[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Israel likes to tell us they're taking steps to avoid civilians, and that they don't target civilians.
Evidence appears to indicate otherwise - or at least, it demonstrates a cavalier approach to their lives.

And yet, the rest of the world just goes tut-tut-tut.

Netanyahu doesn't seem to be overly popular in Israel, and was caught sleeping on Oct 7th. For that and the vengeance he's pouring on Gaza (there's really no nicer way of putting it, IMO) he should be kicked out and dealt with by international justice.
Fat chance.

Of course not, nothing justifies what happened on Oct 7 and no-one here has claimed otherwise - but it doesn't take too much investigation to find years of oppressive reasons why the situation in Gaza may have been boiling up to it.

Not directly but if every time someone points out that the current war is a response to the horrors Hamas committed on 7 October, the replies are "oh, but historical context", then it certainly seems to me like those people are saying that those were justified as a response to what the Israeli government has been doing to the Palestinians.

So one day, Hamas decided to attack Israeli citizens just because?

That makes no sense and while history is no justification for Oct 7th, it sure seems to provide an explanatory context for it.
It didn't happen in a vacuum.

Will there be a ceasefire to observe Hanukkah?

And why do you think Hamas wanted to "provoke the IDF to retaliate"?

Most likely, in the hope that Israel would over-react and thereby (1) radicalize Palestinians, (2) reignite the larger Arab-Israeli conflict, (3) show the entire world how utterly evil Israel (or at least its current government) is, and (4) cause Israel to lose at least some of the support it gets from the U.S.A. and other Western countries.

And Israel over-reacted, exactly according to Hamas's most likely plan.

But Israel could have chosen to react in a more measured way.

Israel could have, for example, bombed only obvious military targets, of which I am sure there are at least a few, such as the places where Hamas had been launching rockets from. I'm sure that Israel knew where Hamas's rocket-launch facilities were, and that they were not easy to hide.

Other military targets may be harder to find, but I'm sure Israel would have had the ability to find them through careful observation over a period of time.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 08 Dec 2023, 12:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hanukkah is a holiday for celebrating military victory.

Sure its all about stuff to sensationalize and inflame the media reporting ,, not down playing the gawd aweful nature of what is happening there , but seriously it is a Land grab..for Israel .And money . Over the long run...IMHO

Now where did I ever say SA was justified?

It sure seems like you've got nothing worthwhile to say without putting words into other people's mouths.

To borrow your tactics, I guess the slaughter, torture and rape of Palestinians for the past 75 years is acceptable to you and they should just accept being ethnically cleansed.

If you look at my earlier posts in this thread, I did say that we would need a two-state solution to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict long term. However, with regards to current war, I have never seen anyone suggest a viable alternative response to the 7 October attack other than war, neither from people I've argued with in real life or on-line who otherwise have argued that Israel should not be going after Hamas at all. It may be the case that Israel has been contravening international humanitarian law with regards to bombing indiscriminately or not letting aid in but I cannot accept that the proper response to that attack is "turning the other cheek".



I've never seen a single allegation of IDF soldiers raping or torturing either civilians or captured militants. I have heard of IDF soldiers committing other atrocities in the past and they are not immune from prosecution in Israeli courts. See for example here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes

I've also heard of violence against Palestinians from illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. However, it seems like this is implying that the only two options are either accepting the transgressions of Israel on the Palestinians or committing an atrocity like on 7 October. Sorry, but there is a choice, not even other armed resistance movements would do what they did on 7 October and even if you have to use violence, you can still limit it to legitimate military targets and not attack civilians. Palestinians may have legitimate grievances but that doesn't mean that Hamas' goals are all about freeing Palestinians because they are also an Islamist group that also had the goal killing all Jews in their original charter.

I guess you don't bother reading the thread before replying.

Yes, and yes.

Bombing civilian housing seems a spectacularly blunt means of dealing with the Hamas rocket launchers allegedly hidden at their base. Is it really necessary to blast through several floors of homes to reach the basement?

Yes indeed.

No it didn't happen in a vacuum. HAMAS are an offshoot of the muslim brotherhood. They have been filling the heads of young Palestinian boys with Jihad propaganda (this is not disputed). They are assisted and funded by states like Iran. Iran had a specific reason to "strongly persuade" HAMAS to launch the 10-7 attack to disrupt Israeli negotiations with Saudi Arabia and the gulf states.

They were banking on the IDF to retaliate and thus reduce Israel's reputation in the eyes of the gulf states and Saudi why? because a strong coalition between Arab states and Israel represents an existential threat to the spread of Iran's influence in the region. What it does demonstrate is how tenuous Israel's relations are with their neighbors, It does not take much to....one step forward and 12 steps back.

Okay.. lets look at history perhaps .. Not Israels but ,USA,s think back in the good ole days of the Wild west and the Indians...and we killed all of them almost ...took all their lands ! Except a few pitiful reservations in the badlands.
All that land .. prime USA real Estate ! Anyone notice any similiarities...Israel a growing Country ...backed by the worlds biggest Superpower ...And the Indians , I bet wanted to save their lands ??. Think the Indians against all the most advanced military machine you could muster .(Indian doing bad things to settlers..terrible things)? Things just do not feel good to me .
Well The French when they controlled part of this country ( USA)in the very early days ..Would pay Indians to bring back the scalps of the other white Frontiersman of English speaking people , in The previously held French territories in the USA ..Perhaps the Hamas have some sort of Allies. Controlling the areas around there.
It all sounds alittle digusting to me..Both sides of the fight .
Obviously Israel is better developed and more advanced military ...History repeating itself, in some way ?

Last edited by Jakki on 08 Dec 2023, 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Any thoughts about what I suggested in my post here? Israel's extreme, massive, brutal over-reaction is the main issue here. I would not say that Israel shouldn't retaliate at all. Some retaliation was justified, but Israel's response has been vastly disproportionate.

Israel: Strikes on Journalists in Lebanon Apparently Deliberate

Blah blah blah usual excuses.

That's exactly what they're saying. Imagine being a Palestinian in 1947, you get the notification that based on research (archeological and geographical), the people you hate the most in the whole world are coming back to their ancestral homeland (the land you've been squatting on, for centuries. And also the land you've turned into a dust bowl, fallow, useless, etc); so move over. With it, they bring their G-d, the same G-d that is Allah, but you can't believe it because that G-d chose Isaac over Ishmael, so there MUST be a difference. And the UN draws up a partition between the two.
Keep on fast forwarding and watch the industrious Jews begin to turn that wasteland around, while the Palestinians waste their energy and aid plotting non-stop revenge, and failing at that too. Sometimes, when other countries get in the mix, a war results (1967). Still, Israel is standing. Years pass, attacks happened routinely, maybe only one or two Jews die, but who gives a s**t, right? Those people may have been everything to their families, but it's not a humanitarian crisis!! So, it doesn't deserve a retaliation, cause it's not our family that died and we (public opinion) say so, and we know best! But, Israel doesn't listen (Good for Israel). With every attack they keep advancing and gaining more land to work and provide for themselves, because NEVER AGAIN.
And they are still progressing, they haven't reached their full potential yet, because they've only been at it again as a nation this time, since 1948. They were once formidable, they're aren't to shabby now either.
I have to remember when I'm writing these diatribes that for the most part, I'm dealing with people who don't believe in God. And that's fine, as long as you remember that you are dealing with two countries that do. You are caught up in your advanced notions and definitions of what constitutes 'humanitarian crisis,' when if you read the Old Testament, the God of both the Jews and the Arabs doesn't give two s**ts about any humanitarian crisis. So all this hot air about this and that falls on deaf ears. They BOTH know that when they enter war with each other, the goal is obliteration of the enemy. These people think we're a bunch of dupes because we're in a corner sucking our thumbs and begging for a ceasefire.

Now, I wait for an message from Cornflake to tell me I can say this, when his posts are some of the most antisemitic I've read.