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

What do you want me to say? That 60 years of bloodshed was totally worth it? It's nothing against anyone, I just can't justify all the pain and suffering that it has created. And for what? Over some ancient religion?

Regarding the Palestinians, in their minds, they're acting out of self-defense. I'm not saying that it's right, obviously, but you have to understand that if you ever have any hope of reaching some sort of resolution that doesn't result in genocide.

How was 9/11 self-defense? At the VERY Least, the masterminds behind that are one source of mayhem that I'm sure none of us would mind eliminating. There's self-defense, and then there's self-defense as a cover up for world-scale offense. They've spread into the neighboring countries, and are destroying it from within. Where are the protests from their countries' people? France? Britain? They're still in support of the immigrants from that region even after the violence.

rock_nog wrote:
Regarding the Palestinians, in their minds, they're acting out of self-defense.

Not to godwin this to hell, but the Nazis made the same claim.

It is 100% irrelevant whether they think they need to shoot rockets into neighborhoods in self defense. If they do it, they should be completely eliminated.

I bet if some right wing christians were shooting rockets into your neighborhood, you'd be a little less philosophical about the need for peace.

IMHO, it's not even an Ad-Hominem in the practical sense if it genuinely makes you consider the reality of the potential situation. I wouldn't mind going vigilante as a / the final solution to such a dilemma.

Imagine someone walks up to you with a pencil. He stabs you in the neck and tells you to die; to stop stealing his oxygen, because he was near that place first. You can't even grab the pencil because it's the only pencil he has, and he's too damned poor to get another pencil. That poor bully and his pencil without his oxygen. Whatever are you going to do? :shakeno: You've got no oxygen, you've somehow made an enemy, and there's a pencil stuck in your neck, and people sympathize with the bully for having his oxygen stolen.

Doesn't everyone have a right to oxygen? Particularly if two people start to fight over oxygen, and someone wins? What right do they have to come crawling back to demand that oxygen when they started the fight for it in the first place and lost?

My god that is a fucked up analogy.

I just can't see the logic of "Well, some Palestinians attacked us, so all Palestinians deserve to die, regardless of their personal beliefs."

There are Palestinians who support peace and oppose this violence. That's all I'm saying.

Yes, there are. All humans are individuals, and are capable of independent thought. Then you have those individuals who are trained from birth to be raw, hating, fighting machines. (You've seen those videos of the kids being given real guns and trained to fight, right?) Those are obviously who we're referring to. As it was mentioned before, the Israelis are just as opposed to violence and death of civilians as you are wishing anyone would be, but when you're attacked, you have to attack back, or else you just get steamrolled over.

Many different kinds of self-defense here, apparently. One is the "You poke me I block your poke." Another is the "We're being surrounded by enemies and they all want us to leave, but we want to live and not abandon our new country. Hey, let's fight back for our own lives, yes?" It's more like a siege than a mass offensive. Very, very big difference. Mass offensives make for terrible self-defense. That's just another word for genocide. Compared to a siege, well, ...

My issue here is that you seem to be saying that all Muslims are exactly alike and equally deserving to die. Obviously there are some who want nothing but to cause death and destruction, and killing them may be the only solution. But I don't think it's fair to say they're all exactly the same.

And I never said Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself.

Hamas hides behind civilians. To kill Hamas, you have to kill civilians. The blood of the civilians is on the hands of Hamas.

Those people are being killed by the hatred and cowardice of their elected leaders, not by Israeli munitions.

All we can hope is that eventually the civilians will see that. I mean, when I've been talking about peace and whatnot, I've been primarily talking about the Palestinians, though it seems people assumed I meant the Israelis. My apologies - I could've been more clear on that. Because I think, despite my cynicism, that if the civilians can be made to see that Hamas is using them, and that if they lay down their arms Israel will not take the opportunity to crush them, there may be peace.

rock_nog wrote:if the civilians can be made to see that Hamas is using them, and that if they lay down their arms Israel will not take the opportunity to crush them, there may be peace.

Yeah, but the problem is, their superiors and peers keep on telling them from a young age that Israel is evil and infidel and needs to be annahilated. That and the civilians who DO know Hamas is using them are too scared to resist, thinking that they'll be killed if they say anything or resist at all.

The only "bad guys" here are Hamas. Not the isrealis, and not the palestinians either. Just the douchtards using them to wage a pointless war.

Although, I feel I need to make an observation. Is it just me, or is Islam MUCH more demanding than any other religious group? Ok, Christianity had the spanish inquisition and the crusades, but it evolved (lol) past that point. But I've heard a lot of recent/semi-recent stories about islam in general.

From what I've gathered through a few humanities, classes, listening to the radio, and the internet, they constantly take offense and make demands of other cultures.

Muslims are lying, conquering, murderous fucks that humanity could do without.

Y'know, I don't know, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it has to do with power. You know, you keep the masses distracted with fanatical devotion and constant scapegoating. Certainly that was the case in medieval Europe with Christianity - life was shitty, but the powers-that-be discovered that they could use religion to keep the people distracted enough to prevent any social upheaval.

Look at Iran, for instance, where it seems that the leaders' denouncement of the west and Israel is in proportion to an ever-growing youth movement that wants to rebel against the current theocratic establishment. They keep the people in fear of us in order to limit the risk of having an outright rebellion. You know, "Do as we say or the US will sense our weakness and destroy us all."

Oh don't bring Iran into this...

Any country where the penalty for BEING raped is death needs to have a POSITIVE revolution asap.

Aegix Drakan wrote:
Although, I feel I need to make an observation. Is it just me, or is Islam MUCH more demanding than any other religious group?

I think it's more along the lines that Islam has that 10% of us are batshit crazy problem just like every other religion. The problem with Islam is the fact that their 10% happens to run countries.

And before Bel says anything. By batshit crazy I mean, "Hey lets go kill people for wearing their hat in the wrong way", and not the more mundane, "Hey we believe in a magical sky daddy" crazy.

Yes, well, being that belief in a magical sky daddy is inherently irrational, one could argue that it facilitates the existence of other irrational beliefs, such as killing a dude for wearing his hat the wrong way. I think most religions have at least a few rules that make absolutely no sense outside of "Magical sky daddy said so." Not that everyone takes it to that extreme, obviously, but I can see how "magical sky daddy" could be a "gateway" belief.

I.e. religions/cultures of the old Southern America who would sacrifice people to their gods by cutting out their heart, pretty much as a thank you for anything at all.

Ah, but that most definitely had a purpose - it was friggin' badass, and it scared the living shit out of anyone who might dare oppose them. Though in the end, they ended up getting out-badassed when the Spanish showed up with their guns and their plagues and their dude who looked like a god.

I wasn't actually even trying to make a point with that last post. I'm getting easily distracted now. For example This is one solution. To anything, I suppose. :goofy:

I think pornography is an excellent weapon against extremist islam. If you can convince teenagers and young men that a beautiful set of quivering breasts, erect nipples, and shapely legs is more desirable than death by suicide, then maybe they will start to really look at their options and start imagining a different life.

That's the problem with suicide bombers. Terror groups tend to pick people who have no other options for that particular role. People who are terminally ill, people who are desperately struggling to support their families, people in abject poverty who have no hope of making anything of their lives... These are the people they recruit for suicide bombings, because they know these people have nothing to look forward to. And in addition to all that, there are the horror stories of young men and women being raped in order to encourage them to go blow themselves up. The whole thing is insane.

there is a reason we the US of A support isreal. we are acting as God's hand to keep at bay those who would dare to hurt his chosen people. i'm just afraid the government is about to jump over to the towelhead's side now that barack oSama is elected (i still don't want to call him the President).

I used to think that too, because the people he was intending on hiring as staff were based on a very anti-Israel opinion base. However, they'll always need Israel there as a friendly landing strip, as Israel seems to keep the most sanity and sense around themselves, at least diplomatically. You're safer in Israel than in all of the neighboring regions, even in the worst of times.

ShadowTiger wrote: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?

ShadowTiger wrote: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.

The people who lived there had no choice about the matter. All of a sudden, there was a large UN-sanctioned immigration of Jewish people from Europe into their home and they couldn't do anything about it. In fact, the only reason that it was legal was because Britain owned the area (Palestine), as a part of their dying empire. So instead of giving the land back to the people who lived there when they stole it, they sent a bunch of Europeans to colonize it completely. Muslims really had no choice but to leave. First off, there simply wasn't enough land for them all. The Arabs who lived there were farmers. If you've ever been to a farm, you'll see how much land you need for just one farm. Israel was not to be a 'farming' nation. Right from the start they were given access to resources that the Arabs in that area never were. The choice given to them to become Israeli citizens is a joke. If you are not Jewish in Israel, your citizenship means nothing. In fact, it is illegal to even speak about your religion openly if you are not Jewish (something about trying to convert Jews).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A few of this guy's points were valid, but the vast majority of them are either outright lies or extremely slanted Anti-Arab sentiments. This is not surprising coming from an Israeli. There is a large amount of Arab-based racism on the part of Israelis these days. You can't really blame them, but you'd think the Jews in particular would understand the dangers of racism, and passing it on to your children.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-ANYONE in this involvement, but I really think that people really need to look at both sides of the situation without bias. I mean, what is really going on in this war?

If you look at it from a completely outside position, What you'll see is a Third-World country (The Palestinian Authority) with individual crazies within, attacking a First-World country (Israel) and doing little actual harm in the process. The First-World country then firebombs, uses chemical warfare, and refuses supplies to the entire Third-World country. In turn, the crazies within that country get even angrier, and continue to attack the First-World country with little effect, but even more damage to themselves.

This is fucked up. No matter what arguments you use on either side. My personal belief is that HAMAS should be exterminated because of the racism they stand for. But I do not condone any of Israel's actions. I refer to my original analogy:

firebug wrote:Israel is acting like a big brother kicking the shit out of his annoying little brother who just wont stop fucking with him.