re: #24 Fozzie Bear

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.

Oh, of course there were plenty of dissenters in Nazi Germany…they just didn’t say squat until after the war was over, when suddenly everybody was a “Good German.” Might have had something to do with the fact that any who spoke up about their opposition while the Reich was still in power had a tendency to end up dead in the streets by way of “lead poisoning,” courtesy of the Gestapo. Likewise there may be plenty of those who disagree with Hamas and want peace with Israel, only Hamas has a word for them: “collaborators.” And the vocal ones have a life expectancy measured in hours and minutes.