The dynamics of this debate are sickening. No one is willing to criticize anyone on their "side" no matter what the cost.

Putin dehuminizes Israelis in a post= 2 likes
Putin damns Israel's for civilian casualties yet cheers on fucking barrel bombing campaigns= Not a peep

You all are pathetic.

Thats all

Anybody who attacks the Syrian government right now doesn't give a damn about religious minorities, period. But we already knew that anyway. Just a bunch of neo-con vampires.

There wouldn't have been an ISIS if Assad hadn't decided to meet peaceful protest with Russian made missiles.

You're pathetic. Get lost.

Bullshit. You're full of shit. The Islamists have existed for decades. Stop reading state department press releases and actually look at the damn context of the struggle. The Islamists were always the core of the opposition. There were no 'peaceful protests'.

You're a liar.

Assad offered compromise over and over again. All you do is spout neo-con propaganda. You're the same bunch of liars who have got us into every fucking conflict in the middle east.

I guess I'll take your wildly general and unsubstantiated word for it.

I've always gone over this. You've never bothered to listen anyway. All you do is come here to abuse people. That's your sole purpose in life.

I love how in a few posts Putin's arguments have turned into Obis arguments.

See how that worked!

No actually it didn't.

Keep trying, pander-bear.

You just called everybody pathetic then you busk for +1s. What a fucking toad you are.

The Syrian rebels actually kill people and control huge swaths of Syria. Hamas is a threat to nobody and Gaza is illegally occupied territory.

Get that straight, liar.

Yeah, and I'm sure dropping those barrel bombs on children is taking the fight to ISIS, considering Assad ignored ISIS for a fucking year.

http://www.newsweek.com/how-syrias-assad-helped-forge-isis-255631

Whoops!

Bullshit. A bunch of spies working for the Islamist cutthroaters make shit up and you eat it up. None of that information is source by anybody but th jihadists themselves. Jihadists use IEDs and the barrel bombs fit the description of IEDs used by the jihadists.

"http://www.newsweek.com/how-syrias-assad-helped-forge-isis-255631

Whoops!"

A fucking ridiculous ahistorical conspiracy theory from a bunch of anti-Assad terrorists printed as fact, of course, from newsweek. Too bad even your beloved western media admits that the rebels you guys are funding are Islamist throatcutters. The Al Nusra front they are now claiming are Assad puppets they were defending as legitimate opposition. But now that ISIS barbarity is on full display for all to see in Iraq, they want to claim Assad is behind it all.

Ha, except that they are dropped out of fucking helicopters you clown

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/iiss-syrias-opposition-is-armed.html

Whoops

According to jihadist sources, you dope.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/12/2012121117048117723.html

Whoops, there are those "peaceful rebels" denouncing the US government for calling Al Nusra a terrorist organization. So much for them being an Assad front group.

are those straws keeping you afloat Putin?

So kiss the ass of al Nusra front and leave me alone.

Whoah there. I think you two have scared everyone else away from the thread. Let's calm down and stop the attacks, and argue politely.

Putin, yes Assad did give peace offers ad attempt to reconcile with the rebels. But, just like Israel, he gave terms he knew the opposition would never agree to. You're smart enough to be aware of that

And of course the rebels have been mainly Islamists. That's what decades of minority favoritism under the guise of a "secular state" will get you. There is also the problem of poverty and tensions with the millions of refugees from Iraq that helped to drive many towards religious radicalism. That being said, Islamists do not necessarily want to expunge all other religions. Extremists often operate within Islamist organizations, but it is an important distinction to make.

Yes, terrorists have hijacked the rebel movement and the likes of Al-Nusra and others at doing horrible things. But one evil does not expunge another. The fact that your fighting terrorists does not give you the right to use chemical weapons

America did seek to embolden Assad's enemies, and that did enable ISIS, and that did make things worse. But all the throat-slitting was not a *goal* of America's foreign policy. It's an enemy-of-my-enemy strategy that has backfired. You don't have to love the enemy-of-your-enemy to make use of them. (Unless you're Putin33, who seems to earnestly embrace the Putins, Mugabes, and Kims of the world, in their opposition to the West. If he loved just one of them, it might make some sense, but to him they're all good people with good intentions. It's weird.)

All of this makes it strange to agree with Putin33 about anything, but I do agree with him about what's happening to Gaza. It is an injustice. The death toll and casualty count completely overwhelms whatever provocations against Israel were coming out of Gaza. And when you consider that death and destruction has lead to diminished support for Hamas in the past, combined with the choice of inaccurate artillery over airstrikes and the sheer casualty count itself, it makes it hard to refute the idea that civilian casualties are part of the plan.

tendmote - do you know that Israel sends text messages to the residents of the households they're about to strike? They take more than a reasonable effort to reduce casualties.

@goldfinger0303 Yes, I know about the warnings. I'm referring to the times when there weren't warnings. If trying to hit a bullseye next to a busy market with artillery is considered acceptable, then there will be civilian casualties. This can be done at the same time as warnings are sent to other targets.

I don't really like typing all that, to be honest, but I can't think of another explanation for what's going on.

People still reading Obis drivel ..... well done you !!
You have been trolled but I suppose if it keeps his hand from inside his pants it can't be such a bad thing :-)

"do you know that Israel sends text messages to the residents of the households they're about to strike? They take more than a reasonable effort to reduce casualties"

Goldie it is nice when you can still laugh in the face of such adversity and your post made me laugh.
What a sick puppy you must be when you think that texting someone to tell them they are going to blow up their house and family and all of their belongings is acceptable. What a fucking nut job you are, are you taking drugs?
What if that person is sleeping?
What about they have their phone on silent?
What if they are not carrying their mobile with them because they actually put it down in the house?
What if they are in the shower?
What if they have no coverage because all of the communication networks have been destroyed?
What if they are at a funeral of another murdered child and someone is looking after their children at home?
What if they have no credit?
What if they don't deserve to have both their families and their homes blown to smithereens?
What the fuck are you on trying to say that texting a person to tell them their house is going to be blown up is REASONABLE, no mate it's only reasonable in the mind of psychotic genocidal maniacs.
You are a very very long way from reality my friend.

http://news.yahoo.com/hamas-plays-dangerous-poker-game-cairo-200343289.html

""Any boat would be able to enter without being checked and Israel will never accept that," warned Thrall, pointing out that a port would simply give Hamas a new means to smuggle in rockets.

Naji Charab, a political affairs expert at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, says Hamas is looking for some kind of compromise that would give it "an honourable exit."

The Islamist movement may have inflicted greater losses on Israel in the battlefield than it expected to, but it has been forced into a corner and lost an ally in Egypt.

The overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood movement is close to Hamas, has seen Cairo lash out hard against Hamas, destroying its tunnels on the Egyptian side of the border and freezing out the movement.

Kobi Michael, a political scientist at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank, said Israel's most important alliance in the Middle East had become Cairo.
View gallery
Palestinians walk past the collapsed minaret of a mosque …
Palestinians walk past the collapsed minaret of a mosque in Gaza city on August 8, 2014 (AFP Photo/M …

"Egypt has no problem seeing Gazans buckle under the burden," he told AFP.

"In that aspect, Israel might have even disappointed Egypt a bit for not doing to Hamas what Egypt would have done to them if it were up to them," he added."

1. I Say again, this is a COALITION EFFORT against Hamas, Israel AND Egypt (and the US arming the former), just for all those who still like to pretend this is Israel going it alone...

2. ...and BECAUSE this is a coalition effort, and the Egyptians would have even harsher military action against Hamas if they had their way, I ask again, dear Hamas supporters--

What, exactly, is your endgame here?

Israel has nearly all the leverage...that fact won't change...

AND the people brokering any deal are, as the article describes, Israel's most important ally in the region, and arguably its second-most important after only the US itself.

Letting Hamas restart this war (as the just did, AGAIN)...tell me what you think the Hamas endgame is to this--please.

@Putin, Chairman, Jamiet (I hate to lump you in with that company, sorry)--

Tell me what the endgame for Hamas is here? What are they going to achieve, when one demand they won't budge on is lifting a blockade...

That both the opposing party AND the mediating party both INSIST upon.

Israel and are not lifting that blockade. Period.
And Hamas cannot win this war militarily. Period.
And Hamas cannot break that Israel/Hamas alliance. Period.
Not with the Muslim Brotherhood now outlawed in Egypt.

So...tell me--what's your endgame? Do you have one that you wish to see Hamas achieve (and if so, what is it? How is that going to happen under these circumstance) and if you don't...well, then why do you enjoy encouraging this cycle of violence to continue WITHOUT an endgame?

What's the endgame?

*Israel and Egypt are not lifting that blockade.

Period.