Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

Well I don’t remember when jimmy carter had said but he has endorsed them on many occasions interviews but I don’t know how to send weblinks or interviews through my phone on the boards.

 

Are you ten years old? You write like you are.

 

Hamas is not being pardoned. Hamas and Fatah are the de facto governments of the Palestinians. If it were someone else, it would be easier to convince people that the government of Israel should not be bombing the crap out of civilians. Just to be clear...even though I would not agree in terms of international law or morality that Israel should not bomb Hamas or whoever, I can't say I would care if they did on purpose or unintentionally. What I care about is them accidentally and purposefully bombing civilians in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere. That's the only reason people get upset. No one really cares if an actor, good or bad, bombs a corrupt government or whatever. But people don't like civilians being killed.





Dated a few months, but that's what upsets us. We ain't saying that all Palestinians are progressive humanists...nor are we saying that they're all conservative Muslims. We don't really care which they are. We just don't like children and their parents being slain. To me...it's no different than those deranged fools who go in and shoot up schools, malls, or movie theaters in the U.S. Bombing civilians is a crime under international law, and too [long] have certain countries gotten away with it. I'm talking Cold War-long. Not exactly the centuries-long argument.

When it comes down to it, if Israel were a multicultural state that allowed everyone to participate in its government and to share land, regardless of ethnicity or religion, we wouldn't be in this mess.

This is why I opposed the Iraq War before it began so long ago. I feared that we would turn that country into an ultra-Palestine, and I even dreamed that that would happen so incredibly soon. Tbh, I'm not trying to get to any argument with you personally. This is just an age-old thing I've had to deal with for years. But, yeah. If Israel were not confrontational and it tried to get along with others, we wouldn't be in this mess. And, yes, I know Israel was attacked by its neighbors during all those wars, but that was due to corrupt Cold War economics and the unwise choice of its government elected to declare itself an ethnostate. If it were a raceless, neutral state that accepted everyone in its society as landowners and to hold equal authority in government, we wouldn't be in this mess.

 

As it is, Palestinians are forced off their land and evicted from their homes with nowhere to go. So...that's insane.

I mean, Yatzhin Rabin and others may have proposed half-measures and a two-state solution, but that was peanuts and half-way decent compared to the madness his successors have unleashed against this persecuted, carved up state.

 

Well loved and respected Jimmy Carter is some kind of antisemite in black-saber's world

 

Why would he say that? That's ridiculous. I mean, I like how much to the left Carter has gone in his post-presidential years, but he's still no socialist in my opinion.

But I'm glad you pointed this out 'cause anti-Semitism is what they always call people who don't want to bomb Palestinian civilians. Now, you always have to be careful about people who said that the Germans might have had a point about wanting to rise into a Third Reich. To me, these folks like to whine and complain about how hard the Versailles Treaty was. Which...it was...horribly unfair. But that doesn't excuse killing so many Jews, Romani, Slavic, and LGBTQ people. I mean, I don't agree with hard, hard left uncompromising communists, but I don't like how they were also Holocaust victims who are easily (purposely) forgotten more than the others. People conveniently tend to forget that Hitler hated "Bolsheviks" as much as "international Jewry."

But that's my point. That regime did all that crap in the name of attaining more so-called living space...and somehow it's okay for the hard right in Israel to bomb civilians and steal their land? I mean, the Zionists did that not only to Muslims and Christians, but also many Jewish people. People tend to forget that. Much like we see in other countries, it's the lighter skinned ones who domineer and control the darker skinned ones. I hate to put it that way, but racism is racism, and you gotta call it out wherever is. So, anyway, yeah. Personally, I only like the labor/leftist elements of old school Zionism that held that Arabs and Jews were equal human beings. I don't like this far-right version of Zionism, and that's all I was sayin'.

 

I mean, we killed a lot of Japanese and Germans during World War II. It was terribly unfortunate that we had to do it, but their leaders led their respective countries down that path of destruction and left us with no choice. In the face of aggression and ethnic cleansing, I have to say it's at least somewhat understandable that some Palestinians turned to violence...the same way that the Polish and French resistance fighters did against the Germans. What Israel needs to do is to stop being evil like the Germans in WWII. Stop expanding settlements, stop stealing land, apologize for its past actions, and probably pay reparations to the Palestinians. No, this won't make Hamas disappear immediately, not in a month, maybe not even in a decade. But the important thing is that we stop pouring gasoline on the fire...and if we do this, support for extremism will gradually decrease.

 

[/QUOTE]
I mean, we killed a lot of Japanese and Germans during World War II. It was terribly unfortunate that we had to do it, but their leaders led their respective countries down that path of destruction and left us with no choice. In the face of aggression and ethnic cleansing, I have to say it's at least somewhat understandable that some Palestinians turned to violence...the same way that the Polish and French resistance fighters did against the Germans. What Israel needs to do is to stop being evil like the Germans in WWII. Stop expanding settlements, stop stealing land, apologize for its past actions, and probably pay reparations to the Palestinians. No, this won't make Hamas disappear immediately, not in a month, maybe not even in a decade. But the important thing is that we stop pouring gasoline on the fire...and if we do this, support for extremism will gradually decrease.[/QUOTE]

I agree. Those who have turned to violence basically are desperate and don't feel they have much to live for. The comparison to the Polish and French resistance fighters to the Nazis is probably the best comparison I've ever read, honestly. Never really thought of it that way, but it's true. I mean, Sabaton produced a great song to honor the Polish resistance that opposed the Nazi occupiers. And I totally agree. The Israeli government is pouring gasoline on fire. If they didn't have those settlements in the West Bank and they just left the Palestinians alone, this mess wouldn't have escalated to this level. Extremism breeds extremism. As MLK said, darkness cannot drive out darkness. Hatred only creates more hatred. Some people act like peace is quaint, but it's actually healing and may lead to reconciliation.

 

Except on the contrary Hamas does also target women and children too.

Comparing the French and polish resistance fighters to Hamas is very not accurate because most Europeans in the resistance groups or partisans didn’t kill innocent German children on purpose except maybe some of the communist groups particularly in Eastern Europe might of done that.

Hamas is not a resistance group and yes Israel does oppress the Palestinians, and I understand that Hamas is weaker, but if Hamas were as strong as the Israeli army or as powerful as Hezbollah, Hamas would use and take that advantage to kill all the Israeli civilians and push them into the sea.

 

Groups don't stop being resistance groups just because you find their methods distasteful, @black_saber

 

Unless they act stay to the limit of behaving like freedom fighters instead of going the pathway to murdering innocent people since Hamas are zealots.

 

"Behaving like freedom fighters" this isn't a thing lol. You're making of categorical distinctions that don't exist. A freedom fighter doesn't stop being one because they kill people you don't think should be killed.

 

The cliche "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" exists for exactly this situation.

Definition of a resistance group: "An organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to resist the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability."

That sounds like it checks out.

 

I pretty much agree with Vivec and Lowbacca on this. When my friend and I went up to the protest in Seattle earlier this year, she was saying that Hamas pretty much was the Gaza Strip's military. It's not what most people would want, but that's what they have. I mean, Israel's government bombed that building with journalists inside and gave them not much time to get out. They've done too many things like that. They're essentially drunk on power.

And the U.S. government's support of this regime is ridiculous. Biden has always demeaned the Palestinians, and it's disgraceful. Trump, despite being personally anti-Semitic, liked to support Israel to court the Republican vote and give him an excuse to say that he was practically the King of the Jews. Lol. One reason that people in Southwest Asia and South Asia don't like the U.S. government is because they see our government's support of the Israeli government as being pretty much the same as our support of the Saudi monarchy. And I can see why. It is a bad habit. The U.S. also has a strange habit of supporting conservative regimes in that area as opposed to "revolutionary" ones. Which I would find weirder if I didn't know the context.

 

I'm really curious how you think Israel being 'destroyed' is in the cards even remotely.

 

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave you met black_saber?

 

It's a weird world.

 

Iran has threatened to nuke Israel, hamas doesn’t support a two state solution either,Hamas has also burned Israeli flags in protests, demonstrations supporting Hamas and other extremists in Gaza and the west bank have shout out death to Israel.

 

This is like dealing with qgm: it's the same conversation over and over.

1) black_saber justifies some sort of policy against palestinians under the guise of hamas being bad
2) people mention that a lot of these accusations can be stuck very easily to Israel
3) black_saber accuses said people of defending or "pardoning" hamas

this happens every time.

 

-Iran would be destroyed in a nuclear exchange. (which it doesn't possess btw, and Israel has since the late 1960s)

-Hamas "destroying" Israel is about as likely as any modern country with a strong government & military being destroyed by a terrorist group is, which is to say it's not.

-protests =/=reality, which is that Israel is the strongest military power in the region by orders of magnitude and concerns of it being "destroyed" are imaginary.

So y'know try again

 

Yes yes I know.

 

Even worse, the Palestinians are using sharpened fruit.

 

Don't forget vegetables. Rotten eggplant warrants a response for sure.