Your post is a bit of a mess. 🙈
"....the IRA killed over 3000 in total..."
Did they, aye?! 🙈
Aside from your lines giving the impression PIRA murdered over 3,000 people in London in total....the figure you gave for PIRAs kill count is very obviously wrong.
Where did you get that from?!
IIRC, PIRA murdered about 1,771 people. Stats vary slightly depending on which set and time frame you're looking at, but it's no more than 1,800.
PIRA would have loved to have murdered far more people than they actually managed to, let me tell you!
"...they blew up the British Government..."
No, they didn't! PIRA tried AND failed to blow up Thatcher's Cabinet, in fact. Not one Government Minister was killed in the 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing. Five people died, but not Government Ministers.
Far more accurate and correct to say PIRA blew up the hotel. Once.
Not in London.
"....they blew up people at memorial services..."
Correct there, but it was just the one at Enniskillen. The other one on the same day a few miles away in 1987 failed to detonate.
Hyde Park wasn't even memorial service - it was the Changing Of The Guard. Regent's Park bomb also wasn't a memorial service - it was a lunchtime bandstand concert.
I say that because you said "memorial services", plural. Again, not in London.
"....people inc soldiers were kidnapped..."
Correct. Jean McConville and Captain Robert Nairac being the better known cases.
But not in London.
"....they attacked and murdered members of the Royal family..."
Only Mounbatten was attacked and murdered. A plot in the United States against the late Queen was foiled which wasn't a PIRA plot. A PIRA plot against the Queen was Shetland in 1981 - premature explosion and PIRA man employed unknowingly by BP fled the island. Forgotten not long after due to news of Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
Not very successful at it. Again, not in London.
"...they murdered two soldiers "live" on TV."
Correct. The two Corporals and the priest who tried to save them was threatened with a bullet in his head.
But:
"Yes the British did try and hunt down the terrorists but they used special forces, intelligence led strikes...... they didn't use WW2 tactics and indiscriminate bombing, nor did they starve out West Belfast or attempt to get the Catholics to move to the ROI.
Israel is using every trick in the book to try and defend what they are doing, which is murder, they are committing war crimes, ignoring every rule written about protecting civilian populations in a war zone, they behaving worse than even the Russians in Ukraine."
The above is a False Equivalence Fallacy and demonstrates your lack of knowledge regarding operations required against PIRA and Hamas respectively.
Even worse, it shows you don't really understand the massive differences in theeat levels faced by the British and Israeli States respectively.
PIRA didn't have anywhere close to the military capabilities of Hamas, so it was never going to be the case where the British Government was going to bomb single streets or use full military capabilities.
Indeed, PIRA only managed to murder 0.5% of the total British Army deployment. Road traffic accidents claimed another 0.5% of British Army personnel - this was actually marginally higher than PIRA murders.
The British Army acted with restraint (more likely to be arrested than killed) but the shift in tactics from 1974 onwards wasn't really based on "hearts and minds". It was based on undermining PIRA and UVF from within - hence Operation Eagle targeted Republicans and Operation Torniquet targeted Loyalists.
The hearts and minds wasn't necessary as Republican and Loyalist terrorists didn't have majority support across Northern Ireland as a whole. Far from it.
So, the use of Special Forces against terrorist groups is one method - this is how the UK did it. Exactly why the 14 Intelligence Company was formed by SAS members and why RUC Special Branch formed E4HSU. Both were very effective. 14 Int Coy is now SRR so that intelligence methods learned during the Troubles wasn't lost. SRR does operate throughout the UK to this day.
Israel, on the other hand, is facing a very different kind of terrorist threat. Hamas makes PIRA look like a nursery group! Consider how PIRA murdered 1,800 in total over nearly four decades yet Hamas murdered 1,200 on just the 7th October 2023!
Hamas is backed by a rogue State (Iran) whereas PIRA was an enemy of the Republic of Ireland Government as well as the UK Government.
Hamas are embedded into the social fabric of Gaza in a way PIRA and UVF were not in Northern Ireland. Indeed, PIRA would have loved to have been that deeply embedded.
That's without talking about Hamas' weapons arsenal and military strategy. Again, they blow PIRA right out of the water!
My point is what worked against PIRA in Northern Ireland won't really work against Hamas in Gaza.
The UK has NOT faced the level of threat Israel has since the Nazis in WW2. Anyone with decent knowledge of military history would know that. Meaning if the UK faced the same level of threat with PIRA, it absolutely would have reacted far, far differently than it did in reality. PIRA simply weren't a big enough threat to warrant much stronger action.
Simply put, PIRA came a cropper against the SAS and E4-HMSU. Indeed, SAS soldiers were able to fight PIRA members including Ivor Bell in 1996 in order to arrest them. Two years earlier and those terrorists would have faced SAS weaponry, so should count themselves lucky.
can you imagine the Israeli Special Forces being able to do the same against Hamas?!
Of course not! 🤦♂️
I don't think any State would have much of a coherent long term strategy at first for dealing with a terrorist group like Hamas.
Much less one for long term peace.
Indeed, it took the British Security Forces a while to develop an effective strategy against PIRA - about 4-5 years. There is ZERO reason to think it wouldn't take Israel a while to develop an effective strategy against Hamas too.
Once again, an ill-informed post by someone who believes they understand both conflicts whilst failing to grasp that the conflict in Northern Ireland was completely different to that in the Middle East.
What we had wasn't a war as PIRA failed in their goal of making it a war by any reasonable description as they lacked the military expertise plus effectiveness to do so. No, we had a campaign of terrorism that ultimately ended in failure.
The conflict in the Middle East easily fits the description of a war, especially as the people there couldn't live life the way the vast majority in Northern Ireland did.
I hope to see no more blatant and disingenuous false equivalences drawn between Northern Ireland and Israel-Gaza. The only real link is the one between PIRA/PSF and Hamas. That's it.
In Northern Ireland, Republican and Loyalist terrorists were engaging in fantasy war by using terms such as "army, brigade, battalion, soldiers, copying military badges", etc. But their setup was nothing like that of an actual Army.
Hamas, on the other hand, does not need to play at fantasy war as it is itself a small army, able to mass manufacture locally made weapons, has a military as well as governmental structure I've posted months ago, etc.
Massive differences, so it's embarrassing to see the false equivalence trotted out. 🙈