Ahmadinejad urges Saudi king to speak up on Gaza
Yeah, come on guy. Stop being so moderate.
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I'madinnerjacket ought to go to Gaza and protest himself.
No, he is sending 10,000 volunteers to commit suicide to speak on his behalf.
Not that such is a war crime or anything, even though it violates international laws on terrorism, and forces of non-belligerent states, or anything like that, but it is.
Read my lips, no new jihads.
So very sad to see a great and ancient culture like the Persians/Iranians dragged into the hell of fascist religious fanaticism. It's as if Jerry Falwell was president-for-life of the United States.
I'madinnerjacket ought to go to Gaza and protest himself.No, he is sending 10,000 volunteers to commit suicide to speak on his behalf.
Not that such is a war crime or anything, even though it violates international laws on terrorism, and forces of non-belligerent states, or anything like that, but it is.
I'm amazed when I hear people talking about war crimes, all the while presumably turning a blind eye to the war crimes committed by their own nation.
Disregard this if you don't actually live in the United States or Britain.
Not until a meteor wipes out the entire Middle East region.
How unapologetically ignorant of you.
Not until a meteor wipes out the entire Middle East region.How unapologetically ignorant of you.If a meteor wipes out the US and Europe you might get peace in the Middle East also but I'd rather have it happen to people I don't care about.
How unapologetically inhuman of you.
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For over two weeks Hammas had been shooting rockets from Gaza into Israel and none of the Arabic nations said anything condemning Hammas for killing civilians but when Israel invades Gaza to stop the attacks Arabic nations step over themselves calling Israel's attack unjustified and asking the world to condemn their actions, not to stop them.
Until the leaders in the Middle East can control their own populations violence towards other nations there will never be any peace.
I am old enough to have witnesses every feasible attempt at a real peace for the last 30 years go up in smoke because some splinter group who has a mad-on and a rocket blow away the chance. So call me inhuman but I am just uncaring what a bunch of zealots who would rather kill each other than talk, do to each other half way around the world.
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I'm amazed when I hear people talking about war crimes, all the while presumably turning a blind eye to the war crimes committed by their own nation.
Oh yeah, Big Lie time!
Disregard this if you don't actually live in the United States or Britain.
You mean "Consider this only if you work for the UN."
The UN is doing a good job of confessing to complicity with war crimes this time around.|
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I live in the Republic of Texas, so I'll disregard it too.Disregard this if you don't actually live in the United States or Britain.
Amen, brother.
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live long day.
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
Do not think you can escape them,
At night, or early in the morn'.
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
Till Gabriel blows his horn!
For over two weeks Hammas had been shooting rockets from Gaza into Israel and none of the Arabic nations said anything condemning Hammas for killing civilians but when Israel invades Gaza to stop the attacks Arabic nations step over themselves calling Israel's attack unjustified and asking the world to condemn their actions, not to stop them.
And Israel uses cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction on the civilian populations within Palestine. These weapons are supplied by the United States. Israeli soldiers regularly shoot real bullets at Palestinian children and teenagers who are throwing rocks or using slingshots to hurl projectiles at them. To me, this is a bit of an overpowered response. Israel clearly has the military advantage in this situation. Israel also has the sympathy of the international population. What people do not seem to realize is that the creation of the state of Israel after WWII displaced the people of Palestine from their land. It would be like some government official coming into your house and telling you that you needed to move out and that I was moving in. This move would be justified by the fact that I had suffered horribly on the other side of the country and now needed a new home. I am not trying to lessen the horrors of the holocaust, but you have to recognize that Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their land and live in an apartheid state where they are treated as less than second-class citizens.
I am not going to say that the Palestinian resistance is without sin. Yet to me it is a matter of scale and it is a matter of power. In short, as I said above, Israel has superior military power which the United States and its military-industrial complex has provided. International sympathy lies with the Israelis. I figure that this is because people associate the Israeli state sympathetically with the war crimes of the Nazis, and then assume that because of this horrible past the Israelis can do no wrong; furthermore, the Palestinians--or any Arabs really--are demonized.
What's worse, while many people unthinkingly buy into this propaganda, they also refuse to think about--or maybe it just never occurs to them--how fascist the concept of corporate globalization, which plays no small part in driving wars like this, is. The United States is thought of as some kind of proud eagle of democracy and goodwill, and blind eyes are turned to the horrible reality that lies under American consumerism and complacency: that is, namely, that the country exports death on an unprecedented scale. Israel, after all, is a client state of the U.S.
Until the leaders in the Middle East can control their own populations violence towards other nations there will never be any peace.
I could just as easily say this:
Until the population of the United States learns to actually act like a democracy of human beings rather than allowing its elite powers-that-be export and peddle violence in other nations, there will never be peace.
In These Times: Gaza in the Crosshairs
The logical fallacy
More than 90 percent of Jewish Israelis support the assault on Gaza. They say to themselves that Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip three years ago, and that despite the withdrawal, Hamas has been shooting rockets at us. This explanation seems logical, yet it elides some crucial facts.
One fact is that Israel maintains sovereignty over the Gaza Strip, despite the withdrawal. Another fact is that the Palestinians have been living in a cage. Palestinians have not had access to basic foodstuff. Their electricity has been cut off, and many don’t have access to clean water.
When one forgets these facts, it is only rational to ask ‘Why are they still shooting at us?’ This is precisely what the media here has been pumping the public with. By contrast, if you look at what’s been going on in the Gaza Strip in the past three years and you see what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians, you would think that the Palestinian resistance is rational. And those are the facts missing in the Israeli and U.S. mainstream media.
From the same article:
Thus, despite the ever-increasing loss of Palestinian life, Israel remains the perpetual victim in the collective self image. Indeed, the last frame with the mother looking straight into the camera leaves the average compassionate viewer — myself included — a bit choked up. Over the past few years, however, I have become a critical consumer of Israeli news. I can see how, regardless of what happens, we are presented as the moral players in this conflict. Therefore, this kind of reportage — where the huge death toll in Gaza is ignored and Jewish suffering is underscored — no longer shocks me.
...
Israel has been bombing Gaza from the air and massacring people. As In These Times went to press, Israel had killed more than 750 Palestinians, including more than 200 children.
What people do not seem to realize is that the creation of the state of Israel after WWII displaced the people of Palestine from their land.
And the Israelites were displaced from the region by the Romans.
And native Americans were displaced by the French, English & Spaniards.
And people were displaced in Australia, and Japan, and Canada, and England, and all over Africa and Europe.
How far back in time do we go to decide who has the rights to what patch of land?
Israel exists. The Arab nations need to deal with it just as some of my ancestors had to deal with the fact that the United States exists where their land once was.
So very sad to see a great and ancient culture like the Persians/Iranians dragged into the hell of fascist religious fanaticism. It's as if Jerry Falwell was president-for-life of the United States.
He's not?
Israeli soldiers regularly shoot real bullets at Palestinian children and teenagers who are throwing rocks or using slingshots to hurl projectiles at them. To me, this is a bit of an overpowered response. Israel clearly has the military advantage in this situation.
How does that old saying go about bringing a knife to a gun fight?
Seriously, you do not meet violence with an equal or lesser amount of force. You overwhelm violence with enough force to insure the perpetrator ceases being violent.
I spent 14 years in law enforcement. Someone come at me with fists, I respond with PR-24 (or OC-10 or taser). Come at me with a stick or a knife, you get shot.
Same rules apply here. Should the Israeli soldiers throw rocks back? Should they wait until someone is hurt or killed by a thrown (or slingshot) rock? Or hang around getting pelted until one of these "children" or "teenagers" grabs a gun and starts shooting before shooting back? And then what? They shot 6 bullets, so we can only shoot 6 as well? They killed one of us, so we can only kill one of them?
Should Israel get the same kind of rockets Hamas uses and just lob them into Gaza on a 1 for 1 basis?
No nation (or sane person) operates this way. Nor should they.
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Israel exists. The Arab nations need to deal with it just as some of my ancestors had to deal with the fact that the United States exists where their land once was.
Erm did some of your ancestors not also take up arms and fight?
Personally I really don't see much point talking about this both groups are in the wrong and neither want to compromise. In fact I'm willing to bet that even if the Israeli army pulled out tomorrow In a few months/years time the exact same thing would be happening all over again
So very sad to see a great and ancient culture like the Persians/Iranians dragged into the hell of fascist religious fanaticism. It's as if Jerry Falwell was president-for-life of the United States.He's not?
Actually no, he's not. He's actually kinda...dead.
Israel exists. The Arab nations need to deal with it just as some of my ancestors had to deal with the fact that the United States exists where their land once was.
Erm did some of your ancestors not also take up arms and fight?
Actually, no.
They were herded peacefully onto a lovely reservation where they starved until someone discovered the magic power of casinos.
You must be thinking of one of the many other groups of brown people indigenous to North America. That's okay, we all look alike. ;)
... it violates international laws on terrorism, and forces of non-belligerent states, or anything like that, but it is.
[jest]Silly international laws. Hehehehe. Who hasn't broken one of those every now and then?[/jest]
Actually no, he's not. He's actually kinda...dead.So very sad to see a great and ancient culture like the Persians/Iranians dragged into the hell of fascist religious fanaticism. It's as if Jerry Falwell was president-for-life of the United States.He's not?
Oh, I have trouble telling these folks apart, who is at the moment involved in a drug bust, who was caught with a prostitute (and which gender), who is dead and who I just wouldn't miss if he was dead.
Allow me to rephrase the question: he was not?
Actually no, he's not. He's actually kinda...dead.So very sad to see a great and ancient culture like the Persians/Iranians dragged into the hell of fascist religious fanaticism. It's as if Jerry Falwell was president-for-life of the United States.He's not?Oh, I have trouble telling these folks apart, who is at the moment involved in a drug bust, who was caught with a prostitute (and which gender), who is dead and who I just wouldn't miss if he was dead.
Allow me to rephrase the question: he was not?
Meh. Say what you will of America, but we have never allowed religious elements to control the apparatus of the state, our Founding Fathers were smart enough to write that in the 1st Amendment. It has worked out pretty well so far. My main man Thomas Jefferson had this to say about it:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
That's some fine mojo that the ayatollahs, mullahs, imams, reverends, archbishops and popes and others should heed. America may not be perfect, but at least we missed travelling down the horrifying dead end political road of Theocracy.
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Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbaya
CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
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Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaCAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
Depends. Which Lord are you referring to? ;-)
It is difficult to know which propaganda to believe.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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ah, always nice to see the Hamas suppoorters out early with their propoganda.
Funny thing about international law and rules of war. They're pretty clear that if you hide in a hospital, a mosque, or a school and shoot someone it's your fault, not theirs, when the counterstrike levels your hidey hole.
yes, the numbers of 'civilians' and 'children' casulties, brought to you by the folks who produced the non-existant massacare at Jennin. Also brought to you by the folks who razed the tomb of Joseph and defiled the church of the Nativity. And lets not forget the photoshop fu, using ambulances to transport homicide bombers...
Curse the IDF for dropping leaflets and calling ahead before they blow Hamas up. next time maybe they should just randomly fire rockets without warning and send in people to blow up pizza places.
if Hamas wanted peace it would be simple. stop firing rockets into Israel
Depends. Which Lord are you referring to? ;-)Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya
O Lord, kumbayaCAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
Is there more than one? ;)
Is there more than one?
Nope. Only his noodly goodness.
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ah, always nice to see the Hamas suppoorters out early with their propoganda.
Funny thing about international law and rules of war. They're pretty clear that if you hide in a hospital, a mosque, or a school and shoot someone it's your fault, not theirs, when the counterstrike levels your hidey hole.
yes, the numbers of 'civilians' and 'children' casulties, brought to you by the folks who produced the non-existant massacare at Jennin. Also brought to you by the folks who razed the tomb of Joseph and defiled the church of the Nativity. And lets not forget the photoshop fu, using ambulances to transport homicide bombers...
Curse the IDF for dropping leaflets and calling ahead before they blow Hamas up. next time maybe they should just randomly fire rockets without warning and send in people to blow up pizza places.
if Hamas wanted peace it would be simple. stop firing rockets into Israel
Yes. And Israel is the lovely country that's still occupying land in defiance of international law and withdrew from Gaza but blocked all access into it, controls the airspace and the entire border. Yeah, I can see how the Palestinians can create a viable economy under those conditions. Not that the Israeli propaganda will acknowledge this. We'll ignore the fact that Israel is hardly innocent in the propaganda stakes or shall we ignore the fact that the there were no Hamas gunmen in the UN school that got hit?
Both sides are lying bastards, and both have committed war crimes and used human shields. One is a thief, one is a thug. Neither are the good guys.
EDIT: Hamas stopped firing rockets for 6 months under an agreed ceasefire. Israel refused to talk to them, even though they are the elected government (funny how many people forget that fact, too). Why continue with a strategy you dislike if it's not working?
EDIT AGAIN: Where are the people who are warned supposed to go? Catch the next flight out? Run through the gunfire and the shells? Seek safety in UN buildings that are safehouses like the school? How is warning them supposed to help? Would it be all ok if Hamas phoned the people of Sterot before they launched their missiles at them?
Is there more than one?Nope. Only his noodly goodness.
Good boy! *pats Courtfool*
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And Israel uses cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction on the civilian populations within Palestine.
*BUZZZZZZZ*
A lie.
Cluster bombs are not indiscriminate weapons, they are not weapons of mass destruction, and they have not been used on the civilian populations.
Actually, that makes it three for one.
These weapons are supplied by the United States. Israeli soldiers regularly shoot real bullets at Palestinian children and teenagers who are throwing rocks or using slingshots to hurl projectiles at them. To me, this is a bit of an overpowered response.
Whether or not it is to you does not make it so under any applicable law. Unless you have become world dictator when nobody was looking, your random thoughts do not constitute law.
Israel clearly has the military advantage in this situation.
Irrelevant under international law.
Having a better military does not constitute a war crime, or make it illegal to employ a military response to terror attacks launched by a civil authorigy.Israel also has the sympathy of the international population.
And people say those who play D&D live in the fantasy world of the game.
What people do not seem to realize is that the creation of the state of Israel after WWII displaced the people of Palestine from their land.
In fact, it did not.
No one was required to leave their home by the UN resolution that partitioned the Palestine Mandate.No one was required to leave their home by the declaration of the Israeli state.
Those people were displaced by the war declared by the Arab states against Israel.
It would be like some government official coming into your house and telling you that you needed to move out and that I was moving in.
No, it is more like a black family moving into the white neighborhood, the white neighbors lynching someone in the family, the family fighting back by shooting at the lynch mob, the relatives and then the neighbors of the lynch mob running away because they think everyone will act like them and murder women and children because they do not like the new neighbors.
This move would be justified by the fact that I had suffered horribly on the other side of the country and now needed a new home. I am not trying to lessen the horrors of the holocaust, but you have to recognize that Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their land and live in an apartheid state where they are treated as less than second-class citizens.
Except the vast majority of Palestinians left voluntarily.
Further, since they constitute a minority within Israel, they do not in fact live in an apartheid state.More, they are not treated as second class citizens within Israel, having full rights to vote, hold office, practice their religion, and the like.
Now if you mean how Palestinians are forced to live in other Arab countries you would be correct, those are essentially apartheid states where Palestinians have no rights.
Or if you mean how Palestinians who are not members of Hamas are forced to live in Gaza, serving as human shields, or tortured and murdered by Hamas for supporting Fatah, you would be close, though not technically correct in your terms.
I am not going to say that the Palestinian resistance is without sin. Yet to me it is a matter of scale and it is a matter of power.
So war crimes are okay if you only murder a few people and do not have better weapons systems.
What a wonderful standard for international law.In short, as I said above, Israel has superior military power which the United States and its military-industrial complex has provided. International sympathy lies with the Israelis. I figure that this is because people associate the Israeli state sympathetically with the war crimes of the Nazis, and then assume that because of this horrible past the Israelis can do no wrong; furthermore, the Palestinians--or any Arabs really--are demonized.
Again you have this delusion that international sympathy is with Israel. Have you actually read any of the nonsense coming from the UN, EU, AU, and OAS?
What's worse, while many people unthinkingly buy into this propaganda, they also refuse to think about--or maybe it just never occurs to them--how fascist the concept of corporate globalization, which plays no small part in driving wars like this, is. The United States is thought of as some kind of proud eagle of democracy and goodwill, and blind eyes are turned to the horrible reality that lies under American consumerism and complacency: that is, namely, that the country exports death on an unprecedented scale. Israel, after all, is a client state of the U.S.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Seriously dude, go out, buy a newspaper, get something vaguely resembling a clue.
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Personally I really don't see much point talking about this both groups are in the wrong and neither want to compromise. In fact I'm willing to bet that even if the Israeli army pulled out tomorrow In a few months/years time the exact same thing would be happening all over again
Which rather means that both groups are not in the wrong.
Responding with force against a terrorist government that has fired over 10,000 rockets and missiles at civilian targets in your country since 2000 does not qualify as "wrong" under any reading of international law.
"Proportionality" in regards to military action does not mean you can only use as many troops, the same weapons, or cause as many casualties as your opponent.
"Collective punishment" does not mean going to war.
"Disproportionate force" does not prevent military action when civilians may, or even absolutely will, be injured.
These are all deliberate lies, propogated by the Palestinians, and parroted by the UN which is making itself complicit in the war crimes of the Palestinians.
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Of course it would be silly to think that one side is totally good and one side is totally bad. The Hamas group just happens to be more openly violent than some previous groups, and has stated several times that peace won't be possible as long as Israel exists. Israel is fairly well-practiced at preserving its existence, and has its share of both fair-minded or vengeful residents. I admire Israel's tenacity and sometimes its ruthlessness in preserving its interests.
IMHO, the best hope for a short-term relative peace is for Israel to continue a hard offensive until a rather favorable set of consessions are brought to the peace talks, and then an orderly withdrawl is made.
There are many factors that lead to the violence in that area, though the one most often side-stepped by the media is the uncomfortable topic of religion.
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Yes. And Israel is the lovely country that's still occupying land in defiance of international law and withdrew from Gaza but blocked all access into it, controls the airspace and the entire border. Yeah, I can see how the Palestinians can create a viable economy under those conditions. Not that the Israeli propaganda will acknowledge this. We'll ignore the fact that Israel is hardly innocent in the propaganda stakes or shall we ignore the fact that the there were no Hamas gunmen in the UN school that got hit?
None of that is a violation of international law.
First, occupying land is not, by default, a violation of international law.
Second, the specific occupation is not a violation as long as the Arab governments and the Palestinians refuse to agree to a peace treaty, which except for two they have refused for 60 years.
Third, control of the airspace over Gaza was negotiated as part of Oslo by the Palestinian Authority, making it completely legal.
Fourth, Gaza has a border crossing with Egypt that is not controlled by Israel, to the detriment of Israeli security.
That Hamas has failed to create a viable economy under these conditions, particularly including their continued state of war with Israel, can only be seen as their responsibility.
Not that your Hamas propaganda will acknowledge all of that . . .
As for the Hamas gunmen in the UN school, the UN is lying about its complicity in Hamas war crimes.
"He noted that all the footage released by the IDF of militants firing from inside the school was from 2007 and not from the incident itself.
"There are no up-to-date photos," Gunness said. "In 2007, we abandoned the site and only then did the militants take it over.""
If the site was abandoned, it was not a UN school.
If "militants" took it over, the UN did in fact know there were terrorists there.
If the "militants" were there, the UN should not have housed refugees there.
Indeed, how exactly did UNRWA manage to take it back from the "militants"?
This is UN perfidy, endangering civilians, support of terrorist attacks on Israel. It is also their typical pattern of lies, which are not actually war crimes.
Both sides are lying bastards, and both have committed war crimes and used human shields. One is a thief, one is a thug. Neither are the good guys.
Yes, both Hamas and the UN are lying bastards who have committed war crimes, used human shields, stolen, and acted as thugs. Neither are good guys.
EDIT: Hamas stopped firing rockets for 6 months under an agreed ceasefire. Israel refused to talk to them, even though they are the elected government (funny how many people forget that fact, too). Why continue with a strategy you dislike if it's not working?
Hamas did not actually stop firing rockets for 6 months.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, and even if elected, no other government is required to talk with them.However, some of us do not in fact forget that Hamas is an elected government. That means that all those "innocent" people in Gaza are not. They sanctioned a terrorist organization to engage in attacks on a neighboring government. Now that they war they voted for is coming home to them they want to blame someone else.
Funny how you forget that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and they have categorically rejected changing that in any way. Even their offers of truce are always predicated on Islamic law that the truces be of limited duration until such time as they are capable of resuming their attacks from a position of strength. There is no such thing as peace negotiations when the position of one side is "no peace, just no active fighting until we are ready to destroy you".
That is why Hamas continues with its strategy. No matter how much they dislike not killing Jews for a short time, the long term plan is working.
EDIT AGAIN: Where are the people who are warned supposed to go? Catch the next flight out? Run through the gunfire and the shells? Seek safety in UN buildings that are safehouses like the school? How is warning them supposed to help? Would it be all ok if Hamas phoned the people of Sterot before they launched their missiles at them?
Into the bomb shelters that Hamas refuses to build for them.
Into UN buildings that provide actual shelter that the UN refuses to build for them.Or maybe, just maybe, into the voting booths to elect a government that will simply not fire rockets at Sderot so the Israelis will not attack Gaza.
Or is that too rational?