES and what Israel DOES. Both are heinous, as evidenced by their actions.

No. He asked the difference. That was my answer. I didn't say I agree with Israel. I don't. I also don't agree with what Hamas is doing. However, Hamas wants to kill jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the muslims. He is killing innocent people which is horrific and that I do not agree with. However, he is doing it to try to gain control of the land. Not to kill all muslims.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Hamas wants to kill the Jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the Muslims.

Really? This is your defense for the loss of life and property that Israel has brought on innocent civilians? This is your explanation? Here is the only thing that matters: what Hamas DOES and what Israel DOES. Both are heinous, as evidenced by their actions.

No. He asked the difference. That was my answer. I didn't say I agree with Israel. I don't. I also don't agree with what Hamas is doing. However, Hamas wants to kill jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the muslims. He is killing innocent people which is horrific and that I do not agree with. However, he is doing it to try to gain control of the land. Not to kill all muslims.

No.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Hamas wants to kill the Jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the Muslims.

Really? This is your defense for the loss of life and property that Israel has brought on innocent civilians? This is your explanation? Here is the only thing that matters: what Hamas DOES and what Israel DOES. Both are heinous, as evidenced by their actions.

No. He asked the difference. That was my answer. I didn't say I agree with Israel. I don't. I also don't agree with what Hamas is doing. However, Hamas wants to kill jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the muslims. He is killing innocent people which is horrific and that I do not agree with. However, he is doing it to try to gain control of the land. Not to kill all muslims.

No.

Yes.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Hamas wants to kill the Jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the Muslims.

Really? This is your defense for the loss of life and property that Israel has brought on innocent civilians? This is your explanation? Here is the only thing that matters: what Hamas DOES and what Israel DOES. Both are heinous, as evidenced by their actions.

No. He asked the difference. That was my answer. I didn't say I agree with Israel. I don't. I also don't agree with what Hamas is doing. However, Hamas wants to kill jews. Netanyahu does not want to kill all the muslims. He is killing innocent people which is horrific and that I do not agree with. However, he is doing it to try to gain control of the land. Not to kill all muslims.

No.

Yes.

PP, Are you a member of Hamas?

KHALED MASHAL, CHIEF OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU, HAMAS : We are not fanatics. We are not fundamentalists. We do not actually fight the Jews because they are Jews, per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers. On the contrary, we actually respect the religious people. We ask for tolerance, for coexistence between the Buddhists, the Jews, the Christians, or the Muslims. As God created us as nations, we are different. And the Quran says that, in order for the nations to live together and coexist together without occupation and without any blockade.

CHARLIE ROSE, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: I think I just heard you say--and we'll close on this--you believe in the coexistence of peoples, and therefore you believe in the coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East.
MASHAL: I can't coexist with occupation.
ROSE: Without occupation you can coexist.
MASHAL: I am ready to coexist with which the Jews, with the Christians, and with the Arabs and non-Arabs, and with those who agree with my ideas and those who disagree with them. However, I do not coexist with the occupiers, with the settlers, and those who took siege of us.
ROSE: It's one thing to say you want to coexist with the Jews. It's another thing, you want to coexist with the state of Israel. Do you want to coexist with the state of Israel? Do you want to recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
MASHAL: No, I said I do not want to live with a state of occupiers. I do coexist with other [crosstalk]
ROSE: I'm assuming they're no longer occupiers. At that point do you want to coexist and recognize their right to exist as they would recognize your right to exist?
MASHAL: When we have a Palestinian state, then the Palestinian state will decide on its policies. But you cannot actually ask me about the future. I answered you. But Palestinian people can have their say when they have their own state without occupation. In natural situations, they can decide policies vis-à-vis others.

Muslima wrote:I asked if you were since you were speaking for them.....

Anonymous wrote:

Israel negotiates in good faith toward a two state solution with security guarantees for all.

Abbas and Fatah also generally seem to negotiate in good faith toward this mutually beneficial goal.

Hamas stays true to its charter goal of the destruction of Israel. Hamas lives up to its official designation as a terrorist organization. The current violence is entirely due to Hamas.

Good faith? What the fuck are you smoking? Israel has worked to derail the two state solution for the past 20 years. Ever notice all the settlements and siege of Gaza?

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:I asked if you were since you were speaking for them.....

They have spoken for themselves. You seem to be the one speaking for them. You cannot say no, just as I cannot say yes. Unless we are Hamas, then neither of us should be saying these things as a definitive.

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:I asked if you were since you were speaking for them.....

They have spoken for themselves. You seem to be the one speaking for them. You cannot say no, just as I cannot say yes. Unless we are Hamas, then neither of us should be saying these things as a definitive.

Did you read what their leader say? Where in what he said is there "we are going to kill the jews"?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Israel negotiates in good faith toward a two state solution with security guarantees for all.

Abbas and Fatah also generally seem to negotiate in good faith toward this mutually beneficial goal.

Hamas stays true to its charter goal of the destruction of Israel. Hamas lives up to its official designation as a terrorist organization. The current violence is entirely due to Hamas.

Good faith? What the fuck are you smoking? Israel has worked to derail the two state solution for the past 20 years. Ever notice all the settlements and siege of Gaza?

In the 1990s, in the era of Clinton and the Oslo accords, Israelis worked for peace and a vision of Israel and Palestine growing together. But a lot of people lost their faith in "peace process" when Hamas etc derailed the peace with bus bombings that killed and maimed many civilians in Israel. This changed the culture. Many Israelis saw that the Hamas terrorism only increased during the peace process. There is no peace with terrorists. They think they can achieve their aim of destroying Israel through violence. Hamas must be defeated.

I mean, it's a very narrow kind of context that doesn't widen the picture.
There are two kinds of contexts one should point to in order to understand the situation. One refers to a more immediate past and one to a more distant one.
The more immediate past that is relevant to what goes on should take us back to just a month or two months ago, when Israel decided to use the pretext of an abduction and killing of three settlers in order to implement a plan that it already had in mind many years ago, and that is a plan to try and destroy the Hamas as a political force in the West Bank, and if possible also the military force in the Gaza Strip.
The reason that Israel chose this particular timing for this initiative was the creation of a unity government and the fact that the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank decided to try a new strategy, with the help of the Hamas, to go to the international community, especially to the United Nations, and demand an engagement with the 46 year long Israeli occupation on the basis of a human rights and civil rights agenda, which Israel totally refuses.
So the Hamas was keeping its part of the deal, back from 2012, for a long ceasefire, but Israel broke it, violated the ceasefire, by arresting all the political leadership and activists in the West Bank, including those Israel was pledged to release under the prisoner exchange deal known as the Shalit exchange deal.
So that's the immediate background, but there's far more important, probably, and deeper historical background.
Since 2006, since the people of Gaza elected democratically the Hamas to try and take them out of the ghetto that Israel created to them long before the Hamas took over Gaza, already 1994--because of the special location, geopolitical location of the Gaza Strip, Israel doesn't really know what to do with it, so it ghettoized it already in 1994. The PA or the Fatah failed to salvage the people of Gaza from that situation. So the people of Gaza gave a chance to the Hamas. And the Israeli reaction was, even at first, a brutal military response to this election. And so the whole issue of how the Hamas responded, namely, through the launching of missiles, has to be seen in this context. It may be there is another way. I'm not sure there is, but definitely this is a response to a policy of strangulation, of siege, of starvation. It's not coming out of blue as one would have thought that one can understand from the way Bill Clinton and others in the United States describe the context of this crisis.

Anonymous wrote:This board has become a propaganda pipeline for Islamiterrorists and their flacks and fellow travelers.