• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Hamas must be eradicated

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Take no prisoners it appears.
Excerpted....
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hours after forming an emergency government and wartime cabinet, foreshadowed a major ground attack on Gaza by promising to destroy Hamas.
“Every Hamas terrorist is a dead man,” Netanyahu said at a late-night briefing, flanked by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, the leader of an opposition party.
Hardly the same as trying to eliminate all Palestinians though.
 

Brickjectivity

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
@setarcos I doubt this is really about Israel. Its true that a lot of people don't understand or trust Israel, but it is about funding and keeping US money from flowing out, and its about evangelicals in USA. Israel inflames the beliefs of evangelicals here, and this very much annoys a lot of people. I think they want to pop that bubble of belief in Israel, but these demonstrations are not having much impact. That Christian protestants have caused the country Israel to appear is lost on some, but its our baby. I read a book printed in 1850something predicting how Israel would become a nation, the kinds of political conflicts which could bring it about etc. World war was predicted. All of this: Israel surrounded by disapproving countries is in the playbook. Its a thoroughly entrenched belief based upon a peculiar way of reading our canon. Books and books have predicted it. There have been variations considering things like 'The antichrist' or 'Rapture' or specific dates or who would attack Israel or who was God & Magog etc.; but the theme has been brought up for almost 2 centuries, now. Growing up as a protestant I heard about this topic almost weekly: how the nations would rise up against Israel, how it miraculously appeared showing Jesus would soon return. You can't demonstrate it away.

You know how science fiction has predicted many things and caused things to appear? Christian fiction has, too. Now we are carried along by a stream uncontrollable, and a lot of people don't feel good about it and don't trust it. They don't trust or understand what Israel is. Its perfectly understandable. Its just weird.

Consider that its evangelicals overwhelmingly supporting Trump (who is extremely loathed). It is evangelicals who have caused Roe v. Wade to be reversed. Its evangelicals that vote red lately. This is about American politics. It is about reaching the US evangelical. It is about us (well...not me anymore), because we are always focused on that country in our sermons. At the same time people don't understand Judaism or Jews, and so they are mysterious and hidden in fog. The whole situation of conflict and the smoke of war is confusing.
 

Colt

Well-Known Member
To be clear, I'm making a distinction between Palestinian civilians, and members of Hamas. All members of Hamas must be dealt with, for example by imprisoning them for life. This terrorist organization must be utterly destroyed, even the leaders sitting in cushy hotels a thousand miles away from the war.

The world has left it to Israel to perform this task, and much of the world complains about how Israel is going about it.

Fine, the world needs to step up and finish the job for Israel. Easy Peasy.
We won't be able to get them all but we can do great damage to their ability to carry out such a large-scale attack.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Well to be blunt I don't really try to remember too much history because it is water under the bridge gone by and can't affect the present .
So it seems.

In fact, we felt so "free" under Cromwell's Commonwealth that we invited the son of Charles I, whom the Parliamentarians had executed, to come back and rule over us again! So England was a republic for a mere 11 years, before the experiment was deemed a failure.

Though we did lay down some severe conditions for the king to return, which form the basis of the UK's constitutional monarchy today.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
Its true that a lot of people don't understand or trust Israel, but it is about funding and keeping US money from flowing out, and its about evangelicals in USA.
Consider that its evangelicals overwhelmingly supporting Trump (who is extremely loathed). It is evangelicals who have caused Roe v. Wade to be reversed. Its evangelicals that vote red lately. This is about American politics. It is about reaching the US evangelical.
Well, I sort of wonder if I am like lone citizen in America who generally seems to admire that country, with some exceptions, for actual secular reasons. The rest of the Left, (if I am on the left, who knows) obviously is not really on board with that. By this, I mean that is obvious, to me, that the Jews have an admirable reputation for being educated. Their population in Israel goes through the trouble of bothering to learn English, for example. They've probably written some of the better books that I have read. For how small a percentage of the world population they are, they seem to produce a lot of thinkers who spur on tangible progress in the world

The connection to the Evangelicals is what is elusive to me, and seems like that something that is sort of recent. I don't think that Christians historically really got along with Jews all that well. I can dig up some quotes by Justin Martyr if you like, who I had read, and point to the history of the Black Death. Large spans of history probably happened, without this sort more recent Evangelical concern. How did early Christians understand the destruction of the 2nd temple?

All that said, I do think this recent situation should be handled differently, and hopefully things do not escalate further
 
Last edited:

Brickjectivity

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
The connection to the Evangelicals is what is elusive to me, and seems like that something that is sort of recent. I don't think that Christians historically really got along with Jews all that well. I can dig up some quotes by Justin Martyr if you like, who I had read, and point to the history of the Black Death. Large spans of history probably happened, without this sort more recent Evangelical concern. How did early Christians understand the destruction of the 2nd temple?
The history of Christians and Jews is hotly contested by many incorrect factions and schools and ignorantes. We have heard many propositions here on RF. The great Isaac Asimov traitor to God and to religion knew better than to claim an understanding of it but only went as far as creating a fictional analogy in his Foundation series. Its an idea he has but a complete fiction, yet it is one of the best propositions available. The actual history is unavailable though for the most surprising reason.

It is unavailable, because the actual history does not matter. The birthday of Jesus is unknown. There is no statue or portrait of him, nor of Moses, nor of Abraham. In truth only principles matter, and it is the mind which matters not the history. History does matter though.

I am not saying History is unimportant. I am saying that the history of Christianity and Judaism are not hidden but are completely gone. We have only fragments of the early times.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
I have no doubt. Those people by majority have been living under apartheid and oppression the majority of their lives. That is what makes the situation so dangerous. Abusing people for so long will turn human beings into monsters.

What is sick, is israel is ruining the integrity of Judaism and Jews because of the apartheid, oppression and illegal occupation.
Like I said, I am skeptical about the use of the term oppression. I think different forces can oppress people, but I just don't know it can be simplified to 'group a oppresses group b,' unless you know, actual enslavement is occurring. It just is very, very simple - too simple of a way to think of it. The idea, on the other hand, that the individual / or group can incur the change they need, is theoretically possible because a) enslavement is absent and b), there is something about humans that is elusive and capable of ingenuity, in that they are not entirely the product of material conditions.

You know, an economy for example, doesn't just have to based on industrial plant. It can be based on anything, and that what anyone who is non-enslaved could theoretically work toward, and build up, out of almost nothing.

I wondered earlier about what would happened if the entire middle-east were its own consolidated federal holding of states. Here in america, for example, one state might not 'get along' with another, but at the end of the day, anyone from one state can go ahead and buy land in another. There is a libertarian concept at play there. Communities a, b, c, etc. can all go and stake out their own spots among states.

Will there be conflicts? There will be, if there is not good will among groups at a more basic level. America has had trouble between people, but there are still a lot of people here to try to get along with each other, those being the people who look toward the merit of character, in my opinion
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
It is unavailable, because the actual history does not matter. The birthday of Jesus is unknown. There is no statue or portrait of him, nor of Moses, nor of Abraham. In truth only principles matter, and it is the mind which matters not the history. History does matter though.
I think that modern technology, from the printing press to the search engine, has arguably marked out the production of a seriously more tangible from of history, yes, if that it was you're driving at. We don't have any video footage of Genghis Khan or his armies, so in a sense, there is layer, or many layers, of imagination that irrevocably have to work as your epistemological elevator toward understanding such things.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
I'm a landlord. I've had many tenants.
At times there have been disputes.
Oh, they can get nasty.
Alas, I can't exterminate them.
So I'm stuck trying to achieve peaceful coexistence.
How?
Understand their feelings, their complaints,
their wants, & their needs. From this I've
crafted optimum but imperfect solutions.

This approach is worth considering when
hostile parties will inevitably have to live
together, or at least in close proximity.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Another reason to see extermination of Hamas
as doomed to failure is its increasing military
capability, & its being based outside of Israeli
controlled areas.
Excerpted....
JERUSALEM — Early in Israel’s invasion of Gaza, an antitank missile fired by Palestinian militants struck an armored personnel carrier, killing — by incineration, concussion, shrapnel — at least nine Israeli soldiers. Other armored assets in the convoy were also hit.
That Oct. 31 attack, on Gaza’s sandy northern periphery, represented the single largest cluster of Israeli casualties in the ground war. It also showed the evolution and expansion of Hamas’s firepower.
Where years ago Israeli forces faced stones and molotov cocktails thrown by Palestinians, they now confront weapons such as laser-guided missiles and antitank munitions in Gaza. Hamas has been “arming itself to the teeth,” one military analyst said.
The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, is now inside Gaza City, fighting Hamas above and below ground — among civilians, around hospitals, schools and mosques — in areas the IDF says are honeycombed with tunnels.
Inside Gaza's tunnel network: Places for Hamas to attack, escape and regroup
This is still asymmetrical warfare. Israel fields one of the best-armed, most technologically sophisticated forces in the world. Hamas brigades today may have advanced weapons, but they are clearly outmatched.
But in the close-quarter fighting in Gaza, Hamas operatives have displayed some of their upgraded arsenal: a large number of shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launchers and antitank missiles, military experts say. Many of the weapons have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip via tunnels, land crossings and the sea during the past decade, from the spillover of wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan, and also manufactured by Iran and even North Korea.


This portends conflicts becoming larger in
scale, death, & destruction.
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
I'm a landlord. I've had many tenants.
At times there have been disputes.
Oh, they can get nasty.
Alas, I can't exterminate them.
So I'm stuck trying to achieve peaceful coexistence.
How?
Understand their feelings, their complaints,
their wants, & their needs. From this I've
crafted optimum but imperfect solutions.

This approach is worth considering when
hostile parties will inevitably have to live
together, or at least in close proximity.

I like the idea of having a landlord for the middle east ;) A secular one...
 
Top