Originally Posted by trish
Hamas, once a religiously inspired terrorist organization, is now also an elected political party. Palestinian elections are coming up again soon. Could it be that Hamas’s renewed provocation of Israel’s wrath is a political ploy to stir up hatred for Israel and votes for the party?
This morning NPR aired a brief discussion touching on the military definition of the phrase “acceptable civilian losses.” It seems the losses are acceptable if their sum doesn’t outweigh the benefits of military action. Which accountants are to be hired to make the assessment wasn’t mentioned. I’m sure military and political minds can easily weigh civilian deaths against troop advancements and other sorts of strategic or political gains. Hamas, for example, fires their mortars from within Palestinian schools and hospitals gambling that the children and patients will function as a kind of repellant against retaliation. Not only is this odious practice itself repellant, it’s paradoxical. By Hamas’s own reckoning, a school full of Palestinian children is worth only the one or two Israeli’s their entire mortar barrage is likely to injure. Of course Israel is inclined to agree with such an assessment and take out the school. Big tit for little tat has been Israel’s modus operandi for decades. It’s predicable.
Personally, I don’t think Israel has a right to exist and neither does Palestine nor Iran nor any other religious form of government. Israeli’s and Palestinians living together with equal citizenship under a secular government would be another story. If Israel could transform itself into a modern, 21st century, secular government and grant equal citizenship and uniform rights to Israeli’s and Palestinians alike, then it might be able to establish its right to exist in the Middle East.