Nearly 5000 now dead, mostly women and children. Sickening.

[flashbac]

At what point will it stop? Why are the Palestinians seen as vermin? Ethnic cleansing is what this is.

The difficulty is that Hamas want the end of Israel and Jews and nothing less, and have powerful external funders and directors. In those circumstances it seems a bit pointless to say ‘I don’t know, but this isn’t an acceptable way to stop your nation and your people being destroyed by racist homicidal maniacs’.

The more i see of Israel the more I am unconvinced that they too don't have their own fair share of racist, homicidal maniacs. Some of the things Israeli politicians have felt able to come out and say are breath taking. It would never happen where I live that a politician of all people would say something as offensive as 'Gazan children brought this on themselves'. As far as I can tell she hasn't been forced to resign over these comments which would indicate that they are pretty wildly held beliefs. A significant amount of Israelis believe Arabs are 'primitive'. A poll from 2021 showed that 'large swathes of Israeli youths hate Arabs'. The more I read, the more I see, it looks more and more like there are 2 of them in it when it comes to hatred and murderous intent. Let's not forget Israel have killed far more Palestinians than the other way around even before this all kicked off again.

I'm not denying that many Palestinian people may feel the way you say they do but it seems pretty obvious that the one thing both have in common is racism and murderous intent. I think that this needs to be more widely acknowledged.

Inhumane corrupt evil terrorists killed 1400 Israeli men, women and children. In response the modern democratic state of Israel kill 5000 men, women and children and bomb, starve, dehydrate and terrify hundreds of thousands more innocent people. It's grim.

*My opinion. Hamas were expecting to do a lil disruptive incursion into Israel, 7/10.

Due to the ridiculousness of Netanyahu's political ambition, Israel had taken its eye off the ball.

Undertrained, ill-disciplined young Palestinian men ran amok. Hamas weren't expecting their level of cruelty and butchery.*

I'm not convinced that's really the case, although it has been said that some non-Hamas followed and apparently were involved in some of it. However Hamas all had bodycams and livestreamed or later uploaded a lot of videos of what they did so they were extremely well organised. I think they're trying something of an "it wasn't meant to be that bad" excuse.

Incidentally due to the levels of denial from some quarters about what happened on that day, on Monday the Israeli govt will screen for foreign journalists with very strong stomachs the unedited footage of Hamas’ atrocities in the October 7 Massacre, as captured by its own body cams. It's not something I'd want to view that's for sure

Well the Israeli government has a massive problem of being racist to the African Jews.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html

We are all collectively responsible for every child killed, maimed , orphaned , damaged by terror of bombs, by constant smoke , deprivation of painkillers, medical help, water, food , shelter , safe space, compassion . For every single child and baby damaged aggressively and relentlessly physically, psychologically and spiritually right now in front of our eyes.
All of us are compartmentalizing what is going on. But we are still responsible.
Look on MN trending topics and you will see compartmentalizing in action. Good women standing by and talking about the weather.

Sorry but I don't agree with any of this - Mumsnet is a parenting site where one can discuss breastfeeding, nappies, - and even the weather. It's not a site for student style political activism and sloganeering- involving the the elected government of another country

And if PP want to compartmentalise the hideousness of all this for their own welfare - well that's their own business not yours or anyone elses

I hope I'm not being too harsh you are clearly passionate and desperate to do something useful beyond donating to charity etc

Every child is our child.
How are the breastfeeding mothers of babies which are terrorised right now supposed to produce milk for their babies with the bombs exploding all around, no clean water to drink , no food or medicines, the stress causing huge amounts of stress hormones to enter into the breast milk?

This interests me too - apparently the WHO/medical aid agencies believe that the biggest threat to breastfeeding in Gaza atm is dehydration and of course once the milk dries up there is no baby milk [there's probably some stuck in those aid lorries in Egypt?] and babies die. My friend who had her first baby in N Africa tells me that babies are breastfed by other relatives being passed one to another for feeding and care - I don't know if that would be culturally acceptable in Gaza to keep these babies alive?

Desperate times

My opinion. Hamas were expecting to do a lil disruptive incursion into Israel, 7/10

The barbaric assault on Israel was 2 years of meticulous planning involving meetings with other terror organisations abroad and training of fighters overseas etc - nothing in the live footage i've seen suggests it was a 'lil incursion' gone wrong - particularly the footage of their arrival at the music festival

Due to the ridiculousness of Netanyahu's political ambition, Israel had taken its eye off the ball.

As I understand it there was both an over-reliance on the hi-tech wall surveillance etc thwarted by Hamas maintaining rigid radio silence and Israel was conned by Hamas into believing that they were quietly getting on with governing Gaza

Much as I loath him - I don't think any kind of victim-blaming is okay

Undertrained, ill-disciplined young Palestinian men ran amok. Hamas weren't expecting their level of cruelty and butchery.

There was meticulous planning and training as above. I too have heard Hamas blame other non Hamas individuals for the worst of the atrocities - might be true but equally might be a pathetic excuse The same level of sadism hadn't featured previously?

It also just gets like this once wine o'clock arrives. There are much more civilized conversations earlier in the day, while that crew are sleeping off the hangovers.

Such sneering sarcasm.
You think Gazan children deserve to be slaughtered because they are poor.

You have misinterpreted my comment completely - try reading it again in the context of the thread

Then apologise to me

No sneering

And I certainly don't believe children in Gaza deserve to die

I don't agree with all that but I also don't disagree.

The problem is that the west has used this justification of 'collateral damage' in the past to justify deaths of civilians.

This has never been accepted by many as being proportional to the threat. Huge numbers of civilians were killed in the Iraq war. This was sanitised for a western audience. Many felt it was essentially racist.

This time, we have Israel flattening whole districts whilst saying the attacks are targeted and with intelligence. Keeping in mind that it was apparently a massive intelligence failure which allowed Hamas massacre in the first place. It's a position which simply isn't credible.

The sanitation of war crimes leaves everyone more vulnerable to more violence.

We are presented with stories of beheaded babies and whole families burnt to death by Hamas. We get told it's medieval and barbaric. But we don't have conversations about what happens to civilians hit by vacuum bombs or trapped alive under buildings. How is one more humane and civilised than the other?

All it does is legitimise and justify more killing.

And so the cycle gets worse not better.

You can't kill people but you can't kill an idea.

I think there would have been more condemnation of eg Iraq than there already was except that as you say, reports were sanitised.

With social media things are different. Lots of lies and propaganda on all sides but also verifiable reports. Now non-military people can see what a “bombing of a district” with “collateral casualties” really means.

The victims are just like us!

Over the last 20 years Israel has massacred thousands of innocent Palestinian children, women and men. While Hamas have massacred a small fraction of innocent Israelis.

The massacres of innocent people cannot be justified, wether Israeli or Palestinian

Someone up thread said that 1400 were killed on 7 Oct and is Israel supposed to take it. (Paraphrased)

Well lets count how many Palestinians have been killed since the first Nakba? Are they supposed to just take it? Or lie down and say heres my land?

Since 7 October more than 5000 Palestinians have been killed. Is that not enough for Israel? Or is 10,000 enough? And then what? Do you want the Palestinians to lie down and take that too?

Just as every single Israeli child feels pain and fear so do the Palestinians. The difference is the 2 million or so Palestinians don’t have the luxury of being evacuated to other places. Dual nationals in Israel left. Dual nationals in Gaza are still there. People visiting families are still there.

I think you will find people are just incredulous that posters are completely ignoring a whole history of death, suffering and destruction.

I think some of us just have to accept people like you exist and believe wiping out a whole group of humans is actually justified. Trust me absolutely nothing you say is civilised.

Or many of them are. There are violent criminals in every society and always will be. You just try not to encourage, sanction or legitimise them.

I can actually understand the thinking of many Israelis. They live in chronic fear, under constant threat of attack and they’re trapped there in a way as I assume they can’t amble into Gaza or Lebanon on a day trip? They only leave Israel on a plane? They are brought up seeing their neighbours as violent and dangerous. Not without justification, as we’ve seen from
October 7 which was horrific. So they react with further fear and anger and violence, which engenders more anger and violence and the cycle continues until each side thinks of the other with pure hatred and as less than human.

I’ve read on Mumsnet that many American and European Jews only stay for a short time and then return to the US or Europe. The Israelis who stay are from Russia or other parts of the ME where they feel it’s not safe for Jewish people to live. So that’s a group of Israelis who I can only imagine feel further trapped and angry and isolated from everyone else.

Thats my perception from reading and listening. Maybe it’s wrong. But if it’s true, there has to be some way of breaking this cycle that doesn’t involve breeding ever more hatred and making the Israelis feel ever more trapped and fearful.

That’s without thinking of the current slaughter of thousands of innocent children going on in Gaza and what it all might lead to if it spreads.

I don’t know the answer at all. But bigger and more weapons surely isn’t it. Things are getting very out of control.

I know. One death is one too many.

They took the land from what was Palestine in 1948 and renamed it Israel, with the help of the UK and USA. They have pushed Palestinians into small enclaves of land and have controlled everything going and coming out of them since then.
The Zionists have created Hamas by doing this, and now they are using them as an excuse to wipe out the population of Gaza, next it will be the West Bank ( the IDF have already bombed it a few days ago).

Waking up to more stories of death and destruction over night, and now they're saying this will go on for months.
Somebody asked me what I think should happen and I think a ceasefire for a start. I would also give the Palestinians in Gaza a chance to have someone other than Hamas as their advocates. I can only imagine how angry Palestinians must feel about what what was done in their name and the price they are paying for it. But I don't think that is what the Israeli state wants, it wants the threat of Hamas to be destroyed in a violent and bloody way. The irony of all of this being that their brutality has insured that Israel is now in MORE danger than it was before. What do you think the memory of this will do to the millions of people there? It result in more and more hatred and more and more killing.

For those who don't know, the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans lost WW1 and the French and British were administering the area after that and had to decide what to do with it. In line with the idea that nations should have self-determination, they decide to create nation-states out of what was called the Palestine Mandate. The French gave a state to the Christians in Lebanon and the British intended to give one to the Jews on their territory. The Arabs were also being offered states. There had, of course, always been Jews and Christians living there.

The Arabs of the area repeatedly refused to agree to either the Christians or the Jews being given their own state. In 1938 they even refused to give the Jews a mere 500 square miles. They wanted them to continue living as minorities under majority Arab muslim rule. This is despite the fact that both the native Christians and Jews of the area had been forced to live as dhimmis, second class citizens, for centuries under the religious supremacist system imposed following the Islamic conquest. That system was only formally abolished about 1860, when the Ottomans were coerced by Europeans into doing so.

The reason for the repeated refusal to let the Jews have a state is that the Arabs did not believe that you can/should voluntarily cede land conquered by Islam to non-muslims, and least of all to your former dhimmis. Qatar, which funds Hamas, and other Islamic states, retain second class citizenship for non-muslims because they continue to view them as inferior.

As the Arabs had made clear that they were never going to permit the Jews sovereignty over any part of what they viewed as their land, the Jews decided to declare independence anyway. They were immediately attacked by all their Arabs neighbours but they won. At some point in all this the UN, not the UK and US, officially gave the Jews their state.

Violence against innocent people is not actually a normal and automatic response to suffering violence. Do you believe all abused children will inevitably grow up to be abusers themselves? Are you genuinely unaware that many groups in history have suffered, been ethnically cleansed, massacred, oppressed, persecuted, and have not responded with terrorism?