Should Israel talk with Hamas?
The entire situation is bleak. Israel has spent 60 years (this year is her birthday) fighting those who seek to destroy her existence. Hamas is only one of many different groups trying to annihilate the State of Israel, including killing off its people one by one. I have to agree with Ronen in that I do not believe any other country in the world would take the kind of abuse Israel has taken without initiating a full-fledged war. It breaks my heart to think of the missing soldiers and what it must be like for them each day in captivity. Hamas is a known terrorist organization and unfortunately, any negotiations with them will only promote future kidnappings. It is extremely important for the Israeli government to do everything it can to bring Gilad Shalit home (as well as the other missing soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev), and at the same time, politically, she cannot compromise the future of her people. Sadly, I think if Israel negotiates now, Hamas will think it can kidnap m
It is so elemental a question, yet one rarely mentioned in the mainline press. Hamas has been demonized so thoroughly and with so little genuine reason that its situation provides prima facie evidence for the immense reach of the Israel lobby. The world is horrified by Israel’s bombing of Gaza’s densely populated area, and rightly so, but the bombing is only a more intense horror than the blockade. The word “blockade” comes so easily, so cleanly, without any feeling for what it reality means. It is one of that class of terms you find dissected in Orwell’s great essay, “Politics and the English Language.” It truly means here an entire population is abused and tortured for months because it voted the wrong way. I do think most of us, if treated in this fashion in our homes by a foreign power, would use any means at hand of protesting and fighting back, even if that fighting is hopeless, as it is. It was, I believe, a former Israeli Prime Minister who said that if he were a Palestinian, h
