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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I could throw this right back at you. Looking at the whole of it illuminates nothing regarding a radical change in tactics by Hamas.
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I was responding to the question of supporting Israel, and despite all the heat you're generating, you're not exactly illuminating about Hamas's change in tactics. Is anywhere here supporting Hamas?
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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.
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Not what I said. Thanks for clarifying that whatever you were saying was based on a misunderstanding.
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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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You forgot to say that he created a permanent impasse by dying and leaving no one for Israel to negotiate with.
What's the principle that explains why Jews should have a right of return to a country that did not exist until 1948 and where their ancestors may never have lived, while Palestinians should not have a right of return to the country where they did live? I am interested in your answer both to the normative question of principle, and also in your answer to the pragmatic, positive question of how there could ever be a durable peace if the fundamental bargain is so unfair to Palestinians. At the risk of stating the obvious, is it not basically this imbalance, and Israel's refusal to negotiate about it, that prompts young Palestinian men to join Hamas and slaughter innocent civilians?
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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.
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You are the one who finds it impossible to discuss these issues without comparing the relative "badness" or culpability of each side. I keep saying I'm not interested in that. Not sure why you don't get it.
Rhetorically, the practical effect of your insistence that we only talk about Hamas's change in tactics, and about how Hamas is worse than Israel, is that Israel gets a pass for whatever it does, because Hamas is worse, we completely ignore what Israel has done to make things worse than they could be, we ignore the many Palestinians who aren't in Hamas, and we get no closer to any kind of solution. Bombing and invading Gaza to try to eliminate Hamas is not a solution, much as invading Iraq because of 9/11 got us ISIS.
