JB Globe

Hamas hasn't even been invited to the table in 20 years so it's hard to say. Although I will say that while Hamas might be reprehensible they are also not completely irrational, they'll negotiate, but like any party they have their own terms. I feel the appropriate measure would be to end the 40-year occupation of Iceland. Then why did they pick the option with the worst long-term consequences? It's because while the Israeli public might want a two-state solution theoretically, they still need to fulfill their obligations to their tribal mentality and hit back with a head-for-an-eye approach. (fyi, Palestinians also theoretically support a two state solution, yet support military attacks against Israel) Any politician who dares suggests negotiation is a better solution to rocket attacks than war would be sacked - even though in a year Hamas will probably have re-built the supply tunnels and re-supplied with rockets, thus rendering the Gaza invasion useless.

The Holocaust isn't used by Hawkish Jews and Israelis when dealing with specific incidents (such as the recent Gaza attacks) but more so when dealing with the existential questions surrounding Israel's existence. ie - Israel occupies the West Bank & Gaza for "security reasons" and if it didn't there would be another Holocaust, therefore: Israel cannot make compromises on security, and by extension Israel cannot give up Gaza & the West Bank, ever.

Actually, I think his point is pro-occupation Israeli supporters are dragging the memory of his Bubie by exploiting the memory of the holocaust for their own political gain. It sounds like he's saying leave the Holocaust out of it, and I as a Jew concur - if you can't justify your policies based on rational reasons, don't try and create a myth that regardless of how strong Israel is and the situation on the ground, that Israel will always be a victim in any conflict, no matter what. AIPAC does it, Likhud, Kadima & Labour all do it. I personally think it's a totally inaccurate comparison to say that Jewish victimization in the Holocaust = what's happening in Israel right now.

Mainly because they can't leave the Gaza strip, hence they can never be arrested by a foreign state and brought to trial. If they did visit Rome, I'm sure the Carabinieri would show up. Erm, you're aware that it's European nations that are considering war crimes charges, right? That's why Israel is warning it's top military brass not to travel there for fear of arrests.

If some group wants to pay a bunch of money to put up ads on the TTC that won't work (since when has anyone changed worldviews based on a salesline of: "Hey you, you're wrong, I'm right, get with MY team!" - ???) I'm sure they'll be able to, the TTC has faith-based ads, such as "Learn about Jesus" and the like, this is no different really.

Only three times so far, and only to posters who can't stop making personal insults.

Peace treaties with Egypt & Jordan - why don't you consider those lasting compromises? Such as?

Actually I think you do, a little bit. You seem to be one of the posters here who actually enjoy "owning" people more than they do engaging in a discussion, hence the consistent personal attacks. Well, now you have one less person to play your immature games with.

No, all Palestinians are not terrorists.

For the obvious reason that Hamas isn't in power in the West Bank, and Hamas is part of this problem along with Israel. Hell you could throw Fatah into the mix for being so inept at governing that they helped create the conditions whereby a group like Hamas would gain popular support in Gaza. I don't need a self-righteous Goy lecturing me on what it means to Jewish. If you are in fact a 14-year-old boy, and can't resist personalizing what should be a non-personal discussion, than you're going on my ignore list.

If only more nations had complete and utter disregard for human life, huh? We could get rid of this global terrorism problem quite quickly, just a few well placed nukes, right?

Do you want me to put you on my ignore list? Stop being immature.

All I'm saying is, in the future, try not to use stats from biased websites that ARE NOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED. I mean, if those sites had hyperlinks to news reports, that would be independent confirmation and that would be fine. But like I said if the situation was reversed, and someone was posting events from a personal blog of a hardline Palestinian nationalist, and they weren't sourced, OR if someone was posting info from Fatah's website - you'd be the first to disregard them.

As part of a future Palestinian state, the process of establishing such a state is ongoing.

That's because the occupation didn't stop. As I said earlier, don't think for a second that as soon as Gazans were left without Israelis in their territory they didn't immediately think of their brothers in the West Bank, who are still under occupation. You can't do this thing half-assed: you have to end the occupation completely, not just a fraction of it. Small gestures like this and dismantling the occasional small settlement aren't going to convince anyone Israel is serious about getting back to the roadmap. JUST LIKE Israelis weren't convinced when Hamas suspended suicide bombings but continued with rocket attacks. Not exactly a show of good-faith there. How so? The blockade is a main component of this, at least before there was an economy of sorts, now everyone lives on handouts. No problem! Hamas isn't launching rockets at Egypt simply because Egypt hasn't been occupying Palestinians for the last 40 years. Had Egypt been doing so, they would probably be the subject of some kind of violence from Hamas. Hamas has been critical of Egypt, but in the grand scheme of things this one action is not worth them going after Egypt and pissing off the only other neighbor they have. And Egypt has been much better about letting in humanitarian supplies as well. Even when the border was breached a year ago, they let half of Gaza's population cross the border unchecked to get food, fuel and other supplies.

I'm going to assume that you don't believe that the Israeli military hasn't attempted cover-ups before, after all, ALL militaries do. Hell, all INSTITUTIONS do. But it's entirely within the realm of possibility that Israeli soldiers mistook fire coming from neighbouring buildings as fire coming from the school, hence why it was hit. Of course, we have no idea of knowing what happened because of the media ban on Gaza, which has been in place for 2 months. Israel Puts Media Clamp on Gaza http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/mi....html?ref=media "And so for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it waited in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering, but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel."

So what you're saying is that as long as I find two sources that say the same thing, that means it's true? No matter how biased they may be? Independent sources be damned? Because then anyone can "prove" anything.

When Israel made good-faith diplomatic efforts, consistently, they worked, both times: Egypt worked, Jordan worked. That's what I'm talking about, diplomatic compromise, not a pointless war which will achieve none of it's long-term objectives. How naive is it to believe that Hamas will never change? After all, the PLO were devils until they became Fatah, and now Israel negotiates with them and assists them. Hamas used to get Israeli assistance, until they became devils. Hamas changed in the past, but it can't change now? Why exactly? How naive is it to think in light of these 180s that Hamas has hardliners and pragmatists just like any other organization?

How about an independent source for a change?

The only source on that is the Israeli military.

Please spare me the "the great Israeli altruists pulled out of Gaza because they love peace" routine. Stop moving the goalposts - Israel withdrew from Gaza because it was incapable of occupying the area anymore, and they were loosing lots of money trying to do so. I suppose I'm supposed to pretend that the blockade on Gaza which has completely crippled the economy, and meant that most people there now require foreign food aid to survive, accounts for nothing? To which of course, the genius' at Hamas responded with: Screw morals period, morals are only useful in conflicts where there's a clear good guy and a bad guy. I'm not interested in tallying up the rights and wrongs to find out how very bad Israel is compared to how very, very bad Hamas is. Fact is both sides are acting immorally - one more than the other? Probably, but I don't want to waste my time splitting hairs, that will do absolutely nothing. I don't care about morals, those are subjective - I care about international law. I'm talking about what things work in terms of attaining peace and security and what things don't. I don't care if it satisfies Israeli or Hamas (or Goyim) bloodlust to fire off Qasam rockets or cruise missles, fact is neither approach does anything but increase hatred on the other side of the fence. Neither approach has ever proven it can work to attain the goals it's promoters claim are possible: peace and security. Are you fully incapable of personal slander? Do you figure that this makes your argument look stronger or weaker?

What money are you talking about? Foreign Direct Investment is committed by companies, not nations. The US gov't can't do anything short of banning FDI to India and freezing American corporation's assets there, which would hurt an already weak American economy even more. And it wouldn't do much long-term damage to India, because other companies from elsewhere in the world who are clamoring to get into the Indian market would take their place. Sorry, something isn't true just because you say it is. Either find a recent example of India being a puppet, a single analysist/commentator who agrees with your views, or stop expecting me or anyone else to believe your wild claims. Are you honestly comparing the scale/cost of Canada's mission in Afghanistan to the US "footing the bill" (as you said) of an Indian invasion of Pakistan? The cost of the second would be astronomical, look how much it cost the US to invade and occupy a country of 30 million, how much do you think it would cost the US to foot the bill of India's invasion and occupation of a nation of 170 million? Do you think that's comparable to us in Afghanistan? Now you're just trying to be funny. The US economy is in the worst shape out of most industrialized countries. It's definitely GOING broke if current trends continue - the US federal budget is at about $3 trillion and is producing a deficit of $410 billion, the current debt is at about $6.3 trillion, with interst at $244 billion a year. However if you factor in the enormous spending the US will have to do in the next few decades on social security (which has been running a surplus for decades which is used to pay down other gov't departments, and will evaporate once baby boomers retire) and medicaid/medicare, the deficit will skyrocket. And who's holding that debt? Who will continue to buy that debt? China and other nations. Talk about being a puppet. But God forbid they decide to stop buying that debt - that would be a disaster. The thing is - no one values the dollar anymore. And it will be valued less as the US sinks further into debt. In the past few years the US dollar has lost ground to the Euro. Show me one person that agrees with you on that.

Because there are always exceptions. Please don't tell me you're going to try and use Arafat's exile adventures as a means of distracting from the fact that the general Palestinian population in Gaza & the West Bank were cooperative and relatively peaceful for the first 20 years of the occupation.

I'm not repeating myself on that, you can read my post again if you're so unsure. But I will repeat this point which you're dancing around: if Palestinians were inherently violent, than the first 20 years of the occupation of Palestine would not have produced such cooperation and peace in Gaza & the West Bank.

The best-case scenario for Israel in the Gaza War is for a temporary halt in rocket attacks. Within a year, the tunnels to Egypt will be re-built (they were built in months in the first place) the rockets will be smuggled in, and things will be back to the way they were a few years ago. Just like how Hezbollah in Lebanon has re-supplied itself and reconstituted it's strength. Unless Israel is prepared to attack like this every year, for eternity, the situation will not change - in fact it may get worse. Conventional militaries simply cannot suppress guerilla warfare tactics and/or terrorist tactics with conventional military force. So Israel will NOT secure their long-term security with this strategy. Also, Jordan & Egypt did not "have the crap kicked out of them" in the sense that their armies were annihilated. Israel defeated the invading forces and won, but there was no massive capitulation a la WWII with the Japanese. Similarly in Gaza, Israel does not have the capacity to "kick the crap" out of Hamas - they can temporarily wound them at best. Israelis themselves decided to pursue peace once things had cooled down, because they knew another conflict was a inevitable and they were tired of constantly having to fight for their lives. So they worked for 10 or 15 years at the diplomatic game and got peace treaties. That shifted the balance of power in the region and they haven't faced an invasion since. I firmly believe that if Israel made a good-faith effort to establish negotiations with Hamas you would see them moderate their position and tactics. It happened with the PLO which became Fatah (who, by the way, never had the crap kicked out of them) and there's no reason why it can't happen with Hamas. I guess it's just going to have to wait until Israelis are tired of fighting wars in Gaza every year. It's not going to be easy, in fact, it will probably be more difficult politically than launching wars all the time - but the pay off is enormous: peace and security, for good. Rather than wars every few years and the inevitable war crimes that go along with them.