the attacks haven't stopped with israel acting "disproportionate"
you said if israel just sits and takes it then the attacks won't stop. israel has been doing everything but sitting and taking it, and the attacks haven't stopped.
why not try something different?
That's fair. Post 285 makes the point that you've got to give people a better choice, but I swear that I could have remembered that we just fought a six year engagement where we tried to put a better choice on the table, and they went right back to fighting each other. I am trying not to conclude that our best policy is complete disengagement and just watching this chemical fire burn to the ground from a distance. I am not having much success.
Just scanning the comments on here, it does seem that just about everyone would like the US government to stop forcing it's citizens to support one side or the other (or both sides at the same time!) in this no win conflict. I'm sure that if RJ wants to support one side or the other he would gladly write that government a check voluntarily.
Tremendous NYT op-ed on how the "If Hamas wasn't around Israel would totally make peace" arguments are complete horseshit: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/1...-by-the-west.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referrer
Basically - Hamas effectively stepped down in Gaza recently (after Morsi lost control in Israel) and Israel and the US did everything possible to undermine the situation. Israel doesn't want peace that leaves a Palestinian state. They just want them gone, or at least that's damn sure how they are acting.
I don't know that they are being "disproportionate", but that's not the point of my post. The point is that you can't convincingly argue that he who owns a bullet proof vest that will probably stop the bullet has a duty to sit back and patiently await getting shots fired at him. I don't believe the Israeli whitewash of their version of these events, but I do believe that if I were watching a stream of rockets, mortar fire, homicide bombers and people tunneling into civilian areas, I'd do something about it.
That's fair. Post 285 makes the point that you've got to give people a better choice, but I swear that I could have remembered that we just fought a six year engagement where we tried to put a better choice on the table, and they went right back to fighting each other. I am trying not to conclude that our best policy is complete disengagement and just watching this chemical fire burn to the ground from a distance. I am not having much success.
The best response for Israel would have been to not antagonize the situation and to have worked with the PLO in the early part of this year when they had Hamas subdued and there was an opportunity to change the dynamic completely.
Quite frankly, it seems there is a decently large portion of the Israeli government and Army that WANTS Hamas shooting at them so they have an excuse to kill Arabs. They come off as quite simply baiting them. It's more likely they simply are unwilling to compromise in any way, but the result is the exact same.
Missed opportunty, what should they do now given where both sides are currently? I realy have no ideas about a 'good' solution.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-menachem-creditor/im-done-apologizing-for-i_b_5606650.html
This pretty much sums up what so many of you here fail to recognize. If Israel really wanted to beat the ever living fuck out of Palestine, they could simply do so. They aren't. They're responding to the fact, and this is not in dispute, that Hamas has repeatedly, and without warning, attacked Israeli civilans for fucking sport.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-menachem-creditor/im-done-apologizing-for-i_b_5606650.html
This pretty much sums up what so many of you here fail to recognize. If Israel really wanted to beat the ever living fuck out of Palestine, they could simply do so. They aren't. They're responding to the fact, and this is not in dispute, that Hamas has repeatedly, and without warning, attacked Israeli civilans for fucking sport.