[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

Ok, but this is speculation (which I think is groundless by the way) and has no role in this discussion.

ok

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

This is false. They were elected having made no call for Israels destruction and their amended charter dropped calls for destruction.

the ones who dropped the destruction of israel from their charter were the PLO, not hamas!

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

In their position I would not want to sit there and do nothing.

neither would i, but why pursue the asinine course?

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

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.

ok. let me try with next paragraph.

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

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.

golda meir came out of the israeli war of independence, the war with egypt, the 6-day war, and had to face the incident at the munich olympics adn the yom-kippur war. what the fuck did you expect her to say?

jordan and egypt actually dumped the palestinians into israel's lap. the territories were indeed part of jordan before the war, but the jordanian bedouins found it convenient to leave the palestinians as a ticking time bomb. there are old palestinians who still have jordanian passports today.

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

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.

no shit, sharon is a fucking pig even in a coma, and an extremist party in his pigfuck coalition does not represent israel monolithically. israel is an open society with free press and a wide political spectrum. to identify a whole country with its right-wing fascist extremists is wilfully ignorant.

and this is precisely why i called this thread "israel vs. hamas"-- i do not identify all palestinians with the terrorist organization that governs gaza.

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

I refer to the occupation as illegal because that is what international law defines it as.

ok, so you're referring to the occupied territories as illegally occupied--i agree with that view. however, there are people who think that the whole UN partition of palestine was illegal in the first place, and i wasn't clear about which was your definition.

Originally Posted by Radioactive Poltergeist

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.

as i stated before, i believe the goal of this campaign is deterrence-- i do not agree with these methods, but i understand their rationale. i think ehud olmert is a fuck, i think what he was doing by continually expanding the borders of jerusalem as a mayor was abusive and illegal, his war with lebanon a fiasco, i think netanyahu is a pig fucker, but i also think that hamas leadership is the second worst blight that could befall upon the palestinians in gaza-- the first one being an israeli invasion.