but don't have time to address the points in detail so here are a few random observations:
1) The Middle East has always been tit for tat. This has always been exacerbated by western intervention..
2) Israel was created by people stealing part of another country.
3) All parties then reneged on the border deals they'd been forced to accept.
4) Palestine/Israel are in a typical unbreakable violence scenario. The onus is on Israel to break this spiral as they hold more military and economic power.
5) Sooner or later it's going to take someone to step back and say, "We have to stop fighting." Hamas did this with their ceasefire, and then with their recognition of the Israeli state. This latter point esp was a miracle given how many members of Hamas would automatically want to kill the leadership for saying this, what Arafat knew was suicide to say. Israel did not take them up on this diplomatic olive branch and nor did the imperious western powers which maintained sanctions and pushed the extremists in Hamas to act against the majority in attacking the Israeli army and the first kidnapping. Given that Hamas's placatory actions were a once in a lifetime opportunity and the nature of Middle-eastern relationships dictates that it was going to be a short window of opportunity, the West and Israel were criminally negligent in allowing things to deterioriate so quickly and badly.
6) Of course the US (and other Western powers) shouldn't automatically support the Hamas govt because it is democratically elected, as it has many opposing ideologies. It should not however actively disrupt that democratic process by causing instability within the party... not through any ideological ideas necessarily but simply because there was no direct opposition or threat to the US (on the contrary greater regional stability through supporting efforts by Hamas to make concessions to Israel would have been beneficial) and therefore meddling for the sake of it or not intervening when they could have been useful is a rank failure of humanity.
7) The Israelis have every right to attack Hizbollah. They have no right to bomb civilian areas of Lebanon. This is even more cut and dried than it was in Iraq. At least in Iraq you had some measure of support for Saddam. Bombing Lebanese civilians is outrageous: the average Lebanese has no more means to get rid of the Hizbollah in their midst than did your average English person to get rid of the IRA within our midst.
8) The Israelis basically created Hizbollah through overreaction in the past. Although the Lebanese people for now recognise that the Israelis are after Hizbollah, the more bloodshed will lead to more marginalization and more clamouring for revenge, just as before, and just as Iraq, and just as Afghanistan. The Israelis acyions are causing more extremism.
9) Great to see you back Monkey Slap, with your insane anti-Islamic paranoia
10) And as for you DJ, the only thing that's been constant in your long years of posting on this forum has been your ability to flipflop snottily and obnoxiously. Congratulations David Januson.
Did you miss the bit where Hamas declared ceasefire and recognised the Israeli state? To blanket them as a terroist organisation would be wrong: any halfway awake Middle-east watcher can tell you that these organisations are very loose and not unified, in fact you've said as much yourself. The leaders of Hamas who made those very unpopular decisions (to make some gestures towards Israel and the international community against their own extremist factions) still had a mandate within the reasonable members of their party. To blanket them as just a uniform terrorist organisation presumably means you believe that there should be no inclusion of Sinn Fein in Parlaimentarian talks in the UK or that they should all be shot or imprisoned?6. Palestine is NOT an autonomous state and falls under the control of Israel. This can be changed, but the palestinian factions seem to want conflict as is more or less seen by their willful election of a terrorist oprganization
There is no culture clash. There is no one body of Islam any more than there is one body of Christianity. And every time the Bushes, Blairs and Olmerts stir up another hornets' nest of marginalization it only serves to highlight the inequality that causes such a spiral of violence in the first place and to destroy the very rights of the women and civil rights supporters who are campaigning every day slowly but surely to gain more rights.Is there a culture clash going on? Yes there is. Would you like to live in a global caliphate with little or no rights for women, a pathetic education system centered on only learning the text and interpretation of same from a book that is 1500 years old? Would you like to live in a society that has taken a step so far back in time that you wouldn't be able to enjoy any of the liberties or freedoms or civil rights or anything that we have come to build for ourselves over the last few hundred years.
Do you think sharia is a better way to live? Afghan women didn't seem to think so under the Taliban. in Fact, Sharia is what governs Iran, a totaletarian dictatorship run by a guy who has publicly called for the destruction of Israel. Yeah that would sit well with us wouldn't it.
Your choice of the sharia is particularly rich: at least half of the Palestinians are largely secular Arabs... and although our intervention in Afghanistan had helped to put a stop to the brutality of the Taliban regime that our very same leaders had helped to install in more meddling in the name of regional stability, our continued intervention with no clear objectives seems to be pushing them back into being a flourishing movement with again, highly marginalized and even more extreme support.
11) Zim, that Monkeysphere site is hilarious!
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American dream
Originally Posted by Merryprankster
= 
& a 
Terrorism.
