Avatar ADV wrote:Whatever happened to the concept of reciprocity?
If Hamas were engaging Israel in actual military engagements, with uniformed soldiers under appointed officers, then there would be a discernible difference between Palestinian civilians and Hamas military.
That is, obviously, not the case.
Hamas operatives do not function as the world accepts militaries to function. They dress as civilians, hide among the civilian population, launch attacks on civilians from civilian areas. If the Israelis occasionally hit a Palestinian civilian, it's because Hamas is doing its damnedest to keep the Israelis from being able to distinguish Hamas members from Palestinian civilians.
Well, but if Hamas was fighting Israel as a stand-up military, they wouldn't last five minutes, you say? Too damned bad. The world doesn't guarantee that you get to win, even if you're really really mad about something. If the Palestinians want to win a military engagement against Israel, they need to suck it up, develop an economy, purchase real arms instead of toy rockets, and then declare war and hope for the best. (Of course, they'd still likely lose. Again, too damned bad.)
I don't have a problem with thinking of Hamas as (a) a terrorist organization and (b) the legitimate government of the Palestinian territories. People knew who and what they were voting for when they had the election; by all accounts, it was actually pretty open and clean, certainly by the standards of an Arab nation; thus it's not too much to say that it's the legitimate choice of the Palestinian people. That DOES say something about the Palestinian people which you may not want to hear. To put it bluntly, if you're going to elect terrorists to national office, that implies at least some complicity with them yourself.
And no, I'm not Jewish, a Jew, have any Jewish ancestry, or whatever. I don't follow any Abrahamic religion at all. I'd personally be just as happy if all the holy sites in Jerusalem crumbled into dust tomorrow (hopefully when nobody was there). I don't like countries with an express theology. But I do make an exception for Israel; a bunker mentality is not a bad thing to have when people are constantly shooting rockets at you!
While you explain you're not Jewish, etc., can you at least give agreement to you're being a very realistic Gentile?
