Hamas has launched a major attack on Israel

Cmaier said:
The source is the ”Palestinian health authority,” which is lying.
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I did read an article on how their main purpose is propaganda.

It's kind of like how Citizens United makes some people go "At the very least it must be about citizens." It isn't.
 
Chew Toy McCoy said:
I did read an article on how their main purpose is propaganda.

It's kind of like how Citizens United makes some people go "At the very least it must be about citizens." It isn't.
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I read a story by the Associated Press comparing numbers of deaths in previous wars in Gaza reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health, and the United Nations, determined independently.

They differed by 1.6%, 1.5%, and 4%. The differences were attributed to the difficulty in collecting and ascertaining/verifying information from families, multiple hospitals, doctors, the Red Crescent, etc who are often working under extremely trying conditions.

Is the above absolute proof or corroboration? Of course not. But when one considers claims by the IAF of 6,000 bombs dropped during the first six days of the current war, and more attacks occurring up until this point in time (including the 400 Israeli air strikes over the last 24 hours), coupled with daily photos and video news coverage of the massive destruction, the number 10,022 doesn't feel far fetched.
 
Huntn said:
Really Alli? So you think it’s worked out wonderfully for Israel? My point has not been invalidated. Israel has faced war and conflict from its neighbors since its creation. It does not matter if they started in the Middle East millennium/centuries before, post WWII, they (100k) suddenly immigrated into the area from Europe taking land from Palestinians, with help from the UN. This is indisputed.
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It is disputed as it is overly simplified. The majority of Jews in Israel at its founding were of middle eastern origin, not European. Hundreds of thousands were expelled from Arab lands to the extent that there are only handfuls left in those countries. Most discussion about "ethnic cleansing" fail to even mention this. What of the losses they incurred? Of course some came from Europe. Land was initially purchased from the Arabs - there was no Israeli army and they were not in any position to "take" anything but the Arabs didn't need any future excuses about occupation or settlements to attack many historically Jewish villages years before the partition and after the partition, which they rejected, Arab countries attacked the new nation leading to many refugees fleeing the land. An unfortunate result of a war they started and lost.

While Jews came into the area that is now Israel, hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Egypt, Syria etc. entered in the 1930's and 1940's to work for the British and stayed there. It's estimated that about half the current population of Gaza was due to this immigration during the British Mandate. No one ever claims that they "took" land from the natives. Instead they are viewed as Palestinians and the Jews are viewed as colonizers. I guess if you are Arab you can't be an ethnic cleanser or a colonizer, just a victim.

For about 20 years before the Six Day War in 1967, the West Bank was under the control of Jordan and Gaza was under the control of Egypt. The Arabs had the means and opportunity to establish a Palestinian state but they didn't. Why not? My opinion - the Arabs use the Palestinians as convenient pawns against Israel. And now, Hamas and their ilk are also not interested in any "two state" solution, for fanatical religious reasons.
 
Huntn said:
Gaza is a mess, a huge tragedy, it is Hamas’s fault, but until I see some some indication that Israel has the slightest concern about Palestinian collateral damage, I will be critical of Israel. There are “tunnels under there” is not an excuse imo to level entire sections of Gaza. Give a short notice, expect civilians to flee immediately, and if they don’t, they can’t, it’s fuck’m, besides, “they are Palestinians and it was Palestinians that attacked us so they brought it on themselves. 🔥

I’ve been asked by blanket Israel supporters, here andvelsewhere, what other option is there, ie basically kill any Palestinians in their sights? Level all of Gaza, cut off food, water, and humanitarian aid, bomb refugee camps, blow up ambulances, and not give a fuck about what these people do in response, just kill’m, problem solved, right? It’s basically the convenient, kill’m all approach. I won’t ever support this, nore will I ever feel guilty for pushing moderation. And just because the blanket Israel supporters have convinced themselves this is the only way, it certainly is the convenient method, but I don’t believe it’s the only way.

My job is not to speculate about tactics for Israel could use, but I do know the optics of indiscriminately slaughtering Palestinians is such a terrible optic, if they want to cement Arab hate against them in the region, to ensure decades more conflict directed at them, then they are doing an outstanding job of making a bloody bed for themselves, and it’s impossible for me to push anything other than moderation, vs kill’m all.

I am against Hamas, and although I support Israel’s right to exist, based on my study of history, I regarded the establishment of a Jewish State in the middle of Palestine as a mistake, as the lasting mistake, in hindsight, reinforcing by decades of conflict that have followed. Israel was not created by indigenous Middle East Jews. It was 100k European Jews that were plopped down in the middle of Palestine, and it’s been conflict ever since. Historically, it has to be regarded as a bad choice.
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"Kill any Palestinians in their sights" is an inciteful, outright misrepresentation of the situation and you know it.

So your job is not to speculate about tactics Israel could use? Maybe because you know there is no alternative except to do nothing.

"Israel was not created by indigenous Middle East Jews" is a historically false statement. As I pointed out elsewhere the majority of Jews at Israel's founding were of Middle East background. Hundreds of thousands were expelled from Arab lands, from places where they had lived for hundreds of years. All this moralizing about the Palestinians and you either don't know that Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands or it's just not convenient for your arguments. And as I also pointed out in another post, the majority of Gazans trace back to immigrants from Egypt, Syria and other Arab lands during the time of British rule. These are considered Palestinian but the Jews are considered colonizers. Got it.
 
However many people have been killed in Gaza is too many. Unfortunately, with Hamas controlling the narrative, we may never know the exact number. I don’t believe anyone wants the fighting to continue, but why are all the protests focusing on Israel participating in a ceasefire, when no one is asking the same of Hamas?

The worst part is, neither the leaders of Hamas, nor the Netanyahu administration care about anything but their own agenda. Neither care about innocent civilians, nor the hostages.
 
Alli said:
I don’t believe anyone wants the fighting to continue, but why are all the protests focusing on Israel participating in a ceasefire, when no one is asking the same of Hamas?
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Pure speculation on my part:

Perhaps it's because most people believe terrorists, with no morals and not being being guided by a code of ethics, will likely not respond to or change their actions due to protests held at universities and other public places. I'm guessing they would not even be aware or care if there were protests held half way around the world in the US.

Countries, which are assumed to be moral and ethical, are held to a higher standard, and more easily held accountable, and to some extent care about public opinion. Thus people protest when necessary.
 
Citysnaps said:
Perhaps it's because most people believe terrorists, with no morals and not being being guided by a code of ethics, will likely not respond to or change their actions due to protests held at universities and other public places.
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That's a best case interpretation and may be true for some people. But let's not dismiss the alternate reason that some/many/mos?t of the people expressing outrage over Israel were in some dark corner of their minds ok with what happened on Oct. 7.
 
Roller said:
Your stance is that the Jews could have avoided war by going to Africa, Russia, Canada, or Australia. But you didn't respond when I pointed out why this wouldn't have worked, especially in the context of the times post Holocaust and the history of Jews being persecuted and expelled from countries repeatedly in the past.

Regardless, it does no good to say Israel should never have been founded in 1948. The fact is that Israel, a tiny country that has achieved more proportionally than its neighbors, is there now. So what's your solution?
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My point is a side note to the creation of a Jewish State in the Middle of Arab land, that has faced conflict, pain, and death ever since its creation. Make of that what you will, sure deny it, Israel is completely blameless in 70 years of conflict. 🔥

Alli said:
You intentionally miss every point. I’m done. No need for a response.
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I disagree with your points, I’ve not missed a thing.. I have explained my view of which you and others on this board are not receptive to.. I’ve got that In spades. Believe it or not, I don’t like this arguing with people I generally get a long with so I’m going to take a moratorium in this board, as far as preaching moderation to deaf ears about Israel and Palestine. But I will finish with this:

If I was born Jewish I might hate all Palestinians and think that destroying Gaza and most of the Palestinians who live there is the only way to eradicate these Hamas monsters who killed innocent Israel citizens. I might even have a blind eye to the innocents on the other side as Israel uses bunker busters on civilian targets. Hey, we told them to leave. I might want a free pass to kill in the name of my security if it was loved ones I lost.

If was born Palestinian, I might hate Jews to the core. They took half of Palestine, have even more now, and have kept us under their economic thumb ever since with the help of the Great Satan, and they find all manner of excuses to hold us down and kill us. Reports this morning are Israel settlers on the West Bank are busy hunting Palestinians

But, I’m not either one. So when Hamas murders 1400 Israel citizens and vows to wipe out Israel I say despite the wrongs, perceived wrongs against you, this is over the top, it’s untenable, you‘ve got to go. It’s you or Israel kill them, but this is not a blank check, not permission to kill and all any Palestinians who don’t jump to your tune, fast enough and get in your way. This is war crimes territory.

And I then observe the IDF taking lethal, hostile, wholesale actions against Palestinians especially women and children in Gaza and refuse all pleas to moderate their lethality, be more surgical, instead of bombing hospitals, schools, refugee camps, etc, I do not say oh, Israel must die, but I will say stop thinking you are righteous and superior. Have some thought about your future in this location.

Yes, you were hit first, but can you kill them all? Are you justified in killing them all? Take a deep breath. You desperately need to regain some perspective and the rest of the world is not going to be patting you on the back for a job well done, as Israel manufactures a whole new generation of neighbors who hate your guts.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
That's a best case interpretation and may be true for some people. But let's not dismiss the alternate reason that some/many/mos?t of the people expressing outrage over Israel were in some dark corner of their minds ok with what happened on Oct. 7.
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Well...that's pretty despicable. And yes, there will be some whose hearts are filled with hate.


Getting back to my "best case interpretation," with respect to the question why people are not demonstrating against Hamas on the other side of the world (US, Canada, etc - or western Europe), and my conjecture as to why that doesn't happen, what are your thoughts on that?

Do you believe it would be effective and cause Hamas to rethink their views and stop being terrorists? I just don't see that happening.
 
Citysnaps said:
Getting back to my "best case interpretation," with respect to the question why people are not demonstrating against Hamas on the other side of the world (US, Canada, etc - or western Europe), and my conjecture as to why that doesn't happen, what are your thoughts on that?

Do you believe it would be effective and cause Hamas to rethink their views and stop being terrorists? I just don't see that happening.
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Protests seldom work on such a large scale. It won’t change a thing if they’re protesting against Israel, or if they’re protesting against Hamas. Especially when the protests are being held half a world away.
 
Alli said:
Protests seldom work on such a large scale. It won’t change a thing if they’re protesting against Israel, or if they’re protesting against Hamas. Especially when the protests are being held half a world away.
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My sense is Biden is feeling some pressure, trying to walk a middle ground with respect to Israel, and Palestinians being killed. Whether that's influenced by protests in the US is debatable. I tend to think so to some extent.
 
Huntn said:
My point is a side note to the creation of a Jewish State in the Middle of Arab land, that has faced conflict, pain, and death ever since its creation. Make of that what you will, sure deny it, Israel is completely blameless in 70 years of conflict. 🔥
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It's not a side note when your thesis is that founding a Jewish state "in the middle of Arab land" is the root cause of all the suffering that has taken place in the region since then. As @mac_in_tosh pointed out better than I, the discussion regarding settlement in what is now Israel is far more nuanced than you acknowledge. As well, you haven't said whether you believe a two state arrangement is worth pursuing, as opposed to, say, Israel renouncing its nationhood and Jews either living in an Arab country or packing up and going elsewhere.

As for the ongoing Hamas-Israel war, here's a new article from someone with domain expertise in urban warfare:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/07/opinions/israel-hamas-gaza-not-war-crimes-spencer/index.html

This doesn't mean that Israel has been blameless in its 75-year history or that what's happening to the Palestinians in the current conflict isn't horrible. The CNN writer makes several suggestions as to what Israel can do to limit casualties and assist with providing humanitarian assistance. But what of Hamas? How about releasing a sizable number of hostages in exchange? If they cared about the Palestinian people in Gaza, wouldn't that be a reasonable course of action? But I'm reasonably certain that won't happen because their primary objective is for Israel not to exist.
 
Citysnaps said:
Getting back to my "best case interpretation," with respect to the question why people are not demonstrating against Hamas on the other side of the world (US, Canada, etc - or western Europe), and my conjecture as to why that doesn't happen, what are your thoughts on that?

Do you believe it would be effective and cause Hamas to rethink their views and stop being terrorists? I just don't see that happening.
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Yes, protests against Hamas would not be effective. They are homicidal fanatics who don't care what people think. They were voted into power after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and have not held any further elections. Your best case interpretation of why people protest, i.e. to get one group or another to change their behavior, is indeed a best case, but other motivations are also in play.

One group of protestors consists of well-meaning people who are upset with what is happening in Gaza, don't know the history well and believe simplistic cliches such as that European Jews swarmed into Palestine, attacked helpless Palestinians and stole their land, end of story. While they think Hamas did terrible things it's all Israel's fault that Hamas exists. They may think it pointless to try to get Hamas to change through protests, but another reason to protest/demonstrate is to show solidarity with victims, which they didn't do after Oct. 7. I recently posted a link to a video of a well-meaning but naive young lady manning a table with literature about Israel's policy of "apartheid." She didn't know that she was talking to an Israeli Arab who relieved her of many widespread misconceptions.

Another group of protestors are people who have been raised from birth to hate Israel and are motivated by the spread of their religion, to which they view Israel as an obstacle. They only protest, are only outraged, when Israel is involved. Thus, tens of thousands have been killed in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Surely, they should think they could have some influence over their co-religionists but there's not a peep out of these people.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
One group of protestors consists of well-meaning people who are upset with what is happening in Gaza, don't know the history well and believe simplistic cliches such as that European Jews swarmed into Palestine, attacked helpless Palestinians and stole their land, end of story. While they think Hamas did terrible things it's all Israel's fault that Hamas exists. They may think it pointless to try to get Hamas to change through protests, but another reason to protest/demonstrate is to show solidarity with victims, which they didn't do after Oct. 7. I recently posted a link to a video of a well-meaning but naive young lady manning a table with literature about Israel's policy of "apartheid." She didn't know that she was talking to an Israeli Arab who relieved her of many widespread misconceptions.

Another group of protestors are people who have been raised from birth to hate Israel and are motivated by the spread of their religion, to which they view Israel as an obstacle. They only protest, are only outraged, when Israel is involved.
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I agree with your post.

However, there's one more group not covered above... And that's people, who I suspect are the majority, who have absolutely no issues with Israel, Jews, how Israel came to be, and don't believe that Hamas' existence is Israel's fault, but are heartbroken seeing 10,000 innocent civilians in Gaza killed over a one month period.

And I suspect the majority of that same group of people are similarly outraged by Hamas' attack on Israel's innocent civilians.
 
Huntn said:
But, I’m not either one. So when Hamas murders 1400 Israel citizens and vows to wipe out Israel I say despite the wrongs, perceived wrongs against you, this is over the top, it’s untenable, you‘ve got to go. It’s you or Israel kill them, but this is not a blank check, not permission to kill and all any Palestinians who don’t jump to your tune, fast enough and get in your way. This is war crimes territory.
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Well, you've once again said you were done with this discussion, which I may also be soon, so I don't know if you'll read this.

You say Israel should be "more surgical" and not strike certain facilities. But Hamas intentionally launches missiles into Israel from those very facilities. Should Israel sacrifice its citizens to avoid casualties among Gazans? Would any nation in the world do that? Isn't this Hamas' fault for putting its own people in jeopardy? Hamas is continuing to fire missiles into Israel. Either Israel does nothing or they do what they are doing now.

You say elsewhere that it's not your job to come up with an alternative strategy for Israel to follow. That's a cop out because it assumes there is a better plan that Israel is not considering out of some evil motivation.

Of course, this was Hamas' plan. Commit unspeakable atrocities in Israel to force a response from Israel and then get people around the world to protest.
 
Citysnaps said:
However, there's one more group not covered above... And that's people, who I suspect are the majority, who have absolutely no issues with Israel, Jews, how Israel came to be, and don't believe that Hamas' existence is Israel's fault, but are heartbroken seeing 10,000 innocent civilians in Gaza killed over a one month period.
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Yes, I would hope most people fall into that category. But let's consider that those numbers come from Hamas. I heard an Israeli say recently that they still haven't got the total casualties from Oct. 7 and yet Hamas comes out daily with figures that they could not accurately know and they include combatants among the total. That's not at all to downplay the tragedy of any loss of life and the situation in Gaza is heartbreaking. I'm just saying we need to take into account the source if we want accuracy.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
Yes, I would hope most people fall into that category. But let's consider that those numbers come from Hamas. I heard an Israeli say recently that they still haven't got the total casualties from Oct. 7 and yet Hamas comes out daily with figures that they could not accurately know and they include combatants among the total. That's not at all to downplay the tragedy of any loss of life and the situation in Gaza is heartbreaking. I'm just saying we need to take into account the source if we want accuracy.
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See my Post# 383 above. Again, as the numbers of deaths from three previous wars/conflicts in Gaza from the Gaza Ministry of Health track numbers independently determined by the United Nations within a few percent, for the moment I'm inclined to believe them.

Considering the number of Israeli airstrikes, the IAF claiming that 6,000 bombs were dropped in the first week (it has now been close to a month), 400 airstrikes over a 24 hour period two days ago, and seeing a large number of daily videos and photographs of the destruction and dead/injured people, etc., the claimed deaths (and likely a similar number of injuries) doesn't seem unreasonable.

Again... I'm not saying that's the last word, just that I wouldn't be surprised given the above. Could be lower, could be higher.

What's your view as to the number?
 
Alli said:
However many people have been killed in Gaza is too many. Unfortunately, with Hamas controlling the narrative, we may never know the exact number. I don’t believe anyone wants the fighting to continue, but why are all the protests focusing on Israel participating in a ceasefire, when no one is asking the same of Hamas?

The worst part is, neither the leaders of Hamas, nor the Netanyahu administration care about anything but their own agenda. Neither care about innocent civilians, nor the hostages.
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I don’t get it either. I’m 100% for being concerned for innocent Palestinians. I get criticism of Netanyahu and Israel policies in “peace” time. That’s sort of beyond the fact, we can dissect all that later, but these militant terrorist forces on a mission to kill must be stopped, first to stop the immediate threat and then to eradicate them as much as is possible. I’m not saying indiscriminate bombing and mass death is the answer, but I don’t know what Israel is supposed to do at this point. Even without Netanyahu’s baggage, any official would be torn over what to do.

If Israel was at a perceived standstill, then what?

Not saying I have the answers, I haven’t the faintest clue how anyone should move forward, but beyond the noise of the usual anti-Semitic crowd, I don’t know what else Israel can do at this point. The terrorist organization next door is also essentially the government and they are interwoven into the public. They adhere to no predictable code of conduct and part of their strategy is to be amongst the innocent for this very reason. So yeah, at a loss.
 
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