Leo Gura

@jdc7733 It sounds like you need some anti-psychotic medication to ground your mind. Please visit a good psychiatrist.

Finding your life purpose would be the best solution here. I have a course on that.

Unfortunately I don't think they will listen to anyone's calls for moderation. They are like an angry hornets nest now. There is a high likelihood that Israel will overreact as the US did after 9/11.

To be clear, it is possible that Israel goes overboard in a nationalist, genocidal campaign for revenge. That would be a big mistake.

There is no integrity to terrorism. That's why it always fails in the end. Revenge is not a high form of integrity. You can't rape a baby with integrity. This is why successful rights movements try to follow the principle of nonviolence, like Gandhi and MLK. If MLK turned to terrorism, blacks would still not have equal rights in the US. Blacks were oppressed worse than Palestinians, but they didn't turn to terrorism, which is what saved them. Palestinians need MLK-like leaders. Not Osama Bin Landen.

True, although they also had a lot of outside aid and they had to pay many reparations. And it took much time. In 30 years Gaza could be a decent place with much help. I wouldn't count on that. Israel now has a lot of enemies from outside to be leery of. Israel won't be able to let its guard down for a decade to come. This act of war will embolden their right-wing. It's like Hamas did the worst possible thing both for themselves and also for the Israeli right-wing. It was a lose-lose strategy which set everyone back. Everyone lost.

It's not so surprising. The Japanese had to do an unconditional surrender in WW2. So did the Germans. The Palestinians are entering an unconditonal surrender situation. Imagine what the US would have done if Japanese kept up doing terror attacks. We would have nuked more cities. That's how this works. This is not a game, this is war. Leftists don't understand what war is. They treat war like a charity. In this case Gaza made an act of war. And now they get war. War is different than colonization or apartheid or occupation. War is a lot worse.

It's a very dire situation at this point. Yes, they are badly cornered and there is no good solution, but the worst possible option is for them to turn to more violence. In the end, if a people cannot embrace peace and they are very weak, they go extinct. That's how this works. Violence is a tool for the powerful, not for the weak. The only hope now is for the international community to help Palestinians elect nonviolent leadership.

The reason is very simple: because Israel is more developed than their neighbors, and the US supports neoliberal values rather than theocratic Islamic values. The US is interested in doing business, not Jihad. So the US will side with those who prefer business over endless Jihad.

That's not a given. They can elect better leaders who reject violence. They really only have two options: embrace nonviolence or be massacred by the Zionists. When you have no strong military and no infrastructure you cannot embrace a policy of violence because that must end in massacre. A crippled person should not enter a boxing ring. That's just the reality of conflict. Your strategy has to fit your capabilities.

Why should Israelis supply their enemies? This is an unreasonable expectation. Having radical leadership comes with serious consequences. When the Allies were fighting the Nazis, a lot of civilians were killed and displaced. That's the consequence of electing Nazis as your leaders. Even though most Germans didn't vote for Nazis. But they all paid the price. Yes, war is ugly, which is why it's imperative to support leadership who don't want to lead you into war. Once the war starts it's too late.

Nice nuance!

Easily. You are just not thinking staight if you equate Netanyahu with ISIS. They are at totally different levels of development. Of course that doesn't make Netanyahu an angel, but he's not a bloodthirsty radical. If you can't see this difference then you have no business doing politics. Politics is all about distinguishing degrees of bad, and choosing the lesser of two bads.

Not necessarily. Terrorist groups have been eliminated in the past. Or at least take them out of mainstream power. It's not necessary to eliminate at 100%, just enough that they are not officially in charge of the Palestinian majority.

Mormons love it when you show up to their church dressed in a devil costume.

Because Netanyahu does not sit around planning to target civilians in Gaza with attacks. If you think he does that, you're being biased. Netanyahu could have killed 10,000 civilians in Gaza a month ago if that was his agenda.

Even if 60% have some sympathies for Hamas does not make them equivalent to Hamas. Similiar to how everyone in Nazi Germany was part of the Nazi party, but not the same as the active Nazi core. You have to carefully distinguish between those who are too far gone, too radicalized, and those who are moderates and can be deradicalized. What needs to be eliminated is those who only want violence as a solution and those who are suicidal. Those who would plan terrorist attacks.

The Israeli right wing is problematic, but it is not a cancer like Hamas. It's just not the same.

@Vrubel Al Jazeera English does good, fair coverage. Don't know what you mean.

*kiss*

That's far from the case. Don't insult the Palestinians with such talk.

That depends on how aggressive Israel gets. How many war crimes they do. Unless it gets really over the top, I don't see Israel losing international support. We will have to wait and see how much Israel resists doing war crimes.

@lina Well, you have to ask yourself, How else can Hamas be eliminated? Because it certainly cannot be allowed to stay in power. The unfortunate reality is that eliminating Hamas will involve a lot of collateral damage. Hamas is a cancer within the Palestinian population. Eliminating a cancer is very difficult and comes with serious side-effects. I wish that wasn't the case, but that's the situation. Peace negotiations can resume once Hamas is eliminated and Palestinians have sane leadership.

It does what you make of it.

That's not what is happening. Hamas is being hunted down because such people cannot be allowed to lead.