[philwelch]

He wanted to "destroy" Northern Ireland by unifying the counties inside of it with the Republic of Ireland, instead of keeping them unified with Great Britain. This is not even an unreasonable stance for a North Irish elected official, is it? It takes a lot of equivocation to equate that with what Hamas wants to do.

We can agree that Israel has made a lot of mistakes. That doesn't legitimate groups like Hamas and that doesn't provide any basis for dialogue with Hamas, either. Meanwhile, the anger and hatred towards Israel would be there with or without the mistakes. It was there before the mistakes and it will be there long afterwards.