No-I am of the school you cant negotiate with people who deny your right to existence.So are you of the school that sees any criticism of the State of Israel as an anti-Semitic attack? Obama must wish he was Jewish and the leader of Israel instead…
Disproportionate according to whom? It has often, over the years been a source of mild frustration to me that American presidents usually seem to want to get Israel to “show restraint” where no restraint has been accorded them in return.
Good post, but no, you have not addressed the example disproportionate ‘punishment’ I gave in my previous post.
What do real solutions have to do with who we know? The present Egyptian regime would probably do the same thing in Gaza that Israel is doing, if given the chance. There is no love lost between the two peoples. Surely you know of at least two wars with Muslims on both sides, so what does your Egyptian Muslim friend’s opinion have to do with the truth about Palestinians?
Disproportionate is always relevant, especially when the most recent example of “lack of restraint” which preceded this latest flare-up was directly related to the example we are discussing.
Both sides have radicals is fair, and both have good people of God is also fair. Hamas couldn’t even make it through the second cease fire this morning without sending rockets in again. I agree with Obama, Israel has the right to defend itself.
It has more to do with the truth about the Israelis. Egypt has what about 80,000,000 people. All people don’t think alike and all Muslims don’t think alike. He doesn’t like the radical fundamentalists in Egypt either and found Mubarak acceptable, a somewhat Secular regime. Egypt and Israel came to a peace accord years ago. Israelis would even go there to vacation.
Obama has zero motivation to really and firmly play peacemaker between Israel and anybody. Not only would that set him apart from most of his predecessors, but it would set off a frenzied reaction of apocalyptic proportions…he’s gone too far, and largely safely, into his second term, to step into the role of peacemaker of the world. I call “chicken” on him; statesmen work for peace - mere politicians worry about who’s going to say “I told you so”.
I’m not saying anything about Egyptians other than that their opinion is not necessarily more valid than anyone else’s. Most of the ME countries seem to care less about the Palestinians except perhaps to play politics with them, so why would the opinion of an Egyptian or that of a Muslim, regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict be more valid than yours or mine?
Israel did not retaliate against Gaza until they started firing rockets at them The Palestinians have made no attempt to find the murderers of the Israeli teens-their only reaction was to praise it.
Hamas wasn’t invited to negotiate a cease-fire and they only found out about it when the media started reporting it. Once again, its just another situation in which Hamas is told to give Israel whatever they want or Israel will bomb their civilian population. The Palestinians have been given the raw deal in every situation since 1948. They should be invited to the table at the very least.
We helped Israel build the Chrome Dome, and we help the poor in Palestine. We take care of both sides and have US interests in both and all the rest of the M-E apparently.
That isn’t true. The Palestinian Authority sent its security forces out in cooperation with Israel’s military. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA, has paid a political price for this cooperation. He believes that destruction of Palestinian unity, which had only recently been forged, was the goal of the kidnappings.
I can understand Israel’s rationale, but forget about surgical precision in rooting out Hamas forces. Ironically, this is not even the top news story of the day in these troubled times.
There certainly is no recognition of the equal value of all lives concerned. The IDF goes to truly extraordinary measures to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians often at far greater risk to their soldiers than any of us in America would be willing to accept for our own soldiers. On the other hand Hamas intentionally attacks Israeli civilians and uses it’s own people as human shields. I heard it put most succinctly by an Israeli officer during an interview the other day. She said that Israel uses it’s weapons to protect it’s people but Hamas uses it’s people to protect it’s weapons.
That’s a bunch of baloney. What Israel wants is for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israeli civilians! As I’ve already stated Yitzhak Rabin offered Yasser Arafat a contiguous state with East Jerusalem as it’s capital. It’s practically everything the Palestinians supposedly wanted. Arafat responded with terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians. They have been at the table again and again. The Palestinian people as a whole do not want peace. They do not recognize Israels right to exist, they hate the Jewish people and they want them pushed into the sea and destroyed utterly. Until that changes no amount of negotiation is going to bring peace.
Hamas wasn’t firing rockets at civilians, but Israel blames Hamas for everything that goes wrong and makes all Palestinians suffer for it.
Talk about baloney! What Yitzhak Rabin offered was a puppet state with Israel pulling the strings. With Israel annexing more land than it was returning to the Palestinian people, requiring the decisions of the Palestinian government to be subject to Israeli approval, and requiring an unarmed police force to report to the IDF.
That just isn’t true and those who do hold that opinion are entitled to their own thoughts. You seem to believe that, aside from dictating where the Palestinians can live and what they can eat, Israel should also be allowed to decide what they can think. Israel, which is far too fond of the stick, creates an environment in which such thought festers and then complains about it.