[Zhukov]

Okay cut the double talk. Yassin was targeted because he took a hands on involvement in recruiting and planning suicide bombings. One can not mastermind a plan for the destruction of an entire race, act on these plans, and then be called a moderate for it.

Hands on?? The man was a quadriplegic… He may have recruited many with his words, but I don’t believe he was a planner. (nothing to do towards being quad btw.)

Rantisi didn't pop up out of the blue as a result of this assassination, he was always the number two guy. When people talk of hitting Yassin, it was always in the same breath as taking out Rantisi. These are people who refuse to coexist, and refuse to negotiate short of killing every Jew, regardless of Israel's existence. What's moderate about that?

I’m not calling him a moderate compared to any… sane… person. I, and others, are calling him the moderate compared to his inner circle buddies. You state yourself that he and Rantisi were inseparable, well, Yassin was the more moderate of the two. People have called that Nazi guy that flew to Britain a ‘Nazi Moderate’. Yassin was a ‘Hamas Moderate’, it sounds like an oxymoron… This is a really stupid point for either of us to be arguing.

Nonetheless, The framed pictures of Yassin that are waved by Palestinians are being replaced by those of Rantisi, this may not have an impact on Hamas right away, like you said Y and R were a duo. Yassin did have a lot of respect outside of Palestine, not just inside. Now that respect is going to go towards the more violent Rantisi. More Palestinian youths are going to idolise the ‘less moderate’ way. Lebanese and other ME groups are going to see an influx of members.

Zionism isn't an organization built around a single idealogy or the politics of any one figurehead. It's leanings were as lefty as they come.

The basic ideal that I thought Zionism stemmed from was that anti-Semitism could only be eliminated by the creation of a Jewish state. You are going to have to tell me otherwise, I really don’t know.

I know my own family attended Zionist meetings in Iraq run by the Communist party, and left a very comfortable lifestyle to go live in tents, and work on farms.

That’s what you get for getting involved with communists. I hope you don’t mind me asking for more information on this? What year/s particularly?

Are you arguing that Palestinians have some moral high ground where they shouldn't be punished for crimes?

No.

Israel has the death penalty does it? I always thought they didn’t.

It's not like Israel is going out and blowing up some random Palestinian home.

That’s highly debatable, collective punishment has been recorded I think. But I don’t want to get into it.

You're confusing self defense, or even "retribution" with blood killings.

Palestinian resistance is as much a form of self defence as the IDF. More so, I believe, as the IDF is used to create terrorists to maintain the stranglehold the Israeli state has on it’s people. Retribution also features highly. Palestinian “leaders” may spout death to all Jews and other rubbish, but what drives the Palestinian youth to want to kill is revenge.