Religion Mid East Religious War

OK, I do not think I am the emotional one. I am the one who points out that there are both sides where civilians are being affected - and I do not think it is reasonable to blame the ones that are under attack originally.

As for your kind offer of sexual intercourse, I would kindly decline. It's not you, it's me, I am just not attracted to you.

 

So root them out. Offer huge rewards for anyone involved, work with informants and send special ops in to collect them.

Offer education, healthcare, other services. Win hearts and minds.

It's not easy, but it would neutralize the problem far bet than creating thousands of new enemies every day.

 

I think this is the long term solution. But at this point, when they are in power, you need to first eliminate the threat from them. Hopefully, once this happens, there will be work done to help the civilians invest in their own community instead of accumulating rockets etc...

It will have to be, imho, a 3rd moderate party that will do that. Probably something put together by the moderate Arab countries that are really who Iran is trying to destabilize.

 

The problem with that is, instead of starting with what phatguy said, and having that on the back burner and starting by bombing their positions, you're juast going to create situations where kids grow up without parents, without siblings, or don't grow up at all, and even if you go in to great detail about how Hamas is ultimately to blame, they will know who pulled the trigger, and a new wave of hate is born.

 

I am not picking on you, I like how you think. But.

How many Hamas fighters are there? No one knows. Estimates range all the way up to 40,000. And the plan is to send in a small special operation group? That is a suicide mission.

This is not a small spat. These is a very large gorilla war, and some, if not many of the people in north Gaza dressed as civilians maybe Hamas fighters.

 

I do not disagree with it. I just don't know what other option there is. We have arrived at a place where if Israel does not do it, there will be continued terror attacks and daily rocket launches at innocent people. Hamas has pretty much brought Israel to a no-win situation. If they do not take care of the immediate threat, their life will be horrible going forward. If they do, people are upset.

So, the non-emotional solution, unfortunately, is to solve the immediate problem (Hamas) - and find a way to help them long-term once that immediate threat is removed. I am again going for the Cancer analogy. Chemo and Radiation are not just hurting the cancerous cells, but sometimes that's the only option.

Let's entertain the idea that having almost 1,500 Israeli civilians die because of a terror attack is not the trigger point for Israel, what is it? 15,000, 150,000? Because, let's face it, that's where it is going next with Hamas.

 

Not a problem at all. I appreciate the conversation.

There are only so many people who have the skills to plan terror attacks. There are only so many people who have thw skills to lead.

And even fewer of those people are ignorant enough to hate somebody because of their race or religion.

Those are the people you target for elimination. You win the hearts and minds of the rest.

It's not easy. But it's what we should have done after 9/11, and I think it would be the best policy in this situation as well.

 

The Palestinian people would much rather have Hamas removed, so more of the opportunities would be available to them along with peace. And no longer used as human shields by murderous terrorist that dont give two shits about the Palestinian people. Gaza can become a prosperous state only when Hamas is gone.

 

But any amount is a trigger point, and has been consistently.
From what I can find from the UN, over the last 15 years, there have been over 6,500 Palestinians killed by Israelis. In that same time span there was slightly over 300 Israelis killed by Palestinians. Yes, they have a right to defend themselves. Contrary to your belief, there isn't an easy solution. But they have consistently answered attacks with a force 20 times higher than what they've been hit with, and it hasn't solved the problem yet.

 

Well, I do not really know what the answer is, but we have seen that over 1,300 Israeli civilians were killed just last month. I also, generally, do not think Israel was the instigator in the vast majority of these issues. So, once again, the terror groups that do not value the life of the people that they supposedly represent use them as cover thus bringing that discrepancy in numbers you point.

It seems to me that this is exactly their M.O. The world, at large, agree that a 2 state solution is the right way to go, all the way back to the UN resolution from 1947 and forward. The only ones that object to it are the religious nuts, they carry terror attacks, use their own people as shields and then use their loses as propaganda. The only reasonable solution is to remove these terror groups and if the Palestinians can not, or are not willing to remove them from within, their victims have got to a place where they have to act.

I know that the emotional thing to do is to cry about the innocent victims, but the terror groups are not crying about them, they use the innocents (on both sides) to appeal to the emotion. I am not saying that every decision Israel made or makes is right, but on the scale of right and wrong, they are more right than wrong. They did give the civilians heads up to evacuate. They do try and minimize the areas they hit instead of spray bombing the way Hamas does. Is it horrible that there are innocent victims? Of course - but they were systematically been forced to that place.

So, logically (because emotions will not solve this in the short or the long term), I can not really accuse Israel of what they have tried to do, given the restrictions they have to live with.

 

This seems to be the case to me as well. The Palestinians will help Israel find peace if they are given the opportunity and incentive.

 

It just seems like you've come to the inverse conclusion you accused noknobs of, that Israeli civilian life is more valuable than Palestinian civilian life. Even when viewing the HUGE disproportion of innocent lives taken.

 

This is a great idea, but are there any Arab countries that would take them? I've heard Egypt will not...

 

I do not think I did. I think there is just no alternative Israel is presented with. I argued before and I continue to argue that the big civilian casualties suffered in Gaza is because Hamas is using the civilians as shield and propaganda. If they really cared about their people, they would not do that. If they really cared in this specific war, they would not prohibit them from leaving. They would not build their tunnels under civilian buildings and use them as shields for their rocket launchers.

What I argued was the making statements like "there has to be other solution", implying that Israel chose to have it's citizens attacks or can realistically choose to let it's citizens continue to live under terror threat because the terrorists use their own people as shields. That, to me, as an illogical statement.

My argument is that Israel has to choose between protecting it's people and try to be precise in attacking Hamas while it uses it's own people as shields. They just have no other reasonable solution at this point.

 

Unfortunately the Palestinians have been given no better option than Hamas. Hamas does offer services and security, nobody else is offering that. But most Palestinians don't enjoy living under extremist rule, from everything I have heard.

 

Well, the West Bank is ruled by the PA - which is who the Gazans rejected in 2006 or so and voted Hamas. I am pretty sure there are hospitals and services in the west bank. So, I do not think this is 100% correct. I think that what happened was that Gaza for whatever reason believed in Hamas more than the PA (which supposedly also has corruption issues) - and once that happened, they are left under a dictatorship (there were no elections since that time, to the best of my knowledge).

But, I agree, I am sure there are a lot of the Palestinians that live in Gaza who would love to live peaceful lives. I hope that once the terror threat is eliminated - there is a way to help them.

Now, if the PA is a better option than Hamas or not, I am not certain, but they do seem less radical and interested in war, so maybe they are?

 

Turkey has about 30,000 Palestinians living there now. And has been giving aid to Gaza.

If the price was right, Turkey would take them.