To think it’s turning into genocide in real time

[Everythingnotsavedwillbelost73]

Just seen this on the news- how can this be right? It genuinely is starting to feel like genocide.

What Hamas did was beyond appalling. But this is also beyond appalling too. Its trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Over 500 kids have already died. Human rights watch have verified that Israel uses white phosphorus against Gaza, which is a war crime.

And everyone is just watching it happen.

“The Israeli army has just ordered the entire civilian population of Gaza to evacuate south within 24 hours. The UN says that amounts to 1.1 million people& applies to 100s of 1000s sheltered in UN buildings & their staff. This is impossible without “devastating human consequences”
Leaving aside the international law implications, I cannot emphasise enough how impossible this kind of movement of people would be. I have spent a lot of time in Gaza it is one of the most densely populated places on earth, there are pretty much only 2 roads south - along the coast and down the centre - they aren’t wide or well paved. I spoke to the gaza health ministry yesterday who said every hospital was overflowing. How would the wounded and elderly be transported? There is a massive fuel shortage how would vehicles drive? There would be no where for 1.1 million to go even if they got there. Rafah crossing to Egypt is not operational because of Israeli airstrikes.”

This is how Genocide is classified;
U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"

The actions of both Israel & Hamas fit this description too. It’s just fucking beyond terrible. And it feels like some world leaders are just cheering from the sidelines 😪

What is anti Semitic is that you do not believe in the human rights of the Israeli people.

100,000 Jews displaced from their homes. Not a single word from the UN.

Not a word about the hostages kidnapped from their homes.

This is happening now even as we pump water into Gaza, and even as they fire the water pipes you paid for throug the UN. Hamas dug then up and machined into rockets to kill our families.

The only human rights that seem to count to you are the human rights of terrorists to be protected from natural consequences.

The 100,000 displaced Israelis will be going back.

The 1 million or more displaced Palestinians will have nothing to go back to.

So regarding displacement it’s not equivalent.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said Israel has no interest in occupying Gaza.

The Palestinian people will return after Hamas has been wiped out.

Don't spread conspiracy theories, please do check your facts, and please treat Jewish rights as human rights.

Spare me your indignation. I wrote about the state of Israel not Jewish people.

Hamas are a known threat, Mossad have admitted their failures. Israel has the upper hand by any metric you care to mention and it failed it's citizens. That is not victim blaming, it's stating the facts.

The innocent civilians of Israel and Gaza have paid the price for those failures.

I have managed to refer to both civilian populations respectfully but you refer to the people of Gaza as ghouls. I would use stronger words to describe Hamas but I am not about to stop distinguishing between them and the ordinary people of Gaza. If that offends you then tough.

Perhaps the distance gives me some objectivity not available to those directly involved, you may think that means I'm not qualified to comment but the world is watching an already desperate situation escalate and we know it will only end in further suffering and loss of life.

The place is being bombed to bits ffs

The prospect of peace terrifies kind, gentle people. What nonsense.

The argument is always that an innocent 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are being held unwilling captive by 40 000 violent militant Hamas fighters.

Some people in Gaza no way support Hamas, however - Hamas; a terrorist organisation, has been allowed to flourish with the support of the majority of the Gaza adult population (according to several polls conducted in 2021).

Hamas do not care about their own people or how they will suffer, in the ultimate aim of destroying the state of Israel through jihad (their manifesto).

They do not want a peaceful Palestine, they want to destroy Israel. Two completely separate agendas.

Whilst Hamas continues it's week long terrorist attack on Israel from within Gaza, holding an estimated 150 Israeli hostages - it is inevitable that there is going to be heavy collateral damage. Hamas started this, fully knowing that this would be the case.

If ISIS was operating in tunnels beneath my neighbourhood, with my support, I would fully expect to be caught up in the retaliatory action should ISIS commit a terrorist attack.

A few recent posters have had their posts deleted because they contained racism and hate speech.

Whole threads are being hidden and taken down because a few posters are not holding the boundaries of civil debate. Sensible posts are lost as a result and the community cannot see them.

Please stay civil and respect one another here.

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What do you think the rockets are doing in Israel? #JewsDontCount

North Gaza is being strategically bombed in order to destroy Hamas' tunnel network they built under civilian homes and infrastructure ahead of the ground incursion. See map courtesy of BBC.

Hamas use these tunnels to store weapons, hide in and even to use as a bottleneck against Israeli military which would be like shooting fish in a barrel for Hamas. Hamas also use tunnels as an escape route as well as an entry point into Israel.

Any tunnels still operational after that will be destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces during ground incursion by throwing explosives into them.

As far as National Security perspective goes, you can argue that it was a mistake for Israel to withdraw from Gaza in 2005.

Reuters explains what happened:

"Security in the area around Rafah is also of concern to Egypt because Sinai has been the site of an Islamist insurgency that flared a decade ago. Hamas, which has run the Gaza Strip since 2007, shares the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement outlawed in Egypt."

And:

"Hamas' deadly attack on southern Israel six days ago - unprecedented for the group in its planning and scale - was a devastating demonstration of the military expertise it has gained since seizing control of Gaza in 2007....

Necessity is the mother of invention," said Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, adding that the group had long drawn on money and training from Iran and Iranian regional proxies like Lebanon's Hezbollah, while bolstering its own forces in Gaza.

Difficulties in importing weapons meant that over the past nine years "we developed our capabilities and are able to manufacture locally", said Baraka, who is based in Lebanon....

In the 2008 Gaza war, Hamas rockets had a maximum range of 40 km (25 miles), but that had risen to 230 km (142 miles) by the 2021 conflict, he added.

After the most recent Gaza war in 2021, Hamas and an affiliated group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad managed to retain 40% of their missile inventories, a key target of the Israelis, according to the U.S. based non-profit Jewish Institute for National Security of America, keeping roughly 11,750 missiles compared with 23,000 before the conflict."

www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bombardments-hit-area-gaza-sinai-border-crossing-gaza-officials-2023-10-10/

So, as a result of Israel Defense Force pulling out of Gaza in 2005, Hamas ended up in power just two years later. And increasingly improved their weapons capabilities whilst increasing their total membership from 10,000 in 1990 to 40,000 in 2023.

It's quite clear that Israeli withdrawal from Gaza made things worse from a National Security perspective.

Not better.

By now, it should be clear that it's NOT an option to allow Hamas' terrorist infrastructure in Gaza to remain intact.

What alternatives do you suggest that will deal with the security threat Hamas has continued to pose Israel?

They've become more sophisticated and massively improved their weapons capabilities since Israel withdrew in 2005.

Iran has Israel surrounded by its proxies, Palestinian terrorist groups, all ready to attack according to the Ayatollah.

You haven't said a word about the ongoing violations of the human rights of Jewish people, not even when invited to do so. It's pretty offensive to ignore the human rights of Jewish hostages and Jewish victims of rocket attacks on civilians.

I wholeheartedly echo your sentiment.

I think the intention is to try to ensure certain posts disappear via thread deletion.

Certain posters would be quite happy if threads disappeared. It's about controlling the narrative for them. They suddenly all started posting the exact same disinformation.
It's not just about racism and hate speech. It's also about certain posters calling for actions that breach international law. Is supporting breaching international law really 'in the spirit of the site' or 'supportive of parents'? No, it isn't.
There's no excuse for those posts, or those posters, to be allowed to remain on MN. It isn't about a difference of opinion. It's about calling for vulnerable people to be killed, ignoring international law and the UN, and ignoring human rights. MN isn't supposed to be a place for that.
And before the usual whataboutery responses - both Hamas and Israel have ignored international law, committed human rights abuses and are edging towards (if not already done so) committed war crimes. Any posts trying to justify any of those should be deleted and the posters banned imo.

Brave UN workers seen driving fuel tankers into Gaza with no ceasefire by Hamas or IDF

One million displaced people now in southern Gaza

@AUserNameIsNot sorry but you are totally blinded by your own views. I don’t think anything anyone said would be enough. And it’s the problem with what’s happening in Gaza too- nothing apart from the total destruction of Gaza will be enough for Israel.

You imply antisemitism despite me saying I support both Jewish and Palestinian rights. But I won’t stop condemning the israeli government. They don’t have the right to wipe out palestine. And because I am not saying it in the language you think I should, you scream antisemite.

Some posts deleted were due to containing a line of hate speech or racism and that broke the talk guidelines - because that is unacceptable.

Both ‘sides’ had posts deleted.

Some of the comments that broke the guidelines were within posts that had made points in acceptable way in some of the sentences.

But they contained clearly racist and hate speech in other sentences.

So the whole post got deleted.

In other threads this has resulted in threads being deleted entirely.

Emotional regulation and proof reading / reviewing posts before sending - self editing would help.

UN fuel tankers now only seen moving towards Gaza

Egypt and Israel now blaming each other for the Rafah crossing not opening

And so it goes on

Hiding hate speech in an otherwise reasonable post is deliberate. They hope if the rest is reasonable then the hate speech and racism seem reasonable too.
I do think if MN won't ban these posters then they should just have a blanket ban on all threads about the current conflict.