[brashrat]

| "The less violent side"?

As I said, click around wikipedia for number of rocket attacks, number of terror attacks, etc. initiated by the Palestinians, mostly against civilians. Regardless of how many more Palestinians are getting killed as a result, it's Arabs and Palestinians who rejected every previous set of borders (including "pre-67"), and Arabs and Palestinians (OK, it's not just Arabs and Palestinians, many other Muslim nation states join in with anti-Semitic diatribes) who continue to say right out loud that their intent is to push Israel into the sea, and who continue an armed struggle against Israel's citizens and Israel's right to exist.

Israel today is an advanced, modern, technological country, so yes, they "win" the conflicts with the Palestinians (and Lebanese Shiites) if you measure "winning" in terms of bodycount (which you brought up). But if you measure unprovoked attacks, it is the Arabs by a landslide, and in case where Jewish extremists attack Arabs, Israel follows a policy of prosecuting their own citizens. BTW, Lebanese Christians are Arabs, so are the Druze, and so are the Bedouins, and they largely prefer the Israelis to the vicious treatment they receive from their Muslim neighbors, cooperating in many ways with the Israeli armed forces.

Is Israel perfect? Not by a long shot, but neither is any other people or nation.

[e12e]

Well, I think we've both pointed to where our views come from, and it's probably not much point in discussing this further here on hn. I thank you for your interesting and measured input. These things do too often devolve into shouting matches.

I will respectfully indicate that it seems a little disingenuous to claim that attacks on Israel are "unprovoked". They follow a similar pattern to Israeli terror attacks on the British occupation government, and I would hope that there'd be room to find common ground among two prosecuted people, rather than simply replace one oppressor with another in the region.

[brashrat]

Thanks for the compliments.

What I mean by "unprovoked" is, if the Palestinians would stop attempting violence, the Israelis would stop attempting violence.

If the Israelis were to stop their violence... the Palestinians would just keep going; that's actually what's been happening.

[e12e]

For what it's worth, the hope I see for Israel and Palestine today stems from the non-violent protests against the occupation that includes many Israelis and Jews. This includes conscientious objectors and groups championing dialogue between people living in Israel and the West Bank.

Lack of dialogue is one of the cornerstones on which we build hatred, racism and violence. It is much harder to justify demolishing someone's family home in order to have a good killing field from your border wall, if you are friends with that family.

[ed eg: http://m.btselem.org/

and http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/ ]

[e12e]

I see what you mean, but on the other hand, the Palestinians are occupied by Israel, barred from trading by Israel and Egypt, beholden to Israel for water and power - so one could say that if Israel lifted the sanctions Palestinians might not need to "keep going". Again I think the parallell to the Warsaw getthoes apply - the Jews and others interned could just have accepted their plight. But it would've been the wrong path.

I'm by no means saying Palestinians have a carte blanche - I'm just saying that calling the attacks "unprovoked" is a bit of a stretch?