To think Hamas have given Israel the excuse they were looking for?

[MistyMooPup]

Not all of Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will obliterate Hamas. But undoubtedly hundred if not thousands of civilians will now be killed.

I’m not sure what Hamas thought the end game if this would be? What have the Iranians convinced them of? This was a sophisticated operation, outside help was given for definite.

I’m not sure it’s possible to rationalise with dehumanised terrorists, neither am I sure what the end game will be, but I just can’t understand what Hamas expected if not a total war/strikes from Israel in retaliation.

Mm. I think AbraKedvera is illustrating what antisemitism looks like, satirically

@anonymousamy

Oh so now suddenly the UN figures which you were claiming were completely made up figments of my imagination now DO actually exist? Wonderful. Welcome to reality.

As for your new line - multiple sources suggest around 800- 1,000 people on BOTH SIDES have been killed in the last week (the Palestinian death toll from just the last 48 hours of bombardments). So, ok, let’s update the estimate to approximately 7,400 Palestinian deaths and 1300 Israeli deaths since 2008. Now please give it a rest as you’re making yourself look ridiculous.

@AbraKedavra I think you’ll find that actually most Israelis aren’t European. Those exiled from Arab countries such as Egypt Syria Lebanon Yemen Iran Iraq Morocco and Algeria as well as India and Ethiopia actually make up a large proportion of the population but whatever.

@bombastix Ah, fair do's.

To be honest, I think, given the last few days and the absolute atrocities carried out by Hamas, it is wrong to imply that Israel has been looking for an excuse in the past. Previously I felt that their response to rocket attacks was heavy handed and my sympathy lay with the ordinary citizens of Palestine. However, the last few days have shown me that their heavy handedness and overly defensive stance in the past was most probably justified as they clearly knew what they were dealing with. And Hamas have shown themselves to be the most vile group that I have ever come across. And unfortunately they were voted in by Palestinians (although who knows how democratic the process was). Hamas has beheaded 40 babies, children, women, the elderly and men according to the press today. Never in my life have I read anything so utterly despicable and heartless. Israel now need to go in hard with Hamas. Egypt doesn't like Hamas either, so that's one good thing at least. However Hezbollah are waiting in the wings too, along with other islamic parties and the Palestine Liberation Party who currently have a foothold in the West Bank and Iran is firmly behind this attack. If Israel were to oust Hamas, and assuming that it's not replaced with a different terrorist group, they could then allow the palastinians more freedoms again.

I have to say that the atrocities committed over the last few days fully justify Israel going in hard. Inevitably there will be Palestinian casualties, although Israel has given warnings and are not directly targeting citizens.

Perhaps if Hamas stopped firing rockets from schools, hospitals and mosques and using civilians as human shields the Israelis wouldn't retaliate by destroying the rockets launch sites? Perhaps if Hamas has built bomb shelters for the Palestinian people instead of tunnels for smuggled arms in, then there would be less civilians injured. Perhaps if Hamas didn't carry out suicide attacks in Israel, there wouldn't be a need for a bloody great wall to keep the Israeli people (of all religions) safe from such attacks. Perhaps if Hamas ceased its stated aim of destroying Israel and killing all Jews, and instead actually worked for a 2 state solution, then progress may be made. They are fundamentalist Jihadi terrorists. The responsibility for all this sits with Hamas.

Grow up @Lonesomefetter, I am allowed to express sympathy for both sides. I've actually sponsored a Palestinian home rebuilding charity in the past. What have you done apart from express pro terrorism outrage?

I see my post has been deleted. For the record I was just paraphrasing a bunch of common Jew-hating tropes, tongue-in-cheek style.

It's pretty obvious from my posts on the other thread on whose side I am and where my sympathies lie.

To be direct instead, what kind of utter horseshit is the OP's thesis? That Israel was 'waiting for an excuse'? Those evil Jews Zionists with blood dripping from their long-nailed fingers?

Well historically, Arab governments haven’t provided much help from a humanitarian point of view. The Palestinians have remained unpopular in large parts of the Arab world. When Egypt was in control of Gaza, from 1949 into 1967, Gaza Arabs were rarely allowed to travel into Egypt. After the first Gulf war in 1991, Kuwait expelled 250,000 Palestinians. Only Jordan allows Palestinians to become citizens. Elsewhere in the Arab world they are not permitted to become citizens.

To date, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been a superbly effective scapegoat and distraction for the Arab masses, who rank very poorly in the UN’s human development index in relation to the rest of the world. So from a strategic point of view, it doesn’t really benefit them to help out at all.

@Oioicaptain
I have to say that the atrocities committed over the last few days fully justify Israel going in hard. Inevitably there will be Palestinian casualties, although Israel has given warnings and are not directly targeting citizens

Israel has killed 900 Palestinans already in 48 hours. Drone footage shows literally dozens of buildings in Gaza City completely flattened, including schools and hospitals. But I’m sure the fact that the deaths from Israeli bins were accidental will be of some comfort to the mothers, brothers, children killed and those left behind. I agree that Israel will be justified in inflicting 20x as much death on Palestine as it suffers in return, as it has done the past couple of decades, all while illegally bulldozing homes and stealing Palestinian land.

JustAMinutePleass

Do you honestly believe that the Israelis have been going around raping women and beheading babies in Gaza? Such hateful lies. My sympathy has previously been with ordinary Palestinians, but we are way past that now. Israel has always defended itself, albeit in a heavy handed and disproportionate way. But there has never been evidence of targeted and deliberate attacks on innocent citizens.

Hamas have literally thrown all Palestinians under the bus. Whereas many people previously had some sympathy with the Palestinian cause, that sympathy has all but been wiped out, apart from a few apologists and conspiracy nutters. The only option open to Israel is to target and bomb every nook and cranny which is home to these savages, and if that means some civilian lives lost, then that’s how it has to be. War is always brutal.

@AbraKedavra - yes it was clear what you intended by it.

And I do not like the implicit gotcha in this OP either.

@soddingspiderseason

Perhaps if Israel stopped flouting dozens of UN Resolutions for decade upon decade, stopped illegally stealing Palestinian land, stopped bulldozing homes (which it does more in times of relative peace than times of high conflict), stopped forcing Palestians into lives of abject poverty in their own nation. Perhaps if they did that, those bad Palestinians would stop feeling aggrieved at a brutal illegal occupation and stop throwing rocks and making those homemade rockets which are then met with overwhelming force.

palestinians do not equal hamas.
people are trying to wrap their head around what’s going on and you’re making a personal attack on a a view. Why not try educating or sharing your views?

i and yes the conflict was the basis of my thesis. It is really sad that people simplify an incredibly complicated situation.

Yes, and if Israel stopped doing all the above, Hamas wouldn’t have the need to rape, kidnap, murder. But of course we know that what they’re doing isn’t with the best interests of the Palestinians at heart, but because they’re evil. Your attempts at justifying the actions of these savages is truly appalling..

Can someone explain why half of Gazians are children? Where are the adults? Is it terrorism, lack of healthcare?

It's a normal pattern for a developing country

@anotherside

"Perhaps if Israel stopped flouting dozens of UN Resolutions for decade upon decade, stopped illegally stealing Palestinian land, stopped bulldozing homes (which it does more in times of relative peace than times of high conflict), stopped forcing Palestians into lives of abject poverty in their own nation. Perhaps if they did that, those bad Palestinians would stop feeling aggrieved at a brutal illegal occupation and stop throwing rocks and making those homemade rockets which are then met with overwhelming force."

None of that, absolutely none of that, excuses what Hamas did. There are no excuses, no justifications for the type of Jihadi extremist brutality that they undertook. The problem that you and all other apologists for these evil monsters have, is that the world has now seen the type of existential hatred that Israel has been dealing with. Hamas is responsible for what is now happening in Gaza. The time for sympathy for terrorists is over.

@Pollyputhekettleon Hamas are the government in Gaza. Unfortunately they care little for their own people and will throw them under the bus without a second thought. Over and over again these militant terrorist groups blow up hundreds of thousands of their own so called brothers and sisters in countries across the world. Terrorism is their oxygen. It's all they have.
Even if Israel did not exist (NOT going to happen), they would still continue their murderous rampages across the world. Life is cheap - they have a different mindset..a different mentality which has often been instilled in them from birth.
Read up on Shia and Sunni Muslims and the hatred they have for each other and the wars across the world this hatred has inflamed...the terrorist attacks...the deaths..
The same cannot be said of the Israelis.

Israel has always defended itself, albeit in a heavy handed and disproportionate way. But there has never been evidence of targeted and deliberate attacks on innocent citizens.

The four boys from the same family targeted on the beach and killed, and two other children injured? Playing football.

Simply not true. The Israeli and international press reports violence against Palestinians in great detail (look up Haaretz Israeli newspaper, they also have an English version, and +972 online news source, and you'll find more detail than you even find in the Guardian etc). An Israeli NGO, 'Breaking the Silence', is one of the most comprehensive sources for information about human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories.

The behaviour of Israeli soldiers and civilians against Palestinians in the occupied territories often ranges from mediocre to appalling. There have been incidents when Israeli soldiers took vengeance against Palestinians. In 2016 a soldier called Elor Azaria shot and killed a Palestinian terrorist who had previously stabbed a soldier, but who was lying on the floor injured and didn't pose a threat.

BUT (and here a huge but...) Do you know what happened to him? He was thrown out of the army, went to trial and received a prison sentence because that is a war crime. And the reason I remember his name is that the entire Israeli population was shocked and appalled.

Jewish-Israeli terrorists burned the home of the Dawabshe family in Duma. Nobody handed out sweets. Those Jewish-Israeli terrorists are sitting in Israeli jail and they are called terrorists.

Jewish-Israeli extremist settlers rioted and burned cars and buildings in the Palestinian town of Huwara in the West Bank a few months ago as revenge for a terrorist attack in the same location in which two Israelis driving through lost their lives. One Palestinian died and a number were injured. This was condemned by the Israeli prime minister and the president. Over a thousand Jewish Israelis (including me) donated money to rebuild Huwara, organised by a religious Jewish Israeli politician (Yaya Fink). When we demonstrate against Netanyahu's government, demonstrators still shout at the Israeli police "Where were you in Huwara?", accusing them of policing demonstrations and not protecting Palestinians.

So no, these are not Israeli military tactics.

By the way, there are now no Palestinian Jews living under Palestinian rule (I'll leave you to figure out why...)

Nobody has a need to rape.
there is never a need to massacre festival goers and rape the surviving women next to their friends’ corpses!

the murder, torture and kidnapping of civilians was also in no way justified. Or are you saying that there was a need to decapitate babies?!

You're minimising what has been done by Hamas, why? Nobody is going to listen to what you have to say.

The people minimising the deranged slaughter and rape of defenceless people can never be reasoned with. They are bigoted and full of self righteous hatred, much the same as we have seen with ISIS sympathisers.

Equally Hamas cannot be reasoned with, because they're full of self righteous hatred and enjoy wallowing in that thick state of ignorance and loathing of Jewish people, women and anyone else that is defenceless including Palestinians. How do I know that Hamas loathe anyone defenceless, not just their arch enemy, the Jews? They abuse their own people including Palestinian children, using them as human shields, and misappropriating funds that has been generously given to them to improve the lives of Palestinians including healthcare and education for their children.

Hamas terrorists have no humanity and only exist to please themselves and live out their brutal and perverted way of life. Some people enjoy displaying solidarity with murderers, abusers and rapists as we have seen on many threads in recent days. Don't make the mistake to assume everyone is intelligent, has critical thinking skills, is educated about history and able to see past their narrow and entrenched views or indeed past their unconscious bias towards Israelis and Jewish people. They're followers of an ideology they don't even fully understand.