Ramping up against the Houthis in Yemem

[GKinnear]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

We might be advocating for different things... I'm suggesting (and I think Gkinnear agrees) that the only real solution is the forced relocation of the Palestinians out of Gaza (or I suppose the slaughter of all Israeli Jews). At which point Israel can do whatever they want with it. 

To my knowledge this has not been tried yet. 

I agree with almost everything stated here...the only thing is "Palestinians".  If you said HAMAS instead, then yes absolutely, no white-space between our positions. 

But the non-HAMAS tolerant Palestinian civilians are an issue to figure out.  I've seen some media reporting about some small-scale protests against HAMAS happening, but not enough yet.  However, I'd like to give them the chance to throw off the shackles of HAMAS oppression and join the international community as Israeli citizens...who happens to grant full citizenship to "Palestinians" people who choose to live in peaceful coexistence under Israeli rule.

[Lord Ratner]

53 minutes ago, GKinnear said:

I agree with almost everything stated here...the only thing is "Palestinians".  If you said HAMAS instead, then yes absolutely, no white-space between our positions. 

But the non-HAMAS tolerant Palestinian civilians are an issue to figure out.  I've seen some media reporting about some small-scale protests against HAMAS happening, but not enough yet.  However, I'd like to give them the chance to throw off the shackles of HAMAS oppression and join the international community as Israeli citizens...who happens to grant full citizenship to "Palestinians" people who choose to live in peaceful coexistence under Israeli rule.

Being against Hamas is not the relevant metric. By the time of October 7th I believe Hamas had already lost a support of the majority of the Palestinians living in Gaza as political leadership. 

However there was practically no daylight between the "citizens" of Gaza and Hamas on the key issue: October 7th was to be celebrated and the Jews are to be killed. 

 

To further clarify using your distinction, I believe that Hamas needs to be exterminated with lethal force. I believe the people of Gaza (who have not individually murdered Jews, but pray for it daily) must be forcibly relocated from Gaza to another part of the world where they are with and/or surrounded by other Muslims.

 

We could not exist peacefully with Mexico as a neighbor if a core identity of the Mexicans was the religious calling to murder, rape, and otherwise dominate Americans.

 

And yes, of course an alternate solution would be to move the Israelis, but since they have no stated or apparent desire to rape and murder every Palestinian they can find, I think they get the benefit of the doubt.

Edited Saturday at 08:28 PM by Lord Ratner

[GKinnear]

29 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Being against Hamas is not the relevant metric. By the time of October 7th I believe Hamas had already lost a support of the majority of the Palestinians living in Gaza as political leadership. 

However there was practically no daylight between the "citizens" of Gaza and Hamas on the key issue: October 7th was to be celebrated and the Jews are to be killed. 

 

To further clarify using your distinction, I believe that Hamas needs to be exterminated with lethal force. I believe the people of Gaza (who have not individually murdered Jews, but pray for it daily) must be forcibly relocated from Gaza to another part of the world where they are with and/or surrounded by other Muslims.

 

We could not exist peacefully with Mexico as a neighbor if a core identity of the Mexicans was the religious calling to murder, rape, and otherwise dominate Americans.

 

And yes, of course an alternate solution would be to move the Israelis, but since they have no stated or apparent desire to rape and murder every Palestinian they can find, I think they get the benefit of the doubt.

I may disagree with the intensity of your statement, but not the overall point you're making.

If the non-HAMAS Palestinians want to take a stand against that death-loving cult, then they need to do it...otherwise, they are unfortunately guilty by association.

[dream big]

On 5/9/2025 at 11:09 PM, Pooter said:

I would exert political pressure on that ally (Israel) to knock it off in Gaza. They have more than retaliated for Oct 7 and gone orders of magnitude past that. The stated position of the houthis is that they are attacking Israeli ships "in support of their muslim brethren in gaza." Which I actually believe because so far the only time the houthis have stopped shooting was during the short lived Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.  I would immediately stop any talks of a Gaza riviera developed by us and Israel. The gaza riviera is a bad idea of biblical proportions that will have Israel cemented as a permanent pariah state, with us as the enablers. 

Of course all of this assumes im king for a day and not completely beholden to AIPAC like the current admin and most of the left are.

edit: The other biggest problem with the gaza riviera plan is that it's the stumbling block preventing any meaningful negotiations from happening to get back the remaining hostages. Think about it from the perspective of hamas. Once you give up the hostages you've given up your last card, then israel is free to completely bulldoze the place. So what incentive do you have to negotiate a cease fire and return hostages if the only thing looming on the horizon afterward is complete displacement?

Why would Israel do that? When you have terrorist living football fields away from your citizens you don’t just tuck tail. 

[Pooter]

Guys I think the only logical solution here is to forcibly displace these people from their claimed ancestral and religious homeland and then re-settle them into like-minded Muslim countries. Definitely won’t result in fertile ground for more terrorist cells surrounding Israel on all sides. 
 

If I’ve learned anything from 20 years of terror wars it’s that it super easy peasy to squash Islamic fundamentalism and imposing our will on them never blows up in our face. Guess we just really have to make a middle eastern Monaco in Gaza. It’s literally the only logical thing to do 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Pooter]

On 5/9/2025 at 6:47 PM, TreeA10 said:

If your neighbor had a pack of vicious dogs that attacked and butchered your child, would you be satisfied that killing a couple of the dogs would prevent your other children from being attacked from the remaining pack of dogs or would want to completely eliminate the threat?

 

 

See this analogy fails because it does what tons of Israel fans do by assuming Oct 7th is the first and only important event to consider when thinking about this conflict. 
 

A more apt analogy here is as follows:
 

You’ve been neighbors for 70 years. You’ve been trading tit for tat dog attacks for that entire time. You have blockaded your neighbor’s house and won’t let him go to the grocery store, receive mail, or otherwise interact with the outside world. You randomly encroach on his property claiming portions of his yard as your own. THEN his dogs get out and kill your kid. So you go kill his dogs, his wife, his kids, him, burn down his house, and burn down every surrounding house in a 2 mile radius.  

[Pooter]

On 5/10/2025 at 7:18 AM, GKinnear said:

Thanks for the reply...some we can agree on, some I see the logic of your decision-making, but I disagree with the assumption it's based on.

@TreeA10 and @Lord Ratner speak to the assumption part...HAMAS has had semi-independence for 20 years and never pursued a peaceful co-existence with Israel, and the world basically encouraged them not to.  See multiple examples of the UN and AP journalists dual-hatted as HAMAS operatives.

Also, HAMAS specifically targeted soft civilian targets.  The killing would have been bad enough, but the torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and raping (regardless of age) puts it on another level.  I pray for peace in the middle east, but it takes both sides to be honest participants, and HAMAS has never proven themselves to be anything other than what the world saw on Oct 7th.  

So your plan to get the Houthis to stop is dependent on Israel, which is dependent on HAMAS...like I said, makes sense from your POV, we just disagree about the nature of HAMAS.

I celebrate your right to free speech under the 1st Amendment, but your AIPAC comment made me pause.  Jews can be criticised, just as blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, Polish, etc, can; however, there are many anti-semetic conspiracy theories about global Jewish cabals running the world that seem to have echoes in your statement.  I may have some bias since we've been on opposite ends of this conversation.

To end on a positive note, I agree with you and @Day Man on the Gaza Riveria plan.  US Government has no standing to get directly involved in post-war plans in any way, and I don't think there's a public outcry to justify a change.

Thank you for the productive disagreement. I agree that Hamas hasn’t done a single thing in good faith ever but I would argue those actions aren’t in a vacuum and Israel hasn’t behaved in a productive manner toward Gaza/Hamas either. 
 

It’s really easy to point to how radicalized Hamas is but the nuance comes from coming to terms with the conditions those people have been subjected to that contributed to their radicalization.

Also AIPAC is just an objectively very powerful lobbying group. I don’t think it’s invoking some grand anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say that US and Israel interests are not always aligned and AIPAC more often than not lobbies for the Israeli interest. 

[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

See this analogy fails because it does what tons of Israel fans do by assuming Oct 7th is the first and only important event to consider when thinking about this conflict. 
 

A more apt analogy here is as follows:
 

You’ve been neighbors for 70 years. You’ve been trading tit for tat dog attacks for that entire time. You have blockaded your neighbor’s house and won’t let him go to the grocery store, receive mail, or otherwise interact with the outside world. You randomly encroach on his property claiming portions of his yard as your own. THEN his dogs get out and kill your kid. So you go kill his dogs, his wife, his kids, him, burn down his house, and burn down every surrounding house in a 2 mile radius.  

Tit for tat? 😂🤣

 

Bro you have no idea what you're talking about. 

 

Just another Westerner with no concept of how other cultures think. Ironically, this is the same misinterpretation of Islamic fundamentalism that brought us the forever-wars you seem to be (incorrectly) comparing this to. 

 

If only the Palestinians weren't under a blockade, there'd be peace!

 

Thanks for the chuckle.

[slc]

What happened to the billions of dollars poured into Gaza the last few decades?  That place should be thriving..... oh wait