Unthinkable - Hamas uses boys school for defense while bombing Israel soldiers.

Hamas should just be exterminated.

See, all this conflict could be solved if we dropped an H. bomb and made a few craters.

Anthus wrote:See, all this conflict could be solved if we dropped an H. bomb and made a few craters.

right, because killing innocent people is fun.

The extremists on both sides certainly seem to think that killing innocents is fun. Frankly, I'm sick of caring about Israel/Palestine. I've seen too many atrocities on both sides to say that either side is right.

Well, since I haven't abdicated my moral compass, I'll come down firmly on the side of Israel. They should exterminate Hamas.

There is an image out there on the internet somewhere with two baby carriages, and an Israeli and Hamas soldier firing at each other. The Israel Soldier is in front of the baby carriage, defending it, and the Hamas soldier is behind the carriage, firing at the Israeli, using it as a meat shield.

Israel doesn't have any extremists. Even if you could say that they did, the only thing "extreme" about them is that they are "extremely naive." They still think there can be peace with the people who still believe in a holy war against others, in addition to regular war. Crusades much? Asking Hamas for Peace is like the mouse asking the snake for peace. The snake thinks the mouse is a religious infidel and must be eaten and squashed at all costs to satisfy their long-lasting traditions. Damned be these snakes in the sand.

Yeah. I don't know what side to be on here. I know that a lot of people think this is a holy war, and in a sense it is, because it's being fought by religious extremists. But in reality, it's a land war. When the Jews settled there, they literally deported all of the people that were living there at the time. Israel was to be a Hebrew Nation exclusively.

So I can understand why these people are pissed. If I was forced out of my homeland, I'd be mighty pissed off too.

What Israel doesn't understand, is that they're not fighting a war. They're fighting a bunch of individuals. It's like us in Viet Nam. We knew we were fighting the Viet Cong, but who were they? Just regular people (mostly farmers) who held extreme political views and were being given weapons and ammunition from both North Korea and the USSR. This is why there were so many 'civilian' casualties. Since we were fighting civilians, every village was a potential VC 'compound'.

Hamas is the same thing. These people aren't soldiers. They're regular people with extremist religious views throwing rocks at Jews and firing homemade rockets over the border. And Israel is bombing the shit out of them, using chemical warfare and just generally acting like a big brother kicking the shit out of his annoying little brother who just wont stop fucking with him.

I think Israel is handling this wrong. What the Gaza Strip and the West Bank need is better policing. Again, Hamas is a group of civilian criminals with extremist views. No different than the Charles Manson Family or The Mob (Just with different viewpoints and goals). And how do you deal with a group of civilian criminals who have started shooting bombs out of schools? You get your police in there and you try your damndest to neutralize the situation and save as many of those schoolchildren as possible. You don't firebomb the school.

So again, What the Gaza Strip and the West Bank need is better police. If the Palestinian Authority won't take care of their criminals, then Israel needs to get their ass in there and do it themselves. Acting as a POLICE force.

So yeah, I feel for their basic complaint, but Hamas are being real douchebags and deserve to be exterminated. On the other hand, Israel needs to just deal with each situation responsibly and not bomb the shit out of their neighbors, who are basically living in the third world. It would be like if someone threw a couple of homemade rockets over the border of Mexico into the US, and we just nuked the shit out of 'wherever those rockets came from', irregardless if the rocket-shooter was even there any more, or if the area contained a shitload of small children and innocent civilians. Israel is a First-World Country, and they need to start acting like it.

firebug wrote: Again, Hamas is a group of civilian criminals with extremist views.

Actually, you are completely and utterly wrong. Hamas is the elected, ruling government of Gaza. They attacked Israel. Israel defended itself against a sovereign foreign government.

How do you think a country should respond if a neighboring country is lobbing rockets into their neighborhoods? Diplomacy? Israel has tried that literally for years.

Israel is a well developed, capitalist society that supports women's rights, human rights, democracy, and decency. Hamas is a elected, ruling terrorist regime that openly proclaims that its goal is kill everyone in Israel so that it will cease to exist.

Beldaran wrote:Actually, you are completely and utterly wrong. Hamas is the elected, ruling government of Gaza.

I understand that. But the people lobbing rockets from schools aren't backed by Hamas. In fact, Hamas says that Israel is lying and that the attacks don't come from these places. You and I know that's utter bullshit, and if Hamas was elected legitimately, those people need to seriously look at the decisions they've made and the consequences of them. The people in the Palestinian Authority may have elected Hamas as their ruling party, but it's their (Hamas) first time actually running a country, and before that they were considered a terrorist organization (which they obviously are). The people lobbing the rockets aren't elected officials. That's like saying; 'The United States is controlled by elected Democrats. Therefore, individuals who commit terrorist acts and call themselves Democrats are acting on behalf of the United States.'

It is different, because Democrats don't consider someone else's land their own and hold it a principle to take that land back, but the analogy is accurate.

Individuals committed these atrocities and they need to be put to justice. Civilians shouldn't be killed indiscriminately because of the actions of a few douche bags.

firebug wrote: Civilians shouldn't be killed indiscriminately because of the actions of a few douche bags.

I agree, which is why Hamas needs to be exterminated, whatever the cost, so they'll stop doing that.

firebug wrote:Hamas are being real douche bags and deserve to be exterminated.

Uh-huh.

If Hamas is wiped out, another extremist group will take their place. As long as their are Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Palestinians will keep on killing each other.

There will always be bullies. They always deserved to be punched, even if another one will eventually take their place. There is no excuse to just let your neighbor kidnap your people and shoot rockets at you. It can't be tolerated.

rock_nog wrote:If Hamas is wiped out, another extremist group will take their place. As long as their are Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Palestinians will keep on killing each other.

There will always be problems. Humans are good at not liking each other. The key is in how you address those problems. There will always be serial killers as well, does that mean the police should just stop investigating murders? Hell no.

Besides, if we didn't have terrorists and criminals in general we'd be living in a Utopian society. Life just isn't that rosy.

Interjection to post something that repeatedly finds its way into my E-mail inbox. But first, an image.

[center][/center]

There is a well known phrase in the middle east, and on E-mails in every Jew's inbox:
[center]If Islam put down their weapons, there would be no war.
If Israel put down their weapons, there would be no Israel.[/center]

I got this from an article by Benjamin Netanyahu.

It's our land
By: Benjamin Netanyahu

Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview and was asked about Israel's occupation of Arab lands.

His response was "It's our land".

The reporter (CNN or the like) was stunned - Read below "It's our land..." It's important information since we don't get fair and accurate reporting from the media and the true facts tend to get lost.

"Crash Course on the Arab Israeli Conflict." Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation. These were compiled by a Christian university professor:

BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY

It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew and non-Jew -- it doesn't matter.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades AFTER the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10 The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey .

13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and
Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990,
429 were directed against Israel.

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

The only extreme thing about Israeli is their dedication to never seeing the holocaust repeated.

Don't forget to mention that Israel did some fucked up shit too. After the land was taken from the Palestinians, and Israel was founded, many Palestinians became displaced and were like "where the fuck do we go now?"

http://www.mfa.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/6820ACDE-FD3F-4583-9963-28CA13BA376C/0/MFAG007y0.gif

The result of the partition plan resulted in Jews getting most of the land, and separating the Arab land from eachother. The Arabs this applied to could either apply for Isreali citizenship (which they were promised if they wanted it) or move the fuck out. Despite this promise, many Arabs who applied for citizenship, were taken to jail, and dumped out into Lebanon. So Jews are going, "yay, land that was promised to us over 2000 fucking years ago by people who no longer exist," and Arabs are going, "What the fuck, my home was taken from me,"

Now I agree that both parties should just live peacefully together, and the Arabs should knock it off. But originally, the Arabs were royally fucked by the UN.

Civilians rarely benefit from wars which occurred out of their hands, particularly when they're on the front lines, or nearby.

What I'm trying to look for now, is the source of the Six-Day War. I've heard opposing things from both sides, obviously.

*depressed sigh*

whoop de do, big surprise. Hamas is a terrosist group. they don't have the sophisticated tanks and stuff Israel does. but they are craaaazy about winning the war, so they fight in the only way possible to not get wiped out; By hiding like cowards behind innocents.

but seriously, it doesn't matter who started the war, or who is in the right. The war there will NEVER END. Not unless one of the two sides is wiped off the face of the earth.

First off, both sides claim that area to be THEIR land. That's already a big problem, since if multiple (completely different) cultures are trying to live in the same small country, there is BOUND to be some conflict.

Second, both sides have taken so many lives in this retarded war that it goes like this: "Your unlce killed my uncle, so I must kill you!" "But your uncle killed MY brother, so I have to kill YOU!" "BUT YOUR BROTHER KILLED MY LITTE SISTER, SO I-"...Repeat ad nauseum. Too much blood has spilled. almost everyone knows someone who killed a relative, who killed a relative, who killed a friend... Both sides have a LOT of anger and desire for revenge bottled up.

And thirdly....Let me tell you something my Dad told me. He ran a plastic injection moulding shop for a while, and one of his employees was a hardcore suporter of Israel. The man told my dad that his brother in law ran a bullet factory down there, and due to the war he'd gone form working 5 days a week, one shift, to having the place running 24-7, and was making a bundle. Bottom line? A lot of bunisnesses on BOTH SIDES are making a lot of money selling weapons. They DO NOT want the war to end. I'm pretty damn sure that more than one cease fire was broken by some crooked businessman giving a 50$ american bill to a hamas soldier, whispering "You fire a few rockets over the border, and I got more for you!".

Seriously, the war there is hopeless, IMO. I don't even CARE who's right or wrong anymore. All I know is that unless some MASSIVE international action is taken in some way or another, the war will go on forever, or at least until one side is just a pile of corpses. Personally, I hope hamas goes down, for the sole fact that it does shit like seen in the video. You DO NOT involve innocent civilians in your stupid retarded turf wars.

Ugh... See, my problem is, you can play the blame game back and forth all the way to the creation of Israel back in 1948 (which I personally consider an unfortunate mistake of history). At some point, someone's just gonna have to say "I care more about peace than revenge," or bloodshed will occur indefinitely.

rock_nog wrote:At some point, someone's just gonna have to say "I care more about peace than revenge,"

Someone IS saying it. More than one person is. But they're drowned out by the million and one other people jumping around screaming "WE WANT VENGEANE! WE WANT VENGEANCE!!!!"

rock_nog wrote:If Hamas is wiped out, another extremist group will take their place. As long as their are Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Palestinians will keep on killing each other.

Well, if they keep killing each other, maybe one day we can have a world where they have wiped each other out.

This is why imaginary friends should stop being socially acceptable past the age of eight.

rock_nog wrote:the creation of Israel back in 1948 (which I personally consider an unfortunate mistake of history).

Yeah how unfortunate that there is one single country in that entire region that is a successful capitalist democracy that respects women's rights, individual liberties, education, and has turned their patch of desert into a powerful economy while their neighbors languish in religious hatred and medieval poverty created by their own philosophical backwardness.

I mean, seriously what a tragedy. It would be so much better if that land were controlled by the Palestinians and their impoverished, intellectually dead nation was slightly larger.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I know it's not right to ask, but if you had a choice about who would win the war, who would you rather see flood the area? The Islam of today, or the Israelis of today? Are we 100% sure that after this conflict is somehow resolved, the Israelis or the others won't suddenly reach out and attack the neighboring countries who aren't of the same faith and value system and make some claim that the tabloids will suddenly start to support due to money issues?

We all need to start reading more than one source of coverage about this. There isn't one single source that isn't biased one way or the other. I personally read the Jewish Star. (Hell, I would. I'm Jewish. 😛 ) and I spoke to some girl who came from the UK as a transfer student about the crisis, and she was completely against Israel due to tragedies committed against humanity, (In other words, humanity being Everyone but Israel.) and continually returned to that point regardless of what I said. It's going to happen; people will take sides, and just won't change their minds or look at other facts or opinions.

Who would I rather see flood the area? I can't stand the thought of either side being exterminated - how am I supposed to have an opinion here? I can't just look at one side and say "Your culture is inferior, you deserve less to be allowed to live." It's all just sheer bloody madness, which is something I think most people aren't comfortable with - we need good guys and bad guys, we need to feel like there's a right and wrong side to this.

And while I do believe there is a right and a wrong side to this conflict, unfortunately, it's not as simple as people like - it doesn't follow neat political lines like we always think it should. There are people who want peace, and there are people who want war. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether you're an Israeli or a Palestinian. There are Palestinians who want peace, and there are Israelis who want war, and vice versa. Ultimately, this is why I do not take sides - I am on the side of anyone, regardless of culture, who supports peace. I am against all of those who want war.

rock_nog wrote:I am on the side of anyone, regardless of culture, who supports peace. I am against all of those who want war.

So you're for Neville Chamberlain, but against Winston Churchill.

�We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.� - Neville Chamberlain

Are you saying that the Palestinians should fight?

I think the Palestinians should treat their neighbors with respect and humanity. Since they won't, I think Israel should exterminate them like roaches.

I'm still having a lot of trouble seeing the non-Israeli Middle Eastern people as being capable of peace. At least concerning the events surrounding the people who are the extremists, anyway. I know there are civilians involved, yes, and they're "innocent," but really, how innocent can people be if they're taught from an early age to hate other nations? How is that so easily forgettable?

The way I see it, it's like that scene from Indiana Jones - Crystal Skull, with the field of ants. You can't reason with them. It's just a flood of constantly biting, nibbling, eating, flowing, dissolving death, (Death to all infidels.) who will stop at nothing to achieve the apparent religious necessities. No matter how much the Jews cede to their enemies in order to persuade a sense of peace to the air around them, they will always want more, and more, and more. It will never, ever stop. I'm astonished Israel is still trying for any semblance of peace, even after the static trends they've already been through year after year.

Are you saying that the Palestinians should fight?

Even after everything else said here, I still can't believe someone said Israel's creation was a mistake. Okay, you know I'm a generally nice person, and would stop at nothing to make people smile, but wow, you just punched me in the Matzo-balls, yo.