Poll: Israel or Palestine?

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

What they say is different from what they'll accept. Language is deceptive in these sorts of deals, and you can't take the guys in the inferior bargaining position at their word.

Oh, I don't. I reckon that the "moderates" and the extremists both want to simply exterminate the Jews.

And in their ideal world with enough power they might do that if that is indeed what they want, but that defies reality. Kim Jong-Il wants nothing more than to conquer South Korea, but he or his son will never try, barring some miraculous intercession of the cosmos in North Korea's favor, he is instead trapped in the current cycle of begging for food aid and backing that begging with the carrot of nuclear arms talks and occasionally taking pot-shots at South Korea to show the alternative, because this is the best he can hope for until conditions change, and if even Kim Jong-Il can behave rationally, who can't?

You moderate your desires based on reality, and in the end take what reality will give you, and that's how politics and international relations work. Extremists only gain functional power in an environment where rational attainment of any sort of progress seems impossible. "Death to Israel" is boilerplate. A rallying cry that, while it has its share of true believers who do want nothing more or less than the destruction of Israel, is more taken up by people with a grievance against the current Middle Eastern power structure that they feel is intolerable and that they feel they are powerless to resolve.

Make the situation tolerable, or at least present to the people the notion that the situation is resolvable through means other than force, and you get peace and see the extremists marginalized.