Is the Vatican full of Nazis?

[Ravi]

Thanks for your response, MP...you raise some interesting points that I will think about.

In the end, though, I think Israel is going to have to deal with this to their own satisfaction.

 

[GHook93]

That's why Israeli never fully funded them. Just enough to eliminate the PLO and to be the divide among Palastine with Fatah

WRONG again. Hamas started out as a humanitarian organization, producing healthcare, education and other services to the Palestinians and gardnering a lot of support over the highly corrupt PLO/Fatah movement. Therefore Israel actually preferred them to the PLO would were lead by terrorist and back-stabbers. Funny how things change. Hamas quickly became a terrorist organization and Fatah became a moderate organization (whose stated goal is still to destroy Israel and still won't compromise on illogical demands like Israel taking on millions of enemies of the state)!

 

[GHook93]

@ Ravi:
What I would do in Israels stead? I am by no means an experts, but my more or less common sense based guesses:

In my opinion the blockade did/does more to unite the Gazans behind Hamas then to divide them into a pro Israel and a pro hamas block. My reasoning for this is that there were nearly no communism supporters left in west Berlin after/during the Berlin blockade either.

East West Berlin to Gaza and West Bank are too different to compare

A) Stike very preferential deals with Fatah. Showing that Palestinians under Fatah are much better of than those under Hamas is propably a very good idea.

Why deal with the ones with no power! Fatah is a paper dragon. In power only because Israel has not left the WB. If Israel left the WB like they did in Gaza, it would be only a matter of days before Hamas controlled WB.

Therefore, for better or worse, Israel should open up direct talks with Hamas! Yes it can lead to nothing, but it might lead to something. Besides anything is better than what we have at the moment!

B) I think that giving control of the humanitarian aid to the UNO was not that smart of Israel, if possible, they should try to do it themselfs. If Hamas shoots Israeli supplies intended for Gaza in Gaza (they cannot shoot in an accurate way anywhere else), they will likely have a hard time in explaining that to their population.

C) Get a better grip over the media. At the moment, Israel blocked access to the international media, which means that the only ones actually sending material from Gaza are arabian media services which are influenced by Hamas. I would guess that Hamas does quite a lot of censorhip f.e. there are suspiciously few pictures of Hamas fighters actually fighting, other pictures do not look very plausible too.
If the international media would be allowed in, Israel would gain some more postive media, especially if they manage to embedd selected journalists in a decent matter.

Impossible! War is hell and will always be reflected that way. Hamas chooses to take the fight to highly civilian areas so collateral damage is inevitable. There is no way to take the negative press when civilians die. However, civilians die in war!

Georgia did a fairly good job in creating favourable PR for example, for a long time they managed to sell a Georgian war of aggression as an act of evil Russian oppression, even though their interpretation was quite adverse to the facts.

With mass help from Western new outlet who are not the best friends of Mother Russia!

D) Have some fun with transmitting totally false information.
One example would be to release prisoners, and spread rumors about their level of cooperation with Israel. I think that succesfully "blaming" a hamas leader to be working for Israel (especially if he was not) would hurt Hamas more than killing one.
Groups like Hamas die of treason, not of martyrs.

Bad idea! N.E.N.!