Hamas says it's back in control of the Gaza Strip
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0
SezWho2
Bearded? So? Why not "brown-eyed", "two-armed", "well-shod"?
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adaydream
I'm so hoping we have cool heads on both side. Tired of needless deaths. < :-)
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SuperLib
We = Hamas. The Palestinian people were surely the losers.
Just like Hitler.
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YangYong
No needed for the 'bearded' to be written. Israel achieved neither of its goals and is left tarnished, exposed and ineffectual. It is the loser and showing itself to be lacking moral fibre. Mr Obama will steer them to an intelligent solution.
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AlfGarnett
Let's hope Israel can leave the Gazans to live in peace and prosper now.
They have suffered enough in the last few weeks. Strewth, at last Hamas is back in control and sanity can come back and that.
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Roger2
Hamas started out as a humanitarian organization which gave shelter and built hospitals, schools and mosques to people in occupied Palestine, Israel started out as a racist, terrorist organization. Now Israel wants to label Hamas a racist terror organization. In the long run the Palestinians will win. A better question Israel needs to ask is what will we do the day we lose? Hamas and Palestinians will never give up. In the end they will eat up Israel. The sooner Zionists understand the reality the sooner peace will come to Palestine bearded or not.
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Faderkinta
"In the end they will eat up Israel." This is why Isreal will keep bombing them back to the stone age. Both sides are wrong but high provocative speeches are dumb at this point. You have not won when your hospital have to decide which treatable with todays medicine child to make the cut. While others with problems that in any other stable nation would be a hiccup in the childs life. I am sorry but Hamas did not win in fact it lose big.
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Roger2
Zionism will lose. The ideology and not the Israeli people. Besides sooner or later the native Palestinians will out number the colonist Jews within Israel.
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Sarge
"Bearded Hamas leaders on Friday delivered an envelope with five crisp $100 bills"
Hey, the dollar must still be worth something!
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likeitis
Because its usually the bad guy who sports a beard in Disney cartoons? The subliminal messages are showing!
First Israel will have to lift the seige. This act of war has been going on for decades. And people are surprised when Palestinians fight back.
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Helter_Skelter
They've been losers for half a century now. How long are you talking about?
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skipthesong
And people are surprised when Palestinians fight back." and then they are surprised when Israel fights back. I don't know why you expect them to just lay down and be walked on.
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wuzzademcrat
"Bearded Hamas leaders on Friday delivered an envelope with five crisp $100 bills to a veiled woman whose house was damaged during Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the first of promised relief payments by the militant group."
All courtesy of imperialist, theocratic Iran.
btw - very interesting the objection from Hamas supporters here to the description bearded, but not to veiled...
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Roger2
Until ignorants learn.
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GJDailleult
What's with the beard comments. Bearded just means they are probably fundamentalists and not moderates. What else did you expect?
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likeitis
I don't see any Hamas supporters here. But I do see idiotic assumption despite being told time and time again.
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likeitis
Yeah. Palestinians could so "walk on" the Israelis! I think you might be a bit confused. This is like the Incredible Hulk in a spat with a ten year old.
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wuzzademcrat
"Because its usually the bad guy who sports a beard in Disney cartoons? The subliminal messages are showing!"
Consider what that says about you.
Do you know much about Islam?
"Muslims could also help by stopping the use of their bodies as advertising space for al-Qaeda. Muslim women should cast aside the so-called hijab, which has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with tribal wear on the Arabian peninsula. The hijab was reinvented in the 1970s as a symbol of militancy, and is now a visual prop of terrorism. If some women have been hoodwinked into believing that they cannot be Muslims without covering their hair, they could at least use headgears other than black (the colour of al-Qaeda) or white (the colour of the Taleban). Green headgear would be less offensive, if only because green is the colour of the House of Hashem, the family of the Prophet.
"Muslim men should consider doing away with Taleban and al-Qaeda-style beards. Growing a beard has nothing to do with Islam; the Prophet himself never sported anything more than a vandyke. The bushy beards you see on Oxford Street are symbols of the Salafi ideology that has produced al-Qaeda and the Taleban."
Moderator: All readers back on topic please.
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SezWho2
wuzzademcrat,
Who says you have to be a Hamas supporter to object to leading the story with the word "bearded"? Anyone who had any claim to anything resembling objectivity could easily object. When we start to hear comments such as "bearded Kenny Rogers took the stage last night...", then we'll know that this is a non-controversial description.
btw: It's interesting that you should accuse Iran of fighting proxy wars and being imperialistic. Surely you know other countries who are the same.
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telecasterplayer
Hamas is back in charge. Israel achieved none of its goals. The International Community is down on Israel because of its disproportionate response to Hamas's hilarious yet potentially (but never quite) deadly 'rockets'. Israel will buy some replacement weapons of war from the profiteers. Hamas's ringleaders will raise more funds from the deeper pockets in its world. The only democracy in the region is an embarrassment. The Palestinians still live in deplorable conditions. And those dead Palestinian kids are still dead.
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Sarge
"israel achieved none of its goals"
I dunno... how many rockets have been fired at Israel in the past few days?
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wuzzademcrat
"The International Community [sic] is down on Israel "
What is the so-called international community going to do? Can you even describe it?
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SuperLib
I think most people are surprised at how the Palestinians fight back, which in the end almost always ends up being counterproductive to their goals.
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SuperLib
Sure, and I don't support Israel. I hope that simple sentence counters the thousands of words I've written defending Israel. Now I can say that I support neither side. If you want proof, just reread my first sentence.
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skipthesong
"The International Community [sic] is down on Israel " Actually, the whole world has been down on the Jews.
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SezWho2
In the simplistic world of if you don't support Israel you automatically support Hamas, there are a lot of Hamas supporters here--and all over the world. I think it would even be true that, under this simplisticity, a vast majority of the world's citizens would be Hamas supporters.
However, it's not that simple. When Hamas fires rockets into Israel and those rockets result in indiscriminate death, dismemberment and destruction, it's a bad thing. However, when Israel appropriates land and shows no intention of ever relinquishing it, it's a worse one.
At present, the Palestinians choice is to passively submit and take what Israel is willing to give, if anything, or to fight back. In fighting back their options are pretty much limited to what they have been doing. The burden is on Israel to provide meaningful incentives. Only then can the Palestinians choose to stop Hamas for speaking for them.
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wuzzademcrat
If Hamas is in control, Iran is in control.
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AlfGarnett
If Obama is in control Israel is in control.
Hamas is now helping the homeless, those in hospitals and those hungry. I say well done chaps.
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Helter_Skelter
Yeah, but a ten year old that fires rockets.
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AlfGarnett
Hamas is better respected in my country than the Israeli's , and too bloody right to. They have a good charotable record, and don'T hide nukes on their land, or break every UN resolution against them.
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SuperLib
Who said anything about supporting Israel? I defend them when I'm able to, I speak out against Hamas, I side with Israel on most issues, I justify most of their actions, and 95% of my statements are pro-Israel and anti-Hamas, etc.
(get ready for it....)
But I don't actually support Israel.
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sailwind
Good to see em doing other things between the strapping on of suicide vests and blowing up markets full of innocents.
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Helter_Skelter
Good, because there are plenty Jihadists just like them already living in your country. So by all means, keep respecting them. It will make the transition to Dhimmi status much smoother.
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SezWho2
SuperLib,
That's entirely possible. But that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the notion that it's not (possible).
Personally, I am indifferent except so far as the United States is concerned. If rockets fall on Israel, I'm not there. If Gaza is in shambles, I'm not there.
Human suffering? It's not mine. But, when I look at the weight of the human suffering and the origins for it, it seems to me that the people in Palestine have had a raw deal. So 95% of the time, I speak out against Israeli action and in favor of...(get ready for it)...the Palestinian cause.
In my estimation, the United States has been in the wrong to arm Israel, to give it a wink and a nod on weapons of mass destruction, and to acquiesce to its ethnic cleansing, seizure of further lands and failures to administer the territories it occupies. That support is, as much as anything else if not more, responsible for the continued hostility in the Middle East.
That does not augur well for "the war on terror." Bush proclaimed Iraq to be the central front in that war, hawks declare it to be Waziristan, and now Obama says its Afghanistan. Yet a steady procession of Arab leaders have told us time and again that the central front is between Israel and Palestine. I think there's a message we're not getting.
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wuzzademcrat
"Yet a steady procession of Arab leaders have told us time and again that the central front is between Israel and Palestine. I think there's a message we're not getting."
The message some of us get is that Israel's very existence infuriates leaders in surrounding Mohammedan nations, many of which would be failed states if it weren't for petroleum revenues or US assistance, and that Israel is used to whip up support for regimes in hellholes like Syria.
Some of us also understand that the destruction of infidel, non-Muslim Israel is a matter of priority for many of the religiously insane in the region. Their "holy book" decrees it. As the Arab saying goes - first Saturday, then Sunday.
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likeitis
So concise! Just about everything I have been saying for weeks in one post! Well done!
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likeitis
Helter, google "five dancing Israelis". There is a lot of crap about it, but some stuff to make you wonder "Are these our allies?" And yeah, they walk among us.
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sailwind
I think there's a message we're not getting.
Sez,
Hillary Clinton has gotten the message loud and clear about HAMAS.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBNRVgq59Y
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likeitis
Interesting video. Everything seems to be from after the Hamas takeover too. They sure are not doing the Palestinian cause any service with that, nor the Palestinian people. But what could we expect from a bunch of thugs? The rap video was so like our own gansta rap. Thugs.
Israel created a monster.
0
sailwind
I've done a lot of hard thinking about this and I think I have come up with a solution that all of can agree on.
The answer seems to be that the Israeli's themselves voluntarly vote themselves out of existence as a Jewish state. Let all Palistinians back into the lands they lost by war and accept Muslim rule again as a minority.
There are two ways to achieve this. The U.S withdraws all support for Israel. The U.N ceases to seat her as a nation and withdraws all support also. The Arab nations of course will then be able to conquer back the land by war and force the final dissolution of Israel.
However that is a pretty hard sell. The region would be a bloodbath and to ask the world once again to turn its eyes to another slaughter of the Jews is something I would even the progressives on this site would want to see happen again.
So in order to get Israel to voluntarly cease to exist by the will of her people. We have to lead by example first. We in the U.S have also subjugated our own Native American population. We stole their land, we herded them into desolate reservations, we took all that they had and turned them into second class citizens. We were just as bad to then as modern Israel has been to the Palistinians.
So we should give all of America back to the Indians. After we do this then we can rightfully claim that Israel do the same. Then if she doesn't then we and the world can withdraw their support for the Jewish state and only then could we avert our eyes in good conscious to the next holocaust of the Jews by her Muslim neighbors.
We have to be bold ones and as leader of the free world take this step. I suggest a phased turn-over though to the Indians. We could start with the blue states first, then move on from there.
I'm going to pass this on to Obama.
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likeitis
Much too late for that. But there are certain areas that should be returned because, by treaty, the land is theirs.
Many a Palestinian has an even better claim, and to even more specific pieces of ground.
How about this: We offer to settle all Israelis in New Mexicoand let them set up a new Jewish homeland there, excluding any patch of desert that has already been set aside for Native Americans or Palestinians.
I would like to see if they can make the desert bloom twice!
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SuperLib
Bye.
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YangYong
No needed for the 'bearded' to be written. Israel achieved neither of its goals and is left tarnished, exposed and ineffectual. It is the loser and showing itself to be lacking moral fibre. Mr Obama will steer them to an intelligent solution.
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rajakumar
Hope for new peace deals and negotiations should be steered by Obama administration-Hamas-Fatah. Middle east wars are costing trillions every year.
USA also losing trillions via defense spending in arab-israel related wars via iraq war,al qaeda-taliban war and afghan-taliban war.
In 2009 world stock markets are in shrinkage,leading also to more loss of trillions. Future can save 1000s of billions,if we instead use more billions to improve quality of life and economy of palestinian people in Gaza-West Bank .
Obama needs to promote a wiser peace deals among all rival parties. There arab nation lands are huge,there can be big billions/trillions created via peace deals between hamas-fatah-israel in the arab world.
End of wars in gaza,iraq and afghanistan will create trillions in future projects in Middle east and elsewhere in Islamic nations via education,petro dollars, JV corporations and JV infra projects.
Obama and cabinet needs to reverse old road maps and create new dynamic intelligent road maps to middle east solutions. Overcoming the challenges to this road map needs to be started again by popular to all Obama and new US administration.
Already guantanamo closing,iraq troops winding down and afghan war also now better in cooperation with pakistan-afghan govt.
Things are looking up for better peace in 2009 via new popular more peaceful Obama administration ways. Deserts can bloom if we can pump water via desalination systems .
Deserts also can bloom via new kind of tech in water resource building systems or high tech new economic nation building systems. In libya, underground water is pumped to create agro land and new towns. Huge number of desalination towers already providing water in many Gulf Opec countries.
Petro dollars and proper nation building projects,can make all thing bloom even deserts as in Dubai,UAE,Saudi arabia,Iraq,Kuwait,Qatar,Bahrain and Iran.
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rajakumar
correction-The arab nations land are huge,there can be billions/trillions created via peace deals between hamas-fatah-israel in arab world.
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Roger2
President Jimmy Carter said,* it is wrong to frame this conflict simply as “democratic Israel” facing “terrorist groups like Hamas” and it is wrong to continue to fund Israeli wars while claiming to be an “honest broker. *
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SezWho2
SuperLib,
What? You don't think that the Israelis ethnically cleansed Israel? You don't think the US has acquiesced to that? You don't think that's a problem?
I'm not sure why you want to turn a civil disagreement into a matter of high dudgeon. But if you can't discuss it in a civil manner, I bid you fare the well.
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SezWho2
sailwind,
Hillary Clinton has got a message loud and clear about Hamas. I'm not sure she got the message.
Nonetheless, it's an interesting video. I've got a couple of questions for you though.
Who is palwatch.org? What is the provenance of the video that was used? To what degree is it representative of Palestinian television? Do you think it would be possible to splice together a similar tape for other countries? Hillary says that TV propaganda is poisoning children's minds. Do you think this does not happen elsewhere?
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SezWho2
wuzzademcrat,
I agree. That's the message you got. The propaganda works.
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Roger2
SezWho2
I know your questions were not meant for me but would like to answer them anyway.
Most Palestinians, believe in the fact that resisting the Israeli aggression is not an aggression.Injustice breeds contempt and violence, oppression calls for brutal reaction. When Sailwind shows video clips of suicide bombers he completely ignores the injustice which the Palestinians have been subjected to since 1948 which has resulted in the most extreme form of resistance.
Many Palestinians believe that suicide missions which are called martyr operations missions are a sacred duty carried out in form of self-defense and resisting aggression and injustice. Since Israel denies the Palestinians basic human rights, terrorising it´s peoples killing their women, children and men and the Palestinians are powerless and incapable of defending themselves. Since the Palestinians do not have much to their disposal but stones which they throw at Israel in order to defend the country. Despite its courage and high morale, stones cannot deter Israel. So the Palestinians resort to martyr operations.
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wuzzademcrat
"That's the message you got. The propaganda works."
Whose propaganda, and via what sources? Can you name them? No, you can't.
All that sezwho ever has is his evasive, hedging rhetoric and his pedantic hypotheticals.
0
grafton
“Hamas, believed to be funded by donations from the Muslim world and Iran, has promised $52 million in emergency relief. This would include $1,300 for a death in the family, $650 for an injury, $5,200 for a destroyed house and $2,600 for a damaged house, he said, adding that these are not yet compensation payments, which Hamas promises will follow.”
So at least hamas is admitting financial responsibility for some of the harm they have caused. But then maybe you have got to be a good hamas supporter before they pay anything. Maybe if all this money had been spent on food & medical supplies rather than weapons Gasa might well be a nicer place to live & the frontiers could have been open a long time ago.
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Roger2
I don´t think the west has understood Hamas yet and do not know how to deal with them. Hamas is embedded in the Palestinian culture so when Israel went in to launch a massive attack on the Palestinians even they knew that they would not be able to topple Hamas. This was the propaganda which Israelis sold to the west and especially Americans bought into this.
In the day and age of Islamophobia people compare Hamas to Al Qaeda or some extreme Muslim country such as Saudi Arabia ( which happen to be an US allie and oppose Hamas ). What I find interesting about Hamas is that Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and has an Islamist ideology but it also is a very democratic movement and also secular at the same time. It has women leaders and Palestinian Christian leaders too.
Hamas is everything from the armed wing of Al Qassam Brigades to running schools, hospitals and day care centers. It started out as a humanitarian organization and it was not first after Israel kept it´s war machine and oppression that Hamas got it´s armed wing. During it´s first Intifada Palestinians resisted the occupation using mostly non violent means but got brutaly crushed by IOF. I think most of you have seen the symbolic images of Palestinians throwing stones at an Israeli tank. But instead of unconditional surrender the Palestinians armed themselves, kept their dignity . Hamas will never give up the rights of the Palestinians and Israel is scared of them. What Israel is scared of is not the weapons of Hamas, they hardly have anything but more than that their will. Their defiance and this together with the social work they do is what makes Hamas popular n Palestine. They have perfectionised the menatlity of resisting occupation which again have made them vastly popular throughout Palestine and the world and is making Israelis scared.
0
TheQuestion
Hm...after all these articals, all this debate, I still wonder why people take sides on this. On one hand you have Palestine lead by Hamas, on the other side you have Israel. Hamas doesn't like Israel and it kills Israeliis, Isreal doesn't like Hamas so it kills Palestinians. We need to stop looking at this in terms of religion, land, and politics for a moment and see this for what it truely is, two groups that want each other dead nothing more, nothing less.
There is no moral highground here, no good side, or bad side for that matter. Its about who folds first and at what cost. If I were a betting man my money would be on Isreal; better armed, better trained, and better organized.
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Roger2
It is not about Jews vs Muslims but Israelis oppressing the Palestinians. Oppression creates resentment.
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Helter_Skelter
It is not about Israelis oppressing the "Palestinians". It is about Islamic Jihadists oppressing the "Palestinians" with their never-ending quest to destroy the Infidel state of Israel. What good is a content "Palestinian" population when you have gullible first-worlders blaming Israel rather than the Jihadists for the misery?
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SuperLib
Just like Gandhi used to say...
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likeitis
How in God's name do you expect the Palestinians to be content? How in God's name do expect a disenfranchised peoples to react?
And would you stop putting Palestinian in quotes? The people are not going disappear from the radar by you trying to deny the name for them. Whether they have a country or not is irrelevant. They exist, just like the Lakota, the Seminole, and the Cherokee, three groups your ancestors also no doubt wished would just disappear after stealing their land.
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sailwind
By non-violence instead of using terrorism to try to achieve their political goals.
Next?
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SuperLib
It is pretty shocking how that thought doesn't cross the minds of so many people. In the West we talk a lot about non-violent resistance, diplomacy, etc. Except when it comes to the Palestinians. When they're the topic suddenly terrorism is an excusable response.
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Roger2
Palestinians tried non violence incase you forgot and most of the resistance towards Israel is indeed non violence. It is pretty shocking that people side with the racist oppressors.
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grafton
Roger2 at 11:30 PM JST - 25th January “Palestinians tried non violence in case you forgot….”
In case you have forgotten or are not old enough to know the PLO used every form of violence they could & did so for a very long time, & they didn’t only target Israel, for them the whole world was a target. They are the fathers & grand fathers of today’s terrorists. And yes I do & will continue to call hamas terrorists because that is what they are. The “why” is irrelevant, because terrorism is never the answer. Especially when this group bring about the deaths of the own children in the pursuit of their aims. The gullible will try to excuse these people with reasoned argument, something they have never tried when dealing with Israel.
“Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood”
You make that sound so nice, what are you, an Obama speech writer? Pigs ears into silk purses in the expression that springs to mind.
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likeitis
Not quite. I once asked the question of how Martin Luther King and Ghandi style passive resistance was supposed to work when people are locked up in a giant concentration camp and basically cannot get out. The best answer I got was "read MLK's autobiography". Anyone else wanna try?
Also, I heard that when the Israelis warned that bombs would be dropped in certain places, the Palestinians would actually gather there. It seems they took a page out of MLKs book to me. But the only way they can make it work is to instigate more violence. Israel does not need to anymore. They already got what they wanted: the land and its former occupants locked up.
So should the Palestinians passively resist the walls around them? Sounds a lot like "talking to a wall" to me.
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