Pun unintended?
In any case, Kimstu, I would definitely like to address your previous post about Hamas’ reception by Palestinian society. Do you have any cites that would help me understand where you’re coming from?
Dude. When you give a terrorist group recognition, encouragement, and funding, you are supporting them. Saying that “well, we did it with our fingers crossed because we were secretly hoping to destroy them” doesn’t absolve you from being a supporter of terrorism. Not in my book, at least.
? Could you point out more specifically which “previous post” you’re referring to? I don’t recall posting in this thread on that subject, but it’s been a long thread and it could have just slipped my mind.
If you support someone in order to pit them against someone else it’s not the same as supporting them to further their goals. Likewise, if I give you a knife and sent you to find a hulking guy covered in scars while snickering “They’ll kill each other now.” I’ve not really got your best interests at heart.
D’oh! I saw that I glanced at it too quickly, it was Kezami, not Kimstu. Stupid mistake on my part and I apologize.
But, with that being said, want to discuss Palestinians’ possible reactions to Hamas and how deep the support for their agenda runs?
I have nothing to add to this thread, except to say: FinnAgain, you’ve done an outstanding job debating in this thread, and your knowledge of the subject is very impressive. The only points that I had intended to make have already been done so by you, only much more persuasively and clearly than I could have.
Yes, I understand that. I’m not claiming that dishonest support for a terrorist organization is exactly the same thing as honest support for it. I’m simply saying that it does to some extent count as “supporting” terrorists, both practically and ethically.
If I’m one crazy wicked violent bitch, and you know that, and you give me a knife (!) and send me out to find the hulking scarred guy hoping that we’ll kill each other, and I find him and kill him with your knife and take all his weapons and become even more dangerous as a result, you are partially responsible for that outcome, because you supported me. You don’t get a free pass for your actions just by saying “But but but but, I meant things to turn out differently! I didn’t really want her to win, honest!”
In addition to all the other problems with that attitude, it provides a potential excuse to all supporters of terrorism, sincere or otherwise. If they change their minds later on, they can just claim “Ha! I never really meant my support sincerely in the first place! I was just pitting them against another enemy!” I’d rather hold people accountable for what they actually do than waste time in arguing about whether they had their fingers crossed when they did it.
You haven’t ‘proven’ anything. You think you have, but you haven’t. You haven’t addressed my points. What you have actually done is quote me line by line and then say something that’s only tangentally related to what I am saying. Basically you want me to just agree with what I see as a very sophomoric idea of good and evil, something if you’ll notice in every thread I post in on the dope that I take issue with. I think that you are choosing a team, and you don’t really know what Good and Evil are. People are not good or evil, nations are not good or evil. Actions can be good or evil, but no one is one or the other. That’s where I take exception, and that’s why I won’t respond to every point in your marathon posts, because I don’t see much point. All I see is rhetoric trying to harangue into agreeing with you. You haven’t shown ANYTHING I’ve said to be false, not once. You’ve stated your opinion as fact and then backed it up with a fact that’s only sort of related to the argument at hand. You think it’s a fact that Israel is morally superior, I think it’s opinion that Israel is morally superior, and opinion that I think is incorrect. I’m not going to jump into defending Hamas so that your tangental attacks on my opinion can be validated, because I am not saying either side is superior, it’s a war, both sides have rhetoric and I’m not going to choose sides, no matter how warm and fuzzy it might make you feel. If it takes me making a judgement call on a puerile sense of good and evil in order for you to respect my judgement, then it’s probably better that you don’t trust my judgement because it’s a waste of my time to be talking to you, as I am not going to address your posts line by line ad nauseum until you actually get back onto the track of understanding what I’m saying.
Erek
So I take it that you’re just typing to hear the sound of your keys and you can’t actually point to any specific example of me doing what you’ve claimed?
As far as I can tell there are very, very few points you’ve actually responded to. You evade, you refuse to answer, and then have the nerve to say that I haven’t addressed your points.
…
Why make stuff up? Especially when it’s in black and white for everybody in this thread to read?
You said, for instance, that Hamas’ actions were only due to them having their back up against a wall. When I proved that Hamas’ actions were consitently undertaken even when Israel was trying to negotiate for peace, you ignored it. I guess you didn’t see much of a “point” in intellectual honesty. And now you want to pretend that there wasn’t “ANYTHING” that I disproved?
Mmmmm hmmmmm.
Cite, winged purple monkey?
Because I saw you flying around the trees and eating bannanas, but, erm, it’s not worth it to me to point out where that happened. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Translation: Waaaah! I won’t address anything you say and will only continue to evade and make unsupported and untrue accusations.
And by the way, you may cast it as a refusal to address my posts line by line, but the fact of the matter, that I’ve already cited in this thread, is that you ignore virutally everything I say . If I don’t “understand” you, point out where, stop whinging and refusing to actually address anything, at all.
Oh, and, this is, what, the fourth post where you’re saying it’s a waste of your time to talk to me? Your time must not be very valuable to you.
Here is the perfect example of you not proving anything and taking your arguments tangentally. You never proved anything about Hamas’ actions being consistent. You keep conflating Hamas with every Palestinian that had a problem with Israel as though they are Hamas. Hamas wasn’t a power before 1948, so you’re points about “Since 1948” have no purpose whatsoever, you are just preaching blind rhetoric. You haven’t proven or disproven anything, that’s the point. Your opinion isn’t fact.
The rest of your posts are just attempts to insult me and goad me onto your playing field. I am posting to let you know exactly why I think arguing with you is pointless, hopefully you’ll understand it. What you have done is provide me with two options for viewing this situation, and I don’t agree with either of them, so until you wake up to the fact that not only is this not a black and white issue, that not only are their shades of grey, but there is a whole spectrum of color that makes up the human experience and affects everyone on this planet, and I’m not going to just oversimplify it by declaring one side the good guys and the other the bad guys. So because I don’t want to choose sides, I don’t see any point in arguing with someone who thinks that this debate must be put into such simplistic terms, because no matter how many facts you might be able to spew at me your argument is still lacking in sufficient sophistication to discuss it in any meaningful way.
Erek
Fifth post telling me how pointless it is to post to me.
Irony so thick you could cut it with a knife.
This is getting absolutely absurd. I did indeed prove that Hamas’ actions remained consistent even during negotiations for peace. Why deny it when it’s in the thread in a post?
Honestly, I don’t understand your tactics here. Do you think that if you keep repeating the same untruth enough times it will become true?
Cite, winged purple monkey?
Again, I don’t understand your tactics. Do you honestly believe that continued attempts at making things up will make them true? I’ve shown how the same financial and political backers of the '48 war have supported Hamas and their agenda. Will your pretending that I haven’t done this erase my posts from the thread?
I’ll use Tom’s word and state that you’re being tremendously disingenuous. You claim that it’s an opinion and not a fact, but that is simply an untruth that you’ve invented. It is a fact that Hamas has the same political, ideoligical and financial backers that have participated in the campaign of genocide since '48. It is a fact that even during negotiations for peace Hamas responded with suicide attacks. These things are facts, and no ammount of pretending on your part will change that, I’m afraid.
Please learn the difference between a fact and an opinion.
Translation: the rest of your posts are just attempts to point out my poor behavior and get me to address something, anything, and/or provide cites for my untrue claims about your positions. Well, you can’t make me!
Um… except you steadfastly refuse to provide a single cite for what you claim my behavior is, even though I can and have provided cites that I’ve done the exact opposite of what you’re claiming.
Pffffffft. I have included numerous factual challenges, which even now you evade madly and claim are only ‘opinions’. Like, for instance, Hamas’ consistent use of terrorism even during peacetime. Ignore that all you like, but clasping your hands over your eyes doesn’t really make you invisible.
Translation: I don’t like your paradigm so I’m going to run away and refuse to answer any of your factual challenges, because even though they prove me wrong… um… waaah! Unfair! Waaah!
FinnAgain Ok, so I will try to explain this succinctly. I think your arguments are veiled ethnocentrism. What is very thinly veiled is a contempt for ALL Palestinians. Hamas hasn’t been around since 1948, it is different organizations that have had a similar agenda who before 1948 opposed the Jewish settlement while they were in the process of settlement. The rhetoric got really fiery and that’s where we are at right now. Now the thing is that if you are going to conflate Hamas with every group that’s ever shared that particular piece of rhetoric, then what you are doing is conflating Hamas with all Palestinians. So I think that your stance is anti-peace. You seem to want nothing less than complete and total domination of the Palestinian people. Fatah if you’ll recall was militant back in the day as well. The point is that the Palestinians were dominated in that region by the Israelis, and they didn’t get the help from their Arab neighbors that they expected to. Now both sides have been involved in a long and bloody conflict. The side that doesn’t have tanks straps bombs to their chest and walks into a Sbarro’s. The side that does have tanks bulldozes whole sections towns if one sniper climbs onto the roof and starts shooting at the Israeli settlements that were often settled illegally by militant Israeli settlers. Israel because they are in such a position of extreme dominance is more capable of taking a softer rhetoric, but their actions speaks louder than their words, and the reality of the situation is that the Israelis are a lot better off than the Palestinians, and both sides have killed Civilians.
So from what I can tell of your argument you wouldn’t be happy with any leadership of Palestine except some fantasy leadership that is not militant at all. The problem with realpolitik is that states don’t negotiate with entities incapable of projecting force in any meaningful way. So that’s the rub of the situation, that’s why I won’t oversimplify it. I want to see peace, and I know that any organization that ends up running Palestine will have terrorist roots, and that not negotiating with terrorists is not an option for anyone who seriously considers peace, because what impetus is their to negotiate with people who aren’t shooting at you?
So I’d recommend you go see Munich, and sit down and give this issue a lot more thought. I am not arguing with your facts, I never once said any of your facts was incorrect, I only disagreed with the conclusion those facts brought you to, and I’m not going to go line by line to show you in each individual case why I think the ‘fact’ you quoted is only tangentally related to the argument we are having.
Erek
If you want peace with the Palestinians you’re going to have to deal with an organization that has the ‘same backers since 1948’. That’s the reality. In order to make peace with your enemy you have to negotiate with your enemy. There isn’t anyone else to run Palestine, there are no groups that are not involved in ‘terrorism’ in Palestine. Your complaint is not about Hamas it’s about Palestine in general.
You. Have. Quoted. The Quaran. Four times. Four. Four times. Thrice and once.
Hamas qoute the same passage from the Quaran but I fail to see how that is more significant than, say, Article eight:
Let’s try the Talmud on for size–it would hardly be fair to just qoute the bad stuff from the Quaran:
It gets worse, I assure you. Would you care to define evil for us? Please note that I have no more grudges with Judaism than Christianity, Mormon religion or Scientology. Religion is a neurological disease.
If your Quaran qoute is applicable, the quote above must also be.
How people intend to solve a religious war with politics is utterly beyond me. The blame doesn’t lie as much with Isreal or Palestine as it does with the UN, Britain and the US. If you kick a dog for a long enough time, it will eventually bite. The most viable option now must be to give Hamas a chance and see if it won’t become tamer with added responsibility–I seem to remember a similar approach having been taken recently elsewhere over yonder in the eastern region. IIRC the USA had no problems with dealing with the Devil when it came to the Sunnis?
You wanted democracy and that’s what you got. Getting your panties in a bunch when the winner of an election isn’t what you hoped for is …well it’s not jingoistic, I’ll give you that. International sanctions would obviously just make the Palestinians more hateful of Israel and the West, spurring more suicide bombings, probably against civilians, since the Israelian army can hardly be attacked with what the Palestinians currently have at their disposal. Pretty much everyone involved in the Isreal/Palestine conflict have, are and will continue to do make things gradually worse save for a monumental ideological change. Israel has been doing very well over all recently, IMHO, but the Palestinians need a little more time to get used to a different playing field. If Hamas resume attacks on Israel, though, I can’t see how that would not be a declaration of war and I fully understand and expect Israel to respond with its considerable fury in which case.
Oh, and before you start pointing out my idiocy regarding choice of words, I am a foreigner. Factual errors, lack of knowledge and general stupidity is regardless of nationality, though.
That is all. Zay mir gezunt.
Isn’t the point of this whole debate the fact that the Palestinians just elected Hamas to represent them?
I’m sure Ghandi wouldn’t have agreed with this statement. I think he said something like if it wasn’t the British he was fighting against he would never have been successful. If the enemy is the former USSR, then they probably wouldn’t have respected you and dealt fairly with you if you didn’t have a gun to shoot back with, but Israel isn’t the former USSR. The continued violence on the Palestinians part gains them nothing other than what they have currently. Unfortunately, the culture in the ME works against a pacifist solution.
Why is that? Are the Israelis using these quotes as a reason and basis for their actions?
By the way, you are not being honest and are acting in tremendously bad faith and simply making things up about me while still ignoring factual refutations and pretending that they don’t exist. This will be my last post to you, because you really don’t have any intention of behaving with any degree of intellectual integrity, at all.
Cite for such ethnocentrism, especially since I’m not an Israeli?
Again, I know it probably comes as a surprise to you, but words have meaning that you don’t just get to assign to them whenever you feel like it.
Just becuase you imagine something doesn’t mean it exists. But it’s nice to know that you continue with your baseless slander.
Why do you keep using this tactic?
I have already shown that the same groups with the same ideology have been supporting Palestinian political groups.
Why pretend that your flights of fancy are equal to proven facts? Maybe it’s because you’re not sure of the difference between an opinion, and a fact? I’m really baffled by why you think your tactics will work.
Again, I have proven, as a fact, that the same groups have supported, in varying ways, the political, tactical, and ideological agenda of militant Palestinian political groups. I have argued that many Palestinian political groups are not distinct from the surrounding Arab regimes. As of yet nobody has refuted this claim, because it’s the truth. If you are unable to comprehend, for some reason, that Arab regimes which have supported Palestinian political groups are not “all Palestinians” then I really can’t help you.
But as a quick exercise I’d invite you to look up the names of the leaders of those regimes, and then the names of all Palestinians. You’ll find far more in the second category than the first.
I have already stated that my desire is for a two state solution with peace. I have not only done that I have already refuted this same claim that you have made once before, with a cite.
You are now just making stuff up because you like to hear yourself type.
Again, do you think if you make things up, they become true?
I have said that the Palestinians should have a soverign state as long as they reject terrorism.
Again, as an exercise look up the meaning of the word “sovereign” and “dominated”. You’ll find that, miracle of miracles, they are not the same word after all.
They never stopped being militant. I’d provide a cite, but you’d ignore it as you have the rest and pretend that I hate all Palestinians.
Funny… they could strap bombs to their chests and walk into IDF patrols. Odd, that, choosing civilian instead of military targets. (You still never provided a cite for your supposed massacre, by the way.)
Yes, actions do speak louder than words. Funny, then, that Israel hasn’t initiated a campaign targeting Palestinian civilians, your still un-cited “massacre” notwithstanding. And only one side targets civilians and attempts to maximize civilian casualties while totally ignoring military targets. Little hole in your rhetoric, there.
Hah. What a tragedy, I’d only be happy with a regime that renounced genocide and civilian targeted killings. What an odd standard I hold!
So everybody ignores Switzerland, eh?
Awww, thanks, but it’s a rather pathetic debating tactic to cite fiction as something that proves a point. And, of course, I haven’t given the issue any thought. Nopers. I’m glad that you, in your eminently-superior, fact-avoiding, non-cite-giving debating glory have deigned to inform me that I need to think about the issue more. I shall treasure your words.
Sure… you’re not arguing with my facts and never said they’re incorrect. Sure you didn’t.
(Do you honestly expect this tactic to work, and that Dopers will be so foolish as to not be able to read other posts in this thread? Honestly? Ah well.)
Again this obfuscation. You haven’t done it in any cases. You’ve steadfastly avoided any and all factual refutations, called them ‘opinions’, and refused to retract your positions.
Are you running out of straw yet? I’ve never said that one can’t negotiate with people who have a history of terrorist connections, you’re making that up. I’ve said that they have to renounce the continuation of such tactics.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the flapping of your purple wings.
Just a hint, but “elected government which refuses to renounce terrorism” ≠ “All Palestinian People.”
I know, the fallacy of composition is a fallacy because some drunken people were just making up names, but let’s pretend that fallacies reflect errors in though, eh?
I should certainly hope not (To communicate anything to a Goy about our religious relations would be equal to the killing of all Jews, for if the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly), but the Jews are in Palestine because they have a “divine right” to be there, a right given to them by God, apparently. Therefore, all their actions there must be derived from the same root, their religion, of which the Tamud is a representative. At least the Muslims are honest. Like I said before, this is not mearly a political issue–it’s a religious one.
… I am so in over my head here in GD. Sorry.
Yes it is. So I guess my question would be, “Is there anyone that the Palestinians could elect to lead them that you’d be happy with and wouldn’t villify?”
Fair enough. I still say it’s more complex. Basically the Israelis thought they had some divine claim to that land. The Palestinians thought that they didn’t and I agree with them. No one has a divine claim to any land. If you can take it and hold you can take it and hold it, and that is the only right to land anyone has. So the Israelis have the right to that land because they have taken it and held it, but for no other reason. Pointing fingers is pointless. What happened here is that a poor disorganized group got overrun by a better organized and better funded group, simple as that. No one is right or wrong, and both sides moral legitimacy is based upon extremely ethnocentric ancient texts, neither of which I think have any legitimacy whatsoever.
FinnAgain Your inability to argue this like an adult without calling me a liar makes you unworthy of speaking to.
I don’t think this accurately reflects Gandhi’s views, and I’d like to see a cite from Gandhi’s writings if it’s to be supported. AFAIK, what Gandhi felt about ruthless despots like Hitler (as opposed to less ruthless ones like the British in India) was that they would be very difficult to resist nonviolently, and would take a long time to overcome, but ultimately could be resisted successfully:
In the long run, Gandhi believed, nonviolent resistance always works because violent oppressors simply can’t sustain their control of unwilling subjects indefinitely. In the short run, though, what makes nonviolent methods work is public attention and the pressure of public opinion. If nobody cares what happens to the nonviolent resisters, or if negative PR isn’t a disincentive for the oppressors, then nonviolence won’t accomplish anything in the short term.
When Ghandi compares Hitler to Alexander, does he refer to Alexander the Great? If so it’s interesting that he would consider Alexander as being “not so remote”.
Erek
Yes, that’s the Alexander referred to. And if you people don’t stop that annoying misspelling of the name “Gandhi”, I’m gonna rip your lungs out and stomp on your eyeballs and… oops, I guess that’s not really in the spirit of nonviolence, though. 