Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib refused to apologize Wednesday for saying on Tuesday that Israel is to blame for the hospital explosion that day in Gaza, an accusation that sparked political backlash against her from Republicans as Israel denies fault.
Tlaib joined thousands of protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during a solidarity rally hosted by the left-leaning group Jewish Voice for Peace at the National Mall. She was visibly emotional, at times pausing her speech to openly weep and criticizing lawmakers who have not backed a ceasefire resolution.
Seems like her heart is in the right place, but I fear peace talks at this time would be unproductive. Neither side can be described as conciliatory.
If not now, when? They’ve been at this for decades
I would love to be able to force them to try, as doubtful as such a peace would be. Any ceasefire would be preferable to this.
Removed by mod
The new rules will have a simple “Keep it civil” rule, this comment would be removed under either the old rules or the new rules so removing it now. You can disagree without calling someone a terrorist.
Cheers. I can abide being called a horror, but I’m no antisemite.
Ahhh the beheaded babies claim that even Biden had to walk back .
Save it for the peace talks.
There was a ceasefire? When?
The thing is that the Islamic Jihad and Hamas don’t want to negotiate, since they won’t accept a two-state solution, so peace is not possible while any of them has a militarized branch. There are plenty of people in Israel that don’t want to negotiate but at least on the Israeli side the only group that needs to stick to the plan is the IDF which will follow the orders they get.
They will. Well at least Hamas well. They changed their charter in 2017 to reflect that.
Yeah, but then Hamas went ahead and murdered 1,400 civilians in Israel. After this, why exactly would Israel want to negotiate with terrorists?
Mostly so this mess doesn’t happen again? Hamas and others like it are a symptom, not a cause.
Here’s the story of the last hostage negotiation between Israel and Hamas. Note that Israel released about half the prisoners from its side of the exchange after Shalit’s release.
Hamas, is, in fact, a cause. Those Israeli civilians were not murdered by some kind of bad-faith negotiation, they were murdered by people who decided to murder them. They were raped by people who decided to rape them. They were kidnapped by people who decided to kidnap them. We absolutely must blame the actual perpetrators of these atrocities, and not hand-wave them away as just a symptom.
The thing is: The atrocities themselves are symptoms. A free Palestine wouldn’t foster the conditions necessary for this kind of bullshit to happen at a large scale.
Note: I condemn any and all murder of civilians.
Humanity wouldn’t foster the conditions necessary for these things to happen. If the people in Hamas had any humanity left in them, they could not have done it. Is it not a symptom of their decisions, as people? Is it not a symptom of their sheer depravity?
A “Free Palestine” is entirely hypothetical, but back in Mandatory Palestine, the Muftis broke bread with Hitler and talked plenty about ridding the world of Jews. They launched pogroms against the Jews. They refused any kind of deal for Jews to even have a small piece of territory, even 20%—look up the Peel commission. They killed Jewish civilians, they made Britain ban Jews from purchasing land… The very prospect that Jews might want to peacefully buy unsettled land in their indigenous homeland was met with violence.
Today, while Israel is not at peace with the West Bank, nothing nearly so atrocious has happened there. The debate is not over civilian deaths, it’s over settlements and rocks and territory.
But Hamas reacted to to Israel’s unilaterally ending the occupation in Gaza by dramatically ramping up rocket fire. Hamas explicitly wants to kill Jews all over the world.
They’re human actors who decide to shed their humanity and brutalize civilians. When humans decide to do that, they’re not symptoms, they’re morally culpable agents.
Israel has negotiated with Hamas before.
Hamas had virtually free reign in Gaza for the past 17 years, despite violently pushing out Fatah and never holding elections again.
That didn’t stop Hamas from murdering 1,400 civilians in Israel.
What results should Israel expect if they negotiated with Hamas this time?
And then went back on the results of those negotiations. Two ceasefires were signed before, and in both the blockade being lifted was a condition that Israel didn’t fulfill no matter how long Hamas waited.
Also you’re being very disingenuous by ignoring the blockade. You can’t call the situation in Gaza “free reign”.
It’s not like the ceasefires were unilaterally observed by Hamas, and only broken by Israel.
I’m not even trying to defend Israel here. My entire point is that there is absolutely no reason to put your entire trust into a terrorist organization that just murdered 1,400 civilians.
Hamas won the 2006 election, and Fatah and the rest of the world opposed them taking office. Hamas and Fatah fought it out, and Hamas won in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank.
You’re right that Hamas hasn’t allowed elections since then, but simply saying, 'violently pushing out Fatah ’ is much less than accurate.
It should also be noted that Hamas won that election because Fatah’s strategy of negotiations was seen as a dead end and Israel is responsible for that. And of course, there might not even BE a Hamas if Israel hadn’t funded Hamas as a divide and conquer strategy against the Palestinian secular nationalist movement .
They changed their charter to deflect criticism. They haven’t changed their behavior at all. They’re still actively pursuing the death of every Jew and Jew-sympathizer the world over. They still say the same shit, but they make sure to only say it in Arabic, and not while the West is paying attention. And they try their best to replace “Jew” with “Zionist,” (still around the world), and they still encourage “global Jihad,” and they still view a Jew’s death anywhere as cause for celebration.
Israel’s objective is that Hamas no longer exists and that Gaza can no longer pose a security threat to Israel. They won’t accept a return to the status quo that just results in more rocket attacks and another wave of attacks years from now.
I understand wanting to see an end to violence and calling for a ceasefire based on that, but to do so is to de facto support more intentional attacks on Israeli civilians, which Israel is simply not going to allow. The time to discuss the future of Gaza will only come once Hamas and other militias are conclusively out of the picture.
Hamas’s founding charter prohibits them from seeking peace or negotiating at all.
And they still have ~150-200 hostages, mostly civilians.
The problem is that Hamas exists, and has complete political control over Gaza. There is nobody Israel can talk to, while Hamas is in power, and convince them to return the hostages, stop the rocket fire, etc.
This is not a problem that can be solved with words.
The only glimmer of hope, unfortunately, lays on the other side of a complete and total destruction of Hamas in Gaza.
There is. Hamas. It happened before. And Israel didn’t follow through with it. Look up the 2008 and 2012 blockades (or I can give a breakdown on them).
Oh yeah, I remember the last time Hamas released a hostage.
I wasn’t talking about the hostages, my bad there, though those can be easily demanded as part of a ceasefire agreement.