[Phantom Hoover]

The German people never voted the Nazis into power in a fair election. They were a minority member of a coalition, then got free reign to suppress their political enemies.

[Luis Dias]

Glad my phrase wasn't precisely "into power" but quite another one then.

[Phantom Hoover]

That's irrelevant pedantry and you know it. The Nazis did not come to power through popular support.

[jr2]

Like Hamas did?

[Luis Dias]

That's irrelevant pedantry and you know it. The Nazis did not come to power through popular support.

Oh I'm sorry so the election that got them bloody 37.8% in 1932 was rigged in that same amount of people now was it? Who's really engaging in irrelevant pedantry" here and knows it for ****s sake?

[Phantom Hoover]

That result is indeed nowhere near a majority!

[Scotty]

It was, unless I'm much mistaken, a plurality, which is what a lot of people think about when saying the word majority in the first place.

[Aardwolf]

I feel like my most recent actually-maybe-constructive post has been unduly ignored. *pout*

[Dragon]

The German people never voted the Nazis into power in a fair election. They were a minority member of a coalition, then got free reign to suppress their political enemies.

They did. This:

That result is indeed nowhere near a majority!

Doesn't make the election unfair. Nazis went into power with a plurality. An actual majority is very rare in Europe, outside of two-party systems like US or UK it practically doesn't happen (Poland came close recently, though). So learn to distinguish a "majority" from the more general "popular support" and with "plurality", which is how elections are usually decided in Europe. And I'd say, the situation here is very similar. People elected Nazis because they wanted a government that would do something. Fatah sat on their butts being corrupt and all the other parties were no better. Hamas, like the Nazis before, said "It's all because of them!, let's get rid of them!". And "them!" happened to be the same people in both cases, to boot. People went with them, because in the time of crisis, a strong arm and decisiveness are often needed to lead the country through. Unlike all the others, Hamas actually done something. This wasn't the right thing to do, of course, but given the choice between doing something and not, people tend to chose the former. Those people aren't smart enough to know the difference, unfortunately, but apparently neither was anyone before WWII started ("Mr. Hitler will sort it all out." remember?").

That said, I'm not sure if the people like them so much anymore. Having already shown their true colors as brutal dictators, they're presumably not liked much. As long as they can justify their actions by fighting Israel, they live, but were they to do what they do outside of a crisis, they'd probably get overthrown like other Middle Eastern tyrants were.

While you are partly true about Hamas as an organization. I think you are severely underestimating how much Hamas is supported by the Palestinian people themselves.
Disbanding Hamas won't instantly make the troubles go away. You'd need to reeducate a whole society full of people on all the hate they've been taught from childhood. You'd need to get them to agree that being a martyr suicide terrorist isn't a glorious thing, that Jews don't need to all burn to death and that the state of Israel can just, ya know... exist.
All of that **** combined with Islamic zealous jihad nonsense won't vanish just because a single terrorist organization packs up and leaves. As long as they keep poisoning every new generation with these doctrines of hatred this **** will continue on and on and on.

If the Palestinians would really want proper peace, it would have happened a long time ago.

The problem with Hamas is that formal disbanding would be indeed practically meaningless. Actual members of the organization are one thing, but there's more to Hamas than just that. Along with their command structure, all people who were brainwashed into hating Jews would have to be reeducated. This is sort of what I meant, in practice, disassembling a terrorist organization typically just splinters it. It might even just reform under a different leader. That's why I said they'd have to go home as an organization, and perhaps disband after. Those kinds of organizations are usually pretty devoted to their leader, and if he'd changed his mind, a lot of people would follow suit just because of that (that's not to say it still wouldn't splinter. c.f. IRA after the Truce and Treaty).

Now, I'm convinced not everyone is like this. Government brainwashing is never 100% effective, many people often pretend that they go with the government's views. In Nazi Germany you had people who displayed a bust of Hitler and a big fat copy of "Mein Kampf" in their living room but they also had a family of Jews in the attic at the same time. Soviet Union was even worse, with "capitalist" luxuries in plain view along with Marx and Engels' works and a bust of Lenin. I don't know how many Palestinians actually hate Jews, but given what Hamas does to people who don't (or don't hate them enough), I wouldn't expect to find that out while they're in power.

[Grizzly]

Yes, because that was what we did regarding Germany in World War 2

It's defenitely not what we did regarding Germany after WW2, when it was no longer under the control of the nazi party (and the west bank is currently not under control of Hamas, mind). The victors fully recognized that Nazism should never rise again, and instead of hobbling Germany they decided to give them the tools to achieve greatness. And lo and behold, now they are winning world cups .

So, srs question: has Israel ever asked for international assistance in dealing with these threats?

Israel is already recieving quite a bit of economic and military aid (I think currently the only country recieveing more from the US is afghanistan), although it is mainly in pure dollars rather then in manpower or equipment (But ISrael has plenty of that already anyway).

Oh I'm sorry so the election that got them bloody 37.8% in 1932 was rigged in that same amount of people now was it? Who's really engaging in irrelevant pedantry" here and knows it for ****s sake?

It droped to a 30.8 later in 1932, before massive rigging and such took over. The NSDAP would never have seized absolute power if was not for their SA and other actions during '33.

[Aardwolf]

Military aid, you say... But it's still always been the Israeli military that does the actual trigger-pulling, right? Does the UN consider Hamas a legitimate political party, or... what's keeping the UN or NATO from getting involved and waging a proper ground war to purge Hamas completely?

[Grizzly]

Military aid, you say... But it's still always been the Israeli military that does the actual trigger-pulling, right? Does the UN consider Hamas a legitimate political party, or... what's keeping the UN or NATO from getting involved and waging a proper ground war to purge Hamas completely?

Israel not asking them, obviously. Besides, it's not like they need actual armies assisting them, they have already shown that they can wipe the floor with the countries surrounding them, let alone hamas.

[Dragon]

What the place needs is a peacekeeping force. Israel's military works just fine, and is very well staffed and equipped. It's not like they don't have the means to flatten their neighbors and be done with it. It's just that it's a really bad idea to try that these days. Their military is the most modern and advanced in the Middle East and literally every citizen could be sent to fight if they needed that. Except that's not the way it's done these days. Conquering enemies went out of fashion somewhere between WWI and WWII, Israel needs more civilized methods if it wants to keep calling itself better than it's neighbors.

This place needs an UN intervention, one that would listen and be listened to by both sides. One that would ensure Palestinians have their land, without Israeli cities being built there and Israelis have theirs, without Palestinian rockets falling on their heads. And Jerusalem needs to be made an independent, neutral nation, accessible to everyone, because all the Koran/Torah/Bible thumpers would probably be displeased with anything else (not to mention it'd be very good for business for everyone in and around it. They could be making millions off all these pilgrims!). I'd say, both Israelis and Palestinians are at fault in this conflict, and I don't think any of them is going to let go of it without an external intervention.

[An4ximandros]

I am sure the Sauds would love turning Jeru into another Mecca... Isra should beat them to the punch!

At this point though, I doubt there will be any solution enforced besides a new scattered diaspora.

[InsaneBaron]

This place needs an UN intervention, one that would listen and be listened to by both sides. One that would ensure Palestinians have their land, without Israeli cities being built there and Israelis have theirs, without Palestinian rockets falling on their heads. And Jerusalem needs to be made an independent, neutral nation, accessible to everyone, because all the Koran/Torah/Bible thumpers would probably be displeased with anything else (not to mention it'd be very good for business for everyone in and around it. They could be making millions off all these pilgrims!).

Sounds a lot like Jack Ryan's solution from "Sum of All Fears" (I agree it's a good idea, but getting the interested parties to agree might be hard).

[MP-Ryan]

Yet I do keep wondering: If Israel hasn't kept doing stuff like blocading the region, building houses on the west bank, building a wall trough the palestinian territory, detaining people seemingly at random, shooting protestors and all that stuff... Would Hamas even have been elected?

Israel systematically hobbled Fatah, probably even going as far as to poison Yasser Arafat. In doing so, they pretty much made them unelectable. Hamas seemed to be the only party in the region capable of actually doing anything. It's not bloody surprising they were elected.

Yet everyone wants to put the entire blame for Hamas being in power on the Palestinians who were simply doing what pretty much everyone else does and voting for whoever they thought would get **** done in the short term.

Are we really going to hold the downtrodden and under-educated Palestinians to a standard that the citizens of most western countries are unable to live up to themselves?

That's not a fair comparison.  No citizens of Western countries have voted knowingly, into power, a party that refuses to recognize another country and has that other nation's destruction as a primary goal of the party organization.  Yes, Hamas probably seemed like the only viable alternative to Fatah.  That said, they knew full well that Hamas was going to continue to strike at Israel, and they knew from history that they would use ordinary Gazans as shields.  "Rock and a hard place" seems an apt description.

As for the current situation, most Gazans want Hamas gone anyway, but they can't get rid of them because they're in power and staying that way through force of arms... a situation that every idiot Westerner, who has not one clue about history or geopolitics but gets outraged at Israel on the basis of body count, forcing Israels hand and playing precisely into Hamas tactics and agenda to begin with, perpetuates.

The practical reality of the situation is that, long term, both the peace process overall and ordinary Gazans as a group would be much better off if the rest of the world backed off and let Israel wipe the floor with Hamas.  As soon as that happened, the blockades could be lifted, international aid could be fully re-established, an economy established, and Gazan lives infinitely bettered with Israel unable to utter so much as a whisper of complaint because the security threat would be, for all intents and purposes, eliminated (if only temporarily).

The key to a lasting peaceful solution in the Gaza strip is a local economy.  There were high hopes one might be established following the Israeli withdrawal in 2005; Hamas took over and it never happened, and it never will happen so long as Hamas continues to be able to strike at Israel.  There are plenty of barriers to lasting peace on the Israeli side, but the largest immovable obstacle is Hamas. Israel will bow to international pressure; the terrorist ****s holding Gaza hostage will not.

[Beskargam]

Such a measure would never happen because that would require a majority in the security council/ the general assembly. And lol UN agreement and actually accomplishing things.

Fatalistic hyperbole aside, foreign "enforcement" of peace in the middle east is not a good prospect. It has been demonstrated many times that middle eastern countires are very resistant to foreign influences. Most noticeably in Afghanistan and Iraq recently where some insurgents were fighting just because the US was the big foreign occupying power. Just as they did when the soviets invaded. What you propose the UN to do would essentially amount to an occupation, and that I don't see doing anything but implode. Unfortunately, change has to come from within the factions involved

[Aardwolf]

but they can't get rid of them because they're in power and staying that way through force of arms... a situation that every idiot Westerner, who has not one clue about history or geopolitics but gets outraged at Israel on the basis of body count, forcing Israels hand and playing precisely into Hamas tactics and agenda to begin with, perpetuates.

Armchair politics isn't going to affect crap, especially not whether Hamas continues to suppress voters.

And just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they're stupid or ignorant. As an example: myself. I am not stupid, and contrary to whatever conclusions you may have reached in order to explain to yourself why I persist in disagreeing with you, I am not nearly as ignorant as you might believe. I have perfectly good reasons for disagreeing.

Specifically:

1. It is entirely reasonable for me to want to see evidence before accepting the presumption that the counterattack had significant real defensive value, i.e. that it actually kept Israelis safe (in the immediate short term).

And then the following two bits, which are relevant only if it would have been possible to achieve a lesser total death toll by allowing for a higher Israeli death toll:

2. I reject the ethical argument that the principle that a government must protect its people is more important than the principle that people have a right to live (and that if lives must be taken, fewer is better). Any group of people (including a nation) can conclude, on the basis of "people have a right to live", that if action is possible to protect the life of a member of that group ("from an outside threat" is optional), that action should be taken. There is no reason this should apply to groups ranging in size from "two best friends" up to "nation", but not to the largest group of people, "all human kind".

"But that doesn't take into account the history or geopolitics!", you say.

3. I am not ignorant of geopolitics, but I do not trust its predictive value. Any sort of predictive rule about how the diplomatic situation would evolve under certain circumstance can be completely upset by one person saying the right words to the right audience.  This is why I have asserted earlier (and now restate and rephrase here), that there (probably) exists a decision strategy which could start from an initial death toll of (<194 Palestinians, >1 Israelis, < 195 total) and which over the course of its execution would result in less total deaths, and less "total suffering" (though that's harder to quantify), than Israel's current strategy.

[karajorma]

That's not a fair comparison.  No citizens of Western countries have voted knowingly, into power, a party that refuses to recognize another country and has that other nation's destruction as a primary goal of the party organization.

1. They've not been in a position where they would have to recently. Are you seriously telling me you don't think it could happen again in the west?

2. Depends what you claim is a Western nation. Serbia for instance did exactly that.

Yes, Hamas probably seemed like the only viable alternative to Fatah.  That said, they knew full well that Hamas was going to continue to strike at Israel, and they knew from history that they would use ordinary Gazans as shields.  "Rock and a hard place" seems an apt description.

Which is kinda my point. Had Israel not systematically hobbled Fatah, Hamas wouldn't even be in a position of power now.

[Lorric]

Yet I do keep wondering: If Israel hasn't kept doing stuff like blocading the region, building houses on the west bank, building a wall trough the palestinian territory, detaining people seemingly at random, shooting protestors and all that stuff... Would Hamas even have been elected?

Israel systematically hobbled Fatah, probably even going as far as to poison Yasser Arafat. In doing so, they pretty much made them unelectable. Hamas seemed to be the only party in the region capable of actually doing anything. It's not bloody surprising they were elected.

Yet everyone wants to put the entire blame for Hamas being in power on the Palestinians who were simply doing what pretty much everyone else does and voting for whoever they thought would get **** done in the short term.

Are we really going to hold the downtrodden and under-educated Palestinians to a standard that the citizens of most western countries are unable to live up to themselves?

That's not a fair comparison.  No citizens of Western countries have voted knowingly, into power, a party that refuses to recognize another country and has that other nation's destruction as a primary goal of the party organization.  Yes, Hamas probably seemed like the only viable alternative to Fatah.  That said, they knew full well that Hamas was going to continue to strike at Israel, and they knew from history that they would use ordinary Gazans as shields.  "Rock and a hard place" seems an apt description.

I strongly believe that countries should be held responsible for the people they elect. There's far too much of the "I voted for the least ****ty party I thought might win" followed by "Why is the government so ****?"

How's about actually electing someone good in the first place?

And that's not an issue which only affects the Japanese, but pretty much every democratic nation.

Electing organisation which loudly proclaims to the World it wants to erase Israel = get a pass. Electing guy with dodgy views on events that happened decades ago = reprehensible!