I understand why they are so set on destroying Hamas

[FebruaryOnMyMind]

Having seen the stories of the women and girls raped at the festival (reportedly over their dead friends bodies) and the people taken off as hostage; I understand why Israel want to destroy Hamas. They have said that Hamas militants are dead men. They have said that they will go after them. The worst killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust and their 9/11 with death toll of over 1300 people.

The story of the women at the Music and Peace festival is here -

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12623023/Israeli-girls-raped-friends-bodies-Hamas-terrorists-carried-second-Holocaust-British-relatives-reveal-condemn-celebrated-atrocities-Gaza-Iran-London.html

Yet some people celebrated when the killings of Jewish people (they were from many different countries) at the festival was announced.

I feel sadness for everything going on in the middle east and for all the people who are innocent are are dying. Terrorists need to be stopped.

I think EasterIssland was being ironic, given the clip. Of course we can all see that killing is wrong on both sides. But I can't help wondering how I would feel as a civilian living in the Gaza Strip who had suffered years and years of devastating restrictions and blockades, in response to Hamas who I probably didn't vote for but whose cause I can understand. Kidnap and murder are somehow more emotive than bombardment and yet Hamas doesn't have the military capability to employ the same strategies as Israel so their options are kind of limited if they want to cause destruction. But Amnesty International is clear regarding the years of abuses and illegal treatment of those in the Gaza strip, which was alikened to an open prison, so the hatred that would have built up over the years just increases the likelihood of young men going to join Hamas. Any which way, none of this is Christian, Jewish or Muslim behaviour and it's horrific for anyone living through it.

BBC also saying children killed after strike hits convoy on safe route

Kidnap and murder are somehow more emotive than bombardment and yet Hamas doesn't have the military capability to employ the same strategies as Israel so their options are kind of limited if they want to cause destruction.

If you think the targeted kidnap, murder, violent rape and sodomy of women, children and civilians is acceptable if you haven't got the resources to attack military/strategic targets, then you must think it's ok to attack military/strategic targets even if this results in unintentional civilian deaths.

I'm not saying I think it's OK, but I'm not the one justifying Hamas.

No one is justifying any of it, but do you not think it's important to understand what motivates the violence in order to figure out a way forward? It's also important to remember that allegations of sexsexual assault and rape have been made by both sides
https://www.cair.com/cair_in_the_news/israeli-guards-rape-palestinian-women/

I can't stand it when people justify something and then immediately claim nobody is justifying it.

Unfortunately, this is the quagmire you enter once you start saying that targeting civilians is, on some level, ok (you do remember Hamas also employed rape and forced sodomy as weapons too?). If it's OK to target civilians because you haven't got the support to target the military, then it's got to be OK to target the military. Besides, another option has always been available to them: stop terrorising Israel and you'll have your own state. It's maddening that it could actually all be over tomorrow if they wanted it to be.

We all know Hamas' motives so there's really no reason to suggest that somehow muddies the waters. If targeting civilians is in some way justifiable, then targeting the military is always justifiable.

Think about it and just don't go there if you don't actually think that path is right.

https://forward.com/news/564318/sexual-assault-rape-proof-hamas-attack-israel-gaza/

I understand that it's difficult to think about what it means when you justify targeting civilians for rape, abduction and murder. I understand that it's far more palatable to reach for disingenuous whataboutery designed to imply, incorrectly, that Israel has a routine and official tactic of raping Palestinian women. And to ignore the fact that Hamas could end this whole horror tomorrow if it wanted to (it doesn't want to).

But please try. Even if your frantic whataboutery were correct, you'd still be arguing that it's ok to use rape and sodomy of civilians as a war weapon if the other side does it too. In other words, you'd be saying there are times when rape is justified. There's absolutely no escaping that. If Israel were routinely using rape as a weapon, that would be inexcusable, and it would not become excusable if Hamas did it in turn.

If you just don't ever start justifying attacks and rapes that deliberately target civilians, you don't have to pretzel and twist yourself like this.

Hmm, too late to edit, but I should clarify: if Israel ever used rape as a war weapon, that would be inexcusable (rape is obviously always inexcusable), and it would not make Hamas rape of Israeli women more excusable.

Honestly, this is the kind of thing you end up defending once you start saying that targeting civilians is sometimes OK. You're saying that there are times when it's sort of all right to sodomise women so they bleed madly and drag them to cars by their hair, to abduct people, to murder children, to open fire in a music festival. Pretzel and whatabout and deflect all you like; that is what you are saying. And they are never OK. Not even if the other side did do it first.

And if targeting civilians is OK when you can't target military, how can targeting military not be OK?

And to present it as some sort of viable alternative when the terrorists doing it have always had the option instead to get round the table and say "OK, we will accept your country and stop attacking it, and in return we want an independent state"....

Accept that targeting civilians is never justifiable and you don't have to worry about how you'll get round all the logical conclusions to this. It actually gives more weight to any criticism of Netanyahu because you've got protecting civilians as your top and indisputable priority.

This whole thread started with someone saying they understand why Israel wants Hamas destroyed. No one is naive enough to think Israel are trying to ensure civilians aren't harmed, especially with the collective punishment which includes being starved and deprived of basic survival needs. But when someone says they can understand why Hamas want to harm Isaelis there's a huge and cry. Therein lies the prejudice, I feel. But we definitely all agree it is inexcusable to rape kill starve kidnap or otherwise harm civilians. Only at this stage there isn't enough evidence to say this latest wave of violence has included systematic rape, and I've not seen mentioned sodomy anywhere.

@Perfect28 What on earth are you on about? This is what I said in response to the thread title of “I understand why they are so set on destroying Hamas”:

“I hope they are obliterated from the earth. Having read about all the atrocities they have committed on babies, children, women and elderly people, they are evil personified.”

No idea how you could interpret that as saying I want the entire population of Gaza obliterated. What is actually wrong with you?

@Thegreatprocrastinator001 I think you are naive if you think many people understand the cause of hammas and would truly vote them in again in a free and fair election?.. ARMED and in possession of all the relevant information?..

Why do you think any gazian would be behind them using aid and water pipes for rockets??..

Why would anyone support them causing trouble just when they had been able to cross into isreal again for work?.
The sheer brutality against women and the repression, why would anyone support this if they knew there was another way?

There are numerous past cases. One is Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian community organizer and political activist. Arrested in 1969, “she underwent twenty-five days of nonstop night-and-day interrogation, during which she was beaten, raped, and witnessed the torture of other prisoners, including the administration of electric shocks to the genitalia”

Khader, Nehad. 2017. “Rasmea Odeh: The Case of an Indomitable Woman.” Journal of Palestine Studies 46 (4): 62–74. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2017.46.4.62

I didn't say they would be voted in again so please don't misquote me, and I don't think their strategies are justified either. I'm saying that you have to understand what is contributing to such hatred and to do that you have to also consider the international law violations and human rights violations also committed, on a large scale, by Israel. Amnesty International has numerous reports on the subject. But of course, atrocities on both sides worsen the conflict and a fair and diplomatic solution for both sides would be better for everyone, with an agreement by both sides to desist from war crimes."causing trouble"? You don't think that any of the well documented violations by Israel over the years would be perceived as "causing trouble"? Your emotive language such as "sheer brutality" should be applied to both sides, including the wilful starvation of a population.

Thanks for this... I think it goes to illustrate that brutality has sadly been present on both sides. I just don't feel that here in the West we hear both sides equally...

Thegreatprocrastinator001

please elaborate ?
im curious (as a white Protestant) I can see both sides relatively clearly

I’m equally angry with both to be honest

although as Isreal score higher in the Maslow hierarchy of needs , I’m kind of hoping they calm down a bit and seek compromise first

I don’t think Palestine is even able after so much suffering

swimsong

I believe that post 100%
and I’ve also seen and wish I hadn’t the video of the Israeli girls

this debate is so frustrating to me as both sides are brutal

BBC news

'It's indescribable, next level sick, piles of Israeli bodies, 80% tortured, beheaded, babies burnt.

No wonder Israel wish to destroy a terrorist group. They are sick animals. They don't just kill they inflicted torture and extreme pain. Yet people in the UK CHEER that disgusting group

@1jan2020

People don't read what you say. You say hamas and they hear Palestinian people. Hamas don't want peace. Some fail to understand this simple fact. They use their own people, they don't care.

Wow just read over 700 Palestinian children have been murdered by the IDF, thats over a hundred a day, not including the children that could be trapped under the rubble with no one to dig them out.

What would the headlines be if 700 Jewish children were killed by Hamas?

There hasn't even been a ground invasion yet.

Link please?

Link please... watch bbc news!

I've not seen anyone cheer any of the violence but please be balanced and stop ignoring the atrocities being committed by a supposedly legitimate Israeli government despite Amnesty International long having highlighted the human rights abuses and international law violations committed by them, as well as the illegal collective punishment being inflicted on Palestinians despite, as you correctly point out,the Palestinian people not being the same as Hamas. Horror on both sides, monsters on both sides committing disgusting acts of violence, and the only winners are the arms companies and those politicians who are in bed with them

There is no evidence of 700 children dying at all. Honestly this is a war on propaganda if nothing else.

Gaza officials say 2600 have been killed in total, 700 of them being children .would be a high % but given the very low average age of the pop. not impossible.

However, the Israelis didn't set out to kill civilians, they attack Hamas positions, which tend to be in heavily populated areas, so there is no equivalence in the actions of Hamas and those of the IDF.

Had Hamas not attacked on the Oct 7th, all 2600 Palestinians would still be alive, the hospitals wouldn't be running out of fuel and drugs and 500,000 people wouldn't have left northern Gaza. ... not too mention the 1400 Israelis who really were murdered by Hamas.

There needs to be a 2 state solution but Hamas have put back that possibility by decades.

They have drones and can strike with precision, I don't believe civilians weren't targeted.

They have told families to leave and then killed them as they were leaving.