re: #14 lawhawk

Except that polls routinely show strong support for Hamas and their genocidal statements towards Israel’s destruction.

And those who don’t follow Hamas, are following Fatah that has a similar core doctrine. Or they‘re moving towards even more extreme terror ideologies like al Qaeda and the Salafists.

This perfectly illustrates how this conflict is a least as much a political one as it is military. As such, words matter, perceptions matter, and nuance matters.

As for your second paragraph, your pronouns are doing some heavy lifting. Stating that the population of gaza / west bank / palestine is of one mind is like saying there were no dissenters in Nazi Germany, there are no gays in Iran, and everybody in North Korea loves the dear leader. It’s an interesting talking point, but in the end, it is nothing more than boilerplate.

Go back in time several years to the start of the Iraq war, and you will find Fozzie Bear absolutely screaming at his television at the idiocy of the invasion. Do I share the blame for Bush’s mistakes, even though I never voted for him? Does someone who voted for McCain share blame for Obama’s mistakes?

The majority != the totality. There are good people in the middle east who aren’t Jews. Attempting to lump everyone there into a common group is a very familiar propaganda tactic. It nearly always precedes doing horrific things. Don’t go there, please.