bouncing

Mandela was not a terrorist. That's an indictment of the US government's stupid "watch list," not Mandela.

In terms of land, do you really think they're coming out ahead in that? Before 2012, they had almost no settlements and they regular demolished them. How were they coming out ahead? Do you think the average Israeli is eager to keep the status quo for a few acres of land? Have you ever talked to an Israeli? They don't care about the land. Most Israelis I know are pretty angry about the squatters and just don't want their tax dollars going to bribe them into leaving like last time Israeli settlers were evicted from Gaza.

Do you think that in 1967, facing invasion from every side, the Israeli thinking was "muaahahaha, finally a full-scale invasion we can use as a subterfuge to add a new subdivision in 50 years!"

The military cost of occupying the West Bank is costing Israel many, many times what the land was ever worth many times over.

And keep in mind, the settlements are mostly in the West Bank, not Gaza.

South Africa was not slow or methodical; it was pretty fast, at least legally. And for a whole host of reasons, it's just not an apples to apples comparison. You could go into the fact that Israel was invaded by its Arab neighbors, who were committed to obliterating it, or you could point out that it's a thousand-year feud, etc. It's just not a comparison that's useful because the differences are too great.

But probably the biggest difference is that there is no Palestinian counterpart to Nelson Mandela.

The concession Israel seeks is, basically, for terrorists to stop slaughtering them in the streets. That's it. What they want is peace. To go to the cinema without fear of being kidnapped or murdered. South Africa's government wanted free labor. Israel just wants to not have bombs go off in the street. Nelson Mandela's whole message was of peace, non-violence, and reconciliation, so if a single Palestinian leader were to offer such a message, they would be a hero to Israelis everywhere.

It's not like Israelis are getting rich off the toil of Palestinians. Quite the opposite. The comparison to South Africa really doesn't work.

There's not an Arab lockdown per se. Israeli Arabs are about as free as anyone in Israel. They're members of parliament, serve on the Israeli Supreme Court, all that.

What is true, of course, is that Palestinian Arabs are basically stateless people who live in inhumane conditions with few freedoms and fewer opportunities for dignity. That's a real problem. I don't necessarily have a solution that they would accept though. To live in dignity and liberty, you need to live in peace. To live in peace, you need to accept that your neighbors have a right to exist.

Hamas didn’t always exist, Hamas is a result of the conditions of the people.

Race-hate has existed for a very long time. It isn't a result of the conditions of anyone.

If Hamas were an insurgency against oppression, it would surely be active in the region's other far more oppressive landscapes.

The narrative that oppressed people turn violent and that's what this violence is probably partially true, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Much of what fuels Hamas and the main reason the peace process is so challenging in the Middle East isn't the plight of oppressed people; it's plain old bigotry.

If tomorrow, Israel announced that it is now a pacifist state, and it melted down all its weapons, disbanded the IDF, and issued Israeli passports to Palestinians, the result would be a thousand pogroms and millions dead.

After Hamas is destroyed completely apartheid and oppression will cause more systemic violence. The sterile road system in the west bank is a clear demonstration of apartheid.

Repeat after. Hamas. Is. Not. The. Result. Of. Oppression.

You believe that terrorism emerged because of the terrible conditions of Palestine. What you don't seem to realize is that the conditions in Palestine are terrible because of terrorism.

Hamas is not the effect. It is the cause.

A full Israel withdrawal would include no embargo with external trade. Fully isolating some land in your territory and not allowing anyone in or out is not a independent country, at best it’s a prison at worst is a grave yard.

Correct. Like existed for the 19 years leading up to Gaza and the West Bank being used as a platform of aggression against Israel-proper.

But have you thought of the wisdom of that for Israel? Every time they loosen their control of either territory, it results in more Israelis dead in the streets. As was the case in the months leading up to this one -- more permits for Gazas, fewer trade restrictions, more shipments. It seems those were mostly used to smuggle in weapons.

It's good to understand the historical context. All for it.

What historical context doesn't do, however, is forgive the unforgivable.

You can condemn the actions, but if you want to fix the problem, then you better learn the context in which the actions take place.

According to Hamas, their grievance is that Jews are alive. I'm not going to address that grievance.

Otherwise it’s just going to be centuries more of throwing bombs at each other.

That seems likely, but just denying the objectives of Hamas isn't going to bring peace either. For the last 20 years, the international community has been trying to follow the Oslo and Camp David peace accords, but there's been only one even remotely interested partner.

The continued violence is a consequence of the systematic oppression of ethnic Arabs in the Israeli territories.

I don't buy that theory. Hamas says their grievance is that a Jew somewhere has a pulse. I take them at their word.

The question becomes after they’ve removed Hamas, how do they work with the remaining Palestinians? The two-tiered system oppressing ethnic Arabs has to end, or they’ll just be a different group that emerges.

There isn't a two-tiered system. Israeli Arabs enjoy all the same privileges as Israeli Jews.

Now, the conditions in Palestine are inhumane and awful, but I don't see that changing with a full Israeli withdrawal. Keep in mind, Israel did mostly withdrawal from Gaza almost 20 years ago.

It is pretty clearly apartheid, the sterile streets in the West Bank that only one race can use, that is segregation of a population by an ethnicity, for the benefit of a minority.

That's just factually completely incorrect. There are several million ethnic Arabs living in Israel. And benefit? What benefit, exactly, does Israel realize here? Would you think the average Israeli wants to live next to Palestine? Surely you see the difference: White South Africans wanted apartheid. Most Israelis probably want to live as far away from anything having to do with Palestine as possible.

There's no benefit to Israel. There's no exploitation of labor or natural resources or anything like that aside from a few thousand settlers living as unlawful squatters in the West Bank.

It would be like saying that the United States' invasion of Afghanistan, which saw thousands of Americans die and billions of dollars lost, was akin to the British invasion of India, which was a very profitable enterprise.

Just because it's a first world country with a modern military doesn't mean that it's the same thing.

You're the one who, for ego or fake Internet points or whatever, just throws around trite stereotypes without any experience or data. Just lazy shit like, "hurp, derp, Americans dumb." It doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you're lazy and ignorant. That's fine though. You can be lazy and ignorant.

I'm addressing only the person I replied to.

That’s when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism.

No, no you can’t.

I just did.

I'll do it again. I categorically condemn Hamas. There.

I'm not ignoring anyone. I'm trying to think of a reasonable explanation for people's incoherence. I think people wanting to root for the underdog really explains a lot of seemingly incoherent beliefs.

Travel more.