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?

Plenty of innocent victims buried underneath the rubble which once was Gaza

Weirdly, many of the onlookers yesterday didn’t seem all that bothered.
Several of them looked quite happy and relaxed.

It's literally not a genocide though if you look up that word... it's 2 sides at war. War is bloody, brutal, awful. But it's not a genocide.

Israel are not trying to wipe out an ethnic group. The Gazans are of the Arab ethnic group & Israel simply aren't trying to wipe out Arabs. It is not even remotely comparable to the Holocaust, which is an actual genocide (ongoing by Hamas).

Israel are attacking a nation that have massacred their civilians. We can argue it's not right/ not proportionate etc. but it's literally not a "genocide" unless you entirely redefine the word. Might as well say it's a "banana". It makes no sense at all.

One side winning at a war doesn't make them the bad guys.

2 million people in Gaza, not all of them there yesterday I presume

BaMamma
**
The celebrations in Gaza, happy, joyful people surrounding those coffins., children dancing, parents smiling.
Ordinary Gazan people laughing and celebrating, encouraged by their leaders; I think that's barbaric.

With respect, you can’t judge a nation by a snapshot.

”Children dancing” - if you have children, you know they’ll seek the happy in any situation. Without knowing what on earth it means.

”Ordinary Hazan people laughing” - I imagine that many, many ordinary German people laughed and applauded in the late 1930s because they were frightened not to .

Hamas is despicable. Some members of the Israeli parliament are despicable - its leader most certainly is. I hope that when this terrible period finally comes to an end we will see the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials, with the leaders on both sides being scrutinised for their actions.

Ordinary Israeli and Palestinian citizens can’t be judged by the standards of their leaders.

OP I wouldn't say I've changed my position on the Israel / Palestinian conflict per se... but I've had a shocking realization of how much antisemitism is around and how deeply entrenched it is. I wasn't aware of this at all until very recently. Every day I can't believe what I see on here.

i agree

No, not at all, because I've always blamed Hamas for the attack in October. They took innocent hostages, kept them in appalling conditions, half starved them, refused them medication, and now we know they murdered those little DC in cold blood. Hamas are evil and they need driving out of Palestine. The problem is the majority of Pakistan still support them. Many voted Hamas into power, knowing what they were like. I have never understood why so many people were out in London supporting them. They could have stopped the war at any time by returning those hostages, but they preferred to keep them
It's really sick to keep dead people hostages yet this is the kind of people they are. I can never understand why Jewish people are so universally discriminated against and many hate them.

No.

Well for example... https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israelis-celebrate-killing-palestinian-woman-strike-lebanon. And how can Israel possibly take the high ground when it has killed more than 13,000 Gazan children, razed homes across an entire territory, and held hostage and traumatised an entire population? This is not guaranteeing Israel's security: it is ensuring hate for generations. How can it even be surprising that some of those people in Gaza would cheer the deaths of the tormentors who did this to them? That there is not more hate, not more aggression among the Palestinians, after all of what has been done to them, is what I personally find surprising.

I was on a cruise ship in November a month after the hostages were taken. There was a Jewish family in the restaurant who every night said prayers for the hostages to be released. I am not religious but it moved me and I went and stood with them why they prayed and told them I wished their hostages would be released unharmed. They told me they feared Hamas would murder them all and they'd never be released alive.

How can it even be surprising that some of those people in Gaza would cheer the deaths of the tormentors who did this to them?

Their ‘tormentors’? A baby and a toddler? The children’s mum? An elderly peace activist?

It’s not a football team.

There is death and destruction on both sides. Innocent people, children, dying on both sides.

It definitely can't take the moral high ground I agree, especially when it set out to destroy hamas and failed

The people who think radicalised Palestinians are justified because of the deaths Israel have caused do they also think the terror attacks the UK have faced or will face are justified?

After the Manchester bombing I don't remember anyone making the point about how many children the War on Terror killed.

You would be driven to murdering and torturing known peace protestors understanding to what they thought was your cause of peace and who were highly unlikely to have been Netanyahu supporters?

There were a hell of a lot of supposedly "progressive" people cheering their specific murders ON 7/10 including in the UK proudly calling the actions of those who committed the atrocities against those individuals "resistance". Do you think brutally raping and murdering teenagers at a PEACE FESTIVAL and elderly PEACE ACTIVISTS including those who had been actively helping Palestinians in a kibbutz (you know these aren't bastions of right wing extremism and hate, don't you?) and families can be considered "resistance"?

The only "resistance" it is is to Jews existing. Those who committed it and filmed it, laughing, and those who cheered it do not give the tiniest fuck about peace, and they were not in any way "resisting" Netanyahu or West Bank settlers. They chose the softest targets they could; including some of those who trusted them, and helped them. Those who carried this out, including Gazan citizens, deliberately and gleefully brutally tortured and murdered the people who are the most likely in Israel, which is their homeland as much as it is Palestinians, to have cared about Palestinians and wanted peace.

Those who brutalised, raped and tortured them before killing them and filmed it proudly, laughing, are Jew haters, nothing more. And there is ideology behind that. It is not "resisting" an oppressor, ffs.

Precisely.

Christ, people are naive.

Who they see as the tormentors. As many people see Palestinians as Hamas, so presumably some Gazans see all Israelis as one/the enemy who did this to them. This is how people go to war - dehumanising each other. And after so much killing on such a huge scale, it's frankly surprising we don't see more hatred and aggression.

Of course, but I also haven't seen my home and family blown to smithereens. Who the fuck knows how I'd behave in that situation

@spooooook do you feel the same about terror attacks in the UK?

@Broug "Has anyone seen groups of Israeli citizens dancing with joy at the deaths of Palestinians? Have the Palestinian prisoners been paraded on stage before being released? Have IDF soldiers deliberately killed children with their bare hands?"
Yes, we have seen all of these things. It is all over Instagram. The videos are horrific. Not with their bare hands, they don't need to, but the IDF have shot many Gazan children. The videos are plastered all over Instagram. I've heard radio presenters laughing about babies being killed. So yeah, about the same stuff really. No moral high ground for Israel I'm afraid.

I didn't see anyone on here saying they are justified. Understandable, yes. Although of course in other contexts one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

@BambooBambou so terror attacks in the UK are understandable?

It hasn't changed my stance, because unfortunately it was not a surprise. I know Hamas are a monstrous terrorist organisation, and I have known that for a long time. I have hated Hamas every step of the way for their antisemitism, for their violence, for their cruelty.

I still stand in support of a safe, free Palestine. Perhaps now moreso than ever, because I don't think Hamas will ever be truly defeated until the perceived "need" for their ideology is deconstructed and that requires a state in which Palestinian citizens do not feel reliant on terrorists for defence, for recognition, for their identity as a people. I know that will not be easy. Managing the risks of a two-state-solution is a job I am very glad I will never be responsible for, but I believe it needs to happen.

My thoughts are with the Bibas family, along with all of the hostages and their relatives, the last couple of days they have been at the forefront of my mind. But I can't say that my thoughts are not also with the innocent civilians of Gaza and those they have lost, especially the children.

I may not be religious, but I am praying for the ceasefire to hold up. The hostages need to be returned, and Gazans need to be safe.

What’s the answer then, if even babies are seen as ‘tormentors’? How can there ever be peace?

If people see murdered children as their tormentors and dance around their coffins, those people are monsters.

Although of course in other contexts one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

If you are killing civilian babies & children for political reasons you a terrorist, at least that's what we call those who do it here