Israel declares war on Hamas

[Geraldsh]

The entire area from Egypt to Lebanon needs to be turned to glass as a message to the rest of the world. Where is the great finger of God when you need it?

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

The entire area from Egypt to Lebanon needs to be turned to glass as a message to the rest of the world. Where is the great finger of God when you need it?

You're an idiot.

[Fuzz]

The finger of God is why the region is such a disaster in the first place. Turns out it was the middle finger.

[blankall]

Just curious for the people turning Israel to turn the other cheek to events of October 7th, what happens when Hamas attacks again? If Israel responds then, are you going to even remember that time Israel turned the other cheek?

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by blankall

Just curious for the people turning Israel to turn the other cheek to events of October 7th, what happens when Hamas attacks again? If Israel responds then, are you going to even remember that time Israel turned the other cheek?

If only this situation could have been avoided.

Oh well, nothing to be done then other than glassing the entire Gaza region and allowing settlers to continue murdering residents of the West Bank with impunity.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

If only this situation could have been avoided.

Oh well, nothing to be done then other than glassing the entire Gaza region and allowing settlers to continue murdering residents of the West Bank with impunity.

Recognition of an Israeli state, by the Palestinians and the surrounding Arab nations, would have been a good start too.

You're asking Israel to unilaterally give up territory, and thereby creating a massive security risk, without even a basic acknowledgment of their right to exist.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by blankall

Just curious for the people turning Israel to turn the other cheek to events of October 7th, what happens when Hamas attacks again? If Israel responds then, are you going to even remember that time Israel turned the other cheek?

Nobody has said that. Nobody expects them to turn the other cheek. That's preposterous.

We expect them to hold those who planned, funded and perpetrated the attack to account.

That requires them going into any country on planet earth to find and kill any Hamas leadership that is responsible wherever they may be hiding. You need diplomacy and spies to make that happen. Get on it.

They also have the unenviable job of rooting out Hamas leadership within Gaza. That is difficult, dangerous, time consuming and doesn't have the whizz-bang factor that dropping bombs here there and everywhere has. It would require patience and the help/support of Palestinians.

A good way to have garnered support from Palestinians would have been to treat them like equal humans prior to October 7. Too late now for that, and as evidenced by the thoughtless takes in this thread, all of this madness started on October 7 and you aren't allowed to point out prior history or Israeli atrocities directed at Gazans. I'll let that part go because the cheerleaders for the Israeli army can't seem to hold these two thoughts in their heads simultaneously: the October 7 attack was evil, horrible and worthy of severe punishment/retribution AND Israel's response is going to make a dangerous situation worse and the slaughter of innocent civilians is unacceptable. Kinda weird how they're all up in arms (rightfully) at Hamas slaughtering their people, but can justify Israel slaughtering 10x (and counting) more Palestinians, but again, not here to argue that since I'm at the point where I have to accept that supporters of this Israeli government are not mentally equipped to grasp that.

In short, you'd have to be a moron to believe Israel doesn't have the right to respond. I believe you also have to be a moron to think anything and everything Israel does is permissible and acceptable as a response. There are responses that would be ethical, proportionate, punitive and substantive enough to deter future attacks; however, Israel's current approach is counter to all of those points. Their murderous and blood-thirsty response is unethical, disproportionate and will only worsen relations (and safety) in the area.

[CliffFletcher]

Hamas aren’t a terrorist organization covertly operating out of Gaza. They’re the government of Gaza. They run all the institutions. And they have the support of most of the people of Gaza.

Expecting Israel to remove the threat of Hamas without killing civilians in Gaza is like expecting the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany by only targeting the Nazi Party leadership and doing everything they could to avoid killing any regular German citizens. It’s beyond naive.

It’s terrible for Palestinians in Gaza who don’t support Hamas that they’re paying the price for their government’s crimes. But when your government initiates a war, you’re going to get hit in the counterblow. Especially when your government deploys its soldiers and weapons in apartment buildings and under hospitals.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Hamas aren’t a terrorist organization covertly operating out of Gaza. They’re the government of Gaza. They run all the institutions. And they have the support of most of the people of Gaza.

Expecting Israel to remove the threat of Hamas without killing civilians in Gaza is like expecting the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany by only targeting the Nazi Party leadership and doing everything they could to avoid killing any regular German citizens. It’s beyond naive.

It’s terrible for Palestinians in Gaza who don’t support Hamas that they’re paying the price for their government’s crimes. But when your government initiates a war, you’re going to get hit in the counterblow. Especially when your government deploys its soldiers and material in apartment buildings and under hospitals.

Do they?

In fact, Gazan frustration with Hamas governance is clear; most Gazans expressed a preference for PA administration and security officials over Hamas—the majority of Gazans (70%) supported a proposal of the PA sending “officials and security officers to Gaza to take over the administration there, with Hamas giving up separate armed units,” including 47% who strongly agreed. Nor is this a new view—this proposal has had majority support in Gaza since first polled by The Washington Institute in 2014.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/...-and-hezbollah


I think it is definitely a bit muddy, but when presented with a question liek the one above, there is a lot of support.

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Nobody has said that. Nobody expects them to turn the other cheek. That's preposterous.

We expect them to hold those who planned, funded and perpetrated the attack to account.

That requires them going into any country on planet earth to find and kill any Hamas leadership that is responsible wherever they may be hiding. You need diplomacy and spies to make that happen. Get on it.

They also have the unenviable job of rooting out Hamas leadership within Gaza. That is difficult, dangerous, time consuming and doesn't have the whizz-bang factor that dropping bombs here there and everywhere has. It would require patience and the help/support of Palestinians.

A good way to have garnered support from Palestinians would have been to treat them like equal humans prior to October 7. Too late now for that, and as evidenced by the thoughtless takes in this thread, all of this madness started on October 7 and you aren't allowed to point out prior history or Israeli atrocities directed at Gazans. I'll let that part go because the cheerleaders for the Israeli army can't seem to hold these two thoughts in their heads simultaneously: the October 7 attack was evil, horrible and worthy of severe punishment/retribution AND Israel's response is going to make a dangerous situation worse and the slaughter of innocent civilians is unacceptable. Kinda weird how they're all up in arms (rightfully) at Hamas slaughtering their people, but can justify Israel slaughtering 10x (and counting) more Palestinians, but again, not here to argue that since I'm at the point where I have to accept that supporters of this Israeli government are not mentally equipped to grasp that.

In short, you'd have to be a moron to believe Israel doesn't have the right to respond. I believe you also have to be a moron to think anything and everything Israel does is permissible and acceptable as a response. There are responses that would be ethical, proportionate, punitive and substantive enough to deter future attacks; however, Israel's current approach is counter to all of those points. Their murderous and blood-thirsty response is unethical, disproportionate and will only worsen relations (and safety) in the area.

Okay, you are calling for a "fair fight". Everyone seems to agree that it's time to eliminate Hamas. How do you propose Israel should go about removing a 30,000 man army, embedded in the population, operating underground, with 250 hostages, and threatening to continue doing all it can to remove Israel from their land in their usual barbarous manner.

serious question

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Hamas aren’t a terrorist organization covertly operating out of Gaza. They’re the government of Gaza. They run all the institutions. And they have the support of most of the people of Gaza.

Expecting Israel to remove the threat of Hamas without killing civilians in Gaza is like expecting the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany by only targeting the Nazi Party leadership and doing everything they could to avoid killing any regular German citizens. It’s beyond naive.

It’s terrible for Palestinians in Gaza who don’t support Hamas that they’re paying the price for their government’s crimes. But when your government initiates a war, you’re going to get hit in the counterblow. Especially when your government deploys its soldiers and material in apartment buildings and under hospitals.

I agree with the majority of your post, except the bolded. I don't think we can make that claim based on the last election (unless there is current polling done. By all accounts, the 2006 elections was run against the ruling government's corruption more so than overall support for Hamas. Hamas won a plurality of votes, but not majority. There hasn't been an election since.

That, of course, is not out of the historical realm of the most recent wars/incursions, and our responses to them. Outside of Ukraine/Russia, when was the last war that involved a democratically elected government?

Outside of some isolated protests, everyone in Canada and the USA were pretty indifferent to the damage and destruction both militaries performed as a response to the blatant terrorist attacks on US soil. We didn't seem to care whether or not the majority of citizens supported the Taliban.

[Zevo]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

We all understand that this is terrible as it’s very sad when innocent lives are lost, but it was inevitable.

#### right off with that ####. My daughter was about 10 km from that party at a friends farm when this happened. We’re very lucky it wasn’t her being raped and mmurdered. Like #### right off with these flippant remarks.

[PsYcNeT]

Yeah the red herring of pointing to Hamas as being the "democratically elected representatives of Gaza" only serves to justify civilians being murdered and displaced en masse, lets not pretend otherwise.

Wear that ####. Just say they deserve it guys.

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

You're an idiot.

Yes, I am your typical armchair idiot reading 184 pages in hopes of a solution to the mess called the Middle East. I have not seen anyone here change their stance enough to make me believe dialogue will work.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by flamesfever

Okay, you are calling for a "fair fight". Everyone seems to agree that it's time to eliminate Hamas. How do you propose Israel should go about removing a 30,000 man army, embedded in the population, operating underground, with 250 hostages, and threatening to continue doing all it can to remove Israel from their land in their usual barbarous manner.

serious question

I'm not calling for a fair fight at all.

I think Israel - in violation of generally accepted international protocols - should find Hamas leadership in any country on earth and literally kill them. Apparently they're living luxurious lives all around the world, or so I hear. Okay, let's get 'em. Israel has my full support to do that.

I think you need to write-off the 250 hostages. They're certainly not worth killing thousands of Palestinians over. It's too disproportionate.

The militants are hiding within the population because that's what militants need to do when they border a powerful and antagonistic military state that views them as sub-human. Do you expect them to build military bases lol? That's an absurd expectation. They would be destroyed in a day. Sorry, but that's just so dumb to expect them to be so dumb as to put a target on their military. They're spread out amongst the population out of necessity.

So how do you get them? Well, that requires patience, intelligence (spy craft, that is...not just a guy with a high IQ) and the support of the local population. You need to earn and build that support - it's a strategic failing on Israel's part that they have not built up that network within Gaza and now they're paying the price for it. And any goodwill they may have had there is definitely gone now because of idiotic, knee-jerk, sledgehammer tactics. But that's where we are, so what next?

Israel needs to immediately change their strategy. Stop dropping bombs on kids/families, for a start. Get down and dirty in a guerilla war is all they can do. Crawl around in tunnels, I guess. I mean, they were complicit in constructing the circumstances that have led to this point, so now they have a harder battle than could have been. I would hope they have sleeper agents and imbedded Israelis living amongst the population to aid in being more surgical and strategic - if they don't, then I guess you can add it to the pile of dumb stuff this government has(n't) done.

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

Yes, I am your typical armchair idiot reading 184 pages in hopes of a solution to the mess called the Middle East. I have not seen anyone here change their stance enough to make me believe dialogue will work.

So nobody has an immediate solution to this problem so you advocate for murdering millions of people, including civilians and governments that aren't directly involved in this conflict?

I stand by my summation.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

We all understand that this is terrible as it’s very sad when innocent lives are lost, but it was inevitable.

I really don't see how this is different than what Pointman was stating. An elderly peace activist and a bunch of young people at a love based music festival deserve to be raped because religious settlers exist in Israel?

The only difference I see is perhaps a semantic debate about whether "deserve" and " inevitable" are all that different.

Seriously.

[jayswin]

This thread is disgusting these days, like shockingly. Wow.

[afc wimbledon]

Meanwhile in other news 400,000 Yemeni's are dead, cholera runs rampant in the 4 million displaced in the country, the war in Somali rages on unchecked, 500,000 dead so far but hey who gives a **** about them eh?? they aint the cool muslims we give a toss about for some reason

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Meanwhile in other news 400,000 Yemeni's are dead, cholera runs rampant in the 4 million displaced in the country, the war in Somali rages on unchecked, 500,000 dead so far but hey who gives a **** about them eh?? they aint the cool muslims we give a toss about for some reason

Whataboutisms aside (and you know we have a very large Yemen thread as well right?), I've admitted previously that for me a lot of this is selfish.

Those Israeli #######s are making other Jews (read: me and mine) look bad and stoking fires of antisemitism by being ruthless morons. I, personally, would like them to stop doing that so that I stop getting asked why they're so dumb and bad at running a government that feels like they're justified in murdering thousands of people.