Just as a sidenote, why is this all over news everywhere with everyone having an opinion on it? It really feels like everyone all over the world is trying to stick their oar in. I am finding it a bit weird that it seems every day we have new thinkpieces and things about it. I don't remember that happening for Ukraine when that all kicked off.

Just as a sidenote, why is this all over news everywhere with everyone having an opinion on it? It really feels like everyone all over the world is trying to stick their oar in. I am finding it a bit weird that it seems every day we have new thinkpieces and things about it. I don't remember that happening for Ukraine when that all kicked off.

 

Ukraine and Russia was a little more black and white in the West (e.g. an illegal war in Ukraine), but the Israel vs Hamas conflict is a lot more complicated and goes back hundreds of years, linked with the perseccution of Jews across multiple points of history and the conflict stokes up people's personal view points on who is right vs who is wrong. Iz did a great post a few pages back.

Also this conflict has more of a religious element then Russia vs Ukraine and so a lot of sympathy is based on religious grounds - some would say racial too.

That's a good point I hadn't considered. How complex... why can't people just live and let live?

The border with Egypt is a limited border, not equipped to deal with people who mostly live in the north of the strip anyway.

 

Israel's response should not be proportional, it should be restrained. He is saying that people are asking Israel to consider a proportional response and then laying out the evil of what that means, and then that it is of course absurd to ask Israel to execute such. But you and he seem to then be advocating for complete destruction which costs yet more lives of Palestinians and is more evil.

 

@1711328353288892702

 

These painful statistics are the human cost of the conflict. Apply those comparisons your Instagram makes between Israel and the US and then apply them again to Palestine. It's just so dreadfully disappointing that Western leaders are okay with allowing this to continue and will ignore thousands of Palestinians dying to support Israel.

 

Whilst I absolutely agree that the death toll for the Palestinians is horrendously high when compared with Isreal, I do feel like these numbers are often branded about without the context they exist within. They are used without understanding why this is so.

 

1. Isreal only ever includes number of civilians killed in conflict. Gaza famously reports their own numbers including Hamas terrorists who have been killed in strikes against their terrorist infrastructure. Many of these numbers will include thousands of direct deaths of Hamas extremists.

 

2. Hamas is known for keeping it's own people as human shields. As well as building underground tunnels, they hide their weapons in schools, hospitals and civilian homes deliberately so that the death toll is as high as possible on their side. They have even been known to keep Gazan family's hostages in their own home so they cannot escape bombfire from Israelis.

 

3. The death toll has been historically low in Israel due to the Iron Dome defence system. Over 3,000 rockets were aimed DIRECTLY at Isreali civilian homes last weekend alone. Could you imagine if the Iron Dome was not there to intercept them? There would be tens of thousands of Israeli citizens dead in one single day. I do not condone all the Isreali strikes against Gaza in any way, but they have never in their history tried to aim as many rockets at that aimlessly at Gaza, without at least trying to aim for terrorist bases. The Iron Dome is the ONLY reason there has been so few Isreali deaths before last Saturday. It does not indicate restraint from the other side in the slightest. Anything but.

Whilst I absolutely agree that the death toll for the Palestinians is horrendously high when compared with Isreal, I do feel like these numbers are often branded about without the context they exist within. They are used without understanding why this is so.

 

1. Isreal only ever includes number of civilians killed in conflict. Gaza famously reports their own numbers including Hamas terrorists who have been killed in strikes against their terrorist infrastructure. Many of these numbers will include thousands of direct deaths of Hamas extremists.

 

2. Hamas is known for keeping it's own people as human shields. As well as building underground tunnels, they hide their weapons in schools, hospitals and civilian homes deliberately so that the death toll is as high as possible on their side. They have even been known to keep Gazan family's hostages in their own home so they cannot escape bombfire from Israelis.

 

3. The death toll has been historically low in Israel due to the Iron Dome defence system. Over 3,000 rockets were aimed DIRECTLY at Isreali civilian homes last weekend alone. Could you imagine if the Iron Dome was not there to intercept them? There would be tens of thousands of Israeli citizens dead in one single day. I do not condone all the Isreali strikes against Gaza in any way, but they have never in their history tried to aim as many rockets at that aimlessly at Gaza, without at least trying to aim for terrorist bases. The Iron Dome is the ONLY reason there has been so few Isreali deaths before last Saturday. It does not indicate restraint from the other side in the slightest. Anything but.

 

Even allowing that Gaza death counts include extremists, they are still going to be a minority of those deaths. There just are not that many extremists in Gaza. As per

 

That doesn't stack up with the casualty reports that I am seeing - the Palestinian authorities are giving death tolls in civilians, including women and children, much the same as the Israeli death tolls, although the Israeli death tolls also include soldiers. I don't think most of them are secret jihadists.

 

approximately half of the death count (2800 at the moment) inside of Gaza is women and children, and then a good number of the adult male casualties will have not been extremists either. I would put an upper bound of 25% of Palestinian casualties being Hamas terrorists and even that is extremely unlikely given the indiscriminate nature of missile attacks and that this figure doesn't include Israel's current claim of about 1,000 militants killed inside of Israel itself.

 

I am not sorry about Hamas members dying and I certainly don't think that Hamas fighters have been restrained, but the reason why this figure is so high compared to Israeli deaths is clear, right? Palestine doesn't have an Iron Dome, their infrastructure and protection is that of a poor country with crumbling buildings, because they've been left to rot by Israel blockading their lands, and Hamas has been able to take control in these conditions. The power disparities are huge here - Israel can wipe Gaza off the map if it chooses to, and unfortunately it's looking like they will, after uprooting about a million people from what homes they have and making them effective refugees too. Israel has the power to not cause all this harm, and yet it will.

Even allowing that Gaza death counts include extremists, they are still going to be a minority of those deaths. There just are not that many extremists in Gaza. As per

 

 

 

approximately half of the death count (2800 at the moment) inside of Gaza is women and children, and then a good number of the adult male casualties will have not been extremists either. I would put an upper bound of 25% of Palestinian casualties being Hamas terrorists and even that is extremely unlikely given the indiscriminate nature of missile attacks and that this figure doesn't include Israel's current claim of about 1,000 militants killed inside of Israel itself.

 

I am not sorry about Hamas members dying and I certainly don't think that Hamas fighters have been restrained, but the reason why this figure is so high compared to Israeli deaths is clear, right? Palestine doesn't have an Iron Dome, their infrastructure and protection is that of a poor country with crumbling buildings, because they've been left to rot by Israel blockading their lands, and Hamas has been able to take control in these conditions. The power disparities are huge here - Israel can wipe Gaza off the map if it chooses to, and unfortunately it's looking like they will, after uprooting about a million people from what homes they have and making them effective refugees too. Israel has the power to not cause all this harm, and yet it will.

 

I think the wider point that often gets missed (and Davison stated) is that Hamas deliberately uses human civillians as human shields, often in the most vulnerable places. Now there's the argument that civillians should not be dismissed like this, but this point often gets missed by the other side of the argument. Hamas knows what it is doing and treats the majority of it's people as human shields. You now have examples of Hamas political leaders claiming that the rapes and murders weren't all done by Hamas.. they were done by Palestinian civillians. Now, two wrongs don't make a right here but it shows what type of terrorists we're dealing with here.

 

For what it's worth, I don't think Israel will wipe Gaza off the map, but I suspect the north will be. I suspected Israel would have gone in on the ground by now - whether they have intelligence to wait, or whether the international community is telling Israel to hold back, who knows.

IMO, Alyssa Farah, who is an Arab-American and The View co-host, has summed up the situation very well:

 

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But for me I ask WHY do a extremist organisation like Hamas appear in a place like Gaza?

@1713964085761519820

 

I would feel really reassured if had I been at a peaceful protest and heard I'd gotten associated with being a Hamas supporter by the BBC. :/

I think the wider point that often gets missed (and Davison stated) is that Hamas deliberately uses human civillians as human shields, often in the most vulnerable places. Now there's the argument that civillians should not be dismissed like this, but this point often gets missed by the other side of the argument. Hamas knows what it is doing and treats the majority of it's people as human shields. You now have examples of Hamas political leaders claiming that the rapes and murders weren't all done by Hamas.. they were done by Palestinian civillians. Now, two wrongs don't make a right here but it shows what type of terrorists we're dealing with here.

 

For what it's worth, I don't think Israel will wipe Gaza off the map, but I suspect the north will be. I suspected Israel would have gone in on the ground by now - whether they have intelligence to wait, or whether the international community is telling Israel to hold back, who knows.

 

Yes, they will do this, use civilians as human shields. But it does not seem like Israel has a problem with treating civilians as collateral damage, nor do they seem to take any precautions in targeting their air strikes and bombs into Gaza with the intent of just eliminating extremists.

 

And as Steve implied, this is a situation where Hamas have been allowed to thrive by these conditions being allowed to exist in Gaza.

But for me I ask WHY do a extremist organisation like Hamas appear in a place like Gaza?

 

This is the kind of framing which is looking for a justification of terrorism. Hamas, who clearly state that on their charter their main aim is religious warfare and a day of "final judgement" where they "kill all Jews", if you think this kind of rhetoric is just based on bad and divisive Isreali policies then we definitely have a massive blind spot here. It based in deep routed antisemitism. This is not just calling for Isreal to give up more fair settlements, it is not calling even just for the end of Israel, it is killing for the massacre of every Jew in the world (all 7 million in Israel and 7.5 million outside Israel).

 

The fact is that sadly the extremists connected to the Muslim Brotherhood have had a massive problem with antisemitism for a VERY long time, very much outdating the 1948 state of Israel. It is well known that the leader of the Palestianian movement Amin Al-Husayni actually advised the Nazi's back in 1933 before Israel was created.

 

This obviously does not mean that all of the Arab civilian population around Israel is antisemitic, I am not suggesting that. But with the current Iranian regime chanting 'death to Israel' in their actual parliament. To suggest Hamas is alone as a terrorist organisation fighting for "resistance" is to both ignore the conjoined efforts of multiple extreme Jihadi regimes in the Middle East to rid Isreal from the map, whilst also ignoring that sadly antisemitism massively outdates any of the debates about land settlements in the area.

Edited October 17, 20231 yr by Davidson

I am not framing it to justify any terrorism by Hamas. I oppose Hamas and their ideology wholeheartedly but I also understand why more extremist elements in states like Palestine and other Middle Eastern states exist and thrive in a place like Gaza which as you admit above, Israeli government policies and the estbablishment of a state in Palestine has caused great hardship to the local Palestinian population.

 

The debate can oppose Hamas but still support the Palestinian rights. Just like you can oppose right wing Israeli government policies and still not be anti semetic.

A DAMN HOSPITAL! (Think I read it's 500 people...)

 

@1714321317120360527

^ It's NOT necessarily Israel who did it. This could be caused by a failed launch of a rocket from within the hospital itself.

Edited October 17, 20231 yr by Voodoo

What's your source for that? And don't give me a social media post.

 

Absolutely awful :/

 

 

What's your source for that? And don't give me a social media post.

What's the problem with a "social media post"? Did Tafty not embed a social media post that you took as The Truth?

 

As a policy, Israel does NOT attack hospitals, although it knows fully well they are used by Hamas.

 

@1714350115312255019

 

Update:

 

Israel has now officially denied it:

 

@1714365887405293663

Edited October 17, 20231 yr by Voodoo

All major news outlets that I can see are reporting the airstrike as an Israeli strike.

 

This is exactly what I meant when I said this was indiscriminate from Israel, without care or concern for human lives. This is ethnic cleansing and genocide from both the IDF AND Hamas - and the language downplaying and making excuses for both sides is exactly the same sort of language that has always been used to condone or make excuses in the past. But with Israeli defenders significantly louder in defending war crimes I must note.

Because I prefer to get news from verified, unbiased sources, and most of those are reporting that it's a Palestinian hospital that's been bombed by an Israeli airstrike. There is no way you can say with the information available this was Hamas entirely without jumping to conclusions or resorting to bias (and that's the same for linking this to the IDF). Unproven conspiracy theories are dangerous and don't help matters.

 

And it's a clear encapsulation of the issue that there is clearly massive issues on both sides and yet it's the innocent civilians on either side that are suffering for it.

Israel explicitly warned a hospital in Gaza to evacuate earlier today. Is that the same one that was hit?