4561

I’d take that bet.

What I definitely would not do, is indiscriminately attack civilian targets.

If they attacked only military targets, that’s one thing. But no, I’m not going to excuse overt acts of terrorism. The Germans had a shitty deal after WWI… That doesn’t excuse the Holocaust.

The Palestinians have, for literally decades, put entirely corrupt, terrorist leaders into power. Those kinds of people will never be able to give you peace. They actually put Hamas in control of their government at one point, who had the explicitly stated goal of destroying Israel entirely.

Hamas has fired over 3000 missiles into civilian targets over the past few weeks. This kind of action does nothing but make it impossible to support them.

Maybe you can ignore that kind of thing and support them anyway, I can’t.

The thing is, I don’t support Israel’s bad actions either… But guess what? Israel doesn’t need my support.

4562

Do they even have the capability in those missiles to target military installations? I thought they were just dumb-fire.

I don’t support terrorist actions either, like the IRA. But I bet the Palestinians shooting missiles think if they can inflict enough pain that will bring Israel to the bargaining table like the attacks in NI did. But what they don’t realize, is Israel doesn’t care. They don’t want peace. So Israel will never bow to military pressure and their attacks are futile. And I guess that feeling of futility is maybe what also drives them to attack populated areas, Israel rapes, kills and steals from them. So they want to inflict some kind of pain on the Israeli people as well who keep supporting a government that does this to them.

4563

I think you are absolutely wrong here, man. The Israelis don’t like living under constant threat of attack. But there’s no way to let their guard down without getting attacked.

4564

Huh? Did Israel stop taking Palestinian homes and land and pull back all the illegal Israeli settlements? If not, then no, Israel doesn’t want peace.

4565

Israel wants peace a hell of a lot more than Hamas does. But you seem to be in denial about what Hamas is, and what the Palestinian hardliners want - and have wanted since 1945.

4566

I’ll restate the obvious. How can you expect peace when you continually whack at an angry bear?

4567

Exactly.

The hardliners on both sides prop each other up. Both sides think they are the angry bear in your analogy.

The only way forwards is to denounce both sets of hardliners and push both sides to de-escalate unilaterally.

I don’t actually disagree with you about the settlements. But when you excuse racist murderers you cross a line.

4568

Last I checked, it wasn’t Jewish people being evicted from homes they have lived in for the past 60 to 70 years.

4569

On the first point, and please correct me if I’m wrong here, the recent case of Palestinians being evicted in east Jerusalem involved 6 families being evicted, for gaming to pay their rent. Is this correct?

On the second point, while I think building additional settlements exacerbates the problem, making it harder to deal with on the future, those settlements are built on empty desert land. They aren’t taking houses from Palestinians.

Again, I don’t support those actions, but I also don’t believe they justify attacking civilians with missiles.

4570

Last I checked, Israel was openly thumbing their nose at International law and actively engaging in Apartheid. Palestinians have some idiots in their population launching rockets and have a joke for any kind of ruling body. The adults in the room are Israel and the simplest thing they can do to show good faith is to stop the illegal settlements.

So let’s rephrase the question. Why is Israel flaunting international law and seizing the best land Palestinians hold for themselves to build wealthy Israeli settlements… if they really want peace?

————-

Oops sorry. Multiple posts while I was writing this up so it rehashes the same thing.

4571

Yea, they’re just demolishing them. As for the land, it is (was) land owned by Palestinians. They are not compensated for it and it splits apart Palestinian towns. It’s very strategic in how Israel is doing it.

4572

I think the window for peace closed a long time ago.

Rabin getting killed was a sign that the extremists on both sides were gearing up.

Arafat couldn’t/wouldn’t reign in the suicide bombings, and that pretty much sunk Oslo.

But guys like Rabin were old warriors who probably saw what was coming if they didn’t come up with a workable peace plan. And Rabin saw it 30 years ago. That future is now.

4573

I believe that the structures being demolished that you refer to are not structures that have existed for significant periods of time, but are instead illegally built structures that were built recently without the legal permits to do so.

Note, I’m still not going to excuse the behavior on Israel’s part, because I believe they don’t generally issue those permits so there’s not Lot of options for the Palestinians building new homes, but these aren’t homes that people have lived in for generations as was suggested.

4574

Playing Devil’s Advocate, if you wanted to commit war crimes hampering the ability of international press to discover and report on those war crimes to the rest of the would would be a smart move.

At the end of the day, “less bloodthirsty than mass murderers” isn’t too much a gold star.

Israel is certainly better than Hamas, but I also don’t think they’re as good as they could be. They have the tech (from US mostly) and intel to avoid a lot of collateral damage that they just don’t. Add in the aggressive expansion of settlements and the like and I can get where someone thinks they aren’t really interested in peace. Add a growing fascist tide for flavor.

All that said, they’re a hell of a lot better than Hamas. But, again, that’s not exactly a paragon of virtue.
“Better than Pinochet,” wouldn’t be much of a position to gloat about, but these days people openly revere fucking Pinochet so what do I know?

4575

The 48-year-old shepherd said he had lived there all his life. “They bulldozed everything,” he said.

Not really recent, if 48 years is anything to go by.

And the hits keep on coming.

4576

Well, those weren’t actually buildings, they were tents. It was a Bedouin community… and they definitely didn’t live there for 48 years. That area has been a live fire zone for IDF training since the 1970’s.

4577

I guess you would know better then the guy living there, wouldn’t you.

4578

Or maybe he just lied.

They are Bedouins, so it’d be weird for them to have a stationary settlement for half a century.

4579

Sure, he just lied and of course, NPR would not do any follow on this at all. It’s not like it would be easy to verify the information.

4580

Seriously, he was a Bedouin. They live in tents and move around with their herd. He probably just meant that he lived in that area his whole life.