5 minutes ago, DaEagles4Life said:

And we know Hamas has and is using them as shields. 

This is like telling a cop to just shoot them in the leg. 

They are targeting entire buildings with rockets, ane it's not always so clear if these are legitimate targets. It's F'd up. They need to hunt moat of these guys down with special forces and spies.

5 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

You're welcome to share your opinion, even if it's totally one sided and agenda adjusted, but I'll ask again, stop telling me what to think. And no, you're wrong. But you can continue to rely on the BBC.

I didn't tell you what to think. I posted my opinion freely in an online forum. You're free to take it or leave it.

You might want to consider the value of an outsider's prespective, though, especially if you're going to use an outsider's means of waging war.

9 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

I didn't tell you what to think. I posted my opinion freely in an online forum. You're free to take it or leave it.

No. This is sharing your "opinion freely in an online forum":

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I think anyone trying to paint one side as the "right" side in this and minimize the misdeeds of the other as having a distorted or biased perception. The truth is that we all possess some bias, but I try to cut through mine as best I can.  As I have repeatedly said, I generally see both group's leadership as detestable in this conflict and have little desire to align myself with either, but I do think it is necessary to push back against the extremely pro-Israel narratives that have dominated Western outlooks for the last 75 years. 

Those are not:

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I think you're having a hard time facing the reality of the racial dynamics taking hold of the Israeli state.

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i don't know what to tell you if you don't think that you're on the brink of a racial civil war. It's just (understandably) too hard to accept, I guess.

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 it certainly appears that your admitted bias as an Israeli citizen is distorting your perception

Do you see the difference?

2 hours ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

And now you are making assumptions about my education and ability to gather information. 

I want to apologize for this one, I shouldn't have said it. I have no doubt that you are well educated person.

Israel should use special forces and spies to target Hamas because Israel can't endanger innocent civilians. 

Isreal should do this while Hamas is firing rockets at innocent Israeli civilians.  It's not enough that Israel warns their bombing targets not once, but twice before firing.  Oh, and meanwhile Hamas is actively choosing to hide behind these innocent civilians, endangering them in the first place. 

But we can only tell Israel how they should fight.  Can't say a word about Hamas, or about them flying flags with swastikas on them. 

Jesus tiddy-Fing Christ I don't know how we've made it this long

 

I continue to not give an ish about fascists and terrorists being at war with each other. 

24 minutes ago, hukdonfoniks said:

Israel should use special forces and spies to target Hamas because Israel can't endanger innocent civilians. 

Isreal should do this while Hamas is firing rockets at innocent Israeli civilians.  It's not enough that Israel warns their bombing targets not once, but twice before firing.  Oh, and meanwhile Hamas is actively choosing to hide behind these innocent civilians, endangering them in the first place. 

But we can only tell Israel how they should fight.  Can't say a word about Hamas, or about them flying flags with swastikas on them. 

Jesus tiddy-Fing Christ I don't know how we've made it this long

 

We can say anything they want to Hamas (and we have plenty of times), but they're not going to listen.  Meanwhile, we hold some purse strings for Israel, so we have a more captive audience.

14 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

No. This is sharing your "opinion freely in an online forum":

Those are not:

Do you see the difference?

They are all opinions, and more specifically, I expressed them after you declared that I was "biased," "distorting facts," and pushing "my agenda." I was qualifying my positions and defending my rational abilities after you attacked my motives and ability to be objective. 

 

 

27 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

I want to apologize for this one, I shouldn't have said it. I have no doubt that you are well educated person.

No problem. I understand that it is an emotional subject.


 

 

33 minutes ago, hukdonfoniks said:

Israel should use special forces and spies to target Hamas because Israel can't endanger innocent civilians. 

Isreal should do this while Hamas is firing rockets at innocent Israeli civilians...

But we can only tell Israel how they should fight.

They're our "allies." We're giving them weapons, we can certainly qualify aid and use their access to them to reign in their recklessness.

 

33 minutes ago, hukdonfoniks said:

Can't say a word about Hamas, or about them flying flags with swastikas on them. 

Jesus tiddy-Fing Christ I don't know how we've made it this long

 

Sure, we can talk about that, but maybe we should also talk about Jewish nationalists roaming the streets and chanting "death to Arabs."

 

33 minutes ago, hukdonfoniks said:

Isreal should do this while Hamas is firing rockets at innocent Israeli civilians.  It's not enough that Israel warns their bombing targets not once, but twice before firing.

 

To beat the terrorist, you must become the terrorist?

3 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

They're our "allies." We're giving them weapons, we can certainly qualify aid and use their access to them to reign in their recklessness.

Yeah, very reckless when they do things like, I dunno....

38 minutes ago, hukdonfoniks said:

...warns their bombing targets not once, but twice before firing.  Oh, and meanwhile Hamas is actively choosing to hide behind these innocent civilians, endangering them in the first place. 

But yeah, Israel is the reckless one. 

5 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Sure, we can talk about that, but maybe we should also talk about Jewish nationalists roaming the streets and chanting "death to Arabs."

What do you expect?  They hate each other.  They both say Fed up things like "death to Arabs" and "death to Jews".  One side is not inherently more evil than the other for saying these things. 

9 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

To beat the terrorist, you must become the terrorist?

This is a long-standing battle between a terrorist organization and a country.  This isn't Batman vs. Joker

I don't know why you're willing to apply this "be the bigger man" concept to Israel in the name of saving innocent lives, but not willing to do the same thing to Hamas.  Just chalking it up as "oh well they're the terrorist" doesn't give them a free pass.  Either Hamas cares about the lives of innocent civilians, or they don't. 

Israel has done 1000x times more to prevent the loss of innocent life.  Meanwhile Hamas goes on their TV network and says it's permissible for Arabs to kill Israeli civilians (not the people firing at them, not the government, but civilians) because they're all criminals.   And yet people have the balls to try and tell Israel how they should respond when they're attacked. 

They don't get along. They'll never get along. I'm frankly sick and tired of trying to come up with solutions just so one side can sabotage them. 

Some problems just can't be fixed. Accept it and move on.

2 hours ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

 I expressed them after you declared that I was "biased," "distorting facts," and pushing "my agenda."  

Yes, this is exactly my opinion about you. It has not changed.

29 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

Yes, this is exactly my opinion about you. It has not changed.

Right, but you sure took umbrage at me suggesting anything similar about you. This is the proverbial "pot calling the kettle black."

1 minute ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Right, but you sure took umbrage at me suggesting anything similar about you. This is the proverbial "pot calling the kettle black."

It wasn't similar, but let's stop here. I think we have understood each other on this particular subject.

9 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

It wasn't similar, but let's stop here. I think we have understood each other on this particular subject.

 

As much as we can, at least. I'm fine with leaving it at that.

Look, I don't (thank God) really know what it's like on the ground there, and I certainly don't mean to deny your feelings as invalid. I will try to approach the subject more delicately. I appreciate your perspective as someone close to the situation. All I can hope to do for you is maybe offer some understanding of how it looks around the world, and it is deeply concerning. As an American, I worry about whether our resources are being appropriated to bring more suffering upon helpless communities. I respect that there's no good answer for how to resolve the situation but pray that Israel will exercise as much restraint as is possible, and I do think that the U.S. has an interest in tempering some of Israel's aggression in the wider interest of peace for the region. I hope yet that we resolve this matter, but I fear that it is too far gone, that each side is only hardening and neither is willing to give up what is necessary to achieve lasting peace. Regardless, I hope that you and your people can yet achieve the national security and peace of mind that you rightly desire

57 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Look, I don't (thank God) really know what it's like on the ground there, and I certainly don't mean to deny your feelings as invalid. I will try to approach the subject more delicately. I appreciate your perspective as someone close to the situation. All I can hope to do for you is maybe offer some understanding of how it looks around the world, and it is deeply concerning. As an American, I worry about whether our resources are being appropriated to bring more suffering upon helpless communities. I respect that there's no good answer for how to resolve the situation but pray that Israel will exercise as much restraint as is possible, and I do think that the U.S. has an interest in tempering some of Israel's aggression in the wider interest of peace for the region. I hope yet that we resolve this matter, but I fear that it is too far gone, that each side is only hardening and neither is willing to give up what is necessary to achieve lasting peace. Regardless, I hope that you and your people can yet achieve the national security and peace of mind that you rightly desire

Thanks, this kind of approach is much more appreciated.

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I have sympathy for all victims, but excuse me if I hold the IDF to a higher standard of conduct than Hamas. I'm also sure the IDF is much, much more skilled and effective at killing scores of people than Hamas, in no small part due to the support of the United States in the form of cash and high-tech weapons of mass destruction. They are also much more capable of being tactical and surgical in their response, rather than leveling entire civilian complexes. The fact that we are even able to compare the behavior of the two sides to one another should give you pause. Israel has gone straight from counterinsurgency to total war.

Let's try to look again at the situation from a statistical point of view. From the beginning of the operation approximately 300 Palestinians were killed. Among them approximately 200 terrorists. This leaves approximately 100 civilians killed. Let's say something like 20 among them were killed by the Hamas failed launches. Which means approximately 80 civilians were (not intentionally!) killed by the IDF in the extremely dense area. I feel for all those civilians. They have done nothing wrong. But, please, tell me, if it's the total war as you have called it, how it is not thousands??? It suggests, more than anything, that IDF is not just "being tactical and surgical in their response", they are absolutely incredible in their response, regarding the circumstances.  

Let's suppose, hypothetically, all those rockets that Hamas is firing on us - are being launched on Washington, Philadelphia and LA. How many civilians would have left in Gaza as a result of the American response? What do you think the citizens of Philadelphia would say while sitting in the shelter for 18 hours a day? Do you think they would be interested in the humanitarian side of the conflict? 

 

25 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

Thanks, this kind of approach is much more appreciated.

Let's try to look again at the situation from a statistical point of view. From the beginning of the operation approximately 300 Palestinians were killed. Among them approximately 200 terrorists. This leaves approximately 100 civilians killed. Let's say something like 20 among them were killed by the Hamas failed launches. Which means approximately 80 civilians were (not intentionally!) killed by the IDF in the extremely dense area.

I wonder how accurate these figures are and who's reporting them, but I will accept them for the sake of argument.

 

25 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

But, please, tell me, if it's the total war as you have called it, how it is not thousands??? It suggests, more than anything, that IDF is not just "being tactical and surgical in their response", they are absolutely incredible in their response, regarding the circumstances.  

 

This is a fair point. Maybe I use the term "total war" too usely, as it implies the intentional slaughtering of civilian populations, but the use of weapons with such a destructive capacity in such densely populated areas suggests a degree of ruthlessness that is hard to countenance by a democratic state in this day and age. I do accept, however, that Israel could certainly be exercising much less restraint if it wanted to. If nothing else, I think it may do more harm than good to the goal of resolution. It hardens the opposition and gives a propaganda coup to the terrorists who can it use to de-legitimize the enemy and claim the mantle of "protectors" of the local population. It's not all humanitarian concerns with me; some of it is pragmatic.

 

25 minutes ago, ilross2003 said:

Let's suppose, hypothetically, all those rockets that Hamas is firing on us - are being launched on Washington, Philadelphia and LA. How many civilians would have left in Gaza as a result of the America response? What do you think the citizens of Philadelphia would say while sitting in the shelter for 18 hours a day? Do you think they would be interested in the humanitarian side of the conflict? 

 

I have thought about exactly this, and let me say that you might be right. Our country has an unfortunate history of treating civilian populations brutally under the guise of "collateral damage," even when our sovereignty and territorial integrity is not under threat. I do not support this and wish history was otherwise. What happened in Vietnam is shameful, and when I think about our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, a great deal of disgust arises from the fact that our military has been directly responsible for the deaths of civilians numbering in the hundreds of thousands. I try my best to be consistent; I find tactics involving mass casualties to civilian populations to be disturbing in all but the most extreme circumstances, but Israel is certainly in a more dire national security situation that the U.S. has known in the last 150 years.

How many Israeli people would be dead if not for this? 

 

6 minutes ago, DaEagles4Life said:

How many Israeli people would be dead if not for this? 

 

Hundreds. Maybe more. I'm terrified when I'm thinking about it... The Iron Dome intercepts close to 90% of the rockets. 

Israel could also save lives (on both sides) by treating the Palestinians like human beings.  Instead, they chose to be the Rand Paul version of a neighbor.

4 minutes ago, Dave Moss said:

Israel could also save lives (on both sides) by treating the Palestinians like human beings.  Instead, they chose to be the Rand Paul version of a neighbor.

Just accept rockets being launched at them and hope the Iron Dome works. 

16 minutes ago, DaEagles4Life said:

Just accept rockets being launched at them and hope the Iron Dome works. 

If every day I took a dump on my neighbor’s driveway, do you think he would just smile and wave?  

36 minutes ago, Dave Moss said:

If every day I took a dump on my neighbor’s driveway, do you think he would just smile and wave?  

He'd fire taco bell blowouts indiscriminately in your direction without regard hitting innocent neighbors.  Pretty much sums this whole shitshow up.

39 minutes ago, Dave Moss said:

If every day I took a dump on my neighbor’s driveway, do you think he would just smile and wave?