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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
the usual left-wing pap is the knee-jerk assumption that the weak are good and the strong are evil. hence hamas is seen as "good" by virtue of having less power than its enemies.
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Ok, but this is speculation (which I think is groundless by the way) and has no role in this discussion.
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
well it's stated in their charter that their goal is the destruction of israel, not a return to pre 1967 borders. if you have the sources for what you're saying, please provide, i'd be eager to read that, meanwhile, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Hamas_documents
sorry to use wikipedia but it's really hard to find reliable sources and this is as neutral as i can get. |
This is false. They were elected having made no call for Israels destruction and their amended charter dropped calls for destruction.
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
yeah, but how do the rockets help their desperate situation? how does provoking a much stronger adversary help their people? the only thing this might accomplish is to boost their image as hardasses, but at the expense of their own population.
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In their position I would not want to sit there and do nothing.
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
I disagree with this completely, especially because it ignores the internal struggles within the body politic of Israel. I call bullshit.
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Care to elaborate? I think it is ridiculous to call bullshit and then to not even attempt a rebuttal. This is an issue I have spent a lot of time researching and I don't accept such a curt dismissal from someone who offers no response of their own.
There is of course internal disagreement, but that is typically due to differences in method, and not so much aim. It was Golda Meir, widely touted as a dove, who said herself that Palestinians did not exist and are in fact Jordanians, so they should go their. This, for Israel, is the doveish position.
More recently for instance Sharon's old coalition government openly included a party Molodet which advocated expelling all Palestinians from the occupied territories. Countless army general admitted ordering their troops to maximise Palestinian civillian casualties. This is all in the open. If you want to call bullshit it is simply because the plain facts don't support your position.
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
The problem with this argument is two-fold: one, is what different groups define as "illegaly occupied", and I don't know what you mean by it; two, is that the israeli right wing has argued that they need a buffer zone to protect themselves from artillery: they pull out of Gaza and the attacks increase instead of diminishing-- sort of proves their point and encourages a continued occupation of the West Bank-- which I think most people would agree would be a fucking tragedy.
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I refer to the occupation as illegal because that is what international law defines it as.
Secondly they can stop the bombings by adhereing to international law. Simple.
Also, if you look at a map of the current Israeli attacks on Gaza you will see they fall in areas that have not been used to launch rockets and in fact fall in dense urban areas.