Footage shows public executions in Gaza City street

The only difference is that they don't wear a uniform. I wonder why that might be...? 🤔

You couldn't really get more strategic/specifically targeted than the pagers, but that too seems to be frowned upon here.

The only way Israel could have won MN hearts and minds is if they withheld any action until intelligence reports identified with 100% certainty who was "Hamas" and who was "not Hamas" (good luck with that one, given the eager participation of civilian mobs in the attacks!) and then politely knocked on their doors to invite them for a cup of tea and a chat about how they would like their situation improved. All at enormous risk to Israel of course, but who gives a shit about that?

What "colour" do you think the people of Israel are?

Hamas has paid soldiers/fighters. They receive a monthly salary. It has an annual military budget of over $200m. Much of this money has come from Qatar via the UN , Iran and humanitarian aid over the last few decades.

There are even well documented photos of a Hamas military passing out parade in Gaza city before 2023.

In my view - this constitutes a well trained and well funded army.

Yes, this. Northern Ireland, post war France as mentioned by a pp, any war zone where people collaborate with the enemy. Unfortunately this is what war breeds.

The hamas leadership are living in Qatar. They are a terrorist organisation who use the civilian population as human shields. Any dissent from support of Hamas risks loss of life/public executions.

However / there is no win for Israel in continuing their bombardment of Hamas’ military - which is deeply embedded in civilian areas. They have lost the support of allies and should have been much much more strategic in their response to October 7th attacks.

Careful, wouldn't want to sound like you don't know that lots of Israelis are brown.

Who are you trying to help with this?

What about the ones before the IDF Apaches arrived? Don't tell me, the whole thing was a false flag operation?

🙄🥱

Bad faith, discussion limiting accusations of “racism”. Honestly think it best to just ignore posters who do this now - they’re stuck in circa 2015/16.

Sure hun whatever helps you think you're a good person

Probably just escape and move from the area, awful situation for every civilian right now

Who are the Al Qassam Brigades then?

What have they firing out of those launchers towards Israel from Gaza for years then?

What did they use to shoot the kids at Nova then?

Utterly predictable response 😁

Do YOU know that it isn't a war when only one side has a military armed force? And fyi 'war' (which it isn't) doesn't mean you can do whatever the fuck you want to unarmed civilians l.

It’s incredible

Woah yeah, how dare brown people have top of the range cars! What do you think the people in Israeli embassy are driving round in?

I once had a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinian cause, but the scales very much fell from my eyes after 7/10.

It’s really curious to see such sudden eagerness to concede the realities of war when it’s Hamas that is being discussed.

It also no longer surprises me that people think Palestinian Action are not an awful organisation that should be proscribed as terrorist supporters. Afterall, their supporters 'only' hit someone with a sledgehammer and 'only' broke into a military base in the UK causing millions of pounds worth of damage and putting aeroplanes out of use for defence because.

Nothing surprises me with the Pro Pal lot. Nothing.

Let them all come here.. they’re on their way anyway. Sharia law, public executions in your local square.. rape, burning and beheading. And don’t you dare try and defend your country or you’ll be just as bad!

Okay, so I've had time to look into the criminal justice system 7/10 free a bit, and it's quite interesting.

So homosexuality is dealt with by criminal courts, not Sharia law. It's punishable by up to 10 years prison, under law that we created in the 1930's (go us...). That's not to say things so miserable and dangerous for gay people in Gaza, there were certainly harassment, and increase the risk of honour killings. But it wasn't capital offence, and as I've said before, videos purporting to be Gaza to show Isis in Iraq instead.

There was a functioning criminal justice system, I'll be not as independent as it should have been, and with less emphasis on rights of appeal and human rights than we would like. Shari's law was a personal disputes and family dispute not the criminal law.

They did have the death penalty, Which was mostly used for either murder or collaboration with Israel (often where that resulted in airstrikes killing people). Occasionally for drug trafficking. The rate at which they executed people was higher than the USA, but lower than places like Saudi and Iran. It was considered mid-tier. There was a full judicial process and there were prisons etc. The appeals process was considered politically motivated and lacking independence however. So whilst collaborators previously probably would have been executed, it would have been after a judicial process, albeit not one that would pass our tests for fairness.

For women's rights, again, it wasn't amazing, but it's not Saudi or the Taliban! Pressure to wear hijab comes from families, not law though same government offices mandated it.

Religious freedom was poor but as long as they kept a low profile Christians were tolerated. They were not expected to wear hijab, even in government offices that mandated it.

Of course what goes on officially and what goes under the radar can be different things. Informal/family pressure and abuse can often be far more a problem.

It clearly wasn't an oasis of enlightenment, but it wasn't the intolerant hellhole comparable to the Taliban that some people make out.

The consensus seems to be that Hamas may have preferred to be more conservative, but in doing so would have risked alienating more liberal elements of society, so took a pragmatic decision to not be too extreme, to keep a better hold on power.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I wouldn't have been rushing to live there, but it wasn't quite as hard long as I thought.