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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The aggregation works here because it's all (ostensibly, or as justification) about the Palestinians. Every war was waged in significant part if not entirely to liberate those people (whom no other Arab country is willing to accept, including currently, Egypt). At issue here is not whether some Arab nations have reached peace with Israel - it's whether historically Israel has tried time and time again to give the Palestinians a solution, and to live in peace, only to be attacked or had peace efforts scuttled at the last minute because of bad faith actors such as Arafat, who were more interested in keeping their power and personal fortunes (which accrue only from conflict).

If you really think that Israel has tried time and time again to give the Palestinians a solution, and to live in peace, I have a bridge in the Negev to sell you. Among (many) other things, the Netanyahu governed has strengthened Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority. No one should pretend that the Palestinians have been blameless, but that does not absolve Israel. It has suited Israeli governments for Gaza to be a Hamas-controlled powder keg.

Israelis, and Palestinians not involved with Hamas, are good and decent people.

However, one group is actively now and has actively in the past sought to avoid civilian casualties. Israel does not want to go into Gaza. Israel wanted to focus on a peace deal with the Saudis. It does not want to kill innocent Palestinians.

Your language is Orwellian in the worst way. Israel is going into Gaza and killing innocent Palestinians because it is choosing too. If you back it, own it. Don't put frosting on a shit sandwich and pretend it's cake.

Hamas, OTOH, intentionally ringed a rave and murdered Israeli civilians, brutally. They did so with glee. And to what end? To get Israel to retaliate - to attack and kill Palestinians, which cannot now be entirely avoided.

And most disgustingly, Hamas will use its own people as human shields. It will fire rockets from the tops of schools and hospitals to attempt to get Israeli radar to trace back the source and obliterate those buildings.

Hamas is not only murdering Israelis, but also its own people, for one reason and one reason alone. To destroy the Saudi peace deal, which would marginalize Hamas. And where is Hamas' leadership while this takes place? Qatar. Are they in the trenches with their pathetic brainwashed soldiers, their cannon fodder? Not a chance.

So yes, in this mess, the Israelis are the good and decent people. And Hamas deserves to be cleansed from the planet. And that is not rhetoric. There should be no Hamas prisoners taken. Yes, many are dimwitted young men maleducated in jihadist nonsense. But they are poisoned, and there is no fixing these people. They are human garbage, like ISIS. The only option is to kill every last one of them. May be incredibly difficult, but that's not a reason not to try.

Just listen to yourself. On other subjects and at other times, you would mock this kind of self-righteous, fawning BS.

ETA: Try to imagine the Israelis attacking Gaza and using their own people as human shields. Could that even happen? No. It's impossible to imagine, because Israelis have western values. They value their countrymen. The values of whatever "culture" creates a thing like Hamas are clearly defective in some fundamental regards.

You're verging toward some very ugly thoughts here. I don't really want to go there with you.

Insurgencies often hide in civilian populations, because they have to. This has been true on every continent, across a wide range of cultures. Hamas is not the first movement to decide that the end justifies the means, and it won't be the last. (Implicit in what you say above is that "western values" mean valuing your countrymen, but not other people, which is not exactly what the Enlightenment was all about, but helps explain how, for example, a western country like the United States dropped so many bombs on Laos and Cambodia, two countries with which it wasn't even at war.)

The moral clarity you now possess about the inhumanity of Hamas would be more impressive if you used to, say, ask yourself why it has been Israeli policy to build up Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority. In Israeli, the Netanyahu government is now wildly unpopular, because Israelis understand that it has made choices that are at least partly to blame for where we are now.

You often accuse me of equating the Right here with the Left. Whataboutism. Well, I admit, and will once more do so here - the Right here is far more demented than the Left. The delta between the two is significant. And using your critical analysis to assess the validity of the argument that Israel and Hamas are on anything even approaching equal footing - which a ton of people in this country (not infrequently moronic college students) are doing - the mere suggestion of equivalence fails miserably. The delta between what Hamas is, and what it did, and Israel is canyon sized.

I don't think there's an "equivalence" between Israel and Hamas, so I haven't suggested it.