Gaza situation discussion

[Darth Wong]

Ooooh, they warn people before they hurt them! How wonderful!

The Mafia does that too.

So, if the Israelis do nothing to mitigate civilian casualties, they're barbaric; and if they do make an attempt to mitigate civilian casualties they're "like the Mafia"?

I'm saying that they're not seriously trying to limit civilian casualties at all. No more than the Mafia is seriously offering to "protect" you when they demand protection money, or "warn" you when they deliver a threat.

What would the point actually be of delivering such warnings? Hmm? Think about it, Einstein: Hamas terrorists are at least as mobile as families in their homes, so if you warn an area that you're going to shell it, who's going to get out most easily? The terrorists, or the people whose homes you're about to blow up?

[Coyote]

The only way to achieve real peace in the region is to find a way where the Palestinian can see actual benefits from peace. Such as food supplies, medical supplies, jobs and etc.

It happens in the West Bank, which is Fatah-controlled and willing to deal with Israel.

JERUSALEM -- The gleaming new governor's office for the Salfit district of the northern West Bank is typical of Palestinian government buildings.

Beyond a marble atrium, a visitor finds several floors, each with a half-dozen rooms equipped with leather couches and chairs, computers and desks. All of them are completely empty.

Next door, by contrast, stands an unassuming police station, built by the police officers themselves. They used to work as day-laborers on Israeli construction sites before it became virtually impossible to obtain a permit to travel through the checkpoints. Now, they must settle for less-well-paid work as cops. Unlike the placeholders in the Governor's office, the police are getting the job done.

Security training for the police in the northern West Bank -- paid for with new injections of U.S. aid money -- is one of the few bright spots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which seems otherwise to be plunging from disaster to catastrophe.

"There's nothing happening up here," says Atef Abu al-Rob, a human rights field worker who lives in nearby Jenin. "The Israelis don't come here, because the police actually keep it quiet."

The violence of Gaza dominates the front pages, but there are no headlines in "nothing happening."

Obviously it is imperfect; there needs to be more jobs and investment. But the longer things keep cool, the more foreign investors will be assured that what they work to build on Tuesday won't be destroyed by Thursday.

The next big step will be reversing the Brain Drain that happened for so long, when the educated and wealthy Palestinians fled-- Edward Said, for example. It's unfortunate he died; it'd be interesting to hear his take on the situation and see if he'd've gone back to the West Bank to serve as an example. I'm sure he'd say that more needed to be done --that much is obvious to anyone-- but someone of his stature returning would've help with the momentum.

[wautd]

Palestinians are depicted as little more than animals in most US media and Faux News is among the worst.

Pulitzer prize-winning "political cartoonist". This shit is syndicated in hundreds of American newspapers.

But the point of that is not "Hamas are animals!", the point is the comparison to a behavioral experiment where the chimp never learns to avoid the punishment, unlike in typical experiments where chimps do learn. Using this as an example is really reaching.

Nice comic. Ofcourse, in reality the hammer dropped on those thousands civilians instead of the monkey.

[Beowulf]

Ooooh, they warn people before they hurt them! How wonderful!

The Mafia does that too.

So, if the Israelis do nothing to mitigate civilian casualties, they're barbaric; and if they do make an attempt to mitigate civilian casualties they're "like the Mafia"?

I'm saying that they're not seriously trying to limit civilian casualties at all. No more than the Mafia is seriously offering to "protect" you when they demand protection money, or "warn" you when they deliver a threat.

What would the point actually be of delivering such warnings? Hmm? Think about it, Einstein: Hamas terrorists are at least as mobile as families in their homes, so if you warn an area that you're going to shell it, who's going to get out most easily? The terrorists, or the people whose homes you're about to blow up?

Sure, the tangos can leave. But they can't take along the arms cache they planted (or a significant portion, anyway). And those caches are the point of this exercise.

[Uraniun235]

And yet... they didn't educate their children together? How did they feel about intermarriage with others?

Yes, I am aware that at time the Middle East has been much more peaceful. I am also aware that various groups in the Middle East were slaughtering each other while Europeans were illiterate pig farmers (at best).

Education was itself not widespread, and most education before modern times was conducted via churches (or mosques or whatever) - so there wouldn't be much reason for Christians to send their kids to learn with the Muslims. Interestingly, in that region of the world it was the Palestinians who made some of the best progress at the turn of the 20th century at implementing compulsory education and promoting literacy.


I also fail to see how "various groups in the Middle East were slaughtering each other while Europeans were illiterate pig farmers" is relevant to anything. Various groups in Europe were killing each other while Middle Easterners were illiterate goat herders, too.

I actually SAID that I knew it was not entirely religious - did you fucking read what I wrote, or just cherry pick what supports your views? I went back and bolded some of it for you.

It fucking DOES break down along religious lines, just like the centuries of bullshit in Ireland broke across religious lines. That, of course, was not nearly the whole of it but to pretend religion plays NO role is just horseshit.

As I said - the historical record of the Middle East had a hefty dose of blood and genocide long before Europe showed up, it's just as racist to blame the current mess entirely on Europe as it is to call Palestinians animals. Europe took advantage of volatility in the region but it's bullshit to lay it all at their doorstep. Other regions of the world that Europe ran roughshod over have their problems but the Middle East is exceptionally violent.

Yeah but what sets me off is that this sounds so much like the bullshit hick-ass line I've heard so many times of "oh well muslims just hate jews and christians and they always have for centuries blah blah" and that's false. You're still wildly overgeneralizing. Let's take a non-Palestinian example: why do you think that there's Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq? Do you really think it's "just because", that they just hate each other for no reason, that it's always been like that and always will?

Because if so, you'd be wrong. Dreadfully wrong. They used to live in peace in Iraq. Sunni and Shia muslims would live together, work together, even intermarry in Iraq with little thought given to the religious differences between them. That began to change when the Ba'ath party took control and grossly favored Sunni Iraqis with government favor and patronage. Then the Iraq-Iran war started, and an entire generation of Iraqis has now grown up only knowing war, and an increasingly desperate people will naturally begin to turn more and more to their religious leaders and to be increasingly resentful of people they perceive to have slighted them. This, by the way, is also the perfect environment for petty tyrants to rally a band of followers with the promise of vengeance and bounty - what have they got to lose?

Do you see what I'm getting at? It's not because they're just a bunch of bloodthirsty Mooslim A-rabs that there's so much violence in the Middle East, it's because they are desperate people who see no alternative course of action and who increasingly irrationally cling to whatever they can that makes them feel better in an increasingly hostile world.

I'm sorry if you're so fucking offended, but I refuse to buy into collective guilt, which is a toxin that poisons a lot of the world today. I am not personally responsible for what occurred before I was born, I am not responsible for what my government did before I was old enough to vote. You have no clue what causes I have or have not supported during my adult life.

Yes I AM lucky to live in a country not torn by the same violence as the Middle East. Why shouldn't I be glad about that, and prefer it to living in Gaza? You'd have to be fucking nuts to think otherwise. I only wish the average person in Gaza could live in the same relative safety I enjoy.

But as long as the majority of the populace tolerates and even fosters the "martyr" mindset and the likes of Hamas not a goddamned thing will change. They refuse to see how their own actions contribute to the problem. And that goes for Israel, too. Both sides keep pulling the damn lever over and over and over and can't figure out why they have such a headache.

As for barbaric actions of my nation - no, I'm not happy about it. Nor am I deluded enough to believe ANY nation has clean hands. I'm not going to wail "Oh woe is me!" and pretend I can't look at the actions of others. That's horseshit, too. I do what I can to make the world the better place, and if I see endless crap occurring over and over in some part of the world I'm not going to pretty it up.

Until ALL sides in this conflict want peace there will be no peace other than the peace of the grave.

I don't give a shit what causes you may have supported or fought for. It's irrelevant. The problem is not that you're glad you live in a less-violent place, the problem is that your post is extremely hypocritical. We're not less violent because we're better people - as your post implies - but only because we're lucky enough to be far less burdened by the threat of starvation and imminent death.


Also, as Darth Wong pointed out while I was writing this post, every criticism about Hamas doing the same thing over and over again could be applied to the Republican Party too. Every snide remark (which I can't remember if you ever said, but I distinctly remember someone else saying) to the effect of "oh, those poor Palestinians, guess they shouldn't have voted for Hamas, boo-hoo" is just as fucking applicable to America after it re-elected George W. Bush in 2004. Yeah, a lot of Americans didn't vote for Bush. A lot of Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas either.

So for some people to suggest that the Palestinians can't learn better, because they're just a bloodthirstier people, when at one point the same could have been (and might well still be) said of the very people they're a part of - that's what I find so deeply offensive about that piece of shit Ramirez's cartoon.


No, my problem is not that you as a citizen of a nation which has committed barbaric acts, chooses to criticize other nations for their barbaric acts. My problem is that you come off as puffing yourself up by casting an entire people as barbarians. My problem is that you come off as a bigot.

[Big Phil]

You may be right, but would you want to lay odds on political cartoonists similarly depicting American Heartland voters for their mindless subscription to Republican dogmas such as the wonders of trickle-down economics, abstinence-only sex education, market deregulation, a blank check for the military-industrial complex, and the War on Drugs? It doesn't matter how badly society pays the price; they keep supporting the same dumb-shit policies, even if they're the ones who get hurt by them.

How about these? They're mostly political, but since that's what dominated the news in 2008, that's what you get.

[Broomstick]

In any case, my post was addressed more at Broomstick's attempt to wash her hands completely of responsibility for the actions of the society of which she is a part.

I did NOT wash my hands completely of responsibility - go back and read what I said. I am not personally responsible for what was done before I was born (the Ottoman Empire, the British meddling and line drawing in the region, the post-WWII creation of Israel, shoving of people who'd lived in Palestine for centuries aside in preference to in-coming Euro-Jews, etc. - hey, wait a minute, quite a bit of that had nothing to do with my country) nor am I personally responsible for what my government did before I was old enough to vote (basically, anything before Carter). I am in part responsible for what the US has done since to the extent that I supported or didn't support various actions or decisions made. It is my responsibility to let my representatives know where I stand on issues, to communicate with them, and so forth. It is also my responsibility to research any causes I'm thinking of supporting prior to handing over money or contributing time. Just for the record, I do think the USA favors Israel more than we should, I deplore the crap press the Palestinians get, I deplore the overly nice press the Israelis get, I hate the kiss-ass relationship Bush had with the Saudis, and... well I could go on. I don't think the current state of Israel should have been created or recognized as it was a blatant conquering of the territory aided and abetted by European powers (who were, yes, helped by the US) who saw it as a convenient way to get rid of their Jews without killing them, but I wouldn't hold a person my age from any of those countries responsible for the nation of Israel or the wrongs committed in its creation because they weren't alive when that was done. I don't believe that children and grandchildren can ethically be held responsible for the actions of their parents. That is precisely why, despite the murder of the European branch of my family, I hold no animosity toward the current generation of Germans - they are NOT their parents and grandparents. I will judge them by THEIR conduct, not that of their ancestors.

Part of the problem in the middle east is the perpetration of centuries-old grievances. For some things there will simply be no justice and digging at the wound over and over and over unto the nth generation only continues the pain. Sure, my grandparents could have dug in their heels when forced out of their homes, but they realized they would only gain death by that, pulled up stakes, and started over halfway around the world. Yes, it sucks to be forced off your land, but the Palestinians who have done best in life are those who didn't spend the past several decades sitting on their asses in refugee camps. There were alternatives, as the Palestinian family down the road from me whose father came to the US 35 years old and set up a successful business could tell you. They didn't stop being Palestinian by doing that, they didn't give up their religion, they still speak Arabic amongst themselves, even the younger generation, they insist on running a hallal restaurant and grocery store, they regularly visit relatives back in the old country, I have no doubt they send money to relatives back home, too, and they're well liked enough in this predominantly Christian red-neck neighborhood that after 9/11 the local neighbors spontaneously showed up to provide a round the clock guard for the home and business for a couple months to prevent some of the local hotheads from starting trouble. They aren't sitting in a hovel in Gaza getting the shit bombed out of them. Nor is the US the only country open to immigrants. I'm not saying that Israel was right to take their land (they weren't) but I don't think there's enough emphasis on the option of cutting losses and starting again elsewhere. Indeed, I expect to be broiled alive for even suggesting it, but just as my relatives never received any form of compensation for the land and possessions stripped from them as they left Russia I don't believe the Palestinians are going to get their land back. Certainly not in this generation. I don't think it's just an Israeli problem, I think there are many Arab governments that secretly want Israel to continue because they're such a handy scapegoat for all the ills they suffer. If Israel was eliminated tomorrow they'd have to find another scapegoat or face unrest among their own populations. If the other Arab and/or Muslim governments of the Middle East were so fucking concerned with the Palestinians, that is, if they REALLY gave a damn about them, they'd be a lot more open to inviting them in, to helping them set up business and trade rather than conduct constant war, and otherwise trying to really better their situation. (Yes, I know Jordan has a large Palestinian population - who else does, though?)

My family did better by moving on rather than sitting and stewing in bitterness and resentment. I can't help but think that at least some of the downtrodden in the Middle East would do better by moving than by remaining as cannon fodder for both sides. And if Palestinians are being forced to stay in Gaza against their will then that is wrong, no two ways about it. Those are willing to leave should be allowed to leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere, be that in neighboring countries or far distant lands.

You're saying that you can't understand the emotional state of someone who takes life over religious beliefs; why not? It's not hard to understand, quite frankly. All you have to do is imagine yourself living in shit conditions and sincerely believing in religious bullshit. I know you're smart enough to be capable of understanding if you make a serious effort. I think you're not trying to understand because it's too heinous, even though I'm betting you do understand the act of butchering people for national economic self-interest, which is equally heinous.

Intellectually I understand it, I just can't get inside the emotion. No, really I can't. I just don't get it on a gut level. Apparently my ancestors didn't either because, as I said, they were willing to move rather than fight for a hopeless cause. It wasn't for lack of courage or lack of willingness to work, it was because... well, I guess they preferred peace in exile to death at home. So, I come from a long line (on both sides, actually) of people who believe in strategic retreat rather than becoming a suicide operative. That's the cultural background I come out of, whether it's typical or not. I try to understand being so attached to a piece of territory that you'd rather die than leave, and that if forced off you'd spend the rest of your life trying to get back to, and I just can't grasp it on an emotional level. Intellectually, historically, yes I am aware that that is how many, if not most, people have felt through most of recorded history. Well, not me and mine, apparently. It would be dishonest of me to pretend to understand that mindset.

[Broomstick]

Don't get the wrong idea, I agree with much of what you said, but the truth of the matter is, the region got done no favors by Europe.

No, it didn't. Neither did Africa, India, or either of the Americas. The European invaders were all to willing to exploit whatever cracks there were, be that national, tribal, or religious. Exploiting those cracks as they did is on their heads, but the cracks did not originate with the arrival of the Europeans.

[Big Phil]

Yeah but what sets me off is that this sounds so much like the bullshit hick-ass line I've heard so many times of "oh well muslims just hate jews and christians and they always have for centuries blah blah" and that's false. You're still wildly overgeneralizing. Let's take a non-Palestinian example: why do you think that there's Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq? Do you really think it's "just because", that they just hate each other for no reason, that it's always been like that and always will?

Because if so, you'd be wrong. Dreadfully wrong. They used to live in peace in Iraq. Sunni and Shia muslims would live together, work together, even intermarry in Iraq with little thought given to the religious differences between them.

Uraniun, you're either ignorant or you're cherry picking evidence. The Sunni/Shia split in Islam led to many conflicts over the past millennia and change, and there was significant violence because of that fact. Now, the situation was certainly calmer before the Ba'ath party took control of Iraq, but to say Sunnis and Shias "used to live in peace in Iraq..." is simply a lie. The situation was far more complicated than "they were happy Muslim hippies until the big bad Ba'ath party came along and made us fight each other."

No, my problem is not that you as a citizen of a nation which has committed barbaric acts, chooses to criticize other nations for their barbaric acts. My problem is that you come off as puffing yourself up by casting an entire people as barbarians. My problem is that you come off as a bigot.

I'm going to let Broomstick defend herself here, but I'm going to suggest that you pull your head out of your self-righteous ass and stop using ad hominem's which are irrelevant to the discussion. You started a thread in HoC asking why we shouldn't lift the IvP ban, and frankly you're offering up example after example of why lifting that ban is a bad idea.

[Coyote]

Is nationalism really so alien to the region? There have been large regional empires in that part of the world for thousands of years: the Hittites, the Egyptians, Babylon, the Persians, Alexander, etc. I thought the Europeans' negligence was to carelessly redraw boundaries, rather than creating a whole new concept of nationalism where it did not exist before.

Good point; I'm obviously thinking of the Nation-State in the European sense, whereas the inter-clan/tribal version that existed before was less solidly defined. But the redrawing of boundaries to suit European ideas did, in fact, put the exclamation point at the end of the sentence.

I honestly don't know how far away from a certain ethnic group one had to be before they were no longer considered part of the "nation"; there was a sense of "area affiliation" in that some Arabs were from Hedjaz region, some from Levant, etc. But at some point on the map one ran out of Arabs and began running into more and more Turks or Persians or Berbers, until that was all you found. I don't know if "Babylonian" or "Egyptian" empire affiliation is the same thing as nationalism as we know it. For that matter, I don't know if being a Greek or Roman was the same thing as being a Frenchman or a German. They were multi-ethnic...

[Coyote]

What would the point actually be of delivering such warnings? Hmm? Think about it, Einstein: Hamas terrorists are at least as mobile as families in their homes, so if you warn an area that you're going to shell it, who's going to get out most easily? The terrorists, or the people whose homes you're about to blow up?

Everyone is going to get blasted, including the Mr. Martyr guy we read about 2-3 pages ago, the family that supports him, the family that didn't, and whatever arms cache may (or may not) be there, obviously.

But if the IDF doesn't warn them, or go through some sort of motions to clear civilians from the battlefield, it's a "lose" there, too.

Not being sarcastic here, but curious: let's say you're an ordinary Israeli, born and raised there, with constant reports of rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. Even given that you're a secular Israeli, think the occupation is unfair, that you joined a left-wing party that protests the wars and supports the peace process, you are part of a political group that seeks to dismantle the Settlements and seek a peaceful solution; and given that you don't know anyone actually hurt or killed by the rockets and you are not in immediate danger... what would you do if you were able to climb some ladder of political power in Israel and had influence enough to make policies. How would you handle the situation prior to the invasion a few weeks ago?

[Darth Wong]

I'm not necessarily opposed to ground operations in order to clear out terror groups, and I do agree that the rocket firing campaign is a terror campaign: it fits the textbook definition of one. However, I would want the ensuing ground operation to be a form of peacekeeping or policing, instead of a retaliatory terror campaign, which is what it turned out to be and which I quite frankly think the leadership always intended it to be, official denials notwithstanding. This sort of thing should be treated as more of a policing issue than a form of open warfare.

[Count Chocula]

A policing issue? I can guarantee you that if an American group, whether it was the ELF or the KKK or the Left-Handed Gardeners For Change was known to even have mortars, rockets and automatic weapons, the US government's mildest response would be BATFE raids with APCs, helicopters and dozens of sub-gun armed agents. If anyone actually FIRED ROCKETS at, say, Tampa from Clearwater, there would be an immediate military response.

Hopefully without the dead civilians, although the FBI and BATFE have spotty track records there.

[Coyote]

Uraniun, you're either ignorant or you're cherry picking evidence. The Sunni/Shia split in Islam led to many conflicts over the past millennia and change, and there was significant violence because of that fact. Now, the situation was certainly calmer before the Ba'ath party took control of Iraq, but to say Sunnis and Shias "used to live in peace in Iraq..." is simply a lie. The situation was far more complicated than "they were happy Muslim hippies until the big bad Ba'ath party came along and made us fight each other."

I think he's referring to the Iraq situation, not the age-old Sunni-Shia schism. In many areas of the Arab-Muslim world, the Sunni-Shia split had calmed considerably and the Shia were seen as "another school of jurisprudence" along the lines of Hanbali, Shafi'i, Maliki, etc. There were a lot of intermarriages in different places; while bear in mind that much of the "Sunni-Shia" trouble was really a coat of paint on another, more ancient feud: the fact that most Shia also happened to be the hated Persians.

[Darth Wong]

A policing issue? I can guarantee you that if an American group, whether it was the ELF or the KKK or the Left-Handed Gardeners For Change was known to even have mortars, rockets and automatic weapons, the US government's mildest response would be BATFE raids with APCs, helicopters and dozens of sub-gun armed agents. If anyone actually FIRED ROCKETS at, say, Tampa from Clearwater, there would be an immediate military response.

Hopefully without the dead civilians, although the FBI and BATFE have spotty track records there.

Bullshit. They would send military troops, but on a policing mission. They would not shell entire neighbourhoods where these groups are suspected of being. That is how you fight an all-out war, not a police action.

[Uraniun235]

Uraniun, you're either ignorant or you're cherry picking evidence. The Sunni/Shia split in Islam led to many conflicts over the past millennia and change, and there was significant violence because of that fact. Now, the situation was certainly calmer before the Ba'ath party took control of Iraq, but to say Sunnis and Shias "used to live in peace in Iraq..." is simply a lie. The situation was far more complicated than "they were happy Muslim hippies until the big bad Ba'ath party came along and made us fight each other."

Everything may not have been sunshine and lollipops in Iraq but that still does not make them inherently more barbaric than Americans (black civil rights) or Europeans (Irish Catholic/Protestant violence), and I'm fairly confident that without thirty years in a state of war Iraq would be far more peaceful and tolerant than it is today.

I'm going to let Broomstick defend herself here, but I'm going to suggest that you pull your head out of your self-righteous ass and stop using ad hominem's which are irrelevant to the discussion. You started a thread in HoC asking why we shouldn't lift the IvP ban, and frankly you're offering up example after example of why lifting that ban is a bad idea.

How can my attacks on Broomstick be irrelevant when the whole point of my posts directed at Broomstick has been to respond to the tone and message of her posts? Hell, the whole reason I want the IVP moratorium lifted is because I see bullshit sentiments like hers (and also Beowulf's asshole "welp, guess the Palestinians shouldn't have voted for Hamas" remark) posted and I often don't feel like it's worth it to try and confront it because the impression I get is that doing so just gets the thread closed more often than not.

[Count Chocula]

Oh I agree. We'd see Hummers, APCs, Blackhawks, and lots of men in uniforms descend on the area, but I guess the point I missed making is that a movement like Hamas, whatever its cause, would have been erased in the US, and its members hunted down and jailed, if any shit like that happened here. Israel's playing whack-a-mole with other people's lives, not just the targeted militants, because they let this crap go on too long IMO. Barring any IvP debate, groups that actively pursue the destruction of their neighbor don't seem to last very long in the rest of the world.

[ray245]

Guys, cool down for a moment shall we, and use less insults, just in case this thread got out of hand.

We are all perfectly reasonable people here, learn to admit and accept other people's viewpoint when they are more logical, and most importantly off all, consider what action is the best course of action to take.

Positive arguments, arguments that seek to improve the situation as compared supporting status quo because nothing can be done. Come on, the more we believe that the situation will not improve, any chance of improvement to the Gaza region will decrease day by day.

History has shown us that improvement of relationship is possible, no matter what kind of enemy they are. Hell, if Americans and Japanese can get along each other eventually after WW2, I fail to see why the idea that the Gaza region can improve is a flawed idea.

We can be cool and rational in other debate, we can be cool and rational in this debate.

Broomstick and etc, you guys taught me to be less emotional and more rational in a debate, I have confidence in you guys that this thread will not end up in the hall of Shame.


So, don't get too personal in this debate,

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'd expect the LAPD to use gunships and artillery strikes with some of the gang violence I've read about going on there. Instead, they police, as Mike says.

The IDF is avoiding that right now to take care of the heavy arms Hamas has lying around. It's dirty, not all that surgical as going door-to-door with soldiers, but it's something that can make any subsequent troop arrivals less likely to falter. Doing anything the right way always tends to be harder, else Israel may as well pummel Gaza into rubble and declare the problem at an end.

No people, no problem, eh?

[ray245]

I'd expect the LAPD to use gunships and artillery strikes with some of the gang violence I've read about going on there. Instead, they police, as Mike says.

The IDF is avoiding that right now to take care of the heavy arms Hamas has lying around. It's dirty, not all that surgical as going door-to-door with soldiers, but it's something that can make any subsequent troop arrivals less likely to falter. Doing anything the right way always tends to be harder, else Israel may as well pummel Gaza into rubble and declare the problem at an end.

No people, no problem, eh?

Good point.

It is important to note that public infrastructure such as schools and hospitals has been severely damaged in the latest attacks. How is the Palestinians able to leave a proper life if they lack all these infrastructure and the means to rebuilt it?

[Big Phil]

Uraniun, you're either ignorant or you're cherry picking evidence. The Sunni/Shia split in Islam led to many conflicts over the past millennia and change, and there was significant violence because of that fact. Now, the situation was certainly calmer before the Ba'ath party took control of Iraq, but to say Sunnis and Shias "used to live in peace in Iraq..." is simply a lie. The situation was far more complicated than "they were happy Muslim hippies until the big bad Ba'ath party came along and made us fight each other."

I think he's referring to the Iraq situation, not the age-old Sunni-Shia schism. In many areas of the Arab-Muslim world, the Sunni-Shia split had calmed considerably and the Shia were seen as "another school of jurisprudence" along the lines of Hanbali, Shafi'i, Maliki, etc. There were a lot of intermarriages in different places; while bear in mind that much of the "Sunni-Shia" trouble was really a coat of paint on another, more ancient feud: the fact that most Shia also happened to be the hated Persians.

I'm aware of that - I'm also aware that the Sunni-Shia calming was a relatively recent event, and that in previous centuries relations were much less cordial. To use a well known example, Saladin spent more time fighting Muslim opponents (including the heretical Shia), than he did Christians, although its the capture of Jersualem for which he's most famous in the west.

Everything may not have been sunshine and lollipops in Iraq but that still does not make them inherently more barbaric than Americans (black civil rights) or Europeans (Irish Catholic/Protestant violence), and I'm fairly confident that without thirty years in a state of war Iraq would be far more peaceful and tolerant than it is today.

Perhaps I missed something, but who (other than Shep, and we all know he's a lunatic) has been describing the Palestinians as barbarians?

How can my attacks on Broomstick be irrelevant when the whole point of my posts directed at Broomstick has been to respond to the tone and message of her posts? Hell, the whole reason I want the IVP moratorium lifted is because I see bullshit sentiments like hers (and also Beowulf's asshole "welp, guess the Palestinians shouldn't have voted for Hamas" remark) posted and I often don't feel like it's worth it to try and confront it because the impression I get is that doing so just gets the thread closed more often than not.

What does the tone of her posts have to do with anything?

[Kanastrous]

I'd expect the LAPD to use gunships and artillery strikes with some of the gang violence I've read about going on there. Instead, they police, as Mike says.

I don't know what you read, but there is no use for that kind of equipment to address the LA gang problem.

If someone has been describing our gang situation here as being similar to what HAMAS has been up to, they have misled you terribly.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't know what you read, but there is no use for that kind of equipment to address the LA gang problem.

If someone has been describing our gang situation here as being similar to what HAMAS has been up to, they have misled you terribly.

I'm not of the impression downtown LA is under rocket bombardment or has militia running around. But extremely violent groups being hammered by extreme force was the point. The IDF has a tendency of fighting an enemy with conventional weapons that won't get the job done entirely, so in the end you'll have to do what the LAPD do sooner or later, and keep the peace, rather than bug out, find rockets landing in your garden again, then pound some other buildings and leave it be for a while.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm not necessarily opposed to ground operations in order to clear out terror groups, and I do agree that the rocket firing campaign is a terror campaign: it fits the textbook definition of one. However, I would want the ensuing ground operation to be a form of peacekeeping or policing, instead of a retaliatory terror campaign, which is what it turned out to be and which I quite frankly think the leadership always intended it to be, official denials notwithstanding. This sort of thing should be treated as more of a policing issue than a form of open warfare.

And on what basis do you make that claim? Despite the weakness of Hamas compared to the IDF they are orders of magnitude more powerful then any mere criminal organization and tightly integrated with the local population. You cannot fucking police someone who is going to wire houses with explosives and blow them up when you come to make a search and when the population will not work with you at all. Seriously, I don’t know how the hell you can think Israel can act as police in such a situation, its absurd. How well do you think your local police would work if you couldn’t even move through the countryside without bringing at least fifty men, and when entering a town required several hundred? It sure wont be less violent, unless you think the Isreal ‘police’ whom would require all the same level of equipment and firepower anyway, are just getting to let themselves get killed enmass on a regular basis.

Israel tried policing the place anyway, that’s what they did from you know 1967 all the way until 1994. All it did was ferment more violence and drain Israeli coffers of a huge amount of money and manpower. It also did not stop terrorist groups from becoming organizations with thousands of hard core members just waiting for the chance to seize power. Meanwhile the Palestinian population has quadrupled since 1967, and what was once a mostly entry Gaza is now mostly urbanized. This is why the US keeps pouring on the military and economic, aid that could otherwise be split with the Palestinians if they’d stop engaging in such clearly futile terror campaigns. That’s exactly what happened when Egypt and Israeli final signed a peace deal. All aid was split evenly for the next ten years, after that Israeli aid was allowed to increase, but Egypt still gets over a billion dollars each year.

The real problem is the leadership of Hamas draws all its power from the continuation of the armed struggle. If there was a peace or even a real ceasefire, then Palestinians would start being able to question Hama’s rule, and Hamas would have to allow new elections it might lose. Hamas would not be able to kill people in the streets and justify it nearly so easily. That will not be allowed to happen by Hamas, which is why the completely dismembered all traces of Fatah even at the expense of losing most of what influence they had in the West Bank. Better to be secure in one place, then at risk in two.

Hamas has to go, and the world, even Israel right now, won’t accept the level of violence necessary to accomplish that externally. The only people who can do it at a reasonable price are the Palestinians themselves, and they won’t and at this point almost can’t. The only thing that could really work now is a separate peace for the west bank, followed by the formation of an actual army for Fatah, which would then be transported to Gaza and turned lose to do anything and everything necessary to destroy Hamas, not just kick it out of power. However Fatah being corrupt and ineffective in its own right, and unwilling to make such a separate deal because it would mean them admitting they have no influence on Gaza, basically rules out this proposition for the moment. Isreal is also distinctly unlikely to want to risk forming and arming a major Palestinian military force, which the might decide invading Gaza is not nearly so desirable as attacking Israel, returning this to a two front war.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm not of the impression downtown LA is under rocket bombardment or has militia running around. But extremely violent groups being hammered by extreme force was the point. The IDF has a tendency of fighting an enemy with conventional weapons that won't get the job done entirely, so in the end you'll have to do what the LAPD do sooner or later, and keep the peace, rather than bug out, find rockets landing in your garden again, then pound some other buildings and leave it be for a while.

The LA gang problem dates back to the 1930s, and its been really bad since the 1960s… police have NOT solved it in decades of trying, nor even come remotely close. At best its containment through constant attrition, yeah really great situation hun? The attrition is only sustainable because LA gangs don’t have explosives, they don’t have hoards of automatic weapons, they aren’t willing to lose ten men just to kill one cop and in the end, they just aren’t nearly as organized as Hamas. Hamas is actually one organization, meanwhile some gangs in LA are big, in the thousands, but in terms of actual control they have hundreds of small branches that operate independently.

You might also notice, Israel was policing Gaza until about a decade ago, and what did it do, spawned more terrorists, harden the resistance. Gaza wasn’t so bad back in say 1971. Police cannot work at all unless the population supports the idea of being policed. The Palestinians will never accept being policed by Israel so it’s a fucking war if you like it or not.