“I killed 10 Jews with my own hands. I’m using the dead Jewish woman’s phone to call you now.”

[mushti]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/israel-shows-footage-of-hamas-killings-to-counter-denial-of-atrocities

I feel sick.

I’ve read some of the details. Admittedly perhaps I feel slightly further removed from them because the only videos I have seen were censored and then I have read descriptions of the attacks but I find visualising something based on reading something hard. I relate more to visual media and I have literally seen countless videos on social media from Palestine of dead babies, families digging dead children from the rubble, children with limbs blown off, children sat in hospital shaking from shock, disfigured bodies, children crying over dead parents etc. These harrowing videos keep coming up on my social media even after unfollowing many of the accounts sharing them and it is hard to get the images and the cries from my mind, thankfully no videos of the Hamas attacks have come up on my social media and so perhaps the realities of what happened feels less ‘real’ than what is happening in Palestine. I guess it’s probably normal to feel more effected by something you have seen with your own eyes (even if via video) compared to reading an account or something and so what is happening in Palestine right now just feels overwhelmingly awful, that’s not to say what happened in Israel wasn’t awful but it is devastating to know that the attacks on Palestine aren’t over and may not be over for months and to know thousands more children are likely to die in awful circumstances.

Have you actually read what was done? They weren't just shot with a rifle. Frankly if I or one of my family members had to die I've rather they were killed in a bombing raid than suffer what was done to many on 7 Oct.

I would too - a thousand times over. To be raped until your pelvis shatters, to have your eyes gouged out, your digits hacked off, to be burned alive. To see your children brutally killed right in front of you.

This may be deleted as it's graphic but so be it. People are minimising what took place, they won't name it. How can you compare that to an airstrike?

However, I also think the ongoing retaliation of Israel against the people of Gaza is equally barbaric.
Can you explain how it's equally barbaric? Are you calculating this in terms of numbers?

I don’t think the killing of innocents is any less barbaric when you do it from the comfort of a military base by dropping a bomb on a refugee camp compared to shooting a civilian at close range with a sniper rifle.
Is that what you think happened, that civilians were shot at closer range with sniper rifles?
Do you wonder why a refugee camp might be targeted by Israel, despite knowing that this will turn the world against them?
Do you know how Hamas operate?

and also accept that in hindsight it probably isn’t reasonable to try and compare suffering and that both situations must feel unbearable.

So maybe don't?

@MolkosTeenageAngst if you search for the footage of the 7 October attacks, there is still plenty out there on twitter. They started streaming onto my feed soon after the attacks as I follow many GC (gender critical) accounts and most picked up on the Shani Louk footage quite quickly.

And the most sickening part of the footage of her wasn't even her lifeless body, with her limbs broken and at horryfing angles. It was the happy, laughing men, jeering at that broken body, spitting on her, legs draped across her, treating her like a hunting trophy. That was the most sickening part.

If you have to see a video of something on social media to appreciate how horrible it is then that's a bit sad.

No because Hamas deliberately embed themselves in civilian areas. Its virtually impossible for Israel to target military only targets. This has always been Hamas's strategy. The number of their own rockets which fail shows how little they value the lives of palestinians, their own people.

What, in your view is a justified response to the terrorist acts perpetrated by Hamas? Have you watched the footage, read the reports? They are acts of complete barbarity - rape torture, gouging out eyes, beheading, tying up & burning alive, livestreaming on social media to their families. What is the proportionate response to such depravity?

The other thing that people seem to forget in their discussion of numbers and proportion is that this is not just a war against Israel but me and you and the Western world, secularism and everything we stand for. The things that Hamas did to those Jewish women, children, babies, they would do to you too, with complete glee and satisfaction, and they would laugh to see you suffer and enjoy every moment torturing your children. That is the cold, hard truth.

I’m not on twitter, only instagram, so perhaps that is why I have only seen footage of the Palestinian air raids. I can imagine seeing that footage was harrowing.

However, I don’t think the fact some of the Hamas members acted so barbarically makes the videos of babies and children with limbs blown off that are coming out from the other side any less harrowing. The acts of Hamas won’t be undone or made right by killing innocent civilians in Palestine. I’ll also add I have seen some awful videos made by young members of the Israeli army mocking the dead children in Palestine being shared on social media. I think there are issues on both sides where the other side are made out to be less than human and that there is a lack of compassion among many on both sides for the suffering of people on the other. Obviously Hamas don’t see Israeli citizens as human which is awful, but then the Israeli minister of defence described Gazans as ‘human animals’ and showed no empathy towards civilians. I have seen videos of Israeli settlers in the West Bank kill Palestinians without a care and showing no remorse as they kill civilians and drive families from their homes. That’s not to excuse the acts of Hamas, they were barbaric, but I have seen videos to suggest the dehumanising of the people on the other side is a problem in Israel as well as Palestine.

@MolkosTeenageAngst I’m not on any of that but reading the detail on here of 7th October is enough to know how extreme, barbaric and monstrous those acts were by Hamas

If you go back to @SomeCatFromJapan you’ll understand what happened

The 4000 Palestinians were living amongst Hamas- Hamas live in the houses, have rocket launchers amidst houses, next to schools and hospitals, in office blocks next to Mosques, they exist in tunnels that thread through Gaza under all the buildings like a giant web- where they stockpile weapons, train gunmen, stockpile food, water, medicine, have medics. They live in the houses of Palestinians- using them as protection. They don't care about Palestinians, they use them to whip up anti-Jewish hatred. The Palestinians are caught- living in the horror that is Gaza usually, never mind now, forced to support Hamas, scared not to, grateful for any protection they get, terrified of the consequences of it all.

Hamas are evil- they don't want Gaza. They want rid of Jews, completely. There is nothing Israel could offer that would stop them. They should be obliterated.

I think most of them, the honest ones I mean, are genuinely oblivious to that. The propaganda is that it's simply an understandable resistance movement that has unfortunately gone wrong. That it is related only to Israel and Israeli actions since 1948. So they try to approach this as neutral, even-handed observers.

The other thing I've seen them do is sort of downplay Hamas' aims as a kind of bravado and to claim that because they're a small group, they're irrelevant as a threat to anyone else. This is an effort to limit the conversation to Hamas as if it were some kind of unique group in the world and with no powerful and wealthy sponsors.

@EllaDisenchanted

Be safe my friend 💐. I cannot begin to imagine how terrifying it is xx

Israel can't do a surgical strike against Hamas. Hamas has intermingled itself among the Palestinian population as a deliberate strategy.

The 85 year old woman who has been released has said that as she was being driven through Gaza, strapped to a motorbike, some of the people were beating her with sticks as she passed and she actually felt safer once she was taken into the tunnels. Clearly some of the ordinary Palestinians would be happy to lynch an elderly woman.

The BBC interviewed a woman from Blackpool who moved to Gaza with her young children to live with her husband's family and to learn Arabic. Now, Blackpool has a reputation as a dump, but would you really take your children to live in the world's largest open-air prison, where they will be brutally oppressed and occupied, if you didn't have to?

@EsmaCannonball I saw that and she is by far not the only one. I think people are very naive that say that. Gaza had lots of very wealthy enclaves.

Of course some ordinary Palestinians would be happy to kill Israelis. Just as many ordinary Israelis are happy to see Palestinians killed. Both sides live under rulers who demonise the other side and blame the other side for all hardships. Neither Israel or Gaza could really exist without significant numbers of the population having hatred for the other side and without believing that theirs is the superior nation destined to own the homeland. I don’t expect the majority of Palestinians or Israelis to be impartial on this. I don’t blame Palestinians, who live under apartheid, are displaced by Israeli settlers and who recurrently face attacks from Israel leading to the deaths of Palestinian children for hating Israel. I don’t blame Israelis who live with the threat of terror from organisations such as Hamas, have rockets fired at their country and are brought up with Zionist messages telling them that the land Israel occupies is their birthright for wanting to occupy Palestine. I understand how the views or ordinary people can be indoctrinated by government propaganda and the effects of living in conflict.

I don’t really understand how people living outside of either country can stand by and watch the war crimes committed by both sides and try to justify them. I understand that Hamas hides in civilian areas but I don’t believe that makes air strikes okay, I don’t believe that it is okay to kill thousands of civilians in the hope of sometimes also killing a few Hamas terrorists. I also I notice my post about Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the killing of ordinary Palestinians by Israelis in an area not ruled by Hamas was the only posts I made which have been completely ignored. Hamas are obviously a terrorist organisation Israel are not innocent in this and life is not much better for Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, where Hamas do not rule, than in Gaza. Is it any wonder that some Palestinian citizens hate Israelis considering how they are treated under occupation? I would hate them too! And that’s not to say I don’t think it’s no wonder some Israelis hate Palestinians after what Hamas have done. It’s understandable, but it doesn’t mean the rest of the world should join either side in their hate or be supporting the war crimes that have been, and continue to be, carried out.

@MolkosTeenageAngst this is where I must disagree. The acts carried out during the 7 October attacks were not justifiable. At all. There should be no "but" after their condemnation.

If Hamas operatives had broken through the fence and attacked military positions it would be understandable but butchering babies and going on rape rampages just isn't something anyone that isn't subhuman scum would ever do.

Apparently it wasn't even just Hamas doing it, but hundreds and possibly thousands of Gazan civilians, as confirmed today by Dr Qanta Ahmed after visiting the sites and watching the evidence firsthand (see 01:05 in this).
s

Sorry, please can you show me which part of my post justified the acts carried out by Hamas?

@MolkosTeenageAngst I am going to be honest now and say I have loved ones in the West Bank so I am refraining from commenting.

Part of the reason I have been so vocal is that I feel western society has come out on mass to 'free Palestine' and chant ' from the river to the sea' and they have no comprehension what they are saying. This is not just a Palestine/ Israel issue it's a democracy and freedom versus terrorism for me.

Palestinians are anything but free under Hamas. That won't be granted any further afield if they are allowed to continue. Then what happens? What happens when Iran gets involved? This has to be resolved for all our sakes.

Sorry, please can you show me which part of my post justified the acts carried out by Hamas?

You didn't justify them but you tried to contextualise them. I'm saying to you that the extreme levels of brutality should defy any attempt at contextualising.

The part where you talked about how well they treat their captives came pretty damn close.

Can I also add to the fact that Hamas don't care about their people. On the news today they said that hospitals in Gaza don't have fuel but Hamas still has fuel to fire rockets. The numbers of dead Hamas are quoting include their fighters and the numbers killed by Hamas rockets misfiring. There is no verification of what Hamas say, western media laps it up like gullible idiots

Well that’s where we have to disagree! I think it’s impossible to look at any act of war/ terrorism/ brutality or whatever you want to call it without looking at the wider context. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Surely the only way to properly and objectively discuss anything is to discuss it within the historical, political etc context in which it happened? If you want to discuss the attacks without the wider context then obviously that is your right to do, but it means the discussion will be completely subjective and so that’s where I will bow out I think.

Some of those Hamas supporters have been brought up conditioned and groomed from a young age (like teenage boys brain washed into Isis fighters) to think like this. Anti jewish passages in the Koran don't help like this one

"Say: “People of the Book, do you blame us for any other cause than that we believe in God, and what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down before, and that most of you are ungodly?…”

Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols — they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way. (5:64-65)
"

The Bible is better " There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."