We will dance again

[namechange11112222]

I have just watched this documentary and it broke my heart.
Hamas are revolting monsters, I can't call them animals because animals wouldn't even do that.

I do wonder how the younger, very outspoken generation would:

1. Feel if that was a festival they went to and watched their friends get slaughtered
2. Have said if there were social media at the time of WW2

Would we have been viewed in the same way Israel has been? The causalities of war were far greater.

I do not support the way in which Benjamin Netanyahu is going about this war at all but I 100% agree with Israel's right to defend itself.

They seem to be the only war I can think of where a country being attacked from all sides, from countries who do want mass extermination of Jewish people (do the younger generation still get taught about the holocaust anymore) who are repeatedly being told to stand down by the west.

To remind the younger generation of previous war casualties (for anyone with the argument that this war is completely out of proportion):

WW1

• UK - 885,000 deaths
• Germany - over 2 million deaths

WW2 - is this proportionate?

• 1.5 - 3 million deaths in Germany
• 210,000 dead - Nuclear bombs into Japan

• 70,000 innocent dead - England

Iraq War

• 179 English soldiers
• 4,492 US soldiers
• 186 - 210,000 Iraqi civilians

No civilian should ever be harmed in war, it is evil however it is inevitable.
How many Jewish people should be killed for Israel to be supported in defending themselves.
So the "the death toll is completely out of proportion" argument doesn't stand.

Yes, we can go back to the time before the bible and argue who has the right to the land. But this current war was started by Hamas and Hezbollah the following day.

However, please don't try to say they want mass extermination of Jewish people just because of the land.
People spitting on a naked woman's dead body when brought back into Gaza, footage filmed by Hamas.

Lets call this what it is pure racism, just like the Nazi's, who killed 6 million Jewish people.

I wasn’t referencing the troubles. My family date back in Ireland for centuries. I’m Irish. I’m catholic. I’m really not referencing the troubles, I’m talking about things way closer to home. Easter rising for one. The “famine” that didn’t exist. The persecution of catholics for centuries.

I apologise to everyone who has mentioned the Manchester attack.

I purposely didn’t include any terrorist attacks, however on reflection I should have absolutely included the Manchester attack as it was reference to a festival in my OP.

I will never condone the loss of civilian lives, they should have gone in with a much more tactical “feet on the ground approach” but the mass bombings have been far too much. It must be terrifying for the Palestinian people to live through.

I also don’t condone people walking around London with banners saying “from the river to the sea”, as that equates to mass extinction of all the people living in Israel.
People calling for all Jewish people to be exterminated have no place living in a western society.

There was someone further up the thread who said their actions are due to years of persecution, yet others saying restraint is the answer. Both of these cannot be true.
Nothing, absolutely nothing will ever justify (in my mind) what hamas did that day, and never will.

However, I do appreciate all the views on this thread. I believe debate is a healthy thing to be part of.

So... nothing justifies the atrocities committed on 7th October, yet any and every act of violence done by Israel is justified by the actions of Palestine. Israel has "right to defend itself", but Palestine... what? Should roll over and accept the extermination of itself? It's a cop out to respond to the flattening of Gaza and the west bank with "well I condemn the loss of ANY innocent lives". Israel is doing nothing but annihilating innocent lives.

And for the record, I have no problems with the Jewish people. Jewish faith has some beautiful things to say about the value of life: "each person is a world, a universe." I can see nothing of that sentiment in Israel's actions. The videos and messages being sent between IDF soldiers that have been leaked are atrocious, nightmarish and steeped in violence and hatred. Israel shouldn't be conflated with Jewishness - to do so is to do a disservice to Jews.

OP, get your head out of your arse. Nothing justifies what Israel is currently doing (and what they were doing before 7/10) in Palestine.

Is this the first time you've taken notice of that region? I'm sceptical about the Hamas attack and taking it as face value. But before the attack, there was mass murder and the ignoring of human rights by Israel. People in this country and globally have been campaigning in support of the Palestinians for years.

There’s a whole missing piece of education in your posts, @namechange11112222

People calling for all Jewish people to be exterminated have no place living in a western society.

Yet it’s ok for Netanyahu to reference Amalek, for the Israeli military to state their intention to “erase Gaza from the face of the earth” and to state “there will be no electricity, no water, only hell”. ?

and as for your “not many safe places left”- many?! ANY. You seem to have no clue what the landscape of Gaza is if you think for a minute telling the civilians to move away from bomb threats is anything more than a cruel facade.

the aid centres, the hospitals and the shelters have been bombed. The Israelis have left nothing safe there.

The IRA hid among the Irish civilians, too. Maybe we should have dealt with The Troubles by the wholesale bombing of Dublin because who cares how many civilians you kill as long as you get a terrorist or two, right?

Aren't you forgetting that hamas is the elected government of Gaza? How do you think the British would have reacted if the IRA were in fact the government of Ireland and launched an attack on them? How do you think any country would react in that situation? Why is Israel held to a different standard?

Aren't you forgetting that hamas is the elected government of Gaza?
Remind me again when the Palestinians had a free election.

Ah yes, that free and unrestricted country, Palestine. There's a reason than Gaza and the West Bank are known as occupied territories - long before last year.

Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestine. I don't see how that can be an acceptable way for Israel to "defend itself". Why would anyone want to live on that land anyway, aside from Palestinians returning to reclaim it as their homes? Who else would actually want to build new homes and sell them to foreign buyers? Oh yeah, Israel.

What happened in Israel on 7th October was utterly horrific and it is deeply distressing to hear about the atrocities that were perpetrated by Hamas, and the unimaginable suffering of those poor, innocent people who were so unjustly targeted. It's heartbreaking.

But I don't think it's possible to justify the massive loss of life of innocent civilians as a response to this. It absolutely isn't a proportionate response, and the deaths of every single innocent life in Gaza and in Lebanon is every bit as heartbreaking as what happened in Israel last October. Frankly I'm amazed that anyone is still trying to justify it as self defence as it has gone way beyond that. It also won't make Israel any safer in the longer term - it will only create a new generation of Palestinians and others who hate Israel and see it as a threat that needs to be eliminated in order to ensure their own safety.

And if you genuinely think it's reasonable for Israel to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon as a form of self defence, would you think it equally reasonable if similar numbers were killed in Israel by innocent communities in Gaza and Lebanon seeking to defend themselves from what will undoubtedly be perceived by them as an unprovoked Israeli attack? Where does it end?

I'm honestly not sure why you would bring the Iraq war in as if that somehow changes the equation. Many of us marched against that war at the time, and many more believed that war crimes had been committed by those responsible. Likewise, I don't think many people who have visited Hiroshima or Nagasaki would argue that the use of the atomic bombs was justifiable.

Israel does have a right to self defence, of course. But true self defence would have involved a much more targeted approach that the indiscriminate attacks that we have seen. I can't get my head around how anyone can think that what's happening right now is a reasonable response, unless they see the victim as somehow being subhuman to the extent that their lives just don't count in the same way. I don't understand it.

I hate these threads because all the CIME queen bees buzz onto main threads with the same old same old

OP. the documentary was incredibly moving and showed that Hamas are lower than the low

Eventually Israel will be the maker of it's own undoing while the West sits back totally spineless watching the disaster unfold.

I watched it. Really important documentary. Up until that moment I hadn’t really had a chance to think and reflect properly on what happened as it was so quickly cast aside by further death and atrocity.

Good is the wrong word but I have felt it’s been ‘right’ that I have had the chance to reflect on the atrocity the past few days and I could have in mind those who were killed, who fought back, who sacrificed themselves and those who saved others.

Some incredible acts of kindness, selflessness and bravery. That sadly have not had as much recognition and reflection as they should. Because it’s been overshadowed. And here we are again.

That documentary was about them being killed. And here you are making it about killing others.

Sad. And you think younger generations are the problem. Mind boggling.

Nothing, absolutely nothing will ever justify (in my mind) what hamas did that day, and never will.

I completely agree with this. I don't dispute that the Palestinians have suffered terribly over many years, but regardless of what the state of Israel may have done, those innocent people that experienced the atrocities at the festival and in the kibbutzes on October 7th were not responsible for any of it. No matter how much you support the Palestinian cause, it simply is not possible to justify what Hamas did.

But I feel exactly the same about the killing of innocent civilisns in Gaza and Lebanon. No matter what those Hamas terrorists did on October 7th, the innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon were not responsible for any of it, and the suffering that they are now enduring as a result of Israel's retaliation simply cannot be justified.

What rubbish, you should educate yourself in the history going back to 1948. At no point has Israel denied the existence of Palestine. There were many attempts to create a 2 state solution but all offers were rejected by the Palestinians even when the split of the land was not in Israel’s favour.

This! I've said this before on another thread but after WW1 the allies drew up the treaty of Versailles which as we know punished Germany severely. German people were suffering on an unimaginable scale.

Then the inevitable happened and they backed the one person who offered to get them out of that hole and it obviously led to WW2 and the holocaust. It genuinely amazes me that nothing has been learned from this at all. When we treat our fellow human beings like shit and they will give their support to anyone who is supporting them - even if on an global level it is clearly the wrong choice.

Now obviously October the 7th was an absolute atrocity but it's very disingenuous to suggest that it all started that day.

Equally the op asking if people even learn about the holocaust these days. Of course people do but I'm not 100% sure of the relevance because it wasn't Palestinians who caused the holocaust. If we're saying the holocaust is one of the reasons why there's a need for a Jewish homeland (and actually I 100% understand why after centuries of antisemitism that this was wanted) then a) somebody needs to decide how many lives we're willing to sacrifice to achieve that and b) What the parameters of that homeland are because random Americans turning up and putting an Arab grandma out of her family home under right to return isn't really in the spirit of the idea I don't think.

The Nakba was an attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestine and the Israeli government have called the invasion the second Nakba. They've also openly talked about plans to drive the Palestinians into Egypt and used genocidal language to describe obliterating Gaza. Their actions speak for themselves.

Hahahahaha. Still on about “genocide”? I’m sure Mumsent will let it slide though because they never seem to do anything much about propaganda. You believe that then love, go ahead, and that’s what the problem is with the world.
But hey Ho, no Jews no news.

Yikes. I've heard it all now.