[Radioactive Poltergeist]

Originally Posted by pbradley

I support the moderates on both sides.

What do you mean by this? I suppose you mean someone like Mahmoud Abbas who has been championed by most Western governments as the acceptable moderate. And yet this is a man whose party did not seem to understand that they lost an election and have become more or less collaborators with the Israelis. So where is your moderation? Personally, I think the sensible thing to do would be to accept the outcome of the elections and start to work with Hamas who have frequently offered ceasefires in return for highly reasonable demands, such as the return of Palestinian land illegally occupied by Israeli forces.

And it still amazes me the way people continually fall back on horrifically ignorant and one sided views. Firstly, as has already been pointed out, Israel is not under threat. Israel happens to be the regional superpower with an armed forces unmatched anywhere else in the middle east, and furthermore they have nuclear weapons. If people were actually to keep this in mind then the absurdity of touting the dire position Israel is in becomes all too obvious. This of course is compounded by the fact that, without any doubt, Israel has launched what should by rights be called a campaign of ethnic cleansing upon a group of people who have little by little had their land and livelihood stripped away by a state where the default course of action is utter barbarism.

The other part of this whole issue which infuriates me is the way people insist on staying completely uninformed. Hamas has long abandoned their policy which calls for the destruction of Israel and instead calls for "the establishment of an independent state whose capital is Jerusalem." What they are demanding is that Israel recognise the 1967 borders. So why is this completely ignored? So Israel can demonize a people who have been so broken in every single respect many resort to suicide bombings in their utter desperation.

It is the state of Israel which clearly needs to take action, and need to abandon their frankly imperial designs in the Palestinian territory.