How exactly? It’s a rather chicken or the egg type situation here. How would you propose to make living conditions in Gaza ‘tolerable’ (whatever that means)? Impose it on them?
Yet they keep happening. Again, how do you propose to stop them from launching these attacks directly at Israeli citizens? And launching them from within the shields of their own people?
Probably true. But how do you fix it? As long as Hamas remains there will be attacks, and those attacks will come from within the shield of their own civilian population…which means that Israel has two choices. Just take it or retaliate knowing there will be civilian collateral damage. So…what do you propose exactly? I’m all for having this situation fixed…I’ve just never heard anyone come up with a reasonable way to do so.
And to answer the OP, no, American civilians aren’t legitimate targets. Palestinian civilians aren’t legitimate targets either…nor are Israeli. Unfortunately, militant Palestinians tend to directly attack Israeli civilians, and they do so from positions close to or even within civilian population or civilian services (like hospitals and churches). They do this quite deliberately for several reasons…one, to inflame Arab (and world) opinion against Israel and two because it’s the only way they CAN engage Israel. If they tried to come out in the open to fight there wouldn’t be much of a problem anymore, since most of them would be DRT. So, they count on some measure of restraint from Israel to no just bomb indiscriminately near civilian targets, while also counting on the fact that Israel can’t just do nothing.
It all depends on who’s ox is getting gored. This board does tend to have quite a bit of pile on type behavior, depending on the subject. If you happen to be the juicy bit of chum in the water then it can be quite frustrating when the sharks start circling about.
Theres plenty of us who are upset that this is happening but believe the fault lies with the cowards hiding among civilians to attack another country, not the country defending itself from attack.
Jolly Roger is right. Diogenes, your analogy is incorrect. If you shoot a low-grade missile at me, you shouldn’t be surprised when high-grade missiles come raining down on you. And if your house is destroyed and your family killed, well…sucks to be you, dude - you shouldn’t have fired the first shot.
I haven’t seen anyone do this to be honest. However, why don’t instead of mirroring some supposed position you go into some details and explain the Palestinians legitimate grievances (they do have them after all), some details about this particular situation with Hamas and how they were justified in their rocket attacks, how this was an aggressive act by Israel, how their response my not be 100% justified, etc? That’s what this board is all about after all…reasoned debate discussing the issues.
Not strawman rebuttals. I’m really interested in someone putting together a reasoned list of the above discussing these things from the Palestinians perspective…as opposed to the ‘debate’ we mostly seem to be getting from those opposed to Israel and in favor of the Palestinians. So…take a shot at some reasoned dialogue on this DtC and see what happens.
What church do you attend? What are their views on Israel & how it fits in with Bible prophecy?
I know my evangelical church leans to a strong secure Israel, as well as human rights for Palestinians, but if the latter keeps attacking the former & will not work towards peace, oh well. Of course, my church also supports missions work to both areas as we believe Israelis & Palestians all need Jesus.
You’d be surprised to discover that Israelis, or at least naturally-born Israelis, aren’t that quick to call people antisemites. Sure, we may joke about how all people of such-and-such a nationality are antisemites, but that’s just crap we heard from our parents. Most Israeli Jews of my generation or younger don’t accuse people of antisemitism, mainly because we wouldn’t know an antisemite if they saw one. We don’t bump into many here, you see, so we don’t have that special “bigotry-radar” that all minority groups, be they Jews, blacks, gays or whatever, develop as a survival method. Not being a minority group, we have no need for it.
As a result, our familiarity with “old-world” antisemitism is largely academic, which means that we are pretty much oblivious to its more subtle aspects (as a rule, Israelis aren’t big on the concept of subtlety). To us, the antisemites were people like the Nazis; and seeing as a Nazi is the absolute worst thing you can call someone, we don’t use the term “antisemite” lightly. It’s like accusing someone of being a pedophile - you don’t do it until you have absolute, incontrovertible proof.
I wonder what would happen if Israelis did hate Palestinian Arab Muslims as much as their leadership hates Israel. We’d be looking at an organized, massive genocide. Like the official strategy of Hamas.
The borders with Egypt have been closed just as tightly as the ones with Israel, but Hamas launched rockets at Israel and not Egypt. You’re blaming Israel for Palestine’s failure, but not Egypt. Why is that?
What exactly should Israel do to make living conditions in Gaza tolerable? Allow foreign aid? Check. Stick to cease fire agreements without being the first to break them? Check. Force their own citizens out of communities they built with their own hands, to give the people attacking them room for a community of their own? Check. What else is there? Stop existing?
71% of Americans think the US should not take sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But 99.9% (I’m estimating here) of US politicians support Israel.
So, no, it wouldn’t be fair to blame the US populace. Unless you blame us for not rising up en masse against our representatives, and I can see the logic in that argument. It’s like the argument that the Iraqis should have risen up against Hussein so that we wouldn’t have to go in there and bust the place up.
The “first” shot? We are spoon fed little drips and dribbles from the media. Each crisis is posed as its own little vignette, independant from all others.
This is not an isolated incident where Hamas decided to begin launching rockets into Israel.
What could motivate someone with a .22 to fire said “first” shot against insurmountable odds. What is the causation?
As a citizen of a representative democracy that has done things deserving of death, you yourself deserve death. You can easily promote justice in the world by carrying out the sentence yourself.
The fact you haven’t done so shows that (i) you don’t really believe that all citizens in a representative democracy are personally responsible for the government’s actions or (ii) the U.S. hasn’t done anything so bad that it deserves the death penalty or (iii) you lack the courage of your convictions or (iv) you tell me.
They’re not immune. Nor is a citizen of a country with an elected leadership that engages in trade with the U.S. Nor is a citizen of a country with an unelected leadership who trades with the U.S. because if they really didn’t like their government, they’d overthrow it. Nor is a citizen of a country with a government (elected or unelected) that doesn’t trade with the U.S., but knowingly trades with countries that trade with the U.S.
There. Everybody on Earth is a legitimate target. Happy now?