Why there can be no peace with Hamas:(

Imogen

Sun, Jul 20 2014, 6:19 am

Yes, thank you for this video. well said and true, tragically now too late for us in Europe to hear this message !!

The world is affected by double standards, this weekend, in Europe thousands took to the streets for the Palestinian cause, the question of Boko Haram latest killing ( 100+) alongside the missing kidnapped girls of Nigeria, the pronouncement against Iraqi Christians in Mosul, Iraq, convert or flee,not to mention the fighting in Syria etc, all ignored.

The Israel Palestinian saga is the only thing that unites all Muslims, Sunni and Shia, religious or not, it also unites the left who have forgotten their committments to their much vaunted causes of feminism and gay rights, trade unions in the UK support the Palestinian cause and happily overlook human rights violations the middle east over, even in Egypt there is more anti Hamas sentiment than here in the UK.

Outside our comfortable safe Jewish homes where we worry about simcha invitations, upsetting inlaws and marrying off our kids, there is a flood of anti semitism engulfing Europe, they have attacked Jews in France, Morocco and Sweden, we in the Uk so far have been relatively lucky. But making peace with Hamas is a painful tragedy to even suggest and yet in rejecting it outright Israel faces the ire of International opinion, I will pass this video on to friends and students, but my heart breaks knowing the tragic killing of civilians alongside an invited world press allowed to film at will and be used for propaganda, all makes Israel's case hard to defend when the truth is swallowed up by hysteria.

cookiecutter

Sun, Jul 20 2014, 1:20 pm

amother wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S2mJGMwsOs

Watched part of the video. If he adds anything in this video that is not common knowledge let me know. It sounded to me like the type of stuff that my Facebook and periodical reading are already littered with.

The approach that the current "hasbara" is taking is wrong IMO. It is incorrect to frame the question as one with two options, war and peace. There are infinite places between war and peace. There can be peace with a Palestinian entity that is not Hamas. There can be "peace" with Hamas that involves killing. There can be war with Hamas that doesn't involve killing.

Whether there can be PEACE with HAMAS is a red herring. If it applies to any violent action, it is limited to directly targeting ONLY threatening members of Hamas.

Palestinians are people. This should not be news to anyone. As Marina posted in another thread, we don't kill children even if in our judgment they will inevitably grow up to be loathsome people, let alone where the outcome depends in part on our pursuit of peace. Nothing about killing children and civilians should be celebrated, justified or explained. It is not appropriate to place blame because blame should not be relevant to our distress over the death of innocents. We should mourn Palestinian innocents with the same sadness that we mourn Israeli innocents. And if we must present a face to the world, that is what we should express.

ora_43

Sun, Jul 20 2014, 3:20 pm

cookiecutter wrote:

It may be all over your Facebook feed because you have a particular set of acquaintances, not because it's truly "common knowledge" in the sense of being something people hear outside pro-Israel circles.

In any case, even common knowledge should be clearly and compellingly argued for. Especially when it's challenged as frequently as the no-peace-with-Hamas idea is.

Quote:

The approach that the current "hasbara" is taking is wrong IMO. It is incorrect to frame the question as one with two options, war and peace. There are infinite places between war and peace. There can be peace with a Palestinian entity that is not Hamas. There can be "peace" with Hamas that involves killing. There can be war with Hamas that doesn't involve killing.

Whether there can be PEACE with HAMAS is a red herring. If it applies to any violent action, it is limited to directly targeting ONLY threatening members of Hamas.

How can you convince people that "war with Hamas that doesn't involve killing" is a moral option if they still think that peace is a viable option? First you have to explain why there can't be peace, then you can explain what the more realistic option is.

Quote:

Palestinians are people. This should not be news to anyone. As Marina posted in another thread, we don't kill children even if in our judgment they will inevitably grow up to be loathsome people, let alone where the outcome depends in part on our pursuit of peace. Nothing about killing children and civilians should be celebrated, justified or explained. It is not appropriate to place blame because blame should not be relevant to our distress over the death of innocents. We should mourn Palestinian innocents with the same sadness that we mourn Israeli innocents. And if we must present a face to the world, that is what we should express.

I totally disagree. The question of who is to blame for killing innocents is VERY VERY relevant here. There's a big moral difference between killing someone accidentally, after making every realistic effort to make sure they wouldn't be harmed, vs. killing them because you were being careless, because you didn't value their life enough to put effort into not killing them.

If we make a public show of mourning innocent Palestinian children before explaining that Israel is making every effort not to kill them, it is going to come across as sickeningly hypocritical.