Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
The talk about "innocent" civilians should probably be a case study on it's own. Some civilians are innocent, but civilians aren't innocent simply because they are civilians. In many wars, civilians are a willing piece of the war machine.
Hamas has something like 30,000 trained terrorist fighters, but they rely on the civilian population to support them with resources, money, intelligence, scouting, and hiding/shielding them. The number of civilians actively and enthusiastically giving material aid to Hamas is likely 10x what the actual number of Hamas fighters are as a conservative estimate. And these are men, women, and children doing it.
You could see it when the corpses and hostages of Israelis were brought into Gaza, and civilians, including children ran out to spit on them, beat them sticks, before being taken away to be distributed among the civilian population where their hostage takers are "civilians".
I won't post them, because things like Tik Tok and Facebook aren't news, but there are numerous videos out there showing Gazan "civilians" celebrating in the streets in support of the attack and saying no matter what happens, it was worth it. Only to have those some people post videos a week later saying they don't understand why they are all being targets and crying in grief.
The University of Birzeit, a Palestinian organization recently posted a poll showing that 70% of their people support the October 7th attacks and that there were barely any war crimes committed by them.
I get the argument that some people are saying that if you bomb the hell out of them, then you just create more extremists and terrorist, but we are also talking about people being led by a cult that wants to install a caliphate in Israel, and eventually the whole world. They are extreme because of their ideology. No matter what Israel does, Hamas will continue to get aid from Iran and indoctrinate their youth to carry on the terrorism. It doesn't matter if Israel holds out a carrot instead.
Just before Israel left Gaza, they built a new wing on the hospital as a parting gift and offered a joint venture to develop oil off the coast. Prior to the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel issued 20,000 work visa to Gazans so that they could make money in Israel and being it back to Gaza. What ended up happening is that the Gazan workers spent their time gathering intelligence for Hamas and gave them information about the military facilities, bomb shelters, and safe room in the villages so that Hamas could be as efficient as possible when it came to raping , putting babies in ovens, burning people alive, pulling fetuses out from pregnant mothers, and so on. How do you win the hearts and minds of people that when you offer them an olive branch, they turnaround and betray the little trust they had? Maybe bombing them into oblivion won't help, but I doubt tickling their balls will change their ideas that Jews all need to die.
You can see, there is a lot of grey area in Gaza when it comes to "innocent " civilians. And to be fair, this happens in a lot of wars. When the Ukrainian was in over, I hope some of the "innocent" Ukrainian civilians who help facilitate Russian occupation face a swift and cruel justice.
One of the more tragic things for me is that there are legitimately innocent civilians there who are getting absolutely ####ed by both Hamas and Israel. Egypt could easily vet these refugees and let them in to Egypt. Heck, many of them even have Egyptian heritage if you go back a couple of generations. Israel isn't going to give up and will bomb those southern cities, but it would be nice if Egypt let them through, but they also know the deal with Hamas. They are a terrorist organization there too.
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Para 1: No source
Para 2: No source
Para 3/4: Yes, and that was pretty disgusting.
Para 5: Leaving aside the scientific logistics and controls of such a poll if even real. If some or all of the following happened to me, my responses to such a poll may be somewhat skewed by the events of the time:
My home blown up
Watching as my family and friends are killed, maimed or disappeared
Forced to leave my home for safety
Forced to leave my place of safety
Attacked when seeking safety
Hardly any access to food or drinking water
If all the above were happening to me, I’d be fairly critical of those doing it to me.
Para 6: Anyone in their right minds wants Hamas destroyed. Leaving aside the enabling of Hamas that contributed to their brutal regime - boning the hell out of them, presumably means bombing the hell out of civilians - that is a war crime and that is a moral equivalence with Hamas.
Para 7: Nobody - absolutely no one you are presumably arguing with has come close to advocating what you conclude there.
Para 8: There is no grey are when if comes to innocent civilians.
Para 9: There sure is a lot that the Arab world should be and should have been doing over the past decades.
Separately from that point in para 9, you speak of one of the more tragic things in your view over this. Given the rest of your post, that sentiment rings hollow.