Israel declares war on Hamas

[The Fonz]

Originally Posted by TherapyforGlencross

Hmm, I’ve yet to see a militant Christian jihad in my lifetime (perhaps the Troubles). But we have witnessed factions such as ISIS and Hamas, whose biggest goal is a jihad. Not even including governments such as the Taliban. Islam, being a younger religion makes sense, but this isn’t the Middle Ages any more

Pretty sure Christian terrorists kill more Americans every year than any other. I don’t have a link… I’m sure someone will Google it.

Radical theism is a plague.

[WCW Nitro]

Originally Posted by _Q_

This guy is straight up human filth.

I am shocked, I was told Israel never targets civilians.

[Sliver]

Didn't George W Bush think God gave him the green light to invade Iraq? About 200,000 civilians dead in that one.

[SutterBrother]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

For Pepsi, Fuzz, PsycNet and others I would ask:

If you were in charge of Israel on Oct.8 what would you do?

I would seal off the Gaza strip, and bomb any known Hamas targets (so pretty much what Israel has done thus far).

I would back channel a deal through Qatar and the US to pay Egypt whatever it took to create a humanitarian escape route through the southern border.

I would then sit tight for months, and wait for every civilian to leave while monitoring for Hamas activity. Without food, power, or water, the area quickly becomes a dead zone. I would use it as a Korean style DMZ for however long it took to find a 2 state solution.

I would never send in ground troops, save to attempt to rescue hostages.

Super grim stuff. Probably still a better outcome than what we're about to get.

Perhaps a more interesting question would be "What would you do if you were a Palestinian in charge of Gaza?"

My answer steals from Tom Clancy in Sum of All Fears. I would take a page from Ghandi, and use the lessons of Indian independance from the British Empire.

Peaceful protest. I would round up every citizen I could, have them get on every social media platform they can, and I would kneel in the street and pray with them.

When the world sees Israeli tanks coming down a road and there are civilians on their knees doing nothing but praying... that's how you turn global sentiment.

Killing kids at a rave doesn't get you anything.

Putting your body on the line embracing peace - that resonates. That can earn you a country.

[Harry Lime]

I think that the difference that we see in Islam is the institutionalized nature of it in politics and socially. It's what the evangelical Christians want to accomplish, but have not been able to.

As someone mentioned, probably because Christianity has been around longer, and that leads to greater religion fatigue over time.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by SutterBrother

Peaceful protest. I would round up every citizen I could, have them get on every social media platform they can, and I would kneel in the street and pray with them.

When the world sees Israeli tanks coming down a road and there are civilians on their knees doing nothing but praying... that's how you turn global sentiment.

They literally did this for months in 2019. Palestinians staged non violent vigil protests and after a few days the IDF shot hundreds of them, killing 223.

The world did not care or notice.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018...order_protests

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

the problem with looking back 2000 years or 80 years is it's both pointless and morally irrelevant, I guess I can see why a Palestinian might be more emotionally invested in their Great Grandfathers land than a Jew in King Davids but neither of them lived on the land, both came by that land via conquest, the Greeks and Turks have just as good a claim frankly, the sad truth is all countries are created and held by force, Israel isnt going anywhere and they aren't going to give up anything as they know full well it wouldn't actually bring them peace and security.

If Palestinians want a better life now they will have to accept defeat and loss, ask for mercy from Israel and the world and try and get as many of their kids educated and out of the region as possible, essentially adopt the posture of Canadian natives, I fully understand why they wont do this but the alternative is things just get worse, there is no pathway for a Palestine that Palestinians actually want, there will be no substantial land given back in our lifetime and there will never be a right of return, just an endless cycle of violence and poverty for Palestinians and hardening right wing hatred in Israel.

Dinosaurs were here first anyways so we’re just tending to their land until they return from their space expedition.

[TherapyforGlencross]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

QANON, incels, white supremacists, some instances of Christian extremism, etc.

Not really a shortage of extremists outside Islam.

Ok, you’re not wrong to say those groups are extremists. I agree. But I’ve yet to see them take over a country. That’s a huge difference between the two comparisons. Incels haven’t taken over any western government in which they demand to kill or slave every woman.

Take ISIS for example. Or Hamas.

Israel certainly isn’t innocent in all this mess but Islamic radicalism has been suffocating the middle east region lately.

Edit. I could also agree that the orthodox faction in the Israeli government attributed to this. As someone said earlier, Extremist theism is a cancer

[SutterBrother]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

They literally did this for months in 2019. Palestinians staged non violent vigil protests and after a few days the IDF shot hundreds of them, killing a dozen.

The world did not care or notice.

Sadly, the British did likewise.

But Ghandi persisted.

[PsYcNeT]

I don't think India under British rule is analogous

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Not sure why I'm so special!

Don't sell yourself short!

I don't mean to single you out in a negative way. You are one of a few who's response has been (or at least it seems to me) to primarily criticize Israel. Don't get me wrong, Israel deserves a lot of criticism but that didn't just start on Oct.7 and prompt this thread and spirited discussion. What prompted it was Hamas attacking civilians in Israel.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I know you keep asking this question, but I don’t think there’s any value in roleplaying foreign policy, certainly not under some limited condition that the answer can only be what would be done on that day specifically, and not what wouldn’t be done or what could have been done differently in the years prior.

Yes, I asked three times because nobody responded the first two. Thanks for replying this time.

But what would I have liked to see? A focus on humanitarian efforts and protecting civilians on both sides of the border, instead of collective punishment, ruthlessness, and revenge.

That would be nice. It would have been even nicer a week ago before Hamas extracted ruthless revenge.

How many civilians would you kill to wipe out Hamas, if you knew you would succeed? What would be your personal limit?

I would like to think my personal limit would be zero. I would also like to think that I wouldn't establish settlements in the West Bank and I wouldn't continue to elect dip#### pseudo-fascists like Bibby. But here we are.

The problem that we keep seeming to skirt around is that Hamas is not interested and has never been interested in a peaceful solution. Neither is Iran or Syria. Now it appears the flames are also getting stoked by Russia. I know it's a cliche but if Hamas put down their weapons their would likely be peace and a two-state solution. If Israel put down their weapons they would be slaughtered, like we just saw when they lowered their guard for a moment. You may think that's an overly rosy picture to paint regarding Israel, but it's already happened with Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states that they were once at war with. So, it's a nice thought around humanitarian efforts to protect civilians but Hamas doesn't care about civilians. Worse than that, they prefer civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian die.

It's tempting to stand up for the victim against the tyrant. Cheering for the underdog is part of my DNA. But Hamas isn't the underdog here. They are one of the tyrants. So is Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Putin, USA and every other cynical actor that uses this unending conflict for their own personal gain. The victims are Palestinians AND Israelis citizens.

I don't know the best way to wipe out Hamas but I suspect it has something to do with following the money.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by TherapyforGlencross

Ok, you’re not wrong to say those groups are extremists. I agree. But I’ve yet to see them take over a country.

Or marshal 1,000 of the fellow-believers in a coordinated murder-suicide spree. Or even 20. Christian extremist terrorist acts today are almost always a lone-wolf attack or a handful of conspirators.

Murderous rogue religious nuts are appalling. Murderous religious nuts carrying out coordinated terrorism in their hundreds and thousands is something different altogether.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by TherapyforGlencross

Ok, you’re not wrong to say those groups are extremists. I agree. But I’ve yet to see them take over a country. That’s a huge difference between the two comparisons. Incels haven’t taken over any western government in which they demand to kill or slave every woman.

Take ISIS for example. Or Hamas.

Israel certainly isn’t innocent in all this mess but Islamic radicalism has been suffocating the middle east region lately.

Edit. I could also agree that the orthodox faction in the Israeli government attributed to this. As someone said earlier, Extremist theism is a cancer

True, they haven’t taken over a country in the same way a group like Hamas has, but I also think the political and military strength of the countries they usually reside in are a big part of why, as well as the laws and conditions in those countries that make something like a well-armed militia far more possible.

I think if white supremacists could realistically take over the US they would, but it’s not even in the realm of possibility. In fact, a well-armed terrorist group more familiar with that practice like ISIS or whoever wouldn’t stand a chance either. It’s just a totally different ball game, but non-Islamic extremists still commit a whole lot of terrorism and kill a whole lot of people without taking over a country.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

The problem that we keep seeming to skirt around is that Hamas is not interested and has never been interested in a peaceful solution. Neither is Iran or Syria. Now it appears the flames are also getting stoked by Russia. I know it's a cliche but if Hamas put down their weapons their would likely be peace and a two-state solution. If Israel put down their weapons they would be slaughtered, like we just saw when they lowered their guard for a moment. You may think that's an overly rosy picture to paint regarding Israel, but it's already happened with Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states that they were once at war with. So, it's a nice thought around humanitarian efforts to protect civilians but Hamas doesn't care about civilians. Worse than that, they prefer civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian die.

It isn’t being skirted around, it’s central to the entire point.

The fact that they don’t care about civilians and would rather see them dead is further reason why Israel must care. And the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel is a proper democratic country is why Israel is held to a far higher standard.

They are responsible to the people under their occupation.

[flylock shox]

I thought this was a really good opinion piece in the Globe today, highlighting the Israeli predicament. It may be behind a paywall, but here's a snippet that I thought gave the gist:

For the Jewish moral sensibility, Israel’s hundred-year conflict with the Palestinians is deeply disorienting. During 2,000 years of exile and persecution, Jews confronted variations of enmity with no basis in reality. “The Jews” didn’t kill Jesus. We were not the subverters of the white race, as the Nazis believed, nor the manipulators of world capital, as the Soviet communists claimed.


But in the era of Jewish power, our enemies’ accusations aren’t entirely baseless. A large part of the Palestinian people are living under Israeli occupation. There are human-rights violations in the West Bank, and settler violence against innocent Palestinians. There are dead children in Gaza, killed by Israeli planes. We may argue, as we must, that these are consequences of a conflict Israel tried to avert and then tried to solve, that arguably no national movement has rejected offers of statehood more often than have Palestinian leaders, that Israel tries to prevent civilian casualties while its enemies try to maximize them.


Still, a nation seeking to thwart enemies attempting to destroy it, and who are prepared to use any means, will inevitably find itself in morally compromising situations. This tragedy will once again play out in the coming weeks. The price of power is the loss of innocence.


But Hamas has reminded us why the Jewish people opted for power in the first place. In a world in which pure evil exists, and where Jew-hatred may be an incurable illness, powerlessness is, for Jews, the greater sin.


As the ferocity of Israel's response unfolds, along with the terrible suffering of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire, we will lose much of the sympathy our dead have earned us. But Hamas has given us no choice. Victimhood is antithetical to the Israeli ethos. We would rather be condemned than pitied.

[FlameOn]

Israel's released photos of the beheaded and burned infant bodies in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks. Best to be careful the links you click on if you don't want to see that.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by SutterBrother

Sadly, the British did likewise.

But Ghandi persisted.

realistically as much as I would like to think Britain's better nature won out the reality is we left India because we were broke after ww2 and could no longer afford an empire

[PsYcNeT]

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https://twitter.com/user/status/1712446982403342616

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[Samonadreau]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

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https://twitter.com/user/status/1712446982403342616

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Even if this is true, If Hamas had thought of it and had the connections, they would have done one first. Get off your high horse.

Sorry Ive sat at the sidelines.

The Jews have done ####ed up ####. Hamas and Palestinians have done ####ed up ####.

Theyve all done ####ed up ####.

People need to get off their high horses.On both sides.

Im sorry that was unnecessary and aggressive but this bickering back and forth will have no end.

[Doctorfever]

YouTube videos are almost as bad a killing babies. Almost.