[Unthinking Majority]

Israel killing Hamas terrorist leaders is good and just.

[Unthinking Majority]

Long before October 7 someone said "If killing terrorists were the best way to stop terrorism, Israel would be the safest country in the world--it isn't." Over the years the Israelis knocked off many, many PLO and Hamas figures, Iranian nuclear scientists and IRGC people. The targeted groups simply replaced them, and kept going. Did previous assassinations, and poundings of gaza, prevent 10/7? Has Iran's nuclear program been stopped?

Israel should invite Hamas over for tea and biscuits and let them import the weapons they want to use to murder Israeli civilians. Israel should just Neville Chamberlain it up with Iran, that will bring peace.

[starman2003]

Israel should invite Hamas over for tea and biscuits and let them import the weapons they want to use to murder Israeli civilians. Israel should just Neville Chamberlain it up with Iran, that will bring peace.

Israel has an overwhelming edge in conventional (and nuclear) forces. They are entitled to strike back if attacked, but not to launch unprovoked attacks, including sabotage and murder. The zionists are strong enough to make concessions. Had they been more generous they could've bolstered Palestinian moderates and taken a lot of wind out of the radical sails. Egypt got all it wanted back and the result has been decades of peace. Yet in their dealings with palestinians and others, the Israelis prefer violence, flying in the face of all the evidence it doesn't work (despite all the previous assassinations and poundings in gaza, October 7 still happened; likewise Iran's nuclear program was never more advanced than now, despite decades of assassination and sabotage). What is needed is regime change in Israel--new leadership with its head screwed on right. But don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen…..Americans are ultimately to blame for backing Israel no matter what it does; it has scant incentive to behave in a civilized, rational fashion.

[Rich]

Israel has an overwhelming edge in conventional (and nuclear) forces. They are entitled to strike back if attacked,

No they're not!

Not in this instance. Even if Hamas did cut the heads off babies, which they probably didn't, even if Hamas did engage in systematic industrial scale rape, which they probably didn't Israel had no moral right to strike back at HAMAS after 10/7, because of the context of Hamas's attack. A 57 year occupation of Gaza's borders, plus 57 years of either direct occupation of Gaza's territory or military invasions of its territory.

I can't give you an exact date, an exact movement, but at some point over the last 57 years Israel's right to occupy Gaza or control its borders ran out. But couldn't this logic be applied to Nat Turners rebellion. Could it not be said that US citizens had no right to take action against Nat Turner and his men, where it seems they really did cut the heads off babies. It could but to apply that standard of morality to US Euracial southerners in the early nineteenth century, is to apply a standard of morality that no society in the world at the time, was even pretending to follow, is anti Euracial hate based racism. Where as to apply it to Jews in 2024 is not anti Jewish racism.

Now morality can only be part of the equation I've argued before that our foreign / military policy has to be based on 4 considerations.

1 Morality
2 Self interest
3 Favouratism
4 The realities of power.

My argument is that we should be honest and aim for a 10 percent moral foreign policy. If we actually achieved that we would be doing well. Any solution must recognise the reality of Israel's power. That's why Donald Trump should be greatly praised for recogising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the annexation of the Golan heights. By not reversing these decisions Joe Biden implicitly accepted that he and Obama were the weaker leaders. We should be demanding that all Palestinian residents of Israel controlled territory are made full citizens of real states, even if some Palestinians have to leave their current places of residence to allow Israel to have more defendable borders than they had prior to 1967.

[starman2003]

Not in this instance. Even if Hamas did cut the heads off babies, which they probably didn't, even if Hamas did engage in systematic industrial scale rape, which they probably didn't Israel had no moral right to strike back at HAMAS after 10/7, because of the context of Hamas's attack. A 57 year occupation of Gaza's borders, plus 57 years of either direct occupation of Gaza's territory or military invasions of its territory.

True, ignorance of the broader context is an egregious failing of our current "leaders." When I said what I did, above, I was thinking mostly of Iran and Syria. If either was in the habit of striking first, that would've been one thing. But both are endlessly attacked by a state which somehow concluded it has the right to dictate to the whole region who can go where and have what.

Any solution must recognise the reality of Israel's power. That's why Donald Trump should be greatly praised for recogising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the annexation of the Golan heights. By not reversing these decisions Joe Biden implicitly accepted that he and Obama were the weaker leaders.

It stems from internal politics, the clout of Israel's supporters. Trump took the US pro-israel stance to a new extreme to consolidate the support of constituents who tend to be very pro-israel. Biden's unwillingness to reverse the decisions mirrored the same clout. Essentially the US has been hobbled, essentially paralyzed, by the inordinate influence of those acting principally in the interest of a foreign power.

We should be demanding that all Palestinian residents of Israel controlled territory are made full citizens of real states, even if returned some Palestinians have to leave their current places of residence to allow Israel to have more defendable borders than they had prior to 1967.

Here you seem to be saying the US should compel Israel to allow a bona fide palestinian state in the West Bank and in gaza. Politically I don't think that's possible. But assuming it is, if the US could force Israel to do that it could force it to give up Golan and east Jerusalem.
Btw "lack of defendable borders" was not a real problem prior to the '67 war; look who won three wars, the last quite easily, fighting from those borders.