Ahem, mate I think that’s he meant it. Certainly how I read it.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
What else are Israelis thinking of when they think of Israeli-Egyptian relations these days?
[/QUOTE]
The possibility of war perhaps? The possibility of worsening relations with a major power on their borders? The possibility that Egypt might allow an open border with Gaza, thus supplying to folks living there with all manner of new military toys to play with?
Welllllll…leaving aside the fact that rocket launchers don’t have feelings (they are simply tubes that launch rockets), I’d say my own least optimal choice for what I’d want Israel to do would be to bomb the crap out of my house and kill my family. Somewhere on that spectrum would probably be ‘invade and smash Gaza to the ground and use our guts to grease their tank treads’, and perhaps the old standby of crushing the enemy (a.k.a. me and my buds, if I’m a Palestinian), seeing us driven before them (on the way towards a major new war with Egypt), and to hear the lamentation of our women (which means we are all dead…major suckage).
But then, I’m not one to kick an angry bear (with a thorn in it’s paw and having a REALLY bad day) squarely in the nuts to see what it will do, so it’s rather hard to put myself into the proper Palestinian mindset.
-XT
See post #33.
I saw it. Was there a specific point you wanted to make? Could you detail it in more than one sentence? 
-XT
Cite?
So what do smart people do to the “angry bear (with a thorn in it’s paw and having a REALLY bad day)”?
Suck his balls I presume?
If Eqypt turns into a theocracy after having seen how that’s been working out in Iran for the past 30 years, then that’s what they deserve.
I am sensing an excluded middle of bear-management here. 
What response could Israel take to the rocket attacks from Gaza, that would be most injurious to the cause of the parties launching them?
Nuking Gaza? Committing genocide and wiping out the Palestinians? Releasing compromising pictures of Khaled Mashal having an orgy with Ismail Haniyeh? Where are you trying to go with this?
I assume he’s making some sort of pitch for quietism/pacifism on the part of the Israelis.
I am trying to present the question for debate. I actually have no opinion as to the answer (though I suppose I could name any number of things Israel might do that wouldn’t hurt the cause).
I never said that the MB were more radical than comparable groups in the ME and that’s not what Brain said either, though he may have alluded to it with his weird reference to the “Ayatollah’s Islamists”.
Brain claimed that they were less radical and less bigoted than the RR in the US and comparable to the Christian Democrats.
Such a claim is not only demonstrably false, but it’s utterly idiotic.
The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.
Anyone who claims that such a group is comparable to the Christian Democrats in German either does not know anything about those two groups or they have been given really horrible information.
Now, is the MB as militant as they used to be? No, because they didn’t like getting locked up in prisons and tortured.
Trying to compare “radicals” in the US to “radicals” in the Islamic World is utterly foolish. For a variety of reasons, if you scratch below the surface of most clerics in the Middle East, whether Christian or Muslim, you’ll find that even most of the moderates tend to hold somewhat medieval views on a wide range of subjects.
That doesn’t answer the question of whether they are worse or better than similar groups across that region.
All of us are rightly concerned about the next group taking leadership in Egypt. But it serves no one any good to speculate wildly and inaccurately about the makeup of that group. I simply want to know if the MB, while probably differing extremely from something I’d be comfortable here in the US, would be a moderating voice within that part of the world
Yes, maybe a lot of their views are medieval, but are they more or less so than other groups in the area?
I’ve given up on hoping that Egypt will become a peaceful, secular democracy with no religious influence. We can’t even get that here in the US, which is what I’m sure Brain was referring to: too many Christians here want to turn the US into a theocracy. But within the civilized western world, the US style of extremist Christian fundamentalism is more extreme than a lot of the comparable groups. Is the MB the same way in Egypt? Or are they less so than, for example, Hamas?
I’d try keeping a low profile.
Cite?
I find people of different faiths from the region to be more intensely involved with their religion. However, I’d rather be on the receiving end of a breach of faith from a Christian denomination than a Muslim one. Infidelity, apostasy or same-sex encounters could become a life threatening event.
I don’t think gay Ugandans would draw the same distinction you do.
I see a lot of excluding the middle in arguments about the Middle East. Makes you wonder why they call it the “Middle” East.
It is more hilarious when it is in the form of an analogy involving bears.
“You see an angry bear in the woods. Do you (a) hoof it in the balls; or (b) appease it by giving it some oral sex”?