Hamas vs Israel

Gonz

Gonz

molṑn labé
Staff member
It looks like this is just getting started & well, I'll be damned if it doesn't need it's very own thread.

BBC said:
Palestinian militant group Hamas has warned foreigners to leave Israeli soil and pledged to bomb the Israeli state into "rubble".

The group's military wing issued its statement on a day when Israeli attacks killed seven people in Gaza City and two in the West Bank town of Jenin.

The helicopter rocket attack on Gaza was the third such strike in 24 hours, and followed a suicide attack by Hamas on a Jerusalem bus on Wednesday which killed 17 people, including the bomber.

The Israeli army has been authorised to use every means to destroy the group, its radio station said on Thursday.

In its website statement, Hamas's military wing claimed responsibility for Wednesday's bomb attack in Jerusalem, naming the bomber as 18-year-old Abd-al-Muti Muhammad Salih Shabanah, of Hebron.

It described it as "the first in a new series of operations... targeting every Zionist usurping our land".

Promising to "turn the Zionist entity's state into rubble", the group told foreign citizens to leave "immediately to save their lives".

In an interview for Qatari satellite TV station al-Jazeera, a man described as a leading Hamas member in Gaza, Mahmud al-Zahhar, predicted that Palestinian attacks on Israelis were imminent "to show them that an eye is for an eye and a tooth for a tooth".
Click to expand...

BBC
 
It was th Israeli assassination attempts that triggered all of this after they had agreed not to for sake of the new peace agreement...
 
Squiggy said:
It was th Israeli assassination attempts that triggered all of this after they had agreed not to for sake of the new peace agreement...
Click to expand...

So I guess that suicide bomber, who was with Hamas, had nothing to do with disrupting the peace plan?
 
It was the bloody Hamas action that killed the treaty. Not the Israeli's, not this time.
One good sign is that the Palestinians are getting pretty fed up with the Hamas organisation as well, maybe that'll help to change the amount of effort that is taken to totally wipe out those terrorists.
and sorry to say, but if the palestinians don't do it, then should the israeli's; people do NOT negotiate with terrorists. and especially not with Hamas, since that has proven again and again to be completely useless.
 
the israeli hardliners have been giving sharon all sorts of shit the last few weeks, hamas walked away from the table and set off on another killing spree. the israeli assasination attempts appear to have been an attempt to quell the right-wing dissenters in the party that believe sharon has gone soft and also remove the more intransigent hamas voices.

sadly the cycle of violence is back on again, hamas sees the israelis as unchanged from the evil zionist murderers they think they are [the rocket assasinations are very unpopular in palestine because of the pretty high civilian death toll, and they are keen to have them stopped - hence bush's words of unhappiness in their use against hamas last week], and the israelis see hamas as unchanged from the terrorist extremists they are.

the difficult part is that if the palestinian authority cannot deliver a ceasefire that it may not realistically be able to achieve [its influence appears to be limited] then the peace process is doomed - not because the pa is not serious but because it cannot get the impossible.

if that happens then it will be immensely hard to achieve peace, unless the pa and israel are willing to continue with the process and eventually alienate hamas and other extremists by getting results for ordinary people. the hardest part would be accepting the bombings and violence that comes during that time.
 
Its real easy to set back and be a monday morning quarterback. Everyone wants to pick sides and say it was Hamas ....no it was the Israelies either way the bottom line is that the Jews have the their land and won't give it back. To end this war and all the attacks on both sides ..the Jews have to give back the land thats it no other solution will do. Until that happens theres gonna be deaths and lots of them on both sides. You can't blame hamas they want their land back. Put yourself in their shoes....suppose some country came here and after a war they held on to say New York ....would there be any of you who wouldn't be some sort of a terrorists ....a under ground fighting force? Well hamas is doing the same thing. Besides Israel has weapons of total destruction which this country backs and permits them to have them. This is why we are hated and attacks are hitting here at home. To end all this aggression and death of a untoll number the Israelies have to give the stolen land back and stop using weapons of total destruction. This eye for an eye isn't do either side any good.
 
john, that attitude is sickening.

I, for one, could never commit terrorist acts. Acts agains military targets... sure. Intentially targeting innocent women and children? And you're saying you would?

Ugh. :disgust2:
 
historical notions of land ownership in this case i believe do not help matters - there is a futility in attempting to set out an ancient 'right' to land that has a complicated history.

there is perhaps the potential case for israel returning lands seized during the war campaigns of the past, the land is in effect occupied and would be an understandable starting point for reducing tensions.

i cannot personally understand how terrorists can do the things they do, or how people would feel the anger enough to support them. in the walled-in camps without water and electricity, without jobs, prevented from these things by an occupying force that appears to oppress them, i think i can there appreciate how desperation would become anger and fear enough to kill. never forget that one mans terrorist can be anothers freedom fighter, no matter how misguided.
 
ris said:
potential case for israel returning lands seized during the war campaigns of the past, the land is in effect occupied
Click to expand...
Spoils of war are not "occupied". It's repayment for being attacked & winning. If that were the case, your own homeland would have to give up about 70% of it's landmasses ;)
ris said:
one mans terrorist can be anothers freedom fighter
Click to expand...
freedom fighters never intentionally target civilians. There is a huge difference.


A majority of those in the "camps" are there because they couldn't live in peace. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Arabs living in Israel, peaceably. They don't attack & Israel leaves them alone to go about their lives.
 
i believe that under un resolutions the land was declared occupied [as ratified by many, including the us]. occupation of lands during war are often the most frequent cause of problems from that point on. i thought we had grown up from the idiotic 'we won so we keep it' mentality after the second world war, clearly not.
 
ris said:
never forget that one mans terrorist can be anothers freedom fighter, no matter how misguided.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry ris, but I can't come to any sort of intellectual agreement with such statements. There is a very precise definition for "terrorist," and no matter what the cause, that man will never be honorable, in any possible meaning of the word.

Freedom fighter != terrorist.
 
The freedom fighters sure know how to pick targets. Reminds me of the killing fields of LA in the late 80's.:cuss:


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas failed on Tuesday to persuade militant groups to end attacks on Israelis. Just after their meeting, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a car and killed an Israeli child.

A 7-year-old girl was killed and a 5-year-old girl was seriously wounded in the shooting on a highway just inside Israel, close to the West Bank town of Qalqiliya. Army Radio said the gunfire came from the West Bank. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Israeli government official Zalman Shoval said the shooting showed that alongside peace efforts, "our own battle with the terrorists will have to continue." Violent Palestinian groups have so far refused to halt attacks, despite tremendous Palestinian, Egyptian, and international pressure backed up by the prospect of a serious Israeli campaign to wipe the militants out. A deal would apparently require Israel to commit to ending killings of militant leaders
Click to expand...
 
outside looking in said:
I'm sorry ris, but I can't come to any sort of intellectual agreement with such statements. There is a very precise definition for "terrorist," and no matter what the cause, that man will never be honorable, in any possible meaning of the word.

Freedom fighter != terrorist.
Click to expand...

that predisposes that a freedom fighter is honourable. we all accept the inherent dirtiness of guerilla warfare [that which is not a standard military of a country] so the role of honour within that is limited anyway. notions of honour seem few and far between in the world today as it is, let alone hunting for it in conflict.

it is not a complex intellectual ideology in saying that no matter how misguided a terrorist can be seen as a freedom fighter. it is instead a method to understanding how terrorist organisations recieve their support and backing.

if the backers believe that they are freedom fighters [and clearly many do] then the statement bears true. we can apply our clear definition until we are blue in the face but it is unlikely to change their view. it is this sort of duality that places barriers to peace, arguments over what is effectively semantics [they believe they fight for peace and will use any means necessary to promote the cause, we believe them to be terrorists] .

i doubt it would it be any more acceptable if groups such as hamas were going after what might be termed 'legiitimate' military targets.
 
I'm sorry, but I just don't agree that morals and ethics can always be decided on an individual basis. There are some universal morals that must remain universal.
 
i would agree that groups such as hamas are terrorists, and the overwhelming majority of people out there will stand behind such a statement. it cannot be ignored that to a minority these people are seen as freedom fighters, and that does not change with their actions or our statements to the contrary.

if we neglect to understand that premise then i think we miss a trick in methods to combat terrorism - that if the people that back them [not just monetarily but also in spirit, the street support if you will] can be shown that there are more sensible and palatable ways to fight the cause then the groups dwindle.

a universal moral would be a wonderful thing if it were possible in reality. if the analysis of problems cannot remove itself from theory and broadly-swept ideas and root out core problems it remains beautiful in words but painfully impotent.
 
ris said:
it cannot be ignored that to a minority these people are seen as freedom fighters...
Click to expand...
It can, and I do. I am only concerned with what these people are, not how they are perceived by their peers.
 
perception is everything, i think if we ignore the others perception and how they arrive at it then we lack the full means to defeat terrorists.
 
I'm insane. I perceive that aliens are trying to impregnate cats. To stop this, I must kill all female humans. My perception is everything... you must respect that.

Do you see any problems with this?

Perception isn't everything. Perception can be, and often is, incorrect. It is only one piece of the equation. Not even the most important piece, mind you, but it is a piece.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top