This whole question of responsibility is all about us guessing exactly what is and isn’t in Hamas’s span of control. We don’t really know, do we?
I would imagine that the Israelis believe that if the government can’t control the terrorists, there should be a government that can.
The only other government the Palestinians ever had was that of Israeli occupation, and they couldn’t control the terrorists. Can you envision a third alternative?
No, but I can’t see the Israelis flogging a dead horse when they want rockets to stop being shot at them, either. Perhaps another election will get some better guys.
So rhetoric trumps reality.
No matter what provocation, including sending a proxy force to attack civilians, would be ignored by you. And you’d deliberately ignore that first strike in order to paint a defensive action as aggression.
No, willful ignorance is not, unfortuantely, a justification for anything. You really can’t pretend to have a valid view of aggression and defense if you declare that no matter what attacks are launched, if Israel responds, they’re the aggressor.
I know that’s how the talking points of many on the Left go. But that’s simply showing anti-Israel bias, and nothing to do with reality. Or, if Israel was launching missiles in order to target civilians with no military targets in mind, would you say that the Palestinians were the aggressors if they responded? :rolleyes:
Something tells me that, no, you would not.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
There is a difference between aggression, and responding in defense to an attack. Or if someone punches you in the face, and you hit him back, are you the one starting a fight?
Finn, your post amounts to, “But they started it!” This is why I say that Israel needs to get off this stupid merry-go-round, and look for real solutions. They’ve got nothing so far, and haven’t for 50 years.
What would you suggest?
-XT
“Personally, were I in change I’d tell the world to take a hike, annex the whole bloody lot and give the folks there who were non-Jewish a choice…go to Jordan or become Israeli citizens.”
Failing that, a two-state solution along the pre-'67 borders. And make the refugee problem go away by throwing cash at it.
No. But your post ammounts to willful obfuscation. If “they started it”, then the people who respond aren’t exactly launching a war of aggression, now are they?
Or would you like to change the subject?
Why yes, you would. Who wold’ve thunk it… and, lookee here. You also ignore the numerous Israeli initiateves for peace, including land for peace, including Oslo, including the attempt to return the '67 lands which were met with the Three Noes.
But I see that “They started it!” is fine, in your book, as long as a terrorist state is the one claiming it, and the one not changing.
Mutable standards are fun.
The three no’s did not come from the Palestinians. Oslo was scuttled by non-compliance from both sides, with the more serious offender being the Israelis, and aggravated by the vast expansion of the Israeli settlements. Israel has never made a serious overture for peace to the Palestinians. And when the Palestinians made one to them in 2000, Israel freaked and would have none of it.
And as to “who started it,” the occupation of the Territories was never the Palestinians’ idea. You’re quick to rake over the ashes of the past, but your raking is selective, so to speak. And I’ll say, again, that this raking brings us no closer to a solution. It’s simple pettifogging, and tiresome at that.
Ya don’t say? And who, pray tell, fought the war against Israel in 1967? Who lost the land? Who refused to negotiate for it?
Or do you simply want to cast some more non sequitors?
Hey, what does the truth matter when you’ve got a great talking point? Responding to Oslo with a campaign of suicide bombings is certainly not as serious as anything the Israelis did. :rolleyes:
Riiiiiiight. They were just pretending.
Cite? I’m sure it will say exactly what you’re claiming happend. I’m sure.
Good obfuscation, I give it a B+ for effort. However, we are talking about launching rockets into Israel and kidnapping soldiers. Your non sequitor about occupied territories has nothing to do with that, I’m afraid.
Says the guy who deliberately and wilfully ignores what’s actually under discussion and wants to conflate the rocket attacks on Israel in 2006 with the 1967 war.
Well, ya know, some honesty might be good first. But if you’d like to do things like pretend that Israel never made any efforts for peace, then you might as well just make some more stuff up. And hey, obviously if one side keeps trying to make peace, and the other keeps using terrorism, then the problem -must- be on the side of those trying to make peace. They’re the ones who should change. Yeah… that’s the ticket.
For those playing along, and interested in playing straight, it’s useful to do more than point out why ignoring the Three Noes is wilfully ignorant, and talking only about the Palestinians is obfuscatory.
First, let’s point out that Israel sued for peace in 1960 before the UN, and was rebuffed by the Arab states. Another fact that’s inconvenient for false-to-facts talking points.
Then, after Israeli attempts at making peace, in '67 a defensive war was fought by Israel. Territories in Sinai and the West Bank were captured, creating massive refugee populations.
In 1950, Jordan had formally annexed the West Bank, making the citizens there Jordanian. After the Six Day War, Jordan, of course, refused to negoiate for peace and accept the land back if it meant anything less than the absolute annihilation of Israel.
Likewise, Gaza was Egyptian. And they too refused to take the land back in exchange for peace.
In both cases, the Egyptian and Jordanian citizens living there morphed into Palestinians, and became refugees largely due to their own governments’ failure to take them back in. Indeed, many Arab governments strictly prohibited Palestinian immigration. Israel, on the other hand, absorbed thousands of them.
The territories even today remain in a state of limbo, one which could easily have been avoided if the Arab states had agreed to peace. But I guess that the offer of land for peace is just another inconvenient fact that people like Sal will ignore in order to voice their talking points.
And while we’re talking facts instead of talking points, the PLO was created in 1963 with the aid of the Arab League, and from that point until 1967 launched numerous civilian targeted acts of terrorism. Support for their attacks continued to come from Cairo and Damascus. Hamas, of course, evolved from the Muslim Brotherhood which had support via Cairo as well. In many cases, both of these organizations used the occupied territories, both before and after 1967, to launch terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, with state sponsorship.
Their state sponsors, of course, refused to cease funding them, or accept peace with Israel, or repatriate refugees.
All of these ‘inconvenient’ facts are easily ignored by someone with an agenda and a bag full of talking points.
Some Moller, 1974 vintage. Same as it ever was.
My wife and I got to know a helicopter bush pilot in New Zealand, and there are a few heli pilots on this board who corroborate. Flying in three dimensions is anything but easy, especially with six degrees of freedom. It gives you more space, but the level of complication and the need for situational awareness increases dramatically. This flying car business seems not to respect the training needed for pilots.
So, you’re saying if we gave the Palestinians flying cars, they’d bugger off?
It would certainly make that wall into a joke…
I think Loopy missed the thread he was aiming for. There’s a flying car thread just up the page from this one.
Crap. Yes, that was meant for the skycar thread. Sam Stone incuded an excellent post in said thread that renders mine quite superfluous anyway. Can a Mod just delete that please? My apologies for being a dumbass (I can insult myself outside of the Pit, right?)
And my excellent joke will look like chopped liver? OK, fine, mine too. 
Update: The UN Security Council is debating the Gaza invasion. Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour is accusing Israel of using the kidnapping as a pretext for a long-planned operation.
Standard routine. The Security Council will propose a resolution ordering Israel out of Gaza and threatening sanctions if they don’t, the US will veto, General Assembly will pass a non-binding resolution condemning Israel, Israel won’t care.
Does that even make sense? Israel pulled out of Gaza in order to… invade it?
Doesn’t it make a bit more sense that rocket attacks and a military incursion by a governmental entity would serve as a casus belli?
Interesting, isn’t it, that we’ll see debatre on a UN resolution about that, but not a UN resolution condemning the terrorist actions of Hamas.