kurtster wrote: 
Maybe they'd stop firing missiles if Israel would stop killing their kids at a rate of one kid every three days since 2000... Chicken and egg. Pot and kettle.

I understand there are states that still have Jim Crow and anti-atheist laws in their books. There are probably a lot more examples and excuses for those too.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Ah, my heart bleeds for poor misunderstood Hamas.

They issue new documents that say things different from the 1988 Charter, yet do not renounce nor officially revise it. 
And then they claim that restoring the 1967 borders is required.  That just plain ain't never gonna happen.  Its about as likely as the US giving California back to Spain.

 Although Obama is working real hard on giving Texas back to Mexico ... so maybe pigs will fly ...

Maybe, just maybe, things would be a little better if Hamas didn't keep firing missiles at Israel.

 RichardPrins wrote:What's the old saying?...For every complex question, there is a simple answer...and it's wrong.  

Another "real leader" with a solution (sadly the bellicose psychotic malady isn't just confined to men)...

"It's, you know, a real absence, though, of American leadership in the region, because I think that you've got these rockets going into Gaza from Syria and Iran. And, you know, we just haven't made a strong enough presence in that region to have people be afraid of this country.

And so I think there's a sense that, you know, they can get away with anything they want to get away with."

For some the fear may already be there, but it's not so much the fear of a militarized policeman, as it is of a demented psychopathic serial killer with a torture chamber.

---

Understanding Hamas | Mondoweiss

This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

 RichardPrins wrote:One can start with that fact...

 ScottN wrote: 
There is quite a bit of space between unconditional support and and no support whatsoever.

PS: I recognize there's more nuance in your response than most with an opinion on this conflict.

 RichardPrins wrote:I am not defending the indefensible...by any participant.  I will simply re-state the point that this issue is very complicated.  You can start w/ the Brits after WWI and go from there. w/o Outside support, Israel vanishes rather quickly.  w/o Outside support, Israel's opposition is very much weaker. So the "proxy issue" gets added to the other significant complexities at work here. I don't think the settlement/re-settlement issues, by themselves, are the deal breakers.

The nefarious (pretend it is a noun) is certainly trumping sound judgment.

 ScottN wrote: 
As with South Africa's apartheid regime in the past, as long as Israel has the unconditional support of the US (and some minor wannabe mini-me) very little will change w.r.t. the occupation/land grabs. And consequently the Palestinian reaction (and that of the larger Arab/Muslim world) won't change either in response to those crimes.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
For my part, I have said Israel has much to answer for.  it's oft written that Israel gains by having a divided Palestine...but only in the short term.
The "eye for an eye" has already blinded so many.  One major issue is that Israel, largely thru its settlements, has done a "land grab".  They no longer will truly negotiate for the 1967 borders—at least not Netanyahu. Jerusalem is also a major problem, as is compensation for eliminating rights to resettle.  The Palestinian diaspora is, I believe, larger than the population still living there.

If this was uncomplicated, with clear issues of right and wrong, it would have settled decades ago.

Israeli commander declares “holy war” on Palestinians | The Electronic Intifada

On the eve of a threatened ground invasion of Gaza, the commander of the Israeli army’s Givati Brigade has told his soldiers that they are engaged in a war to “wipe out” an “enemy who defames” God.

In a Hebrew language letter to his troops published by Israel’s NRG news website and laden with bibilical references, Colonel Ofer Winter writes, “History has chosen us to be the sharp edge of the bayonet of fighting the terrorist enemy ‘from Gaza’ which curses, defames and abuses the God of Israel’s battles.” (...)

Cut off power to Gaza dialysis patients, Knesset deputy speaker urges
Israeli lawmaker's call for genocide of Palestinians gets thousands of Facebook likes
Bombing of Gaza children gives me “orgasm”: Israelis celebrate slaughter on Facebook
Israel student union sets up “war room” to sell Gaza massacre on Facebook

 mutepoint wrote:Duh. Hamas should be condemned for firing many hundreds of aimless (literally) rockets into Israel and then using their own civilians as some kind of human shield.  Israel, for whatever else can be said about them, has promised from day one—retaliation and then some! 

The issue is far more complicated than this.  Israel has much to answer for, no doubt.  But the above has been true since shortly after the country was formed.  What does an organization, or a country, think will happen when they not just deny Israel's right to exist, but declare that Israel should be annihilated?

In Photos: Worldwide protest against Israeli attack on Gaza (Update) | Mondoweiss

Palestinians say death toll over 70 as Israel pounds Gaza with air raids | World | The Guardian
Abbas in firing line over security cooperation with Israel | Middle East Eye
Outrage turns to satire after ABC News misidentifies Palestinian victims
Twitter users mock news organisation's error using #TweetLikeABC.

ABC News tells viewers that scenes of destruction in Gaza are in Israel | The Electronic Intifada

 RichardPrins wrote: 
It is terrible what is happening there.  Rarely reported on American news.

Israeli soldiers have killed 3 Palestinians in week since teens went missing | Mondoweiss

In 'turning-point' vote, Presbyterians divest from occupation-linked corporations

Presbyterians Vote to Divest Holdings to Pressure Israel - NYTimes.com

A Palestinian Christian family that preaches non-violence from a farm in the West Bank is battling to hold on to land it has owned for 98 years. Now surrounded by Israeli settlements, the family is a living example of the idea of peaceful resistance.

On his farm outside Bethlehem, Daher Nassar is picking apples from the ruins of the orchard he planted at least eight years ago. The fruit is scattered across ground freshly opened and imprinted with the tracks of a bulldozer. At the field's edge, branches reach out from inside a mound of earth, the bark stripped and mangled, unripe almonds still clinging to the trees.

On 19 May a Palestinian shepherd from the village of Nahalin was out at first light and saw the bulldozer at work in the field, guarded by Israeli soldiers. By the time Nassar arrived the whole orchard - the best part of a decade's work - was gone. His English is far from fluent, but there's no mistaking the pain in his voice: "Why you broke the trees?"

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27883685

The way Amal sees it, the Israeli military and the settlers, having failed to evict the family by legal means, are now trying to force them out. She remembers the settlers who uprooted 250 young olive trees in 2002, and who permanently closed the road to the farm with rubble. The demolition orders posted on the gate, threatening to destroy the Nassars' home and water wells. The soldiers who, in 2009, forced her 72-year-old mother out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and made her wait in the cold while they searched the farm.