If you were Israel's Prime Minister, how would you respond?

[Ken]

Facts:
-Israel was attacked viciously from Gaza by Hamas terrorists. Iran is the author and coordinator of the attacks and has vowed to destroy Israel.

False. No evidence Iran had anything to do with it.

Both the WSJ and NPR are reporting on the link between Iran and the Hamas attack. FOX reports that the Hamas leadership admitted that Iran planned and green lighted it.

Hamas are clients of Iran. It is Iran that is their primary source of weapons, financing, and training. So whether or not Iran specifically greenlighted this particular terrorist event is almost irrelevant. Hamas is a loaded gun created by Iran. Whether or not they pulled the trigger last week is just semantics. They loaded the gun and aimed it at Israel.

[Josh]

Yes, some Arabs want to wipe out Jews. They didn't before Israel took away land from the Palestinians. That makes me think this has a LOT to do with the land.

Is this a fair characterization of what happened?

This seems like a gross eliding of the actual history.

The actual history? A bunch of settlers moved in in the 1940s and basically started evicting people who'd lived there for generations (some going back 2,000 years).

The Arab world responded with a massive war (which wasn't the right response) - and they lost the war. Much like the native Americans in America, who also lost their battles, that meant they lost their land. But it doesn't make any of it right.

For comparision, if we were regularly having rockets launched into my town from a Seneca reservation that had 2 million people in it, I do not think launching an extermination of half of the reservation would be the right response.

We need a return to the peace process. Unfortunately, neither side (Hamas or Israel) has seemed very interested in the peace process. Other groups like Fatah in the West Bank are willing to sit down at the table - and even offer input on how to lessen conflicts. A painfully obvious lesson would be that they shouldn't have let the al-Aqsa mosque be desecrated.

[Josh]

Facts:
-Israel was attacked viciously from Gaza by Hamas terrorists. Iran is the author and coordinator of the attacks and has vowed to destroy Israel.

False. No evidence Iran had anything to do with it.

Both the WSJ and NPR are reporting on the link between Iran and the Hamas attack. FOX reports that the Hamas leadership admitted that Iran planned and green lighted it.

Somehow, I see it unfolding that this will turn into "America needs to invade Iran" and we will later find out it was under false pretenses (just like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming they had WMDs). I don't buy any of it.

[mike]

Is this a fair characterization of what happened?

This seems like a gross eliding of the actual history.

The actual history? A bunch of settlers moved in in the 1940s and basically started evicting people who'd lived there for generations (some going back 2,000 years).

The Arab world responded with a massive war (which wasn't the right response) - and they lost the war. Much like the native Americans in America, who also lost their battles, that meant they lost their land. But it doesn't make any of it right.

And the role of England, in your view?

[HondurasKeiser]

This seems like a gross eliding of the actual history.

The actual history? A bunch of settlers moved in in the 1940s and basically started evicting people who'd lived there for generations (some going back 2,000 years).

The Arab world responded with a massive war (which wasn't the right response) - and they lost the war. Much like the native Americans in America, who also lost their battles, that meant they lost their land. But it doesn't make any of it right.

And the role of England, in your view?

And the League of Nations...

[Josh]

The actual history? A bunch of settlers moved in in the 1940s and basically started evicting people who'd lived there for generations (some going back 2,000 years).

The Arab world responded with a massive war (which wasn't the right response) - and they lost the war. Much like the native Americans in America, who also lost their battles, that meant they lost their land. But it doesn't make any of it right.

And the role of England, in your view?

And the League of Nations...

Empires tend to leave lots of dead bodies in their wake.

[JimFoxvog]

Maybe the Jews should leave Israel???? Why would you want to live in such a hostile environment where all the bordering countries hate you? They moved into Israel in 1948, 75 years later BB and all Jews should move out. All the bickering and fighting has to be getting old.

Jews and Arabs lived mostly in peace in Palestine until the creation of the State of Israel. In a secular state with equal rights for all, I believe a much more peaceful land would be possible.

[Ken]

Maybe the Jews should leave Israel???? Why would you want to live in such a hostile environment where all the bordering countries hate you? They moved into Israel in 1948, 75 years later BB and all Jews should move out. All the bickering and fighting has to be getting old.

Jews and Arabs lived mostly in peace in Palestine until the creation of the State of Israel. In a secular state with equal rights for all, I believe a much more peaceful land would be possible.

For over 600 years from 1517 when Suleman the Magnificent conquered Jerusalem until 1920, Jews and Arabs were all ethnic minority citizens of the Ottoman Empire along with Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Bulgarians, etc. Strictly speaking they were all minorities in a Turkish-dominated empire.

From 1920 until the creation of Israel in 1948, the territory was subject to British rule under the Palestinian Mandate and during that time Jews and Arabs were most definitely NOT living in peace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_k ... _Palestine

To cite just a few random examples

The Jaffa riots in 1921: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_riots
The Buraq Riots in 1929: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

And from 1947-1948 before the creation of the state of Israel there was a state of civil war between Jews and Arabs in the Palestinian mandate with lots and lots of massacres on both sides.

[Bootstrap]

And the role of England, in your view?

And the League of Nations...

Suppose England and the League of Nations took parts of the United States and gave it to the Houtos people. Including some of our homes.

Now suppose the Houtos people took over a bunch more of the United States, illegally according to both England and the League of Nations. Killing a lot of Americans in the process.

Then suppose that some Americans hate the guts of the Houtos people. They didn't before these things happened. They do now. Would you say that taking our land had something to do with the hate? Some people are saying there is no connection. I suspect there is.

[ohio jones]

They didn't before these things happened.

That's where the analogy falls apart. The establishment of the Israeli state intensified the hatred, but to a significant extent it was already there.