Excellent!

Submitted by Ron Factor (Canada), Jul 16, 2014 at 13:03

Excellent interview and absolutely worth the 22 minutes. Bravo!

Some of my own idle thoughts that I haven't seen well addressed:

1. Disproportional death rate. The implication is that if more Israelis are killed this point will go away. What that means is that the issue is not one of disproportionality – it is that the debater wants to see more dead Jews. Kind of like that Henry Fonda movie 'Failsafe' in 1964. The Americans accidently sent a non-retrievable jet carrying a nuclear bomb to Moscow and in order to avoid an all-out war with the Soviets, the US agreed to drop one on New York city.

2. Occupation – you made a great point about Israel withdrawing completely from Gaza in 2005. I don't believe that this resonates with your debater since I believe that she and you disagree on the term. It's worth a challenge – I think she defines 'occupation' as Israelis in Israel, and as long as they continue to 'occupy' Arab territory the struggle will continue.

3. 20 km fishing limit – This totally ignores one fact and sequencing. The fact is that Hamas has made more than one attempt to use their water access to bring weaponry into Gaza. The sequence is that once they did that Israel needed to impose controls to protect their citizens.

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