Collective Punishment - No water, no food, no medicines

[Lieblingsessen]

I do not condone whatsoever what the Hamas attacks on civilians in Israel or their ideology

But surely, Israel laying siege to Gaza, preventing innocent civilians from accessing water, food, medicines, electricity for hospital equipment, is not justifiable. To collectively punish civilians who have no control over what Hamas or their government does. This is medieval.

Where is the outcry on the mainstream media about this? Surely it is not being anti-semitic to call out Israel, that retaliation is not unexpected, but collective punishment is horrendous.

Also, it doesn't sit right with me that Britain, an imperial power from thousands of miles away, was making that decision on behalf of the people actually living in that area.

"But why the blame is with Israel, and not with Hamas? They knew exactly what will happen". Is it OK to bomb Israel indiscriminately and tell Israeli to leave because "Israel is going to be turned into rubbles" and call them animals every time they commit a crime against Palestinians? To tell Israelis they knew what would happen? No? Same the other way then.

This!

As the grandchild of an Orthodox Jew who lost relatives in the Holocaust, I get that.
But I'm not sure what point you are trying to make? Yes Hamas is a bad organisation- but also the fact that Israel has created an open air prison in Gaza for the last 16 years and completely disengaged with any sort of meaningful peace process, whilst continuing to speed illegal settlement of Palestinian land.....it was unfortunately inevitable that this violence would end up with a retaliation from Hamas. As in every part of the Arab Israeli conflict, more Palestinians will end up dead than Israelis.
It is possible to totally support the right of Israel to exist- and this is really important thinking back to the Holocaust- and also believe that the Palestinians who were displaced from their land to allow Israel to exist also get a say in running that country, instead of being treated like second class citizens in Israel; kept in the corruptly run West Bank or the prison of Gaza where collective punishment by Israel is the norm.
Land for peace is the only way forward but is not possible with either Hamas or this extreme right wing Israeli government in charge.

Seriously - you took that from my post?

The Navy control how far the fishermen could fish.
If they went too far, they got shot at.

The fishermen. Not the fish.

Thank you for answering! Did you know that Jews were also living there all along? I didn't until today.

Are you seriously expecting anyone to believe that Egypt are cowed by Israel into not helping the Palestinians? Are you serious?

Does Israel also 'bully' Jordan into keeping the West bank border closed?

Is Israel the boss of Egypt and Jordan??

"Muslim Brotherhood - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood

If you're interested Hamas roots lie in the Muslim brotherhood who dance with Qatar, tried to control Egypt. Hamas is the gun the Hamas have their fingers on the trigger but who's supplying the bullets?Destabilisation of the middle east being desired.

Israel is responsible for this as they are the cause of this problem. The blames is at their feet. They are an apartheid state and have been pillaging their way through what is left of Palestine for their own profit.

Ah yes, Jews are all about the profit eh?

So of course they should feed the Palestians as well as welcome the children and women over instead of preparing the blood thirsty army into killing them.

Good old blood libel, classic.

What do they teach these young Israelis to have them abandoning their cars are running to join the army, they seem to love it?

Or they have grown up surrounded by neighbours who want to wipe them off the map, parents who fought in the Yom Kippur war and grandparents who were flung into concentration camps in Europe.

I have seen horrible videos of children that have been set on fire by Israelis, babies shot point blank in the head. What kind of evil is this? And why isn't it being reported on the news.

Here for links please.

@BBno4 there’s plenty to criticise about Israel but the above is garden-variety antisemitism. Why bother?

Egypt could help if it really wanted to. In fact the rest of the Arab world could help if they really wanted to. But they don’t. And the reason for the is probably the Arab Spring. No stable government wants to invite in thousands of refugees of that mean harbouring terrorist cells that might have a crack of overthrowing you.

if you can surround your enemy then why wouldn’t you? The issue is that no other state in the world (aside from
North Korean) is being running by a terrorist organisation whose main objective is to commit mass genocide at the first chance it gets.

I feel for the children of Gaza. I do. But their parents voted on Hamas. They must in some way support Hamas. And Hamas’ main aim is the extermination of Israel and every Jew on earth.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Hamas knew Israel will retaliate, and did not bother with protecting Palestinians because they don't give a shit. your point is?...

It wasn't 'their land'. It was British Mandate territory.

And the Jews had been there for quite literally thousands of years.

If the Jews were 'new entrants', I struggle to imagine who you think is classed as indigenous.

Btw, had it ever occurred to you to wonder why the Dome of the Rock is built on top of the Jewish Temple site, and not the other way around, if supposedly the Muslims came first?

Well I'm not really asking why you today would oppose it. I'm asking why they did. They didn't object to the decision of that distant imperial power to give them a state on the way out.

And would it not have been quite a nice thing to do as a way to say sorry for the whole centuries of dhimmitude business?

Frankly lots of the geo political problems of the current age are in part caused by the decisions made at the end of Empire.

No, it's more to do with the billions and billions of dollars in aid and weapons for Egypt from the USA following the Camp David agreement which resulted from the Yom Kippur War.
Open the border= bye bye US assistance.

Israeli are the one taking the land and house of Palestinians, displacing them and creating settlements where they have no right to do so. Not the other way around.

Israeli are the one forcing Palestinians to live in terrible conditions in an open air Prison where they have to ask for permission to live, not the other way around. Look at the map of Israel expansion from 1948 to today.

I don't see any evidence that Palestinians are stealing anything from Israeli. Or voting apartheid laws.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. It's a very complex situation and as always it's the innocent that suffer, the children, the elderly... the attacks on Israel were terrible but I cannot condone the withholding of essential services and supplies ever.

Gaza, West Bank, Israel- it simply not a situation that is solvable currently, my heart goes out to all peaceful people there of all religions and none.

I'm not sure what happened leading up to the attacks, but it seems to have taken Israel by surprise

So again - why are you not putting pressure on Egypt to open the border? Why are there not threads screaming about Egyptian oppression and corruption?

Why does that always get left out when all the blame is put on the one country that Hamas have declared, as their absolute single aim, to wipe off the face of the Earth?

Were there no problems between Jews and Arabs prior to the British getting out of the area? Because that's definitely not what some of us have learned on the other thread. I mean, if there were no problems then why did the Arabs refuse to let the Jews get a state at that time when they were also being offered one?

Did Israeli soldiers ever raped female Palestinian civilians? Paraded their dead bodies through the streets, spitting at them? Cut off Palestinian's heads on video? Kidnapped kids? Because this is what I have seen in the last few days posted by Palestinians themselves.

The very powerful and moving cartoon by Ella Baron in today’s Guardian made me cry. It summed up, without words, the sheer despair and horror of this situation, where there are no winners, and innocent people are the losers.

@pleasehelpwi3

Apologies, I thought you were talking about a shared state being a possibility with the current Hamas and hard-right Israeli governments.

Did you mean to reply to me or was that an accident? Because I don't see a connection between what you wrote and what I asked that other person.

This isn't "collective punishment." It's war, and in war innocent people suffer. If Hamas didn't want the Palestinians to suffer, they shouldn't have started a war. The leaders are well-stocked in their bunkers; they don't care what happens to their people above ground any more than they care what happens to their Israeli hostages.