Hamas strike on Israel - mod warning in OP updated 19/10/23

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529950#Comment_121529950

This is bickering now. This will get us banned. We just fundamentally disagree on the ethics of this operation

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529927#Comment_121529927

I don't know but Baha'is are not Muslim, so I'd be a bit doubtful about your detailed knowledge of the Quran.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529953#Comment_121529953

But you're really not, except in a "Oh let's all be nice" way, which is meaningless and actually counterproductive.

The reality is that Hamas chose to go into Israel specifically to target civilians including babies because of their ethnicity, and you say that the IDF is not entitled to respond militarily to that because Hamas has also put its own civilians, including babies, in the way of the IDF trying to attack Hamas fighters.

If that is allowed to become protection for an army, then only armies which deliberately sacrifice civilians can ever fight from now on. It's an imparable defence. And I think that's a worse outcome for people everywhere than this one war. Like the Nazis, I think Hamas have to be fought on this because otherwise, it will happen again and again, and not just to Israelis.

Field east

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529955#Comment_121529955

Please correct me where I am wrong. I will accept that the Bahais’ are not Muslim

blackcard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529755#Comment_121529755

Another anology could be as follows. The League of Nations, aided and abetted by bribery from Britain, awards them 21 counties in Ireland with 11 going to the Republic. The latter, not being willing to 'suck it up and compromise even though there would be 2 nations' decided to rise up against Britain and in the ensuing battle were reduced to say Wexford, Cavan and Monaghan. Even then the Brits decided to continue taking more land in the latter 2 counties and settling more Brits. They also control power, water and goods going into Wexford, severely repress them and make their lives a misery. Would you still expect Wexford to suck it up? Or would they be a 'death cult' by rebelling?

I condemn what Hamas have done but there are 2 sides to the story and neither side has right on their side. There is a reason why the current conflict is taking place. Israel are currently acting as 'Might is right' and are not using their power wisely and have managed to alienate most countries in the world. Given how Jews have suffered through history, I hope they find compassion rather hard hearts

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529934#Comment_121529934

Don't think I implied that.Fairly sure most Israelis are behind their armed forces and the operation in general.

What makes you think they don't care?

I imagine their proximity to the conflict makes them care are lot more they most of us in this thread (the same applies of course to the Palestinians)

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529972#Comment_121529972

No, the first reason your analogy fails is that Britain already has a country. The Jewish people had nothing, as well as a history of being hunted down and killed pretty much everywhere else in the world.

Also, no idea where your claim about bribery is coming from. Are you saying that the only reason Israel was given recognition as a state was because someone bribed the United Nations? And not, say, the effects of the Holocaust? Who paid, and how much?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529967#Comment_121529967

There's no point in me discussing it because I don't know. I do know though that it's possible to interpret stuff in the bible about selling your daughters into slavery and so on to make Christianity out to be completely extremist too, so I wouldn't be prepared to accept a claim about what Islamists believe just on the basis of what somebody else says they believe. If you have quotes from specific people about their own beliefs, that would be interesting.

blackcard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530010#Comment_121530010

There were a number of reasons why Israel were given a disproportionate amount of territory. Part of the reason was the empathy felt by many countries because of the Holocaust, guilt also by many countries that they did little to stop the genocide. However, this is not a good reason to take land off others. The Belgian Prime Minister in 1947 acknowledged the decision would lead to bloodshed. France and others were against the resolution but pressure was put on American senators to say post war aid would be withheld unless they supported the resolution. Financial pressure was put on smaller countries and it is acknowledged in articles published by Mosaic that Zionist bribes were paid to countries such as Costa Rica. Indeed, the tactics used to gain a disproportionate amount of land were rightly seen by Ben Gurion as an extremely successful starting point in their acquisition of land, the 1948 war with the assistance of Russian arms was another successful step. In many ways, you have to greatly admire their tactics. However, it meant that many people were ousted from their land unjustly. You might think that they should just 'suck it up and compromise' but you can trace the current conflict to unwise decisions made back then. It is still no excuse for Hamas

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530161#Comment_121530161

" Israel were given a disproportionate amount of territory"

Can you give a reference.I have seen elsewhere said (on this thread) that they were allocated a very small amount of territory at first (some 20% ?) but this was rejected by the Palestinians,leading to the 1948 war.

What is the truth on this point,I wonder?

blackcard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530225#Comment_121530225

In 1947, Jews comprised less than 1/3 of the population and owned 7% of the land but got 56% of the land. Israel now controls 77% of the land even excluding the West Bank settlements

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530301#Comment_121530301

Much of the land that was go to the new state of Israel was worthless desert, that being the Negev desert in the South. Of course the 1947 plan would have left Israel completely indefensible against a co-ordinated attack, that's why after the '47-'48 war Israel expanded to what became the '67 borders.

United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine - Wikipedia

Additionally, the new State of Israel had to absorb hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the Middle East / North Africa region during and after the 47/48 war, which hadn't previously been factored into partition plans.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530301#Comment_121530301

Most of the land dedicated to Israel in the 1947 UN plan was inhospitable desert. It's a lie perpetuated by the 'pre-1947' maps you see showing vast swaths of southern Palestine as 'Palestinian' when they were empty desert, and likely belonged to Jordan/Egypt/...

In 1947, 60% of "Palestine" was Muslim, 33% Jewish and 8% Christian.

As for who owned what, that's another tricky question - pre-Israeli Jewish settlers lived on land they purchased from whoever controlled it, like the Ottomans.

And, lest we forget, as soon as the UN mandate came into force in 1947, the neighbouring countries like Jordan, Egypt, Syria even Iraq, all invaded with the express purpose of dividing the land amongst themselves. There were no "Palestinians" then; Palestinians are an invention starting in the 1960's once the local powers realized they couldn't readily defeat the Israelis.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530161#Comment_121530161

A number of assertions and opinions there presented as fact. Some, for instance, would say that the Holocaust was a very good reason for giving the Jewish people their own state. The idea that only Palestinian Arabs were displaced in the post Ottoman empire/two world wars is just nonsense. Christians (and Jews) had to leave their homes in Turkey and many other places. In fact many Jews arriving in Palestine after 1946 were refugees a second time - from the homes they'd hoped to go back to after the Nazis were beaten. The pogroms in 1946-48 showed them that only in their own country could they hope to be safe. So it wasn't just some sort of guilt over the holocaust - it was the need to create a place where Jews were not going to be attacked just for being Jews. That was a perfectly sensible approach to take.

It wasn't the fault of the Jews that the Arabs wouldn't allow them to live there in peace either. There was no reason why the state of Israel couldn't have been set up alongside the states of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria etc - the only reason it wasn't treated like another new state like Iraq or Jordan was that the Arabs hated the Jews too much to envisage that.

And in any case, even if it were true that the Jews got "too much" land, what makes you think everybody else got "the right amount"? What about the Kurds - they got nothing? Are they all still considered refugees wherever they live generations later? Why do only Palestinians get to transmit their "refugee" status to their descendants? Will the Armenians who've had to leave Stepanakert this year all transmit their status as refugees to their children, or will they just have to get on with it and make new lives for themselves wherever they end up?

blackcard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530371#Comment_121530371

Israel needed living space so it was entitled to take more land? Do you think the 1947 resolution was fair to Palestine?

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530429#Comment_121530429

Notice the wording on the map of the '47 partition plan. It called for a Jewish state and an "Arab" state - not a "Palestine". In terms of valuable land, e.g. in the North, the partition plan left most of that to the Arabs.

Not only did Israel have to accept hundreds of thousands of fleeing Jews beyond what they'd planned for, but the '47 plan would never work for an Israel that would be constantly under attack. That's why they took more land after the 47/48 war - and as to whether they should have done so, it was accepted as a rule in international relations that if your country starts a war with another and loses, the country you attacked can claim some of your territory. And Israel certainly had both right and reason to do so.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530429#Comment_121530429

Israel got more physical land, because most of what it got, was useless desert. The Israelis did improve the local conditions quite a bit.

nachouser

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/23/israeli-airstrike-kills-gaza-aid-worker-and-70-of-his-extended-family-un-says

Ah sure it's just war. Happens all the time. I guess large extended families should just start swapping kids with people in other buildings so they're not all wiped out at once. This is fine.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530301#Comment_121530301

They weren't "given" all of that though - their Arab neighbours attacked them to take away even what they had - and they lost. That's what happens when you lose wars. Or maybe you think Germany should start bringing up its claim to large sections of Poland which used to be part of Germany?

blackcard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530481#Comment_121530481

I don't know how anyone can't see that the 1947 Resolution was totally unfair to Arabs. It was inevitably going to end in war. Also why if their land was taken, they were not entitled to take it back. If Germany had won the second world war, would they have been entitled to keep the spoils and tell everyone else to suck it up

blackcard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530528#Comment_121530528

As I said, they were given 56% of the land as a result of the 1947 Resolution

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530493#Comment_121530493

I saw this earlier - absolutely sickening. Jesus Christ who is going to put an end to this slaughter of innocents by Israel. How can the US government possibly stand over such an abomination of an atrocity.

I don't know what God the Israeli soldiers who did this believe in, but I very sincerely hope they burn in hell.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530764#Comment_121530764

Funny thing is, every other war to the death in history (like WWII) resulted in collateral damage. Do you hope all the participants in those wars burned in hell too, or just Israelis?

Timberrrrrrrr

Interview with 2 Israeli hostages that were released by Hamas.

https://twitter.com/DrSakriKaia/status/1738622976646656051?t=LNhiR0ejRDfitgOQLEU6FA&s=19

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530849#Comment_121530849

Anyone who can quibble with such appalling savagery is sick. Sympathisers too for good measure 🔥 Maybe they are all heathens.

Rosahane

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530764#Comment_121530764

There's a simple solution to end the killing.

Let Hamas surrender to the Israelis!

Do you agree?

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530913#Comment_121530913

Haha do you really believe that is going to happen? No so why even suggest it as a solution to the Israelis killing civilians in Gaza. Hamas care as little about the Palestinian civilians as Israel in the last two months.

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530849#Comment_121530849

So how does WWII, the largest and bloodiest war compare?

23mil soldiers dead vs 30mil civilians dead.

So about 43/57 split.

Gaza, 6k Hamas dead vs 20k civilians.

So about a 23/77 split.

So in WWII with mass carpet bombing, 2 nukes and a Holocaust, there was less civilians killed per 100 deaths (57) vs Israel (77) with laser guided bombs, drones, attack helicopters etc....

So yes, civilian deaths do occur in wars, but there's no denying the ratio of civilian deaths is extremely high in Gaza.

nachouser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530913#Comment_121530913

I think what you're suggesting is called collective punishment. But if you're ok with that, then fine.

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530913#Comment_121530913

Hamas can't, Bibi has already said no quarter shall be given (which... Yup, you guessed it, is a war crime) Then again, Israel, a bit like Russia the end goal and excuses change week to week.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530891#Comment_121530891

Oh well that's ok then - a group of unarmed civilians were taken violently hostage, many have still not been released, several have died in custody, including apparently a 10 month old baby and his four-year-old brother. Some of the children came back unable to speak louder than in whispers because they'd been so terrified and traumatised all the time they were kept captive - but it's all a fuss about nothing because these two women weren't badly treated?

Sweet suffering Jesus what are you like.

And has it occurred to you that they may have husbands, fathers or brothers still being held by Hamas and are therefore being very careful to put a positive spin on being held captive by terrorists?

Do you know that some of them were given ketamine before they were handed over, to make them look happy and relaxed? So I wouldn't be sure that you're hearing the whole truth there - but even if you were, FFS they were captured in a violent incident that in itself was enough to traumatise people - and that alone is a crime.

But yeah, you do you.

ollkiller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530913#Comment_121530913

In a fairytale world 100% yes. It's never gonna happen. Another way to stop the killing would be to actually just stop killing thousands of innocent people. Do you agree?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530931#Comment_121530931

That's why Hamas need to be removed from power: it's not Israel's job to make the lives of Palestinians bearable, but it is - or it should be - Hamas', since they're the government of Gaza.

If your government are violent autocrats, you're just unlucky. Plenty of countries suffer from that problem: Iran, North Korea, China etc. But if they're violent autocrats who attack the neighbouring country, then you're even more unlucky, because your neighbours are going to attack them back, and you're likely to be in the way.

But I don't think Gaza can expect Israel to put up with being attacked just to save Gazans. That's not how nations work. Israel's role is to ensure the safety of Israelis.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531099#Comment_121531099

I think they have made that point clear in the last two months and pushed back any lasting peace by decades. I am just depressed by the whole situation.

ceadaoin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531015#Comment_121531015

Lol yes, I take all my political opinions from Saudi Arabia, that bastion of tolerance and human rights. If they say it, it must be true They definitely wouldn't be biased towards Hamas. It's not like they share some of the same opinions on Jews, gay people and women and how they should be treated. It's a provable lie that civilians weren't targeted by Hamas. Why do you continually try to excuse them of their actions?

If you hate Israel so much that you're aligning yourself with Saudi Arabia, well you're really scraping the barrel. Pathetic.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530849#Comment_121530849

This is not collateral damage : number of innocent civilians killed vastly outnumbers that of Hamas fighters. The regime is deliberately bombing civilian areas, either quite deliberately (i.e. they are the target a la Dresden) or because it doesn't give a damn that tens of thousands of civilians have to die whilst it goes after Hamas.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531213#Comment_121531213

All those kids they have been killed will have relatives who will be enemies of Israel for life. In the short term I'm sure it will reduce the number of rockets flying at Israel but this latest blood letting has just pushed back probably by decades the idea even of lasting peace

Rosahane

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121530961#Comment_121530961

Hamas are an internationally recognised and proscribd terrorist organisation in the EU, North America and many Middle Eastern countries including Egypt.

Its members are terrorists and criminals.

They will be jailed if found guilty in court of being members of Hamas.

internationally recognised and mandated “collective punishment” applies to them… so yes I am OK with it.

Fr D Maugire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121529755#Comment_121529755

Picking your own points when this conflict started. It did not start with the creation of Israel, it was happening long before that, violence between Jewish settlers and Arabs was rife during the British mandate of Palestine.

As I have pointed out before, an independent commission of enquiry was set up post War 1 to assess the future of the region. Following their investigations into the region, the commission reported that the people of the area were completely opposed to Zionism and they recommended that the Zionists forget about trying to establish a Jewish state in the region. Jewish people made up about 11% of the population at that time. The commission clearly recognised the potential problems of Zionism and the resulting conflict, yet the great powers ignored the advice of the commission and ploughed ahead with their own agendas, and here we are 100 years later still dealing with that stupid decision. All the UN did in 1947 was solidify a problem that had already been created.

The problems were not created by the Palestinians, they were created by Zionism, the British(Balfour Declaration) and later, western powers. Palestinians were completely ignored time and again on what they wanted for their lands, of course they were never going to accept the creation of a new state in their lands by a people who had accounted for about 5% of the population barely 50 years earlier. Could the US for example not have given up one of their lowly populated states to the Zionists for the creation of a Jewish state?

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531243#Comment_121531243

"internationally recognised and mandated “collective punishment” applies to them… so yes I am OK with it."

Lord almighty - why don't you just propose wiping out the now <2 million peoples in Gaza and be done with it. We see Israel for the tyrant it has become.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531213#Comment_121531213

Maybe the Nazis just didn't use human shields as extensively as Hamas?

suvigirl

The people of the area were completely opposed to Zionism.

Except all the ones that sold their property to the Jewish people from 1880ish

Fr D Maugire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531327#Comment_121531327

Honestly, go and read a book or watch a video or something about the history of the region before the creation of Israel. This might be a good starting point.

How Zionists Came to Palestine Under British Protection (Documentary) (youtube.com)

Timberrrrrrrr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531006#Comment_121531006

they were captured in a violent incident that in itself was enough to traumatise people - and that alone is a crime.

Now imagine you are talking about the THOUSANDS of Palestinians that have faced this year in year out.

Take your faux outrage and ......well ill let you finish the rest of that sentence.

suvigirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531387#Comment_121531387

Maybe you should read a book or watch a video about the area, before world was 1. How do you think the news were moving there since 1880?

They were sold land and property by those people who were so opposed to them.

Timberrrrrrrr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531243#Comment_121531243

"internationally recognised and mandated “collective punishment” applies to them… so yes I am OK with it."

So in your world you would have been fine with the British carpet bombing Derry, Belfast etc because if the actions of the IRA?

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531015#Comment_121531015

Could it be that antisemitism is alive and well in Saudi Arabia?

It is a great tradition .We can all join in ,don't you know?

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531318#Comment_121531318

LOL. The whole "human shields" thing seems a bit defunct when Gaza is small, fully bottled up, and the entire area is a war zone.

I think I remember the term from the Iraq war and Israel's bombings of Lebanon.

Made some kind of sense in those earlier contexts but can't see that it does in this war, so it's just being wheeled out there as a kind of handy (but empty) buzzword in expectation people won't think about it too much.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121531318#Comment_121531318

Talk of 'human shields' is nonsense in terms of Gaza : it's one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121520162#Comment_121520162

I was deliberately constructing a nonsense argument to mirror the other posters nonsense.

This meme showing an empty street with the caption "Yemen" or "Syria" or suchlike, coupled with posts on thread making the accusation that someone criticising Israel is only doing it because they are antisemitic, and that the proof is that they haven't criticized random cause 'X' - is nonsense.

I did mention in a few posts that both were nonsense.

The Russians claim that they invaded Ukraine as an act of self defense. Israel is claiming what it is doing now in bombing random Palestinian civilians is also self defence. Neither has any realistic merit in my opinion.