Médecins Sans Frontières are warning that they lack important medicines.
@Alessan No, I don’t know what to do. Starving all Gazans out is probably not the best solution.
That is the conundrum here. How can Israel act calmly and thoughtfully for the long term so soon after events of the weekend (rhetorically)? Here in the US we had the same sentiment after 9/11. Our President announced from the rubble in NYC that “the people who brought down these buildings will hear from us!” The rage was pulsating, and we were going to make some heads roll. For us, it took some time to prepare and position that rage to the other side of the world. For Israel, the rage is at a target right there, close at hand. I hope TPTB do root-out the evil but also act with civility where warrated.
This sounds plausible to me, but since it’s now been asserted three times in 42 posts, someone really ought to come up with a cite. Is this credible?
Do you have a cite for this disgusting bigoted slander? We don’t have dual loyalty. Shame on you. I’ve met very few American Jews who don’t have sympathy for the Palestinians.
I absolutely know you don’t harbor that sort of hatred. The hateful thought you mentioned involving nukes is understandable under the circumstance, but reasonable people such as yourself calm down and become more rational, as you note you yourself did.
There was the “nuke them all” thought after 9/11 in the US. But, like yourself, after the initial shock reasonable people calm down.
There is, however, a problem with people who don’t calm down and become more rational, people who are in “nuke 'em” mode all the time, with or without provocation who will then use that hate as an excuse to commit atrocity.
I linked to a video of a Hamas official of that same sort of vile mindset who asserted multiple times that there were NO Israeli civilians, they were all soldiers and therefore, in his mind, acceptable targets. It’s the other side of the same coin made of hatred.
I don’t have a solution for the immediate crisis that doesn’t involve thousands of people dead on BOTH sides, to be honest. I wish I did.
I believe Hamas will be eradicated. They’ve basically stabbed a relative giant in the foot and the giant isn’t going to tolerate that. Hamas has a history of hiding behind civilians/human shields so that elimination will be bloody. They wanted a war with Israel and now they have it, with the greatest tragedy being the innocents on both sides that will be killed and maimed in the crossfire.
However, Hamas is not all Palestinians, just as bigoted anti-Palestinian Israelis are not all Israelis. I think it would be a very good thing long term if that distinction is maintained. This should be framed as war between Hamas and Israel, not anyone else and Israel. The Palestinians of the West Bank aren’t friendly, but they didn’t start or participate in this particular conflict. (Hezbollah on the Golan Heights does seem to be taking advantage, though. I can’t know for sure but suspect it was more a chance opportunity for them than any planned coordination. But I could be wrong.)
I would also like to see, after this is over, some introspection on the part of Israelis as to how the actions of their current government might have inflamed already existing problems in the Middle East. I wish my own country had done more of that after 9/11. Let me be clear - there is NO justification for the atrocities that occurred in either attack, but understanding is not at all the same thing as condoning. Better understanding, though, and better empathy with those you disagree with (and yes, that is very hard to do) is the only path to eventual peace.
Yes. They do.
They should mean never again for anyone. Never again one ethnic/religious/national group targeted for abuse, second-class status, or worse yet, elimination. Never again a nation forced off its land and turned into a diaspora without a home.
It has long puzzled me how a group of people who had been a diaspora for 1900 years could so readily force another group of people off their land, turning them into a diaspora. (Just as it has long puzzled me that a nation founded on the concept of all men being equal could spend 80 years buying and selling human beings, and founded on the notion of freedom/self-determination continues to try to impose its will on other nations) The land on which Modern Israel stands was not vacant when the aliyah occurred. The methods with which Israel has attempted to deal with that fact for the past 75 years have been, shall we say, less than optimal in results.
Personally, I’d advocate for a two-state solution. Not semi-autonomy, but true independence for both parties. I’m frequently told by people I know on both sides of the issue that that is impossible and unacceptable. I think a satisfactory compromise is when both sides are equally unhappy, which would seem to describe a two-state solution. I’m sure there would be security risks for such an arrangement, but given the recently demonstrated security risks of the current situation are you in a better place right now?
And if I were Dictator of the World She Who Must Be Obeyed I’d say NOBODY gets to own Jerusalem. Everybody gets access, but it is to be run by a government completely independent of any present or past authority that has controlled the city. Which probably means UN control of some sort, not that past history of that sort of thing has ever worked out. People can continue to live there, work there, and visit the holy places but everyone has to behave. You don’t have to like the neighbors, but you aren’t allowed to hurt or kill them anymore. There’s a hell of a lot of ugly irony that a place whose name means “city of peace” is so blood soaked. Anyone caught committing violence in the city will be banned from it for life. The two respective nations can have their capitals elsewhere - presumably Israel would use Tel Aviv and Palestinians can choose what they like, as long as it’s not al-Quds. No one gets to place their seat of government or politics in that city anymore. This paragraph is a fantasy in our world, of course. There’s no impartial party who can do that. The only people who can bring that about are the Palestinians and the Israelis and if they could truly cooperate to that extent they wouldn’t be having such problems.
Bottom line, back in reality: I don’t think there’s a good solution here, so you have to start trying to find acceptable solutions, that is, solutions that both side can live with even if they don’t really like them.
Sounds like you just came up with the original 1947 UN partition proposal for the Palestine Mandate.
Which was rejected out of hand by the whole Arab League and resulted in intense civil violence in the Mandate.
The UN Powers, kind of establishing what would become typical, refused to get their hands dirty actually directly enforcing the partition, and upon the Brits bugging out the Arab League attacked and war it was.
Sorry - just realized I had already replied to that post. Move along, nothing to see here…
Like I said - neither side seems open to that solution.
But it’s been awhile. Maybe we should try again.
I kind of agree with this. It has been a while, and the players and motivations are different now. And it’s evident the current arrangement isn’t working, for anyone.
I don’t know if anyone else has already brought this up (from Times of Israel):
Mounting questions over Israel’s massive intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for a surprise Hamas assault were compounded Monday when an Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big” — which included an apparent direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister to the prime minister.
The Egyptian official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big,” without elaborating.
Further discussion of the warnings (which Netanyahu denies) at the link.
Unfortunately, I believe that there are enough “hard-asses” in any given population that an appropriately nuanced response taking into consideration cultural and historical considerations and realities would be regarded as “soft on crime” writ large.
Unfortunately it seems that any middle east-related situation is an almost intractable problem with so many historical antecedents (where does one start - Old Testament? Paris peace talks of 1919? the holocaust? post-WWII partitioning? etc etc)
And there will always be at least party who will feel unjustly treated in any deal and for any peace process to work, all parties will have to accept getting elements of a raw deal.
The two-State solution was the only thing that made sense in 1947 and it’s the only thing that makes sense now, but it seems to be getting further and further away. 
The status quo of endless Occupation is clearly unacceptable and unsustainable. And the only idea that seems more absurd than a State run by Hamas living in peace with a State run by Religious Zionist fanatics is the idea that these people could live in peace as part of the same country.
It appears my worst fears are being realized as Israel seems to be gearing up for something really horrific. They have cut off the water supply to 2.3 million people, nearly half of them children. They are refusing to allow humanitarian organizations to bring food and medical supplies to civilians.
I don’t see how bombing Gaza or invading and occupying it will particularly help the situation, but I will defend Israel’s moral right to do these things. These acts of collective punishment against civilian populations are indefensible and must stop.
If Netanyahu doesn’t stop… what then should be done? Invasion of Israel? Deposing of Netanyahu?
At this point the government of Israel is on the cusp of killing a couple million people by thirst and hunger.
What do you think should be done?
What do you think actually could be done?
Agree with this.
I misread this the first time. I believe your are saying Israel has a moral right to bomb Gaza, but not to cut off water and other necessities from the entire region.
Israel has the right to wage war on Hamas. Unfortunately, Hamas is deeply embedded in Gaza, where 2 million other people are stuck - people who did not breach any border fence or shoot or kidnap anyone. But those people are going to get caught in the crossfire, sadly.
We’ve been watching i24, an English language news service originating in Tel Aviv. You can watch their live feed on YouTube. The reporting and video from Gaza have shaken us in a way we haven’t seen since 9/11. These animals wiped out entire families! Burned people alive! Beheaded babies in their cribs! We of a Western mindset can’t fathom brutality of this degree, though we’ve certainly seen it before. My biggest fear is that this will go nuclear. These people have already shown they will stop at nothing.
They aren’t animals. They’re human beings. They are very, very bad human beings, I would even say evil, but they aren’t animals. As a general rule calling the enemy “animals” leads to more escalation and greater atrocity. Things are bad enough, let’s not throw even a little fuel on the fire.
That said, Hamas must be dealt with. That level of chaotic violence can’t be tolerated.
Please do keep in mind that the blame and the guilt resides with Hamas, an organization that people choose to join. It does not belong to and ethnic or religious group. It is important to keep focused on the actual guilty parties and not get sidetracked.
Sure we can. WWI and WWII were prime examples of the Western capacity to be awful to each other.
Let’s not kid ourselves. This level of horror is within the capability of humans beings. The big difference is that most people don’t do these terrible things. Hamas chooses to commit atrocities. I expect they will continue to claim they have been “forced” to do these things but no one mind-controlled them. It’s like an abusive man claiming his wife “forced” him to break her jaw. No, she didn’t, no matter how much she pissed him off. He choose to break her jaw. Hamas chose to, as you say, slaughter entire families, burn people alive, behead people, etc. They need to be stopped and held to account for their actions.
It will not go nuclear.
First, Hamas does not have nuclear weapons. If they did they would have used them already.
Second, Israel isn’t going to drop a nuke because the whole area is small and the entirety of Israel is downwind from Gaza. The Israels won’t use a nuke because doing so will irradiate not just Hamas but their own people.
True. But, Tehran is far from Israel, and if a clear connection is made between Iran and these recent events, …it could make one pause.