Hamas claims majority in new Palestinian elections

[HomeLAN]

The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which has said it favors the destruction of Israel, won an apparent victory in Palestinian legislative elections, officials said Thursday, reshaping the political landscape of the Middle East.

"We have lost the elections; Hamas has won," said Saeb Erakat, a Palestinian lawmaker with the ruling Fatah Party. He said Fatah, which has held power since the creation of the Palestinian Authority, will now be the opposition.

Source

So, the peace-loving people of Palastine have handed power to an acknowledged terrorist group who have, in the near past, held as announced goals the eradication of a neighboring state and the killing of as many Israeli and US citizens as possible. Not even mandating a coalition, they handed these bastards a clean majority.

Are some of you starting to get the picture yet? These folks don't want peace, nor even continued negotiation. They WANT to remain in howling barbarism and a constant state of holy war, and they've elected a gov't that will lead them there.

I need a drink.

 

[catocom]

Re: Hamas claims majority in new Palastinian elections

I guess there's always "hope", but I never "expected" anything different.
I've always believed the prophecies that said there would "never" be peace.

 

[HomeLAN]

Re: Hamas claims majority in new Palastinian elections

I did expect something different. I really thought the average palestinian just wanted to get on with life, and was a heck of a lot smarter than to vote for a group of murderous thugs and their apocalyptic view of the future.

Guess I was wrong.

 

[chcr]

Obviously my point has been missed. The Palestinians And the Israelis have fought since before there were jews (or, of course, muslims). There is nothing on earth that will ever stop them. Well, possibly extermination. My earlier point was that this in no way makes all muslims the evil, want every non-muslim dead or converted group that many people on the board present this as evidence to support. I still contend that the rifle waving suicide bombers are a small minority of the Palestinians, but I do agree that the vast majority of Palestinians would be more than happy to see every Israeli dead. I'm not certain you can say the same about the vst majority of Israelis but the sentiment certainly exists. That's been clear for thousands of years. This war has nothing to do with religion (although that is the current excuse). It's a race war. Isn't it pretty? This war started long before either religion did and it will likely go on until the end of days.

 

[HomeLAN]

I still contend that the rifle waving suicide bombers are a small minority of the Palestinians,

I used to agree. This was an open election, with some 78% turnout, that flatly contradicts that opinion.

 

[chcr]

I used to agree. This was an open election, with some 78% turnout, that flatly contradicts that opinion.

I don't think it does. It just shows that at least 78% agree with the rifle waving suicide bombers, which really doesn't surprise me in this particular case. Most people, even fanatical ones, have better sense than to make themselves an obvious target.

 

[HomeLAN]

OK, so they just whole-heartedly support them. You know as well as I do just how thin that particular line is.

 

[chcr]

OK, so they just whole-heartedly support them. You know as well as I do just how thin that particular line is.

Well, I clearly think it's a wider line than you do. You'll note that the leaders are generally not the rifle wavers and hardly ever the suicide bombers. I just say that most Palestinians are perfectly happy to let someone else die for the cause and would probably be a great deal less so to do it themselves.

I whole-heartedly support gay rights and gay marriage but I'll never have sex with a man.

 

[HomeLAN]

Yeah, whatever.

 

[Professur]

Well, I clearly think it's a wider line than you do. You'll note that the leaders are generally not the rifle wavers and hardly ever the suicide bombers. I just say that most Palestinians are perfectly happy to let someone else die for the cause and would probably be a great deal less so to do it themselves.

I whole-heartedly support gay rights and gay marriage but I'll never have sex with a man.

It worries me greatly that you somehow equate supporting gay rights and supporting terrorists.

As for the separation twixt leaders and rifle wavers ..... from someone who lives in the legacy of the FLQ, and has cousins living the legacy of the IRA ..... You're talking out your ass.

 

[HomeLAN]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Professur again.

 

[Gonz]

So, the peace-loving people of Palastine have handed power to an acknowledged terrorist group...

Are some of you starting to get the picture yet? These folks don't want peace, nor even continued negotiation.

That's it in a nutshell.

There goes the incorrect theory that only the nuts were dancing in the streets.

 

[Gonz]

That's been clear for thousands of years.

Jaffa (the main city full of Muslims & Christians) & Tel Aviv(a Jewish suburb) peaceably coexisted in the Palestinian region of the desert for 50 years before the state of Israel was formed which upset the Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians & other assorted Arab states by having a Jewish controlled state.

They were all happy to take from the Palestinians & hold the land that is now claimed by a group who never wanted to form their own country & were happy to line under primarily Jordanian or Syrian rule. The children have been brought up to hate Jews & to find their deaths pleasurable. Now the children have children & they placed a militant terrorist group in charge...with one thing in mind. Kill the Jews.

There will be no peace without total victory.

 

[paul_valaru]

Jaffa (the main city full of Muslims & Christians) & Tel Aviv(a Jewish suburb) peaceably coexisted in the Palestinian region of the desert for 50 years before the state of Israel was formed which upset the Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians & other assorted Arab states by having a Jewish controlled state.

They were all happy to take from the Palestinians & hold the land that is now claimed by a group who never wanted to form their own country & were happy to line under primarily Jordanian or Syrian rule. The children have been brought up to hate Jews & to find their deaths pleasurable. Now the children have children & they placed a militant terrorist group in charge...with one thing in mind. Kill the Jews.

There will be no peace without total victory.

what he said!!!!!!!!!!!

(especially that last bit)

I am all for gay marriage, but I am also all for israeli soilders shooting at kids throwing rocks, cause one might be a grenade.

Once again they have a chance for peace and they don't want it, makes me wish the US finally lets Israel off it's leash, and lets them go to town.

 

[chcr]

Jaffa (the main city full of Muslims & Christians) & Tel Aviv(a Jewish suburb) peaceably coexisted in the Palestinian region of the desert for 50 years before the state of Israel was formed which upset the Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians & other assorted Arab states by having a Jewish controlled state.

Re the fifty years leading up to the formation of the Jewish state:

When Jews began arriving in Palestine en masse in the late 19th century, the land had an Arab presence. The number of Arabs in Palestine at the time and questions surrounding when many of the Arabs came to the land remain the subject of dispute among historians. The early Zionist pioneers saw the Arab population as small, apolitical and without a nationalist element and they therefore believed that there would not be friction between the two communities. They also thought that development of the country would benefit both peoples and they would thus secure Arab support and cooperation. Indeed, many Arabs migrated to Palestine in the wake of economic growth stimulated by Jewish immigration. They were attracted to the area by its employment opportunities, higher wages and better living conditions.

Contrary to their expectations, the Jews were met with intense Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine. In the early years of Jewish immigration, individual and small bands of Arabs engaged in violence against Jews and Jewish settlements. As time went on, Arab attacks against Jews became more organized and more widespread. The British authorities often failed to stave off Arab attacks and refused to come to the assistance of Jews during attacks. Particularly brutal Arab assaults swept Palestine in 1929, of which the Hebron massacre, in which 67 Jews were murdered, is the most infamous.

*sigh* I usually don't hunt for stuff I read about in high school, but I thought this point should be made.

I got yer link right here.

BTW, Prof, I didn't equate them. Kind of interesting you took it that way though.

 

[flavio]

There goes the incorrect theory that only the nuts were dancing in the streets.

Could we get some clarity on the correct theory about who all exactly danced in the streets and what is it that stems from the dancing?

The children have been brought up to hate Jews & to find their deaths pleasurable.

Anyone know how Jewish children are brought up to feel about Palestinians?

Honestly I don't know a whole lot about the situation except that I've been hearing "Gaza Strip" and about fighting, negotiations, and more fighting between the two countries for as long as I can remember.

So I am curious why some people think the Israelis are obviously the good guys. Looking for a little info makes it seem that it's not so clear. I found the stuff below at a site called Jews for Justice for Palestinians. The articles apparently are all written by Jews.

If it Were the Reverse

What would happen if a Palestinian
terrorist were to detonate a bomb at the
entrance to an apartment building in
Israel and cause the death of an elderly
man in a wheelchair, who would later be
found buried under the rubble of the
building? The country would be
profoundly shocked. Everyone would talk
about the sickening cruelty of the act and
its perpetrators. The shock would be even
greater if it then turned out that the dead
man’s wife had tried to dissuade the
terrorist from blowing up the house,
telling him that there were people inside,
but to no avail. The tabloids would come
out with the usual screaming headline:
“Buried alive in his wheelchair.” The
terrorists would be branded “animals.”
Last Monday, Israel Defense Forces
bulldozers in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza
Strip, demolished the home of Ibrahim
Halfalla, a 75-year-old disabled man and
father of seven, and buried him alive.
Umm-Basel, his wife, says she tried to
stop the driver of the heavy machine by
shouting, but he paid her no heed. The
IDF termed the act “a mistake that
shouldn’t have happened,” and the
incident was noted in passing in Israel.
The country’s largest-circulation paper,
Yedioth Ahronoth, didn’t bother to run the
story at all. The blood libel in France - a
woman’s tale of being subjected to an
anti-
Semitic attack, which later turned out to
be fiction - proved a great deal more
upsetting to people. There we thought the
assault was aimed against our people.
But when the IDF bulldozes a disabled
Palestinian to death? Not a story. Just like
the killing, under the rubble of her home,
of Noha Maqadama, a woman in her ninth
month of pregnancy, before the eyes of
her husband and children, in El Boureij
refugee camp a few months earlier.
And what would happen if a Palestinian
were to shoot an Israeli university
lecturer and his son in front of his wife
and their young son? That’s what
happened 10 days ago in the case of Dr.
Salem Khaled, from Nablus, who called to
the soldiers from the window of his house
because he was a man of peace and the
front door had jammed, so he couldn’t
get out. The soldiers shot him to death
and then killed his 16-year-old son before
the eyes of his mother and his 11-yearold
brother. It’s not hard to imagine how
we would react to the story if the victims
were ours.

But when we’re implicated and the
victims are Palestinians, we prefer to
avert our eyes, not to know, not to take
an interest and certainly not to be
shocked. Palestinian victims - and their
numbers, as everyone knows, are far
greater than ours - don’t even merit
newspaper reports, not even when the
chain of events is particularly brutal, as in
the examples above. This is not an
intellectual exercise but an attempt to
demonstrate the concealment of
information, the double morality and the
hypocrisy. The indifference to these two
very recent incidents proved again that in
our eyes there is only one victim and all
the others will never be considered
victims.

If a European cabinet minister were to
declare, “I don’t want these long-nosed
Jews to serve me in restaurants,” all of
Europe would be up in arms and this
would be the minister’s last comment as
a minister. Three years ago, our former
labor and social affairs minister, Shlomo
Benizri, from Shas, stated: “I can’t
understand why slanty-eyed types should
be the ones to serve me in restaurants.”
Nothing happened. We are allowed to be
racists. And if a European government
were to announce that Jews are not
permitted to attend Christian schools?
The Jewish world would rise up in protest.
But when our Education Ministry
announces that it will not permit Arabs to
attend Jewish schools in Haifa, it’s not
considered racism. Only in Israel could
this not be labeled racist. The heritage of
Golda Meir - it was she who said that
after what the Nazis did to us, we can do
whatever we want - is now having a late
and unfortunate revival.

What would happen if a certain country
were to enact legislation forbidding
members of a particular nation to become
citizens there, no matter what the
circumstances, including mixed couples
who married and raised families? No
country anywhere enacts laws like these
nowadays. Apart from Israel. If the
cabinet extends the validity of the new
Citizenship Law today, Palestinians will
not be able to undergo naturalization
here, even if they are married to Israelis.
We have the right, you see. And if the
illegal Israeli immigrants in the United
States were hunted down like animals in
the dark of night, the way the
Immigration Police do here, would we
have a better understanding of the
injustice we are doing to a community
that wants nothing other than to work
here?

What would we say if the parents of
Israeli emigrants were separated from
their children and deported, without
having available any avenue of
naturalization, no matter what the
circumstances? And how would we
classify a country that interrogates
visitors about their political opinions as
soon as they disembark from the plane at
the airport and bars them from entering it
the security authorities look askance at
the opinions they express? What would
happen if anti-Semites in France were to
poison the drinking water of a Jewish
neighborhood? Last week settlers
poisoned a well at Atawana, in the
southern Mount Hebron region, and the
police are investigating.

And we still haven’t said anything about a
country that would imprison another
nation, or about a regime that would
prevent access to medical treatment for
some of its subjects, according to its
national identity, about roads that would
be open only to the members of one
nation or about an airport that would be
closed to the other nation. All this is
happening in Israel and is pulling from
under us the moral ground that makes it
possible for us to complain about racism
and anti-Semitism abroad, even when
they actually erupt.

More than 30 Palestinian children were
killed in the first two weeks of Operation
Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's
no wonder that many people term such
wholesale killing of children "terror."
Whereas in the overall count of all the
victims of the intifada the ratio is three
Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed,
when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1.
According to B'Tselem, the human rights
organization, even before the current
operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors
(below the age of 18) were killed,
compared to 110 Israeli minors.
Palestinian human rights groups speak of
even higher numbers: 598 Palestinian
children killed (up to age 17), according
to the Palestinian Human Rights
Monitoring Group, and 828 killed (up to
age 18) according to the Red Crescent.
Take note of the ages, too. According to
B'Tselem, whose data are updated until
about a month ago, 42 of the children
who have been killed were 10; 20 were
seven; and eight were two years old
when they died. The youngest victims are
13 newborn infants who died at
checkpoints during birth.
With horrific statistics like this, the
question of who is a terrorist should have
long since become very burdensome for
every Israeli. Yet it is not on the public
agenda. Child killers are always the
Palestinians, the soldiers always only
defend us and themselves, and the hell
with the statistics....

More....

Israel's Violations of the Geneva Convention

Outside links from that site...

Fact Sheet: The Smokescreen of the Gaza Disengagement

Operation Defensive Shield - Frequently Asked Questions


Is this why they were dancing?


Controversy of US Aid to Israel

"U.S. Aid to Israel: Interpreting the 'Strategic Relationship"'

US Aid to Isael Issues

As of Oct. 31, 1997 Israel will have received $3.05 billion in U.S. foreign aid for fiscal year 1997 and $3.08 billion in foreign aid for fiscal year 1998. Adding the 1997 and 1998 totals to those of previous years since 1949 yields a total of $74,157,600,000 in foreign aid grants and loans. Assuming that the actual totals from other budgets average 12.2 percent of that amount, that brings the grand total to $83,204,827,200.

But that's not quite all. Receiving its annual foreign aid appropriation during the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in quarterly installments as do other recipients, is just another special privilege Congress has voted for Israel. It enables Israel to invest the money in U.S. Treasury notes. That means that the U.S., which has to borrow the money it gives to Israel, pays interest on the money it has granted to Israel in advance, while at the same time Israel is collecting interest on the money. That interest to Israel from advance payments adds another $1.650 billion to the total, making it $84,854,827,200.That's the number you should write down for total aid to Israel. And that's $14,346 each for each man, woman and child in Israel.

 

[MrBishop]

What does Hamas believe and what are its goals?
Hamas combines Palestinian nationalism with Islamic fundamentalism. Its founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raise “the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” Its leaders have called suicide attacks the “F-16” of the Palestinian people. Hamas believes “peace talks will do no good,” Rantisi said in April 2004. “We do not believe we can live with the enemy.”

Is Hamas only a terrorist group?
No. In addition to its military wing, the so-called Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas devotes much of its estimated $70-million annual budget to an extensive social services network. It funds schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues. “Approximately 90 percent of its work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities,” writes the Israeli scholar Reuven Paz. The Palestinian Authority often fails to provide such services; Hamas’ efforts in this area— as well as a reputation for honesty, in contrast to the many Fatah officials accused of corruption—explain much of its popularity.

Both sides of the issue.

 

[freako104]

Hamas won. I cant help but think there was probably some intimidation by them to get power. Which fucks the situation there. Moreso.

 

[HomeLAN]

Both sides of the issue.

Oh, OK. So, as long as you build schools, orphanges, mosques, etc., we really shouldn't mind if you also have killing civilians and the destruction of a neighboring state as part of your doctrine. Glad you cleared that up for me.

 

[flavio]

Both sides of the issue.

I wouldn't call that both sides of the issue really. It's information about Hamas and really doesn't address the issue very much. What it does say about the issue doesn't give much understanding.

For instance...

[font=Georgia, serif]When the second intifada started in September 2000, Israel reoccupied major cities in the territories in an effort to quell the violence. In December 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a plan to withdraw all Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank; that process was completed by October 2005. Despite the withdrawal, Hamas has not renounced violence as a way to achieve its goals; instead, it has claimed that its suicide attacks were responsible for driving Israeli forces out of Gaza.

That would make it appear that Israel is trying to stop violence and Hamas refuses to stop "dispite the withdrawal".

Well the withdrawal has some issues...

and maybe Israel hasn't tried hard enough to stop the violence...

More than 30 Palestinian children were
killed in the first two weeks of Operation
Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's
no wonder that many people term such
wholesale killing of children "terror."
Whereas in the overall count of all the
victims of the intifada the ratio is three
Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed,
when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1.
According to B'Tselem, the human rights
organization, even before the current
operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors
(below the age of 18) were killed,
compared to 110 Israeli minors.
Palestinian human rights groups speak of
even higher numbers: 598 Palestinian
children killed (up to age 17), according
to the Palestinian Human Rights
Monitoring Group, and 828 killed (up to
age 18) according to the Red Crescent.
Take note of the ages, too. According to
B'Tselem, whose data are updated until
about a month ago, 42 of the children
who have been killed were 10; 20 were
seven; and eight were two years old
when they died. The youngest victims are
13 newborn infants who died at
checkpoints during birth.
Source..

[/font]