Hamas on today's suicide bombing

That’s the one thing that’s always seemed odd to me: why can’t Israel suck up the terrorism for a while without retaliating, without inflicting collateral damange, and so on? Even as a self-aware strategic plan, it seems that Israel has found reason to not do this at all. Surely they know that just a year or two of it would provide an international halo that could give them, ultimately, a much freer hand when realpolitik is actually necessary.

I keep thinking of the British approach to Irish terrorists over the years, which often bordered on a studied ignorance of their existence, at least in terms of the PR front created. Outpourings of grief are politically more potent than outpourings of missiles. Why can’t Israel do something similar?

Maybe because ignoring terror in Israel just makes the problem worse? Any time Israel starts showing any real restraint, somebody kabooms a bus or a falafel stand. I agree that Israel has been too harsh with the Palestinians over the years, and driven a once-secular population deeper into fanaticism. But all of the violence has been orchestrated by the PA, courtesy of scumbags like Arafat speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

Also, these comparisons with Britain and the IRA have really gotta stop, as they have no basis in reality. The IRA didn’t regularly pull off attacks like this, aimed solely at civilians, and it typically called in warnings first to minimize or eliminate the loss of life. By all accounts, the IRA was always conflicted over using violence to try and achieve goals, too, and always maintained a political dialogue with the UK. The IRA worked on multiple fronts to try and achieve its aims with the least possible loss of life. It wasn’t waging a war on a race, on other religions, or on the Western way of life as a whole.

Not the Islamists. They don’t want dialogue or deals; they want death. Good luck using “studied ignorance” as a response to fanatics who think “self-defense” is kabooming themselves in businesses and buses packed with women and kids.

Yes, because clearly Hamas’ continued calls to wipe Israel from the map, and its associations with Teheran and its lunatic regime, should be met with loads and loads of cash. That’ll show 'em!

Seriously, man, what the fuck are you on?

I am just glad we are not giving Hamas my tax money. In fact, we should probably give it to Israel.

Also, these comparisons with Britain and the IRA have really gotta stop, as they have no basis in reality. The IRA didn’t regularly pull off attacks like this, aimed solely at civilians, and it typically called in warnings first to minimize or eliminate the loss of life. By all accounts, the IRA was always conflicted over using violence to try and achieve goals, too, and always maintained a political dialogue with the UK. The IRA worked on multiple fronts to try and achieve its aims with the least possible loss of life. It wasn’t waging a war on a race, on other religions, or on the Western way of life as a whole.

Can we drop the IRA were always given sleepless nights when they blew up the women and the children because they missed the off duty soldier, it’s bullshit. You don’t pack a nailbomb into bins and blow it up during a tourist/public parade in the middle of a major city if you are in the slightest bit concerned about hurting people. You dont bomb gas works, shopping centres, rememberence day parades and so on if when you are trying not to hurt people. arguably, you don’t plant bombs at all.

I’ll point you in the direction of the other thread that quotes directly from IRA literature where killing as many people as possible is the first stated aim of the IRA’s long war campaign.

Once again I’ll point out that Enniskillen and the effect that had on the IRA image across the world, especially where collecting tins were being rattled marked the turning point in the IRA tactics where they stopped indiscriminantly, and without warning, targetting anyone they considered “the enemy”, which up until that point most certainly included ‘civilians’ of any age or sex.

edit. But as we’re still on the subject, Mr Adams was never one to step out and condemn IRA bombings, even after 1987. It took them 10 years to formally apologise for Enniskillen despite their insistence they were only after the marching band, not everyone else. So I can still see parallels here (Adams and McGuinness at one point being elected members of Parliament). That said in the past 10 years we’ve got past the point of having to dub Adams voice in news reports (one of the more surreal elements of “the troubles”). I don’t suspect for a second that Adams or the IRA for that matter have changed their views, just that after 30 years they might actually of realised and been persuaded that dialogue and the political process might yield more fruit than nailbombs in London bins.

The manifesto of the IRA defined as its primary goal a 100% Gaelic Ireland. The Protestants are not Gaelic, and so this goal would require mass murder or ethnic cleansing. They were probably more focused on clearing out the Protestants, who have been in Ireland as long as Europeans have been in America, more than Hamas are focused on clearing the Jews out of Israel.

The parallels between the two situations are huge, and pretending that they don’t exist doesn’t make rational sense. Both terrorist groups arose because of popular support brought about by an imbalance of power, the only difference in this sense is that the imbalance and deprivation in Palestine is vastly greater for the Palestinians than it was for the Catholics.

Also the Palestinians aren’t waging a war on the “Western way of life as a whole”. They are engaging in a purely secular power battle, which just happens to be divided down religious lines (just like in Ireland).

Any time Israel starts showing any real restraint, somebody kabooms a bus or a falafel stand.

You call dropping 2000+ shells onto Palestinian farmland in the last month “showing restraint”? I can understand that you might sometimes miss the Israeli aggression in the conflict, as it is always tremendously underreported, but I just linked you plainly to the lack of restraint in this very thread, and yet you still miss it.

Israel wouldn’t be shelling the farmland if there weren’t daily rocket attacks coming from it into neighboring regions of Israel. Since the Palestinian Authority is unwilling to prevent these attacks, Israel’s available responses are: 1) do nothing, 2) shell to discourage the attacks, or 3) re-occupy Gaza. Or do you have another option for them to consider?

Considering their options, they are exercising restraint.

[Edited to add last sentence]

You would describe the firing of 2,000+ artillery shells in response to about 70 makeshift rockets, excerising restraint? So if I called your mother a whore, and you slapped me, I’d be acting in a restrained manner by punching you 30 times in the face and testicles, because, well… I could murder you, so 30 punches is being restrained relative to murder.

Where there is an action, it is usually a reaction. The Palestinians point to an escalation of actions from the Israelis: shootings, blockades, arrests, and general unwanted meddling. The Israelis point to cross border attacks from Palestinian militants. There is fault on all sides, but from some people here I only hear of the fault of the Palestinians, and every Israeli action, even when it is thousands of artillery shells onto civilian farmland, is called restrained and thus excused.

I haven’t got a solution to their problems, but I ask you: do you really think 2,000+ shells onto the heads of civilians is going to make militants reconsider their actions, or increase support among the civilian population for their actions? Take into consideration the history of the region, and the history of similarly polarised conflicts.

Hey, I’m not talking about rewarding them or anything. That money is already theirs, you may have noticed. It’s criminal to not give it to them.

But not only that, it’s stupid. See, if they had said, “Hey, you know, we’re going to go ahead and recognize the results of your election, and it’ll be business as usual… but if you back one more attack, we’re cutting you off from your own funds,” then they could have been the good guys in this instead of the less bad guys. If this attack happened, Hamas would have had to either condemn it or be responsible for rendering their own government unable to collect taxes, and there would already be a major strike against them that would destroy their support among a large majority of Palestinians.

Instead, Israel gave them a perfect and absolutely legitimate gripe, because they decided to assume the worst, and act preemptively. Even if the worst ended up being true, it’s just bad politics. It seems like Israel plays by playground rules. There are people they just hate (not without reason, mind you), and they just let their tempers flare. They never think these things through, and that’s why this conflict seems like it will never end. And in turn, that’s why, in my mind, the notion that Israel is completely committed to peace is in doubt.

If that seemed to complex for you, let me break it down to bare bones: This attack is going to bolster support for Hamas, when it could have destroyed it. That choice was up to Israel.

I think it’s going to take a real leader, someone with bulletproof credentials on one or both sides, who doesn’t get assassinated, to resolve the silly mess. Someone who has the stones to break out of the escalation/retaliation model.

…and while we wait for this übermensch to manifest we’ll just keep a running tally of the dead and leave it at that.

That new era sure was short.

Does the $50 Million in Iranian aid come in a chest that never empties? Any credibility to the conspiracy angle that Hamas is getting secret money from self-hating Saudis?

Or … Hamas is just following the lead of Iran and they just don’t give a damn. They’ll follow their doctrine for now and figure the rest out later.

What were we just all saying about restraint?

Any way you try to spin this, you’re blaming Israel for the bombing. That’s insane. As is your insistence that Israel needs to give Hamas money to gain the moral high ground. News flash, genius – they’re already there. That’s sort of what happens when your enemies send human bombs to blow up civilians at restaurants over and over again.

Also, why on earth should Israel turn over tax money to an organization dedicated to destroying it? How does that make any sense? And do you think that doing so would help bring about peace? Why wouldn’t it just provide Hamas with more cash it could use to fund the purchase of explosives, nails, and those great pastries they hand out on the streets every time some brave freedom fighter takes out a shwarama stand?

Because there’s no other alternatives?

No, he’s partially blaming Israel. I’d say everyone involved in the whole mess is partly to blame by this point. It’s impossible to freeze frame a fist fight and assign blame for an individual punch. It makes no sense.

Regardless of how it got started both sides are throwing punches nowadays and ignoring one side of the fight isn’t going to work.

Because that organization is the elected government?

Yes.

So if Israel identifies a few crowded civilian areas and sends out a flight of F-16s to cluster bomb them, would the Palestinians be partly to blame for that?

I think each party is responsible for its own actions.

Similarly, are Palestinians as a whole responsible for the actions of individual groups that they have no control over?

It’s all part of the process. If the Israelis were carpet bombing as a result of a massive series of suicide bomb attacks perpetrated by Hamas, I would consider the Palestinians partly to blame.

True, but aren’t the Palestinians accountable for the government that they elect? Hamas didn’t just take over the PA by force, you know. It’s not like suicide bombings are unpopular with the man on the street in Ramallah, or in Amman, for that matter.