Hamas Wins !!!

Perhaps, but apparently a "considerable number" is not a majority.

How long will it take to persuade Palestinians that violence will never work for them? Not because violence never works but because it will never work for them.

Whenever they have stepped up their violence against Israel, Israel has responded in kind. Violence has not improved the daily lives of Palestinians.

There is no level of violence the Palestinians can rise to that will defeat Israel, but there is a level to which they can rise which will result in their destruction as a nation and a people.

It really is a terrible shame and waste of lives. Half the world is sympathetic towards them even while they engage in terrorism. Imagine how they would be seen, and how much pressure would be brought to bear on Israel, if they adopted a non-violent approach.

I completely agree, Finn.

I don't know if there really is a majority of Palestinians who want to eliminate Israel. It seems that a majority does not show a lot of restraint when it comes to using strong words. On the other hand, that's not something that is unique to the Palestinians. There are lots of Israelis who have not a lot of charming words for the Palestinians.

However, I almost completely agree with Finn. Violence has never worked for the Palestinians. And obviously they have been used by their fellow islamic brothers in order to keep that "oppressed Palestinians" scenario alive without doing anything to actually try to improve their situation.

Yes, Israel is portrayed as the bad guys by some even when they are retaliating for a bus full of school children being blown up or a busy restaurant or marketplace being obliterated. Imagine if Israel committed unprovoked violence against people just peacefully going about their daily business? The outrage would be universal and all support would be withdrawn.

It should be universal when the Palestinians do it too, and Hamas should be put on notice.

I take issue with the word "retaliation".

Because, having said that violence has never worked for the Palestinians, I'd like to add that the concept of retaliation from the Israeli side doesn't seem to be a particularly peace-endorsing one. Neither are the methods employed overly squeamish.

There have been cases where the Israeli army has bulldozed virtually every house along a particular road. The reason given was that "they have been shot at" from somewhere down that road. I think it is obvious that the families who have lost their homes to such particular acts of "retaliation" are not very willing to partake in whatever peace process there is.

This is just one tiny example. And it can in no way be a justification for the suicide attacks on Israeli civilians (having typed "civilians" I'm left wondering whether or not it could possibly justify suicide attacks on Israeli soldiers?).

But critizising one side must automatically lead to critizising the other side as well when the methods employed are barely distinguishable. Plus I think the question who actually started the whole process (attack-retaliation-retaliation for that retaliation-etc.) is quite mute and the term "retaliation" has become meaningless.

Of course, Israel has been guilty of such acts as well, during Brit occupation, before that period, and since. We'll note the Israeli general (if I recall the rank correctly) who dropped his bombs on an apartment building in order to kill a suspected Hamas operative or leader but killing 17 innocents also in that apartment building. When asked later what he felt about this act, he replied "A slight bump on my plane from the bomb." Or the infamous slaughter of some 2000 Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps (ethnic cleansing for which Sharon holds personal responsibility, along with others). It's a long list and Israel has much responsibility in this mess as do the Palestinians. Many many more innocent Palestianians have been killed than innocent Israelis.

The argument that violence has not helped the Palestinian cause is surely true. But it is equally as true to say the same thing about Israel's uses of violence. Israel has engaged in a systematic and highly successful operation designed to assassinate the Hamas leadership. That leadership has been almost completely killed off. But as we've seen from the election, the power of Hamas is now greater than it has ever been.

The big winner in recent events (Sharon's stroke before his new party had gained any organization, membership or even enough substance to be real, and the Palestinian election) looks likely to produce a very dangerous consequence of Netanyahu once again as the dominant figure in Israeli politics. That doesn't bode well for anyone.

I think what it all comes down to is...who wants peace most?

If Hamas truly wants peace,they will reign in their suicide bombers and stop the attacks.
If Israel wants peace,they will negotiate in good faith.

I do however,think that if Hamas continues the suicide attacks,they will be signing Palestines death warrant.
If Hamas attacks now,then since they are the govt,that would give Israel the excuse it needed to declare total war.

Hamas MUST not continue the attacks,because if they do it will be one nation attacking another,and the Palestinians cannot win thar fight.

Most definitely. However - do you think they'll be capable of doing so?

Honestly?

No,I dont.
The hatred runs to deep,the passions are so intense,that neither side will be willing to compromise.

However,as long as Hamas doesnt recognize Israels right to exist,or renounce their wanting to destroy Israel,then the Israeli's have every right to be suspicious.

I agree completely.

Unmasking Amona

By Haaretz Editorial

Before the dust of the Amona demolitions has cleared, the settlers have begun their next media offensive. They insist on foisting on Israeli society their own narrow, self-victimized narrative of the outposts' evacuation. This tactic failed after the Gaza disengagement, yet they are obstinately determined to wring any emotional capital out of it.

Wednesday night they prayed for the life of 14-year-old Yehiam Eyal, whose skull was cracked, and blamed the policemen, who clubbed him, for his injury. One's heart goes out to the boy lying helpless in his bed, yet one cannot but marvel at this cynical and malicious emotional manipulation.

Amona was born in sin. The children of the "mainstream" settlers in Ofra and other settlements, who were swept away to a more extreme position than their parents, set it up as an illegal outpost.

It is on private land overlooking a settlement, whose legal status derives only from a political definition. Ariel Sharon encouraged them when he was infrastructure minister. They knew no government would stop them. For a short time they dwelt in temporary structures, then built permanent houses - the ones the court ordered demolished. Amona residents had not moved into those houses

On Wednesday, after the High Court of Justice rejected the settlers' petition, the demolition order was finally carried out.

Eyal, who was later injured, and his colleagues were abandoned by their parents in a violent, wild battle, which teachers, educators, rabbis and mentors all initiated and egged on.

Even if some policeman's blow was excessively hard, one should ask what those children were doing on Amona hill on the day of evacuation.

"We are sitting in our warm houses," Nekuda editor Uri Elitzur wrote in January's edition, "leaving the war for our entire life's project in the hands of masked 14- and 15-year-olds ... They sense intuitively what is at stake, but they do not always understand what is the right thing to do or not to do." Elitzur's conclusion is that "someone must break out of this paralysis and lead. Both them and us."

Elitzur admits the failure of the settlers' leadership, which lost control. But he is convinced the settlers must go to war. This is how the children he is talking about were raised: on hatred toward the law and the police, and in recent years on incitement against the army and the state.

In their eyes, it's okay to kill Palestinians, the land is sacred and man is its victim.

The evacuation of Amona is not the last. Additional evacuations are expected soon. The government and security forces must learn their lessons from this evacuation and find ways to prepare for violent resistance.

"Everything beyond the fence is earmarked for demolition," writes Elitzur, expressing the settlers' recognition that the ball has already started rolling.

The rearguard battle could, therefore, be desperate and wild, and clever military deployment and organization may be required, to combine intelligent and decisive negotiations with the evacuation. Thus the ground would be prepared for the next stage, in which Israel withdraws into its borders of sanity.

Brushfire civil war: Israel, the new enemy of the True Jew

By Bradley Burston

The time has come to choose your side. The civil war has begun.

On one side of this War Between the States are the Children of Light. The pure, the young and untainted, the real Jews, who care nothing for themselves, only for the Land of Israel. Passionate, tireless, leaderless.

They are the New Genuine Jews. And they have a new enemy: The state of Israel.

Increasingly, the language of hardline settlers has taken on a note of estrangement, even divorce from institutions of the state, the police, the Supreme Court, the army, the prime minister. "This is an army of Israelis who hate the Jews," a Hebron resident said last week.

By no means are they representative of settlers as a whole, or of pro-settler Israelis, nor youth as a whole, nor even settler youth. Their mindset and methods often harm the settlers' cause, and the settlers know it. They are small in number. Theirs is a brushfire civil war. But brushfires can take directions and forms which no one can control.

You know the children's crusade in its many forms, the Vegan Hippie Carlebachites, the hardcore Confederacy of Kahane, the separatist State of Judea loyalists, the settlement-born Orange Diaper Babies of the Hilltop Youth.

You know them by the way they relate to the rest of us. The quiet, knowing disdain that says that they know more than we, they care more than we, they suffer more, contribute more, matter more.

They are saintly where we are profane, godly where we are lost. And, to the extent that we serve in this army or support this government, we are something else as well. The enemy.

"This is a war," said Asaf Baruchi of Beit El settlement, standing bandaged and in a sling in from of Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, the left half of his face striped in the blood of his own scalp. "It's a war between cultures. The left is trying to lliquidate religious Zionism, the only alternative."

Baruchi was beaten in the violent collisions between pro-settler demonstrators and the troops and police that came to oust them from Amona, a West Bank outpost not far from Baruchi's home. As many as 100 were injured on each side. A 15-year-old was critically injured by a police nightstick, and a policeman was critically injured by a thrown rock.

"The army's not yours, it's ours," Baruchi told Channel 10 talk show host Rafi Reshef, in response to a question about the actions of IDF troops in Amona. "You stole it, but we're going to take it back."

more http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=677531&contrassID=2

This sort of tit for tat response is silly: "Yeah, well violence is no good for Israel either!"

The notion that a condemnation of violence must be symmetrical is moral rather than strategic.

Irrespective of morality, from a purely practical standpoint, violence will never work for Palestine. It will never be able to mount an attack on Israel of such force that Israel will not be able to respond and in responding, utterly destroy Palestine.

While I don't advocate a course of violence for Israel, the simple fact remains that violence is, in a very limited sense, an option for success

Under the right circumstances, Israel can obliterate Palestine and weather the disapproval of the world.

Hamas running Palestine brings the region closer to that right set of circumstances.

In the end, it is the Palestinians who bring their fate upon themselves.

If South Africa was able to avoid what seemed like an inevitable blood bath and move forward into an imperfect but admirably peaceful society, the same can be done in Palestine --- unless the Palestinians are somehow culturally incapable of normalcy. Frankly, I am beginning to wonder if the modern Arab culture has a place within a civilized world society.

BTW - welcome back blatham.

Damn it, they're just not immoral and violent the way civilized people are!

finn said

Actually, my point was the opposite to what you suggest. It is a strategic argument, not a moral argument, to point out that Hamas has grown in influence and power EVEN THOUGH Israeli forces had assassinated almost their entire leadership structure.

The Jan 23 & 30 New Yorker has a wonderful profile on Ariel Sharon written by Israel journalist Ari Shavit (Haaretz). Highly recommended.

Finn wrote:
"Frankly, I am beginning to wonder if the modern Arab culture has a place within a civilized world society." Kind of a broad generalization. And what of these people, "the Children of Light. The pure, the young and untainted, the real Jews, who care nothing for themselves, only for the Land of Israel. Passionate, tireless, leaderless.

They are the New Genuine Jews. And they have a new enemy: The state of Israel? "

If somehow the fundamentalism of both sides could be diminished there maybe a chance for peace. After all, Jews are originally from the Middle East like the city of Ur in modern day Iraq.

talk, yes and American Christian fundamentalism is playing a large role also.

"...Shall We Not Revenge?"
by Uri Avnery
(Saturday February 04 2006)

If one wants to understand what the Palestinians did on election day, one has to see the film "Paradise Now", which has been nominated for an Oscar for the best foreign film, after collecting several prestigious international prizes. It explains better than a million words.
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/26372