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.

Your one experience is just that.

But it's not just that one experience.
It's interesting how any negative experiences along these lines are sort of swept away as 'it's just that one time' or 'fake news' or 'didn't happen'.
Just because it's an inconvenient truth, does not make it unreal.
I guess you dont question any data coming from the Israel government?

It was your one experience. I have visited Israel countless times and never experienced this.

I think it's just that - an inconvenient truth. I really hope people do question data from the government, some of the propaganda and outright lies which have been released and subsequently shown to be untrue shocked me, and I'm usually wary of what comes from any government, UK included.

But did it make sense to rehome and resettle Palestininans to make room for so many people and lose their own? Why did someone else have to lose their homeland?

And a very large proportion of Israelis were likewise displaced from surrounding countries.

I still don't understand why people supporting Palestinians in Gaza wouldn't fervently support the removal of Hamas. Imagine living under a bunch of Islamist thugs who periodically pick fights with your better armed neighbour.
Don't they deserve a leadership that will actually seek a pathway to peace and growth? One that isn't an Iranian proxy?

Absolutely.

I despise Hamas more than the IDF because Hamas doesn’t even care about its own people.

The IDF - like every other army in the world- has some individual nasty bastards who need to be held accountable…. But at least they protect their own…unlike Hamas .

I have genuinely not seen anyone not want Hamas removed though? Where have you seen that? What people are saying is that innocent Palestinians civilians aren't expendable in the pursuit of that.

I find the association of Hamas and the Palestinian people as "their own" part of the reason why people are watching thousands of people die without being more outraged. Innocent Palestinians do not belong to Hamas - they are people with no agency trapped and most of them raised from birth in what is effectively a prison with a terrorist organisation while they're also being bombed and shot at by an army that you're giving prompts to for "protecting their own" and the lazy association of them as "Hamas' people" is exactly the kind of attitude enabling the world to look away from how unjust the situation is.

Actually they weren't Israelis. They were all Jews who had lived for thousands of years alongside the Arab populations of Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc which, until the end of the First World War, was part of the Ottoman Empire.

Is there a resistance against Hamas in Gaza? All I have seen is normal citizens keeping hostages captive, cheering in the streets and spitting on dead bodies but surely they're must be some people resisting and protesting even if it puts their lives at risk. If not they are hamas's people.

What you see isn't the majority of normal citizens. Are the Israelis who were all over tiktok posting videos mocking Gazans for not having access to fresh water, or singing, laughing and celebrating the destruction of Gaza representative of Israel as a whole?

I have thought about your question regarding resisting before, and without having been in that situation, I would say no, I would not openly resist. I would not support Hamas, but I would also not be brave/stupid enough to openly protest against the men holding automatic weapons with the power to also hurt and kill my children for my actions. I would likely quietly avoid them and hope that one day they were ousted.

I think they're a bit busy being fleeing from place to place for over a year fleeing bombs and trying not to die from starvation and disease to be protesting right now. The whole discussion of Hamas regarding the treatment of innocent Palestinians is moot anyway when they're treated the same way in the territories where there is no Hamas. It's almost like deflecting the discussion about the disregard for Palestinian lives is the point.

Yes that is for the past year. But what about before that since 2006? If the Palestinians are not going to usurp Hamas who is (without civilian casualties)? To me Hamas are like the Nazis and Palestinians are the Germans who we killed in their millions. And yes I would find it hard to resist people that would kill me too but someone's got to just like we had to in the war. Hamas have received billions of aid and could have built a great country, but opted to build tunnels and be consumed with hatred.

Just like we had to what? Please do tell us a situation where we were in the same situation as the people of Palestine.

You're once again ignoring the facts though and pretending that if Palestinians had or could rise up and defeat Hamas themselves that they would be safe from the brutality of the IDF and they wouldn't. That's why they aren't safe from the IDF in the territories not governed by Hamas either. Do you ever ask yourself why or bother to research why the Israeli government funded Hamas? Perhaps you should educate yourself before you post something as ignorant as reducing this situation to Nazi Germany comparison 🤨

Well quite.

@PollyPaintsFlowers, your list is the best example of selective editing to suit the narrative.

I am not getting into the debate of who is right or wrong, but the undermining of what happened to individuals around 1948 is very sad.

If your country was suddenly invaded, and you were told to leave everything behind and come back to your home, would you really blindly believe them? Wouldn't it be a bit naive to do so at the time? It's easy to look at the situation in retrospective.

Also, you seem to have completely omitted the Zionist terrorist groups (Irgun) which although small, were growing with their aggressive attacks, ie King David attack.

Again, it's easy to look at it in retrospective and conclude that they were really harmless. The reality is that locals must have been petrified that they could take over, take revenge for what happened to the Jews and not care who were the innocent victims.

I'm pretty sure I would have fled the not shortly after to protect my family. It must be hard not to build resentment when you leave everything behind and come back to find your house had been destroyed and replaced, or when you are still to scared to come back and have to accept a new standard of living much below what you were used to through no fault of yours.

This thread reminds me how easy it is to blame, belittle, justify violence in the name of whatever suits, from one's comfy sofa!

Yeah, why isn't there a revolution in Gaza against Hamas? Then Israel can be satisfied that there are no more enemies and everybody can live happy ever after within peace and complete trust!

The reality is that we are talking about people just like us, people whose priority is to protect and support those they love. If that means doing nothing to do so, that's what they do.

How many parents here take the risk to see your children killed because you decided to rebel? When ultimately, you have absolutely no trust that anyone else will then take care of you?

It really makes me sick to read strangers judging those people on the basis that they are nothing like them and that ultimately, their problems are so far removed from their own lives and experience.

Too many people who have lost all sense of true empathy.

@vivainsomnia or maybe people in Gaza aren't rising up against Hamas because they support them. They were celebrating in the streets on October 7th as hostages were being transported into Gaza, one guy was kissing the ground 😵‍💫

@MonaLisaDoesntSmile when I was in Israel I was harassed while I was laying on the beach by Palestinian kids who ran up and started kicking sand on me. Maybe that's a common occurrence and the police were just looking out for you? Not saying my scenario is correct but it's a possibility based on my experience

I do believed it happened. However I think that other groups of people on both sides quite welcome this conflict, even if they didn't fund/help plan etc. It did momentarily shift the support from the Palestinians. You seem to see the Palestinians as ants, who should be eradicated. As said, this didn't start on 7/10/23. It goes back decades. You conveniently ignore the previous behaviour of Isreal.

Just watched the channel 4 documentary One Day in October. Even old Palestinians with walking sticks were coming into Israel to loot.

@Ponoka7 it goes back further than decades. Arabs were massacring Jewish villages throughout the Ottoman Empire. Non-Muslims were prevented from bearing arms and couldn't even defend themselves