Israel has invaded Gaza...
 

Israel has invaded Gaza, per news ticker beneath British Open re-run.

I have no data...

Yeah! That was coming. Hamas is dumb.

Hamas is fighting strictly to maintain relevance. It's hard to be relevant when you're dead though.

Israelis need their "Lebensraum", I guess?

Dave

There is nothing in Gaza that Israel needs. This is just because the rockets piss them off.

Now they will kill a bunch of people in Gaza, so the Gazians will stay pissed, and shoot some more rockets, in a while....

I just spoke to my son in Tel Aviv (he works with the State Dep't). He just returned from 10 days in Spain and Germany (he left for Spain before the shit hit the fan) and says that Tel Aviv is pretty quiet on the streets. Everybody is still going to work normally in Tel Aviv. Down the coast in Ashdod and Ashkelon, normal life is impacted quite a bit more. Tel Aviv is in a bubble and probably safer than any city any of us live in or near.

I pray you're right.

So why shoot rockets, if you are in such a weak position.

Islamic terrorism since Hamas is part of an international Islamist movement (Muslim Brotherhood?). Hamas does not recognize Israel and was democratically elected thus giving them legitimacy.

Shooting rockets at Israeli civilians is all they can do as a mark of their jihad.

Because if you don't, you fear you will lose power to people who will, because the populace contains a whole lot of pissed young men, who are the least logical of all humans.

You ever look at the demographics of Gaza?

Because Hamas wants to show the people of Gaza their willingness to fight Israel, hence asserting their relevance after being throttled by Egypt's new leadership and Syria no longer being able to provide financing.

There is a time for realism. The FARC/left wing rebels have been fighting in Colombia for decades and have recently realized the game is up. FARC agreed to sue for peace when it discern that it had become irrelevant and the Colombian people had moved past its methods and followers..

It is time for Hamas to be bold...recognize Israel right to exist and embarrass
the Israelis.

It is time to try something new.

Sounds interesting if they can get it past the hard heads on both sides, there's nothing in the status quo for the folks caught between them.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

Forgive me but :confused:. I get what you're saying about tactics but Colombia's troubles have always been about politics ala the Marxists vs. the Oligarchs with the 'helpful bloody hand' of Uncle Sam.

Israel is actually quite happy with the status quo. In fact, Tel Aviv is pretty much oblivious to what's going on in Gaza (or the West Bank). They have absolute military superiority and continue to build settlements. After Kerry's inability to get the sides together, one could easily enough say that we were the only ones who actually wanted a change to the status quo.

Kerry should've known better than to trust that Romney lovin' prick Bebe Netanyahu.

I don't like either one of them.

They both give me a case of the ass.

Hamas leadership has nothing else going for it that will keep them in power. It's not like Hamas is doing anything to improve the quality of life for the people who have put them in power. If living in Gaza is as bad we're told it is...it's not because of Israel. It's because of worthless Palestinian leadership. So they fire a few rockets and lob a few mortar rounds into a few Israeli neighborhoods and suddenly Hamas are heroes, everybody loves them, and everybody goes happily back home to their miserable existence with smiles on their faces.

The Marxists have realized that they were beaten and it was time to get the best deal. Chavez and Castro encouraged them in that direction. :D

Hamas has no hope of physically defeating the Jewish state, unless it acquires a nuclear suit case.

Only thing Hamas is achieving is increase punishment of its people. Israel and its universal connections are too powerful. Time to sue for peace.

Not then either. You keep confusing hurting an enemy with defeating them. Not the same thing at all.

No me: the stated aim of Hamas is to remove physically the Israeli state.

No doubt in my mind that if Hamas had the nuclear option, it would use it.
Have no illusion about the extreme position of Hamas.

It sees Israel as an intolerable imposition not only on the Palestinians but on
the Arab people in general.

I am saying it is time to step back from it suicidal attitude.

I can not but think if Israel were to treat the Palestinians as equals and stop the settlements. Give back some of the land seized. Take the high road and treat them as neighbors. The populace would come around and stop supporting Humas.

But blowing up homes and killing families will only incite after all.

It seems to me the Israelis want to wipe them off the map. They need look back at their own history of not so long ago and see the error in this.

Barney

While this may be Hamas' stated aim, the facts on the ground show that Israel is actively wiping Palestine off the map in the West Bank.

http://www.fmep.org/resources/public...esentation.pdf

If you must perpetually protect yourself from the world around you with an "Iron Bubble", or whatever those Zionist tyrants call it...........................I'm just sayin'.

I'm no fan of Hamas, but I don't have very much sympathy left for Israel either. I've had it with all of them. I'm thinking there will never be peace in the ME unless we nuke the entire region into oblivion and that includes those "settlement" building assholes in Israel.

Dave

Exactly. They have become what they despise. Hence my acidic reference to "Lebensraum".

Dave

Having traveled in the West Bank on several occasions (as recently as last November), I cannot help but have sympathy for the Palestinians, if not their tactics. I have also spoken to several of the settlers, many of whom are ultra-Zionist Americans. I've never met a more obnoxious bunch of @ssholes anywhere in my many travels.

I agree. Give the Israelis what they want, then when the bastards continue pushing and killing, they no longer have any excuse and the world sees them for what they have become.

BULLIES.

Dave

Well it worked for the Vietnamese.

I think most of the world already sees that.

Not that I am any great fan of the Palestinians, but the Israelis treat them like shit.

It's incredible to me, after the treatment their parents and grandparents had under the Nazi's, that they can't see that they are doing the same thing to the Palestinians. They might as well start wearing armbands with swastikas on them.

Comparing the Jews to Nazis is absolute bullshit and perhaps the most hateful offensive thing I've ever heard.

Ever notice that the Jews care about civilian casualties? Not only are the jihadist happy to hide behind women and children, they parade their dead bodies to show Israel's 'war crimes'. There's suckers born every minute though.

Haw! ;) There's something siren like about ME peace that suckers every President into announcing prematurely. One thing Carter can claim.

Well said. And where's the greater Islamic community? NONE of their 'brother' States in the area will give them more than refugee status. They're happy to send them rockets though, pointing to Israel as the bad guy gives them something to blame other than their pathetic domestic policies.

Good point.

Pete

Spare me your righteous indignation.

I call em like I see em.

I'm sick and tired of the US being Israel's bitch.

It's no coincidence that at least half of the architects of the Iraq War were Jewish neocons with dual Israeli/US citizenship.

And I'm pissed as Hell that those fucking bastards sent my son into harms way to make the Middle East safe for Israel.

Fuck those bastards.

How about their collective punishment practices? Netanyahu's response to the murder of the three settler kids was heavy-handed (and collective) in the extreme.

If any of the BS that Israel has often just put up with happened here we would stomp the assailants flat. It wouldn't be about hurting them, it would be about destroying them.

Pete

If any of the BS that Palestinians have often just put up with happened here we would stomp the assailants flat. It wouldn't be about hurting them, it would be about destroying them.

We stomp people flat if they happen to have a resource that we want.

We stomp people flat at the drop of a hat, and we'll drop the hat ourselves.

I would suggest you have it backwards, Barney. The day the last rocket or mortar round is lobbed into an Israeli town will be the day the conflict ends.

History? Here's the history. The rest of the world left the Jews of Europe hanging out to dry and twisting in the wind for 10 years. And now anybody thinks that Jews should trust anybody? That's the history they're looking at. That's the only history they should be looking at when considering what they oughta do to protect themselves from the annihilation promised by their friendly pacifistic neighbors who only want peace. The Palestinian populace will never come around. What history has shown is that if the populace were to stop supporting Hamas it will be in favor of those worse than Hamas. The Palestinian people have already shifted their support from old, worn out terrorist organizations like the PLO in favor of fresh and energetic terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.

Leave the Jews of Israel alone, no more mortars, no more rockets, no more maniacs with 5 pounds of gelignite strapped to their ass in an open market in Tel Aviv, and it all goes away, right away...and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza will have nobody to blame for their misery but their own leaders...and themselves.

To people like you, I've already committed original sin just by daring to criticize Israel. So the way I figure it, in for a penny, in for a pound.

What suicidal attitude? So Israel invades. They will take some losses, then Israel will pull out. Israel will try to make the punishment harsh, but there will actually be rather strict limits to how far they will go, in retaliation for a missle barrage that has caused, I think, one death....

Hammas isn't doing anything suicidal. They will come out of this just fine. Suicide, for them, would be becoming, in young Arab eyes, 'soft' on Isarel. Then their own people would get rid of them, something beyond Israel's power.

You said defeat of Israel. Now you say physical removal of Israel. "A suitcase bomb" is not enough for the first, and much less enough for the second. That's all I'm saying.

Basically, you're just throwing around this talk of Hamas using nukes as a way of saying how awful 'they' are. Doubtless some are passionate enough with the war emotion to want to kill some 10's of thousands of Israelis with a small nuke. But control hopefully there would lodge with more rational leadership who would realize the Israelis could and would kill ALL of them in retaliation. I believe this would be the case; I don't think the Hamas is a monstrous, crazed, monolithic 'they.' There are lots of teenagers of strong passion, but also older individuals capable of subtle thought--more like myself and you. Making non-suicidal strategy.

You fire rockets..kill probably one Israeli and loses 200 of your own people in the process. Isn't that suicidal?

It is logical to assume the worst if an organization used suicidal bombings as a strategy. I have no doubt Hamas would use the nuclear
option if they had it.

The North Vietnamese were always going all out. We were the ones holding back. It's not so much that it worked for the Vietnamese, as it is that it didn't work for us.

Even though it was their land to begin with.

Where have I heard that, before? :rolleyes:

Point begin, Israel can SUCK IT. And they are to be directly compared to Nazis, here.