BoSoxGal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 2:08 pm
How do you negotiate with people whose manifesto asserts the desire to exterminate your people, who have declared outright that while Jews love life, Hamas happily embraces death and martyrdom in the pursuit of protecting Allah’s land against the Jews? Who have exhibited an ability to commit atrocities equal to those committed by the Nazis, and who are happy to impoverish and intimidate and destroy their own people in the process?
Honestly, how?
By recognizing that we want something they have, and they want something we could provide. The scope of things on either side of that equation is variable, but that's what negotiation is about. Sure, you hate me and want me and my children dead, but right now you also want food, water, electricity, security, medical care, international aid, construction materials, etc. I hate Hamas and want its leaders jailed for life, but right now I also want hostages returned, security, etc. No one is going to get everything they want, and some things (probably including murderers and their commanders being brought to justice) will have to wait.
BoSoxGal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 2:08 pm
I have deep empathy for the people in Gaza who are actually innocent.
There were some civilian Germans who didn’t embrace the deep centuries old German tradition of antisemitism. Some of them were surely among the civilian casualties of the Allies’ defeat of the Nazis. Were America and her allies morally repugnant for killing some innocent Germans in the process of putting down the evil of Nazism?
I'm not sure that war between state actors can really be equated to a state campaign against a terrorist group, and war is almost always the worst solution to any problem. (Also, at least for the Allies, WWII was not about Nazis murdering Jews and other minorities deemed subhuman.) But there are "rules of war" and there are "war crimes," and there is at least the potential for those prosecuting a war to be prosecuted criminally themselves for such violations.
BoSoxGal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 2:08 pm
I want to add that I respect the position of empathy for the Gazans, I wholeheartedly agree that especially recent Israeli policy toward Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank has been counterproductive and has included human rights violations but Israel is not Netanyahu and the Hamas massacre of Jews this last weekend was not justified by anything Israel government has done.
And I don’t know how America can do anything but wholeheartedly support Israel in going after Hamas given what we did to Iraqis and Afghanis in our pursuit of the war on terror after 9/11.
Wholehearted support of Israel does not mean giving it carte blanche to (further) abuse Palestinian civilians, and our colossally wrong decisions to go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than round up the actual criminals of 9/11 do not justify Israel's decision here. In fact, just as the US lost the moral high ground with ill-considered military action after 9/11, Israel is losing it here for largely the same reasons.
Palestinians have legitimate grievances against Israel generally and the Netanyahu government in particular. Israel should not be using a "war" specifically against Hamas terrorists as an excuse to ignore and drown out the complaints of Palestinians generally.
ETA:
I also agree with Big RR's post above.