Hamas

[spence]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Democracy is great, but only when the people involved in the democratic process are not coerced and blinded by both insane intolerant terroristic views promulgated by their extremist authoritarian leaders and by a probable fear that those extremist leaders will execute them in the middle of the night should they "vote" against them.

Do you really think it is a true democracy when these overriding pressures exist?

I object your honor, the defense is applying his personal value system upon another culture!

The Palestinians are screwed up in a lot of ways, but you gotta look at the last 60 odd years in perspective to get a grip on what's going on. Not that there's been parity necessarily, but both sides have behaved poorly and the Palestinians have been screwed over by just about everyone including the Brits, Jews and Arabs and Persians.

In the end, unless someone can indicate the election was fraudlent, (that there was corruption or forced votes) what you would have are people voting for who they think is going to deliver the best quality of life for their children. We find terrorisim to be abhorrent, they look at the razing of homes and annexing of land to be just as so...it's all relative.

-spence

[Nebe]

what blows my mind is that 80% of americans have no idea that the country of Israel is only 50 years old. If everyone here knew that 50 years ago millions of pallestinians were kicked out of thier homes and forced into giant refugee camps like in the gaza strip, i think our people would understad what Hammas stands for and why they are blowing them selves up in jewish settlements.

you gotta hear both sides of a story to make a fair decision.

[MakoMike]

Originally Posted by Nebe

what blows my mind is that 80% of americans have no idea that the country of Israel is only 50 years old. If everyone here knew that 50 years ago millions of pallestinians were kicked out of thier homes and forced into giant refugee camps like in the gaza strip, i think our people would understad what Hammas stands for and why they are blowing them selves up in jewish settlements.

you gotta hear both sides of a story to make a fair decision.

Kicked out by who? Not the Jews, it was their fellow arabs who told them to get out of the way so they could destroy Israel. They didn't and Israel didn't let them back in. And who kept them in those refugee camps for the last 50 years? Arab governements, who refused to let them integrate into their countries. Jordan has more of the land from "palistine" than Israel does, and yet most of the Palistinians are still in refugee camps. It's been a PR coup for the arabs, who have a large part of the world blaming Israel for the "palistinian problem" when it was realy all created by the arabs themselves.

[BigFish]

They said on the morning news with Hamas now in power....the chance of peace in the mid-east has no chance.........like it had a chance before???

[afterhours]

how can anyone have any compassion or respect for these animals who intentionally target civilian populace with suicide bombers? my hope is that these hammas creatins see allah......very soon. oh yeah, and what mmike said.

[Skip N]

Originally Posted by afterhours

how can anyone have any compassion or respect for these animals who intentionally target civilian populace with suicide bombers? my hope is that these hammas creatins see allah......very soon. oh yeah, and what mmike said.

Excactlly....how people don't ge that is beyond me

[Navy Chief]

By all accounts, the election of Hamas was orderly and well executed. Let's please remember the fact that Yassar Arafat was the leader of the PLO. He was the Osama bin Laden of his time and later became a welcome visitor to the White House.

Just because we don't agree with someones point of view on certain issues doesn't mean that they don't want the same things that we want. I know that Hamas stated goal is the destruction of Israel (so was the PLO's). The fact remains that all people want to live according to their beliefs and be able to raise their families.

The only way there will be peace in this region is the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Israeli's will never give up Jeruselem and that will always be a point of contention. Israel will never allow a Palestinian state to happen, so this is a neverending story.

Tolerance is required and there is none in that part of the world.

[Raven]

Originally Posted by Navy Chief

. The fact remains that all people want to live according to their beliefs and be able to raise their families.
.

.................................................. .................................................. .

seems to me that there's a bit to much focus on beliefs and not enough on living.
.................................................. ..................................................
a little off topic but...after watching a documetary on the huge military base in IRAQ thats outsourced to run it by kbr corp. it's astonishing.
it will be interesting to see what happens when battlebots come into the picture....ON THE GROUND... as we have them in the air now...

[spence]

Originally Posted by MakoMike

It's been a PR coup for the arabs, who have a large part of the world blaming Israel for the "palistinian problem" when it was realy all created by the arabs themselves.

Mike, I think you're forgetting the small part about the UN partition in 1947 done against the wishes of every Arab nation!

While I agree the surrounding Arab states could and should have done much more to help Palestinian suffering over the years, the fact is the UN displaced three quarters of a million people...promised to help them and did little to nothing.

-spence

[MakoMike]

Originally Posted by spence

Mike, I think you're forgetting the small part about the UN partition in 1947 done against the wishes of every Arab nation!

While I agree the surrounding Arab states could and should have done much more to help Palestinian suffering over the years, the fact is the UN displaced three quarters of a million people...promised to help them and did little to nothing.

-spence

I'm not forgetting about the partition. The partition itself did not displace anyone, everyone that was there was allowed to stay there. It was the looming threat that as soon as the UN got out of the way the Arab countries were going to destroy the fledgling state, that forced palistinians to move, the Jews had no where to go, so they stayed and fought, and won. If the palistinians that elected to move out of the way, had instead stayed, they would still be there.

[TSPS]

The old saying that "there is nothing new under the sun " is true .

1) Back in the late 30's early 40's it was the Dems that where crying out to get involved in what was becomeing WW2 , and the Republicans saying " stay out of it its their problem we need to be diplomatic "
Now in todays age the the rolls have reversed .

2) Hammas may do some good things , but thats just to cover up their real/true agenda . Hammas has finally got what it wanted , political power . I'm sorry ,open minded or not , this is a big , big problem. They go out recrute , brain wash , and send kids in with bombs tied around them .

just my 2cents

[spence]

I don't think anyone is arguing that Hamas doing humanitarian work in any way compensates for acts of terror. Rather it's to try to put things in an alternate and disturbing perspective.

Mike, I don't think the refugees had much choice...they could have stayed and probably not lived. The important point is that they were denied the right to return and the UN failed to provide promised assistance.

It is really f'd up and it only going to get worse before it gets better.

HANG ON.

-spence

[Swimmer]

Sharon is getting what he wanted with the Palastinians. He took his troops out of the way and they started killing themselves immediately. To Israel it may be a problem that is going to take care of itself. But if it doesn't consider this, Hamas on one side of Israel and Iran a short distance away. How long does anyone think that Israel is going to allow that kind of threat to fester and grow before they step on the threat? Boom!

[Swimmer]

NIB is smarter than he looks!

[Nebe]

The interesting thing is that now that the people of palestine have voted in the party that they want, the onus is totally on Hamas to step up to the plate. If Hamas does not show to the world that they want peace, the US and its allies will place sanctions up the yazoo which could put palestine in a worse place than the days of arafat.
This year will be very intersting to say the least.

[Swimmer]

Its sad looking at this from both sides. Isreal and the palastinians are fighting to keep land they have lived on and lost, lived on and lost, lived on and lost over several milleniums. God, no matter which one you ascribe to isn't making any more of it and maybe on that basis everybody ought to learn to live with what they have.

[chris L]

Originally Posted by Nebe

what blows my mind is that 80% of americans have no idea that the country of Israel is only 50 years old. If everyone here knew that 50 years ago millions of pallestinians were kicked out of thier homes and forced into giant refugee camps like in the gaza strip, i think our people would understad what Hammas stands for and why they are blowing them selves up in jewish settlements.

you gotta hear both sides of a story to make a fair decision.

HERE HERE jolly good eben . you hit the nail on the head and so did spence .

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by spence

I object your honor, the defense is applying his personal value system upon another culture!

The Palestinians are screwed up in a lot of ways, but you gotta look at the last 60 odd years in perspective to get a grip on what's going on. Not that there's been parity necessarily, but both sides have behaved poorly and the Palestinians have been screwed over by just about everyone including the Brits, Jews and Arabs and Persians.

In the end, unless someone can indicate the election was fraudlent, (that there was corruption or forced votes) what you would have are people voting for who they think is going to deliver the best quality of life for their children. We find terrorisim to be abhorrent, they look at the razing of homes and annexing of land to be just as so...it's all relative.

-spence

Nope Spence, just what I consider normal human universal values. Jusr because some people portray their causes as sympathetic or somehow moral in their own sense of culture does not mean I have to believe or accept their crap.

I consider it coercion when people are led to believe that strapping bombs to themselves or their kids is the "right" thing to do and will lead to some sort of salvation for them.

Tired now...

[spence]

I think you're confusing the cause of the general people vs the cause of those aligned against Isreal. The whole Wilsonian "universal values" thing is fragile, it exists in a world of plenty, not in a world of poverty.

I'm not justifying any of their actions, I find terrorisim to be abhorrent and Hamas to be evil in many ways, but I also understand (somewhat) how humans could come to do these things.

Think about US action in Dresden or the atomic attacks in Japan. These clearly were intended to kill large numbers of civilians to crush the will of our opponents. Were they in our interests at the time? Sure they were...but you know where I'm going.

The key is, we can't just look at terrorists as crackpots, because you can never stop all the wackos. The world today is such that a few people can create tremendous harm for the masses if their motivated.

We need policy that places a wedge between the real fanatics and the mainstream. Today we've lost a billion people on the wrong side of the wedge...

-spence

[JoeP]

Spence I agree with alot of what you said - it's just that the premise of my original comments came from the other comments about whether or not the Hamas vote today was "true" democracy in action.

But I will add, again, that I believe policy and diplomacy with these types of people only goes so far, and then aggressive protective and instinctual defensive tactics must take over. That is why I fully support what our President has done for this country in the past 4 years...

[spence]

You know...the interesting byline here is that the people were so frustrated with the corruption of the old government that they voted a wacko terror group into power!

Could some strategic aid have swayed (i.e. purchased) their support instead?

Was Isreal too hardline in their stance?

Simple questions, but this is and has been the single largest Global policy issue in the last 35 years! (aside from the cold war)...

-spence

[ThrowingTimber]