re: #335 LudwigVanQuixote

The people of Gaza, as pointed out repeatedly, democratically elected the government responsible for the kidnapping. Hamas ran on a we will murder more Jews than Fatah campaign - just look at their speeches, this is real and not hyperbole - and they were elected.

The “innocent” people of Gaza voted for more hostility - democratically and in a landslide. Shutting off the water and power is already a mercy. What would America do to a regime that constantly tried to kidnap Americans, bragged about it, launched rocket attacks into our soil, bragged about it, sent suicide bombers, bragged about it, and consistently talked of destroying us?

Would we use stop gap measures?

We would flatten them even if they were a dictatorship and the people had not voted for the regime. We would not try coercing them with water and power that we would then turn back on first.

Ludwig, I’m back. A couple of things - Hamas did won “in a landslide”, in the sense that it had far more votes than Fatah, but it also had just 43% of the total popular vote. And I agree that many nations, including the U.S., would have been far harsher to the Palestinians than Israel has been. I just don’t think that’s a good thing.

Take the less loaded case of native Americans tribes. It’s a pretty imperfect parallel, but still. They were not democratic. I’m not sure what kind of rhetoric they used, but I’m sure that speeches eradicating all American settlers must have come up quite often during war time. And they submitted prisoners and enemy combatants to quite cruel rituals, such as live scalping.

But there’s more or less a consensus that native Americans were often treated unfairly.