When does terrorism become war?

[mids2019]

Looking at the news this morning I think the media are finding it difficult to register Palestinian attacks as a terrorism event or simply an attack of one state against another.

I suppose whether you view 5000 tickets as a terrorist atrocity or a declaration of war is dependent on your views on whether Palestine can ever be a functioning state. We plainly in Europe would describe such events as terrorism in that civilian populations have been targeted but in the eternally challenged middle East the use of such a word has political connurtations.

Is this a terrorist attack on Israel?

Oh no, definitely don't want to see it with my own eyes, but a lot of allegations have been independently verified whereas others haven't, so I'm wary of propaganda from either side, as it's always present in any conflict.

One hopeful glimmer of light according to the Telegraphs Ukraine: The Lastest Hamas is negotiating to exchange women/child hostages for women/child prisoners since yesterday (monday).

@ChickHenLittle

I really wish we lived in a world where there was no war or people could turn the other cheek and violence and death would face away. I really really do.

I realise I don't live in that world and we have to accept war at points in our history as necessary. I think this is the case where a continued war is necessary.

Maybe some of us will put on Imagine by John Lennon at Christmas but such thoughts are unfortunatly whimisical :(

This would be a terrible outcome that would only incentivise more hostage taking. Release of hostages must be unilateral. Hostages are not the same as convicted prisoners. I believe this quote comes from Qatar, who proposed this yesterday, without any agreement or discussion with Israel and faced being rebuffed by Hamas.

I've also just read that Shani Louk's mother has had word she's alive (albeit in critical condition), which is hopeful, but it's the word of Hamas with no proof so who knows. I'm hoping it's true as reading about what happened to her hit quite hard, especially as she was a pacifist herself and refused to do military duty due to those beliefs.

So what would you do. Unlike you, Israelis can't just sit back and say "I don't know". They're in the situation of facing Hamas, who have just shown they will stoop to Isis levels of depravity.

Being a "powerless observer" is easy, I'm afraid, you don't have to make any difficult decisions. You can sit at home typing trite, clichéd slogans like "you can't destroy an idea with bullets" and judging the people who don't have that privilege.

@mids2019 It has been a constant throughout my life, thinking about it, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but no real progress has ever been made with peace talks, then they're abandoned.
People can't just be left displaced in Gaza, and now massacred for the actions of terrorists.
I'm not a politician or anything close to it so don't have an alternative answer, but that's (seemingly) why we elected them. In 2023 the answer shouldn't be "let them obliterate Gaza and it's a shame for the civilians". There is no need for Gaza to be destroyed and for all of its civilians to be collateral damage.

@ChickHenLittle

it's not obliteration though it's a means of removing the means through which Hamas a terrorist organisation is ruling over the populace to calculate removing them as a political and military force which is capable of the most heinous acts.

if we view this as Israel trying to get regime change in Gaza then I think there is justification. I think all would like to see civilian casualties minimised but we should not try and debt the right of Israel to self defence.

Not OP, but probably not this.

By Léo Cans, MSF head of mission in the Palestinian Territories

The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The hospitals are overwhelmed. The number of wounded is extremely high, with a constant influx of patients in all the hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Medical teams are exhausted, working around the clock to treat the wounded.

The bombardments are very intense. Entire buildings are being destroyed, including one last night right next to the MSF office. Sometimes people receive a text message in the middle of the night telling them to evacuate their homes, as happened to some of our team members in Gaza. You have to wake up your children in the middle of the night and leave your house, without taking any of your belongings, to find safety. But very often, people don't know where to go. They find themselves outside in the middle of the night, under a hail of bombs. Where can they find safety?

Now the Israeli government has decided to completely cut off water and electricity supplies, and the phone network has been badly damaged. This morning, we were unable to reach our teams in Gaza by phone. Inevitably, this all makes it extremely difficult to coordinate rescue operations and access the injured.

The intensity of the violence and bombardment is shocking, as is the death toll. The declaration of war must not, under any circumstances, lead to collective punishment of the population of Gaza. Cutting off water, electricity, and fuel supplies is unacceptable, as it punishes the entire population and deprives them of their basic needs.

The latest estimates put the number of people displaced by the current violence at around 200,000. They are mainly people whose homes have been destroyed. They need everything: water, a place to shower, food, a mattress to sleep on. These are varied but basic needs.

In Gaza today, people are terrified. I speak very regularly with our colleagues there. They are very tough people because unfortunately they have lived through a lot of wars, but the current situation is causing extreme anxiety. They say that this time it's different, that they don't see a way out and wonder how it’s all going to end. They are in terrible mental distress. There aren't words to describe what people are going through.

As for MSF, we are very concerned to see that medical facilities have not been spared. One of the hospitals we support was hit by an airstrike and damaged. Another airstrike destroyed an ambulance carrying the wounded, right in front of the hospital where we work. The MSF team was operating on a patient and had to leave the hospital in a hurry.

We repeat: Medical facilities must be respected. This is not something that should have to be negotiated.

Currently, MSF is donating essential medicines and medical equipment to the main hospitals in Gaza. We have also sent surgical teams to two hospitals to help treat the wounded. In the coming days, there will also be a lot of post-operative surgeries, as most of the wounded we receive will need several surgical interventions before they can be saved. Yesterday we also set up a clinic in downtown Gaza City for people with other injuries, which we will try to keep open if conditions allow.

Yesterday morning, we received a 13-year-old boy whose body was almost completely burned after a bomb fell right next to his house, starting a fire. These are very complicated cases to treat in such conditions and, when children are involved, it's very hard to bear.

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gaza-situation-catastrophic-hospitals-are-overwhelmed

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), says he believes that Iran aims to create “a reality of war in order to exhaust Israeli society, in order to exhaust the Israel Defense Forces.”

“Here is the common denominator between the Iran strategy and the Hamas strategy. Therefore Iran is an asset for Hamas and Hamas is an asset for Iran."

Let's all not forget that Hamas have a history of using civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields against attacks as noted by NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence and the UN, for example.

We know Hamas have stockpiled weapons at UN run schools and built tunnels underneath them in order to move explosives ahead of attacks on Israel too. In 2014 Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency said after Hamas rockets were found in UN schools, "We condemn the group or groups who endangered civilians by placing these munitions in our school. This is yet another flagrant violation of the neutrality of our premises. We call on all the warring parties to respect the inviolability of U.N. property.”

There is no reason to think Hamas wouldn't use hospitals as a launchpad for rockets and then use the propaganda from any Israeli attack to gain sympathisers.

Don't worry. The IAF is well on its way to demolishing all hospitals, so this won't be a problem for long.

I worked for INSS for a few years when I was young, and their research on this is phenomenal. I very much suggest taking a look through their reports on this issue as they’ve looked at the risks of ground offensives and the potential options for Gaza for a long time. Fantastic people.

Cheers! I'll be sure to check out their reports too.

I've also just read that Shani Louk's mother has had word she's alive (albeit in critical condition), which is hopeful, but it's the word of Hamas with no proof so who knows.

I doubt it's true but her poor mother will be desperate. The video showed, if still alive, she was in an awful state and if they were taking her to hospital why would one of them practically be sitting on her and another spitting on her? I also note some reports were saying that she'd actually been shot by the IDF but since there were basically no IDF in the area of the festival that is beyond unlikely.

Sadly I'd bet money she'll never be seen again.

Reading about her maybe you could believe she was still alive. I saw the video of her. I wish I hadn't. She is not still alive

It has been widely verified.

And here's the thing, massacring an entire village in cold blood including elderly, babies,children, women, even fucking dogs wouldn't be OK even if they didn't fucking decapitate them

Which they did.

Well at least he's honest - time to kill as many Hamas / Palestinians as possible. Blood is up - they seem pretty much interchangeable to many commentators' now and no doubt some will find grim pleasure in such an approach or at least a sense of vengeance an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Very biblical. This seems to be what Hamas wants - massive bloodshed on all sides in order to chuck petrol and matches on the tinderbox of the Middle East and set the whole region on fire.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza

Speaking on Tuesday morning, IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari made the startling admission that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had already been dropped on the tiny strip, adding that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”.

As was WMD Colin Powell went to his grave haunted by the lies he knew he had told at the UN and the consequences of his actions. 100s of thousands dead and Iraq pushed into the arms of their previous adversary Iran all because Bush wanted to lash out after 9/11 and find an enemy to punish to avenge that atrocity. Our chance of solving the climate catastrophe - pretty much nil I'm afraid, much of humanity still seems to be animals in clothes with the same instincts and behaviours.

Yes, pro-Palestinian NGOs are known to lie frequently. Unfortunately that means you can’t trust any Palestinian source. Aware that their victim mask simply doesn’t hold up anymore, after they raped and slaughtered innocent people and threaten to execute hostages, they will stop at nothing to pretend they’re the hard done by in a conflict they started, they perpetuate and they celebrate.

The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/11/israel-palestine-war-biden-zelenskiy

So now Israel are effectively killing civilians, bombing babies and elderly, can we start calling them terrorists? I suppose this kind of killing - the Israeli kind - is justified and no one is about to express horror and outrage at the deaths, fear and suffering of Palestinians?

There is no double standard. You are pretending that you believe that targeted military strikes at legitimate targets in defence of your country is the same as invading and slaughtering civilians and taking hostages. This is obviously not equivalent.

Israel has continued to do its best to minimise civilian injury, by asking specific areas to be evacuated ahead of targeted strikes. In fact, they take measures no other military on Earth uses, to protect civilian lives despite this often limiting the success of their war against extremism.

Hamas continue to use human shields to co-opt people like you into defending terrorism and 'both side-ing' two very different entities. Israel has a right to self-defence, and the elimination of Hamas is necessary to avoid the continuation of Palestinian attempts to genocide the Jewish people. I'll remind you, Hamas just hit a hospital in Israel and claims that there are no 'civilians' in Israel as part of their dehumanising rhetoric.

Air strikes are bad enough but the cutting off of supplies to ordinary people there, who will include children and the elderly is a war crime. I think the U.K giving such unequivocal support to Israel will land it on the wrong side of history.

Israel isn't providing supplies to the people who want to exterminate them, no, which is quite reasonable and certainly does not constitute a war crime. Israel have not prevented Gaza from self-sustaining or getting resources in via Egypt or through their nest of terror tunnels to the South.

The UK will be on the right side of history. The defenders of civilian slaughter under the Palestinian flag will not be.