From: rivk@ellis.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Peace
Date: 24 Jan 93 20:08:00 GMT
Reply-To: rivk@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

In article <1jg8chINN4u@manuel.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:

>>  Would you care to suggest a compromise between Israel and Hamas?
>>  Hamas wants all the Israelis dead, so maybe they should
>>  settle for half?
>
>Would you suggest killing all Hamas members instead?  

If that is the *only* way to prevent Hamas from killing all Israelis,
then yes, I would. It isn't; nothing's ever that simple. But I have no
problems with *any* action if there is no alternative but to die.

>Ok, I didn't really mean that.  The point I would like to make is that
>merely treating Hamas as a band of crazed antisemites who have no 
>thought but to murder Jews is not the way to take care of them. 

But that's pretty close to what they are, and ignoring the fact will
not help. Refusing to pay attention to them because they are crazed
is not a good idea, they have to be noticed and dealt with somehow,
but an accurate assessment of them is vital. And they really are a
bunch of crazed anti-Zionists whose one thought is to kill all Israelis;
whether they bring all Diaspora Jews into this I'm not sure.

> The
>Palestinians of the OT have a lot of severe and genuine grievances
>against Israel and until some justice begins to get done organisations
>like Hamas are going to grow in popularity.  You can't neutralise
>them by expelling a few leaders, or by the current regime of 
>repression; that will just strengthen them.  You have to do something
>about the basic injustices that drive the rank-and-file members.
>When the root causes are removed the mass support will dwindle.
>The hard-core fanatics will still be there, but they are a different
>type of problem (and a Palestinian state would take care of them
>in short order). 

Bullshit. A Palestinian state might take some minimal degree of
support away from some of the more moderate anti-Israel groups. It
will not and cannot take any support away from Hamas because it is
not what Hamas is advocating. People do not go to Hamas because they
want a state or because they want justice; they go to Hamas as opposed
to the PLO or other more moderate (if you can call an organization
moderate who goes around blowing up random civilians of unrelated
countries) groups because they want blood. The *only* way to appease
the people who support Hamas is for Israel and Israelis to die. This
is not a length to which we are prepared to go, sorry to disappoint
you.

Your fundamental problem is you think the extremists are a *small*
group of hard-core fanatics. They aren't. They are made up of most
of the population that cares enough to be activist at all. The vocal
support for the groups might slow down, among the portion of the population
sufficiently lackadaisical not to be fighting in any case. But those who 
kill are nearly *all* hard-core fanatics, and those in Hamas in specific,
triply so. There is no compromise position.

"[They] want us dead. We want to be alive. Compromise between these
two positions is not exactly easy."

				-Golda Meir


>>--- D. C. Sessions                            Speaking for myself ---
>
>Brendan.

	-Naomi


-- 
Oseh shalom b'imromav, hu ya'aseh shalom, aleinu v'al kol Yisrael.
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