Israel

Well it has been well documented on National and world media outlets has it not

 

I think you will find it’s a Hamas led atrocity and not a Palestine one.
Then again if you are easily influenced by the likes of BBC news I can understand how you are getting things so wrong.

 

It's not out of context at all. The reason people are staunchly pro-Israel is because the Israeli people have been the victims of an atrocity. There isn't anything to be said about Israel's role in the humanitarian crisis that has anything to do with the crimes against humanity Hamas have committed.

 

What exactly are you looking for here? According to the press, Hamas have killed about 1,000 people so far. That's bad. But there's also a population of 2m in Gaza, most of whom have got nothing to do with Hamas, but have still had their electricity and water cut off and are currently preparing for a land invasion by an army that is light years ahead in terms of tech. That's also very bad.

It's all awful, it really is. But let's not pretend that a) the Gaza strip is a paradise and b) everybody who lives there is Hamas. It's a couple of million normal people, packed into an area way smaller than Barnsley, who can't get out. There's literally nowhere for them to go, even if they wanted to leave.

 

Of course there is. In response to the heinous attacks Israel is committing war crimes as a state against a population of c.2.3m including around 800,000 children. It's collective punishment, literally defined as a war crime.

If the IRA had killed 1,000 English people in the 90s would you have been in favour of us cutting water, food and utilities to the entirety of Northern Ireland and launching air strikes to level large parts of Belfast?

 

Many of the very same people cheering on Israel's indiscriminate response will be criticising Palestinians fleeing their homeland (such as it is) and indifferent to their deaths in small boats.

 

If it’s just Hamas there must have been a lot of their fighters who turned up Sydney outside the opera house the other night shouting “gas the jews”.

 

According to figures I saw yesterday, over the last 15 years, Hamas have killed ~300 Israelis in terrorist attacks (not including the recent incidents where the true figure isn't known yet). That is absolutely f**king terrible and should be condemned by all.

In the same period, Israel have killed ~6,400 Palestinians (https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties), been accused of committing war crimes on a civilian population, continues to do so despite numerous UN Resolutions and routinely demolish homes and entire villages. One has been demolished 211 times. (https://www.amnesty.org/en/location...-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/)

Neither side come out of this looking good.

 

Gaza power station now out of fuel. Imminent Israeli attack. There'll be some further retribution here on top of the bombing/strikes. Make no mistake. Innocent Palestinians will get killed and mutilated. No doubt about it. Absolutely horrible.

 

As ive said, the bombing of Gaza will continue until western liberal sensibilities reach the point where they decide Israel has had their pound of flesh and the scenes from Gaza can't be stomached at any longer. Biden and others will then ask Israel to stop and there will be talks of Israel offering a ceasefire but not stopping "because Hamas are still fighting". Then at some point they'll find lots of dead hostages inside Gaza, some killed by Hamas, some by Israel dropping bombs on their own hostages, because to Israel those hostages are in the big picture, expendable.

I can't imagine how I'd feel knowing my relatives were being bombed by my own airforce. Wild.

 

Welcome to Gaza.

 

Terrorist atrocities against people - whether soldiers, children or even members of the government - traditionally don't achieve much. Blowing up expensive buildings and affecting the stock markets without killing people tends to bring solutions quicker.

 

What a shocking series of events' the blood thirsty loons running riot whilst the innocents pay the price' Israel have said that they'll wipe hamas off the face of the earth but in reality its a perfect opportunity to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth with the full backing of the rest of the world. What Hamas have done is dispicable and i'm all for em being hunted down but indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities full of innocent men women and children isn't the answer and cannot be condoned surely' when will this insanity stop? human life means absolutely nothing.

 

This is a very thoughtful assessment, in my opinion, even if there are parts I disagree with personally.

 

All power politics, extreme nationalism, a racist Israeli government and failure by politicians to grasp the nettle and try and establish some peace and acceptance of the other side's situation and history. As long as Palestinians are denied rights under Israeli law there will be flare ups like this and extremists in both sides will then exploit the situation and make things more entrenched. There has to be dialogue and the beginnings of respect for the other side's point of view. Sadly there is no vision on this at the moment and it doesn't look forthcoming.

 

Yeah great read.

Which parts do you disagree with?

 

It's a, shame the media isn't as nuanced and open about the causes of the conflict.

 

Why on earth are we getting involved in some one's problems, Navy and RAF getting in the mix.

 

I think that if you go down the route of ethnic groups having a historical claim to land currently lived in by others then you're getting into dangerous territory, basically. I'm also not sure that the 'might makes right' idea of who should have certain pieces of land is a good one. I can follow the argument and see that it makes sense in the context of the piece, and I definitely think that everybody should now have to work with what we currently have, but I'm basically really uncomfortable with both the concepts of ethnic nationalism and military supremacism in general.

Personally, I agree with the piece that if Israel had to be a thing at all (and probably it did given the circumstances, although I think that's a shame) then it should have been done better in the first place. Carving a piece of land out of what was already an occupied territory was not the way to go.