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This is all twaddle. If you can't handle complexity or having more than one thought in your head at a time, then by all means, keep things simple and clear. Also, don't talk about the Middle East with anyone.
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I could throw this right back at you. Looking at the whole of it illuminates nothing regarding a radical change in tactics by Hamas. If you can't handle the process of spotting and dissecting the most salient issue, then by all means, keep farting the line, "We must examine all in context."
By the way, I don't have any issue with examining it all in context. One can do that and at the same time look at the particular issue of Hamas' recent slide into depravity. I happen to think it's unnecessary to do the former here, but I don't object to it as long as it's not done to obscure consideration of the latter, or worse, normalize it within that broader context.
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Oh, come now. A few posts ago you were explaining how everyone in Hamas should be rounded up and executed. Did you only come to that clarity in the last two weeks?
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Yes. Because Hamas drifted into death cult status with ISIS, it must be treated like ISIS. If all Hamas had done was lob bombs into Israel, as it had in the past, a proportionate similar response would be all that was warranted. So no -- I very much did not think Hamas deserved to be executed prior to the recent attack. Now, I do.
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You have some need to keep equating and comparing them, a need I don't share.
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You're compelling me to do so by responding to the argument that what Hamas did was uniquely extreme and outside the bounds of normal war within this or any other conflict by saying "Well, Bibi set the stage for it." As I have noted in numerous prior posts, I don't think that issue has anything to do with examination of Hamas' singular actions here. But if must stipulate that Israel does not have clean hands here, which I do, it is only fair to note that its are slightly soiled, while Hamas' are now soaked in blood.
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I don't think it's true or useful to say that. Hamas is quite rational in its way. Iran too.
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That's fair. Barbarity is not automatically insane. It can be a very deliberately considered device.
(I think psychotics can be rational, FWIW. But that's not how I was using the term.)
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Yassir Arafat has been dead for almost twenty years. I appreciate your need to dumb things down for moral clarity, but the idea that Israel tried for peace and the Palestinians were the obstacle is too simple even for an episode of West Wing or Madame Secretary.
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The last useful talks were during his tenure. And he created the wedge that renders all future talks pointless - a demand for right of return.
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I get it. You're on Team Israeli, so you are going to absolve Israeli and you want to talk only about how bad Hamas is.
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I'm happy to talk about Israel's past misdeeds. I just don't see that as anything near as important an issue as the shift in Hamas' tactics. The brazenness and violence of it indicates either desperation among Hamas' leadership, or the Iranians, or perhaps a belief Israel is uniquely weak because of the political infighting. Probably all three. It also signals that the Gaza Strip will never be part of any two state solution as long as Hamas is there.
Of paramount interest will be how MBS reacts after this hopefully cools down a bit. If he resumes normalization of relations with Israel, Hamas and Iran will have shot their shot (Israel will not allow this to happen again) and missed. That would be a dagger in the heart of Tehran.
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"Lamentable". But Hamas is worse. I guess "lamentable" is something.
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Is that even in question? You're not suggesting that Arafat's and Bibi's cynical politics are on par with ringing a festival and murdering ravers, murdering families hiding in safe rooms, and raping women in front of their friends and families and then killing them?
If badness is a mountain, Arafat and Bibi are at base camp. Hamas, like ISIS, sits at the peak.
