Have the events of the last couple of days changed your mind on the Israel/Gaza crisis?

[BaMamma]

Not only, but including, the macabre theatre with the coffins of the Bibas babies, Oded Lifshitz, and, as we now know, a currently anonymous Palestinian woman.

The locked coffins with no keys.

The antisemitic poster of Netanyahu as a blood sucking vampire.

The celebrations in Gaza, happy, joyful people surrounding those coffins., children dancing, parents smiling.

The 'mix-up' over Shiri Bibas body.

The discovery that the babies were murdered, not killed in an airstrike.

Does any of that change your mind about the rightness of your position on Israel and Palestine/Gaza?

@LetThereBeLove

It is indeed a shame. The right to peaceful protest is just so important. We all have the right to protest and we have the right to disagree about about our reasons for doing so.

May the ME, the US, the Eu and the UK all come together to support a next day for Gazan’s in a rebuilt Gaza without Hamas.

98% of Palestinians ARE Muslim. 85% in the West Bank and 99% in Gaza.

The facts are appreciated but I’m hoping

You don’t also agree to ethnic cleansing

I think there are lots of genuine posters here. There are people, many who have identified themselves as Jewish who have described their support for Israel and who also have reservations or a moral struggle over the actions of the current government. Who are human beings basically.

But there are some other voices. Who are really nasty with seriously extreme views. I am assuming they are not genuine or they are paid to post here.

No I don't agree with ethnic cleansing. You won't get many people to admit to it though.

Oh okay. The horrific terror attacks that took YEARS in the making are all Netanyahu's fault because he held up a map two weeks prior to the mass savagery.

Hamas, Hamas-affiliated and Gazan civilians on October 7 set all this in motion. What came after is on their hands.

Yes it's very disturbing that some posters think it's perfectly acceptable for the Palestinians to move out but Israel to stay where they are, if it was the other way round we would all be accused of anti semitism

Hardly
His aims were widely known before.

This image just proves it and, if you look at the pp I was responding to, it is one answer about Netanyahu.

Do you think anything carried out on October 7 was justified resistance?

What a ridiculous and completely evidence-free assumption.

It doesn’t work the other way round.

There are ~50 Islamic countries and they happily have possession of Mecca, their spiritual centre.

If Palestinians were accepted into other Islamic countries, they would be living under their desired conditions of Sharia law and a culture that is familiar and religiously acceptable to them.

There are no other Jewish countries, so Israeli Jews do not have that option. Israel is it - if they lose Israel, Jews are left without a religious homeland.

@Wildflowers But you said earlier no one was inherently entitled to the land beneath their feet? So that means Israel isn't either then

It was not only Hamas who took hostages though was it?

There are plenty of videos showing ‘civilians’ including at the kidnap of the Bibas family, invading Israel, taking hostages and slaughtering as they went at both the kibbutz’s and the festival. Then we had civilians following the vehicles with dead Israelis in them, filming, cheering and spitting. I imagine many civilians knew in advance that Oct 7th was happening. They had sweets ready to hand out and of course held hostages in their own homes while torturing, starving, sexually harassing them and using them as slaves (this has been reported by released hostages). Not one civilian took up the offer of a 5 million dollar reward, safe passage from Gaza and new life for EACH hostage released from Gaza. They must know where try were/are held. Gaza is tiny. It’s about a third of the size of London.

So No. it wasn’t ALL Palestinians, but it certainly wasn’t just Hamas.

You do know this is not the first time Israeli hostages have been taken by Palestinians.

Two of the hostages released on Saturday had been held for over 10 years.

The only way the marches would have made any sense was if alongside the calls for ceasefire now, there were chants for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages now.

I don’t think ‘Release the hostages NOW’, ‘Death to Hamas scum’ (instead of ‘Death to Israel’) or ‘Hamas surrender NOW’ alongside Ceasefire NOW at the pro Palestine protest marches was ever chanted was it, certainly not from videos I saw?

Thank you. I think it's unacceptable to suggest that Gazans should have to leave. And very offensive to suggest that's what I think, on no evidence.

Why isnt Ceasefire Now enough

Why not a call for peace alone

Why not allow people to speak ( within the law) as they wish.

We have no rights over what people say. If you go on a March you can call for what you wish but you can’t demand your wishes on others.

Forced displacement is fairly common in war. Most of the world’s refugees are currently displaced by war.

Gaza is unliveable and occupied by barbaric terrorists who have deliberately caused the death of thousands of their civilians and inflicted an extremism ideology on their people. Most people in Gaza never voted for these savage terrorists and they can not free themselves of them. Certainly the 50% of the population who are children didn’t.

Israel is not.

Surely better to move Gazan civilians to safety where they can rebuild their lives and no longer have to live as perpetual refugees as generations before them have?

Anyone who genuinely cares about the lives of Palestinians, especially children, would not think this was a bad thing.

Agree.

This tired insistence that Palestinians are peace loving people held to ransom by Hamas is wearing very very thin.

I strongly suggest everyone watches the BBC doc ‘Israel and Palestinians’ about the events leading up to October 7. There have been years and years of attempts to get Hamas to negotiate and they simply refuse, only making the most absurd of demands (‘we’ll release 1 hostage if you release 1,000’).

Equally, it took huge international effort to ensure Gaza had an election in 2006. Who did they vote for? Hamas.

Every survey shows Palestinians are willing to die for their cause, and they consider their grudge to take precedence over anything. This is a religious struggle for them, not political, and the result of that struggle is an absolutist belief that Islam must conquer and nothing else is acceptable.

The number of posts from Westerners who clearly cannot think outside of their liberal democracy mindset is staggering. ‘Oh but I would want love’n’peace, so surely they do too.’ They’re so naive it’s almost hopeless trying to explain to them

Quote fail, sorry - that was to @Travelodge

Except it their choice to stay in their home or go and
Moving them out against their choice is Ethnic cleansing

No
Of course not!

All aggression against civilians in abhorrent

Maybe the Palestinians themselves might think it's a bad thing to be forcibly removed from their homeland, you know the people who have actually lived there for generations?

That’s what the IDF and their jailors do to Palestinians. And have been for years now.
The Palestinians want to be left alone and not under the control of Israel.
It’s very simple really.

See, I used to believe this. Then after October 7 I realised that the Israelis had to keep an iron grip on those borders because the people running Gaza, and an unspecified additional percentage of the population, in fact want nothing more than to slaughter Israelis en masse in the most brutal ways possible.

It's vile no other word for it

@PhoenixResurrected I am not disagreeing with you- Hamas nor any other Palestinians- should not have taken the hostages. It was an act of cowardice.

We have seen videos of settlers attacking Palestinians and trying to stop aid into Gaza. That wouldn’t mean all Israelis would act similarly? Why think of all 2.5 million Palestinians as one cohesive group?