Opinion of this quote

[Indy Texas]

HQ. The United States doesn't have a "moral imperative" to defend any foreign nation.

[Indy Texas]

I'm more inclined to for the U.S. to wipe it's hands with the conflict.  However, if we absolutely must be involved (which is a valid argument), and considering it seems that neither government is interested in a peaceful solution, I'm with TNF and say that a secular representative government should be imposed on the whole lot of 'em. 

And what do you do when the general public uses that representative government to elect people to office who proceed to impose Sharia/Halacha/whatever?

[Indy Texas]

Freedom quote, as is her support of a two state solution.

The comparison to aparthied era South Africa is faulty as popular soverignty would mandate israel as a Jewish state just as South Africa government is multi~acial led by blacks.

No - apartheid era South Africa was politically majority white because virtually all blacks were not considered full citizens of South Africa. They were considered citizens of the bantustans, which had largely nominal authority, and thus had no political rights in the national South African political process.

If you gave citizenship and the franchise to every adult in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, you'd never have another Likud government in Israel again.

[Indy Texas]

A considerable proportion of Israel's Jewish population is of recent Middle Eastern/North African origin, incidentally.

What's your point? That it's okay for brown people to abuse and marginalize other brown people?

[Indy Texas]

The United States certainly can't be proud of our treatment of the Indians.  Should we allow Sioux people to fire rockets at Rapid City to make up for that?

The comparison that Israeli apologists make to our own colonization and settlement of North America is a monstrous misrepresentation.

What was acceptable in the 1600s is not necessarily acceptable in the 20th century or today. If Israel wanted to enact chattel slavery, would you be saying, "Well WE did it prior to the 1860s. If you don't allow them to, you're a raving anti-semite who wants them all to die in Hitler's ovens you Nazi!"

We didn't have to kill very many Indians since most of them died from all the diseases we and the Spanish brought there from Europe.

And the American Indians have by and large ceased to exist as a distinct people in modern America. There are a few on reservations, but they largely wear Western clothes, speak English and often don't even practice their traditional religion. They often intermarried with white and black Americans; I can claim Native American ancestry as can just about any American whose family has been here a decent amount of time. If you tried to find out what tribe's land was taken when and locate their direct descendants to give it back, it would more or less be impossible. Too much time has gone by. Too much migration and merger and splitting of tribes has happened. The definition of who qualifies as a Native American has become very fluid.

By contrast, the Palestinians have not disappeared as a people. It would be very easy to locate land deeds from less than a century ago. Many of those people are still alive, or their children or grandchildren are. There has been virtually no intermarrying between Israelis or Palestinians and they and their culture have, by design, remained outside the Israeli state and Israeli society. So the idea that a "Native American" solution would be acceptable in the context of Israel and the Palestinians is absurd, as is the idea that there is any moral equivalency between white Americans driving natives into the woods in the early 1600s and Israelis burning Palestinian olive orchards in the 2010s. They should know better.

[Indy Texas]

Well, that's certainly wrong on many levels as it pertains to Native Americans.  But, more to the point, I didn't imply that anything that happened to Palestinians is justified.  I meant, just because your group of people legitimately suffered, you don't get to fire missiles at innocent civilians and blatantly violate rules of war.  Hamas is clearly the villain here and there's nothing that could justify their tactics and ideological program.  The cause of Palestinian statehood and human rights is kind of irrelevant to this current situation.  It could be the best cause, most righteous cause in the world, if you're pursuing using Hamas's tactics, you're at fault for both your attacks and the response. 

This is what would happen if Hamas stopped shooting rockets: Israel would end their military operation, the troops would go home, the settlement construction in the West Bank/Judaea and Samaria/Cisjordan would continue and nothing would change.

So what incentive do they have to do that? At this point, the general sense among Hamas seems to be that Israel is never going to seriously negotiate anything and isn't going anywhere, but if they're going to be there then Hamas is going to ensure that their existence is as miserable as possible. And Israel has more or less taken the same stance - they can't eliminate the Palestinians or send them all to Jordan, so they're going to make their lives as unpleasant as they can for the time being.

The goal in both cases is to get the other side to "self deport" to borrow a Mittism.

[Indy Texas]

This is where the US might consider holding hostage arms expenditures to Israel until a satisfactory peace occurs.

Ted Cruz is accusing the White House of launching an economic boycott of Israel all because the FAA halted US airline flights to Tel Aviv for two days for security reasons.

You really think stopping arms sales to Israel is a realistic course of action?

[Indy Texas]

George H. W. Bush and his foreign policy team (James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Thomas R. Pickering) were probably the closest any administration came to a truly balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And Bush got hell for that decision, the Christian Right started looking for people to primary him, and AIPAC got firmly in the Clinton camp.

[Indy Texas]

Well, that's certainly wrong on many levels as it pertains to Native Americans.  But, more to the point, I didn't imply that anything that happened to Palestinians is justified.  I meant, just because your group of people legitimately suffered, you don't get to fire missiles at innocent civilians and blatantly violate rules of war.  Hamas is clearly the villain here and there's nothing that could justify their tactics and ideological program.  The cause of Palestinian statehood and human rights is kind of irrelevant to this current situation.  It could be the best cause, most righteous cause in the world, if you're pursuing using Hamas's tactics, you're at fault for both your attacks and the response. 

This is what would happen if Hamas stopped shooting rockets: Israel would end their military operation, the troops would go home, the settlement construction in the West Bank/Judaea and Samaria/Cisjordan would continue and nothing would change.

So what incentive do they have to do that? At this point, the general sense among Hamas seems to be that Israel is never going to seriously negotiate anything and isn't going anywhere, but if they're going to be there then Hamas is going to ensure that their existence is as miserable as possible. And Israel has more or less taken the same stance - they can't eliminate the Palestinians or send them all to Jordan, so they're going to make their lives as unpleasant as they can for the time being.

The goal in both cases is to get the other side to "self deport" to borrow a Mittism.

That's another silly argument.  Not shooting rockets at civilians won't immediately solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, I agree.  That's hardly a test for whether you should continue an action though.  Nothing, by itself, will lead to peace.  But, observing basic conventions of human decency would be a good start, and that goes for both sides.  Both sides need to start taking steps towards peace, even if there's no guarantee the other side will reciprocate.  However, the thing that locks the situation in place though is the mass scale violence.  Hamas is clearly the driving force behind that and they need to stop.

On the point of Israel's intentions, I don't think it's clear.  Israel has seriously negotiated with the Palestinians in the past.  If you go back to the time before the second intifada, there were serious negotiations.  Look at the Oslo Peace Accords and the Camp David summit.  Israel has negotiated in good faith when they didn't feel this huge threat to their security.  I think they would again if they had a partner for peace.  If there was a sane, orderly Palestinian government to negotiate with Israel would likely be forced to make serious concessions by the international community.

When Mahmoud Abbas tried to negotiate with them unilaterally, Israel claimed that wasn't valid because he wasn't representing the entire government. Whenever he tries rapprochement with Hamas, Israel claims they still won't negotiate because now Hamas is involved and they don't like Hamas. What if the Palestinian Authority simply refused to negotiate with an Israeli government that had a right-wing party like Yisrael Beitenu in its coalition? You can't just refuse to talk to someone because you don't like their internal political reality. Hamas's political success in Palestinian elections is Israel's own fault more than anything else.

When the suicide bombings stopped in the mid-2000s, Israel responded by building more settlements. When the rocket attacks from Gaza stop, there are more settlements. When the rocket attacks started up again, there were more settlements.

Why are you so unwilling to acknowledge that the fact that the settlement construction continues is a pretty big red flag that Israel has no interest in negotiating?

[Indy Texas]

How convenient for you (and the rest of us Americans) that the US's occupation of Native American land occured before this arbitrary line you drew to separate "acceptable" and "unacceptable" kinds of land occupation. Ha, we got grandfathered in, suckers!

I'm sure you arrived at this specific dividing line through a fair and rational thought process, and not at all through your own self interest.

It's not arbitrary. The fact is that prior to the early 20th century, it was pretty much accepted as a given that white people were better than everyone else and could do whatever the hell they wanted in any corner of the world. In fact, it was our "duty" to conquer and control those poor lil' darkies so that they could be given the glorious gifts of our civilization. (And give us their rubber/gold/tobacco/etc in the process.)

That was something that we came to understand over time was completely wrong. And if that conclusion had been reached in, say, the mid-18th century, the right thing to do would have been to compensate the native Americans, return them their lands and confine ourselves to areas that they were willing to voluntarily sell us. And any government that would be set up would be done both with their consent and the colonists' consent.

Some of my ancestors helped settle Jamestown colony in the 17th century. I doubt they thought of the natives as human beings with rights equal to theirs. That was completely outside the scope of human thought at that time.

They didn't know any better. But an Israeli settler who wantonly shoots at Palestinians from his settlement outpost most certainly does know better. He has the benefit of hundreds of years of history and human development that someone 400 years ago didn't have. So yes, I am going to hold him to a higher standard, and yes, what he is doing in the year 2014 is wrong. What my ancestors did in 1650 was wrong by the standards of 2014 but not by the standards of 1650. That is the difference.

[Indy Texas]

My point is that the Palestinians' primary grievance against Israel is the settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nothing the Palestinians have or haven't done has stopped Israel from doing that.

But their logic is that if Israel is going to do that no matter what, they're going to try to make Israel as miserable as possible. They would rather have a settlement full of stressed-out, PTSD-suffering Israelis than one full of happy, unperturbed Israelis because the former would hopefully go back to Israel proper or pressure their government to change their policies.

That is also the reason they attack civilians (though I'd point out that nearly every Israeli who has died during this operation has been a non-civilian). The rockets, as you know, kill very few people. They're not designed to kill people. They're designed to scare people and make their lives stressful and unpleasant so that they will pressure their government to pursue a different set of policies. Of course it could just as easily have the opposite effect - emboldening them to vote for politicians who will be even more hardline and uncompromising.

When you're dealing with an area that small, civilians are going to be impacted no matter what. I don't know why you're ignoring the fact that Israel has recently killed nearly 700 civilians. Why aren't you asking them to stop doing that?

[Indy Texas]

My point is that the Palestinians' primary grievance against Israel is the settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nothing the Palestinians have or haven't done has stopped Israel from doing that.

But their logic is that if Israel is going to do that no matter what, they're going to try to make Israel as miserable as possible. They would rather have a settlement full of stressed-out, PTSD-suffering Israelis than one full of happy, unperturbed Israelis because the former would hopefully go back to Israel proper or pressure their government to change their policies.

That is also the reason they attack civilians (though I'd point out that nearly every Israeli who has died during this operation has been a non-civilian). The rockets, as you know, kill very few people. They're not designed to kill people. They're designed to scare people and make their lives stressful and unpleasant so that they will pressure their government to pursue a different set of policies. Of course it could just as easily have the opposite effect - emboldening them to vote for politicians who will be even more hardline and uncompromising.

When you're dealing with an area that small, civilians are going to be impacted no matter what. I don't know why you're ignoring the fact that Israel has recently killed nearly 700 civilians. Why aren't you asking them to stop doing that?

Israel is trying to get rid of the rockets and tunnels used to transport them into Gaza, they're not trying to kill civilians.  What Israel has done is perfectly legal under the rules of war.  Maybe they could be more careful about avoiding civilian casualties, but that's largely impaired by Hamas using the human shield strategy. 

As far as the settlements, I'm kind of confused.  There are no settlements in Gaza or anywhere where the rockets can hit.  And, sure, the rockets don't kill a lot of people.  That's because their range is not highly populated and Israel protects its civilians, instead of using them as human shields.

No, but there are settlements all over the West Bank, which is precisely the source of the grievance. Yes, Israel dismantled its Gaza settlements, but that is meaningless considering they then proceeded to construct a number in the West Bank that far exceeded those they dismantled. If you were going to attack Israel, would you do it from the West Bank, which is essentially under de facto IDF control, or would you do it from Gaza, where Israel has no presence? Which would be easier to do?

As for the Gaza civilians, exactly where do you expect them to go so that they won't be harmed by the present Israeli incursion? They're not allowed to leave the Gaza Strip. You can pat the IDF on the back for giving them advance notice of attacks, but when they have no wherewithal to actually go to a safe location, it's totally pointless. Israeli civilians have bomb shelters they can go to when Hamas fires rockets at them. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza - kind of hard to make those when you're barred from importing building materials to make them. You might as well give them no warning and kill them suddenly - at least that way they won't spend their last minutes and hours in a state of panic and terror.

[Indy Texas]

I mean, I generally agree that Israel's settlement policy is horrible and illegal.  But, there's no unanimity in Israel over the idea that all the settlements need to stay. 

There's no unanimity among Palestinians that Hamas firing rockets into Israel is a good idea either, but Israel has no problem collectively punishing them for that.

Why is it beyond the pale for the Palestinians to collectively punish Israel for their own non-unanimous decision?

[Indy Texas]

I mean, I generally agree that Israel's settlement policy is horrible and illegal.  But, there's no unanimity in Israel over the idea that all the settlements need to stay. 

There's no unanimity among Palestinians that Hamas firing rockets into Israel is a good idea either, but Israel has no problem collectively punishing them for that.

Why is it beyond the pale for the Palestinians to collectively punish Israel for their own non-unanimous decision?

So, people in East Jerusalem adding a bedroom to their house is tantamount to firing rockets at civilians?  I don't support Israel building settlements either, but it's not warfare.  It's provocative and wrong, but it must be dealt with using peaceful means. 

To further distinguish, I think Israel is following established international norms of warfare.  Going into Gaza to destroy rockets and their access points is in response to a military threat and proportional to its scope.  It's not just, Israel disapproves of Hamas so they're going to bomb Gaza.  It's not collective punishment, even if that's the net effect of any war.

Hamas, on the other hand, constantly violates the basic international rules of war.  They're a terrorist group that targets civilians.  That's not a legitimate tactic.  What they should do is recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce terrorism and come to the bargaining table.

When your government demolishes the house of the person next door because that person isn't the right religion so that you can add that extra bedroom, you're certainly not leaving them with a shortage of reasons to be firing rockets.

What "peaceful means" deter that kind of behavior? They've been doing it for at least 40 years. I'm sure if linking hands and singing Kumbaya were effective, it would have been done by now.

[Indy Texas]

If you think it's perfectly OK to shoot rockets at civilians, I don't know what to tell you.  If you think Hamas's terrorist tactics are legitimate and helpful to the situation, we have to just agree to disagree.

I don't think it's "perfectly OK."

Do you think it's "perfectly OK" that Israel has been shelling a UN-run school full of children?

At this point, there's really no substantive difference between what these two groups of people are doing apart from the fact that one is the official military of a recognized government and the other is a para-military organization affiliated with a political party in an unrecognized state.