Naw, you don’t want to risk embarrassment in a Pepsi challenge with this particular enthusiastic amateur.

However, for the purposes of understanding the lens through which Jews see Saturday's attack, it's a necessary perspective to include.

I’m glad you wrote this because knowledge of the Israeli’s positions and perceptions is useful to me. So I’ll read the 276-page tome.

I've been a history teacher for 18 years, and I'll gladly take the Pepsi challenge with any enthusiastic amateur, yourself included. Bard is certainly one-sided in his analysis (much more than I'd be, at any rate) but the factual basis he provides for his opinions does not contain anything false. If you mean "propaganda" in the broad sense of showing a view skewed toward one side, you'd be correct. However, for the purposes of understanding the lens through which Jews see Saturday's attack, it's a necessary perspective to include.

…and this is the absolute wrong time to demonstrate your ignorance on the topic.

Why is this the wrong time? Hamas has just tapped Israel on the shoulder to remind them that no justice, no peace.

This is like the gun lobby’s almost pro forma response to mass shootings that we shouldn’t act when everyone is “so emotional.”

But take myself. Lets say the native Americans suddenly got magic technology and kicked everyone out. Where would I go? "Europe"? Where specifically? I am an American mutt, you would have to cut me up in to ten or more pieces that would be spread from Ireland to Slovakia and southern Russia and every place in between. I suspect you would find the same problem with Palestinians. Yes, they immigrated there just like the Jews. After a few generations, the blood mingles and they don't don't have a place to go back to. The specific amount of time they happened to hold the land is immaterial...

I’ve got news for you, nypoet22.

I majored in History and for years now I’ve been able to study History-Politics-Religion-et Al hours every day. Like a full time job hours except that it’s a labor of love for me. So I think I know (1) more than a thimble, and (2) more than you.

I read the intro and since I’ve read the Quran (and a Hadith) this year I’ll go ahead and read what appears (on first blush) to be Zionist propaganda.

"asymmetrical warfare" requires there to be a war, and what you know about this war could fit in a thimble. which is no particular knock on you, it's just a very complicated situation and most people who have opinions on it are woefully uninformed.

read this, back to front...

and if you fully absorb the factual basis of it, you'll have an understanding of the conflict equal to an israeli first-grader.

Sure, take out Hamas but lets not pretend they are unique in their savagery. These kind of horrible actions can be found all over the world.

I've been following lots of threads and have found the bloodthirstiness for revenge interesting. But if it is a purely eye for an eye revenge fantasy it will solve nothing. There will still be two million people in a small strip of land with less infrastructure, no real government and no representation in Israeli government. Another decade down the line and technology will improve and the lethality available to the common man will as well and there will be a repeat. Happy, content and educated people don't have time for savagery. They got jobs to go to and mouths to feed even if they express it on their favorite forums. Poor, less educated and desperate people have plenty of time for it though...

No fucking clue? Look up asymmetrical warfare before you embarrass yourself. Look up the history of other wars of liberation — these Hamas atrocities are nothing new and are what a smaller force has to do against a larger force. Do I approve of targeting civilians? No, never!

But there is NO morality in these matters, to wit: do you feel as strongly about the fact that Palestinian civilian casualties are ALWAYS multiples of Israel’s? Of course not — it’s what the IDF has to do to get the bad guys, right?

Yup, the US most certainly had it coming, as Ron Paul pointed out. Unless, of course, you believe Osama bin Ladan threw a dart at a map of the world and just happened to hit the USA that out

Pardon my Anglo-Saxon but you have no fucking clue what you're talking about, and this is the absolute wrong time to demonstrate your ignorance on the topic. There is zero cause-effect relationship between Israeli border policy and the assassination style murder of civilians that occurred on Saturday. You and politico are attributing motives that simply don't exist and drawing comparisons to regimes with next to nothing in common.

If you'd like to draw comparisons, try this; Would you have said on September 14, 2001 that the u.s. had it coming because of our Afghanistan policy?

JL

Israel brought this upon itself. Jewish Apartheid isn’t any better than South African Apartheid and Hamas’s attack is an effort to 1- compel an IDF overreaction 2- generate attention and sympathy due to said overreaction, and 3- Force Israel to get serious about negotiating a two-state resolution.

It struck me as being in very bad taste, to say the least. It's hard if not impossible to support the Palestinian peoples' cause when there are terrorist entities like Hamas in charge of things, to say nothing of the state of Iran and the ongoing and never-ending chilling chants of 'Death to Israel, Death to America'.

There was a pro-Israel event in Halifax and I'm sure in other Canadian cities, too. It's easy to understand what Israel must do.

AOC and her "squad" need to quit the both-sides narrative and accept that they were wrong about Israel and what Israelis need to do to protect themselves.