Feel like once the hostages are handed over Israel will start bombing again

Saying “people voted in a man” suggests Netanyahu to me as he the leader of the party people voted for.

Like if it was the UK and someone said “people voted in a man” the assumption would be they were talking about Starmer not one of his ministers.

This posters words are vague & unsubstantiated.

IDF don't need to start bombing again, hamas have already begun terrorising and shooting their own again without trial. What a messed up country. What a messed up group.
Send our protestors to Palestine to wave the flags where it really matters.

Well said.
I don't know if many people will admit that but my hands are up. Be careful what you wish for.
I never denied that hamas were scum but didn’t consider the consequences for the innocent Palestinian people passed stopping the war.
Seeing photos of their execution, no words.

We have at least one person posting favourably about Sinwar and lots of legitimate resistance apologists, as well as people who equate Hamas with Israel as if Hamas are a legitimate organisation that some of us just have a difference of opinion about.

In think pp is referring to Ben-Gvir.
He made a comment to that effect in 2024.
He was already minister at that time though, whereas Israelis voted in a man who says rape of detainees is legitimate makes it sound as if he‘d been appointed after making those comments.

It's actually worse than I thought. Hanoch Milwidsky from the Likud party said that it is legitimate "to insert a stick into a person's rectum". Smotrich was just angry that they had been filmed. And Ben Gvir argued that any action, even gang rape, is permissible if it is undertaken for the security of the state.

^these are who Israelis vote for. These are their politicians and law makers. In Ireland recently a man stood down from his presidential campaign because he owed 3 grand to former tenants. In Israel men like these feature over and over, year on year in Israeli politics. Men who think it's fine to gang rape and insert objects into people rectums. They are never ousted in shame, instead they are repeatly given positions of power. This is the culture that allows the abuse of children in detention to thrive, so it gets to the point where almost every child detained is abused in some manner.

Not a single person here stood up for these child victims when they were called liars and jew haters. If British people won't stand up for them what hope is there in a culture where people say its OK to force a stick into someones rectum and they get to keep their government job as a lawmaker!

Israelis voted in a man who says rape of detainees is legitimate.

@CrossChecking I have just googled your first allegation but saw no evidence of Netanyahu (aka the man who Isreali voters voted in) saying the rape of detainees is legitimate.

If you have a link, please share it.

Again it is all true. Israelis voted in a man who says rape of detainees is legitimate. Israelis brought a rapist on national TV, lauded him and gave him multiple standing ovations. Israelis protested for rapists who they watched gang rape a man on camera to be freed from prison. This was all stated in response to a poster who said that Palestinian victims of child abuse at the hands of Israelis in detention are liars and Jew haters. She said that it would take lots of Israelis covering up to do have such high amounts of child sex abuse.

Look at what Israelis do on TV, what they do on the streets, who they vote for. It doesn't seem so impossible now that there would be a cover up of mass child abuse in detention when rapists are lauded and the rape of detainees is called legitimate by the people that they vote for.

Everything I have said is easy to Google for anyone who actually cares about sexual violence and child sex abuse victims. Graphic accounts of Palestinian child sexual abuse in prison are also easy to find on Google. If people want to believe the perpetrators who laud sex criminals on TV rather than traumatised children and childrens charities who help 10s of millions of children each year around the world then that is their choice and nothing I could ever link to would change that kind of mindset.

I’ve heard it described as the racism of low expectations.

The framing of this is very much that women are resorting to this, placing the blame on Israel for forcing women into this position. I don’t accept this, men, Palestinian men are the one forcing women into this position.

It's actually phenomenally - racist isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but something patronising and prejudiced. Only the Israelis ("western colonisers" in their view) have agency, are in effect adults. The Palestinians ("brown bodies" or whatever the horrendous current terminology is) are so childlike and without agency that they mustn't even be held accountable for rape.

I can agree on that and I hope you can agree that you were wrong with your earlier comment that pro Israel supporters are never critical of Israel.

A false claim that had been debunked many times including my post on here that you presumably didn’t have time to respond to.

Got to work now.
But, before I go, I hope we all agree anyway that we desperately hope peace will hold. Praying for all the victims regardless of race or religion 🙏

I didn't lump all pro-Israeli posters together. Not at all.
But, I'm leaving it there now, as time and energy are now in short supply!

This is one of those situations where pro-Palestinians like to pretend that Hamas doesn't exist. It messes up the agreed narrative where Palestinians are goodies and Israel are baddies and there is nothing else to be said.

My point is that the word 'Zionist' is generally used in this topic by people who don't know the meaning of it and use it to demonise a group of people, usually Jews. You might not have meant it like that, but you have clearly come to see it as synonymous with support for Netanyahu, which it isn't at all.

If you are casually using Zionist in conversation, you probably need to check where you are getting your news from.

I have explained this and apologised.
I said some of the Zionists. Meaning some of the very pro Israel folks on here, who would indeed be Zionists. I should have just stuck to the description of 'some of the pro-Israel posters here'. I was rounding off the post quickly, and know what I meant, but realised immediately after posting that it could have been misconstrued. Yes, I know what it means.
I actually wouldn't describe myself as anti-zionist. I'm anti-genocide, anti-apartheid and anti-racism.

Your post, and Sharon Ellis' posts feel like a gotcha? I see that loads on this board, on both sides actually. It really isn't playing fair. I'm leaving it there now.

https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/women-in-gaza-say-they-were-promised-food-money-or-work-in-exchange-for-sexual-interactions/

This is an article on the abuse of Gazan women. Apart for the obvious horrors what got me was the statement of a charity group

Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip and the restrictions on humanitarian aid are what’s forcing women to resort to this,” said Amal Syam, director of the Women’s Affairs Center.

The framing of this is very much that women are resorting to this, placing the blame on Israel for forcing women into this position. I don’t accept this, men, Palestinian men are the one forcing women into this position. There is no situation where rape is necessary. This happens everywhere there is conflict but we don’t usually blame the women for it do we? And thats why aid agencies operating in Gaza aren’t always straightforward for me. I have literally never seen this framing, if it were Ukraine I’m pretty sure you’d just see “ukrainian men are taking advantage of the war to coerce women into sex”.

Israelis should similarly be held to account when a woman says she has been harmed.

I heard it on an interview with Bel Trew, the international war reporter.
Apparently discussed by Hamas during the peace process.

I'm assuming you don't mean on MN where there have been loads of people queuing up to defend the 'resistance' and deny the rape.

Totally agree with this. I don't know anyone who isn't highly critical of Hamas, and hasn't been throughout.

Why did you use the word Zionist?

'people who think Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state' doesn't seem to be relevant at all here. Isn't that most people?

You'd have to take that one up with Channel 4 News, as I'm pretty sure that's where I heard it. Either that or another mainstream news broadcast. It wasn't a random bod on YouTube.

Exactly. If some of the hostages sadly lost their lives a long time ago, there might not be anything to return.

I loathe Hamas, but I imagine for the sake of their own PR, they're keen to return the remains of the deceased.

I think it was on Channel 4 news that I heard they're struggling to access them.

I was anxious about the Zionist comment, as I genuinely do try to word things carefully here, and I was worried it could be misconstrued. That's why I went back to it to explain myself. I realise I strayed off topic.

This. They existed, they still exist, they are currently killing 'collaborators ' and people who are against them. Hamas are within and part of Palestinian society, not a separate entity. Palestinians need to decide if they want hamas to continue in the same cycle of hatred and killing or not.