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

blackcard

The killing of 3 hostages by the IDF raises a number of questions

*Had the hostages escaped from their captors? If so, how? Were their captors killed by the IDF? Were the hostages walking towards the IDF forces?

*Were the hostages allowed to escape? If so, why? Were there other hostages in the vicinity

*Presumably the hostages weren't armed and they were dressed like civilians. In that case, is it the policy of the IDF to kill unarmed civilians that approach them? Did the IDF think that they might be a victim of a suicide bomb? How close did the hostages get to the IDF?

dmcdona

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501158#Comment_121501158

I doubt many people here were alive at that time.

In my younger years, I read a lot about the allied bombings - especially Dresden. I don't know much about the details of Japan other than the two nuclear bombs dropped. Dresden was appalling, horrific. So is what is happening in Gaza.

Do you have any empathy for those in Dresden/Hiroshima? Do you have any empathy for those in Gaza?

dmcdona

Ref the three hostages mistakenly killed - I wonder what the reaction will be from the families of all the hostages - those that were freed, those that are dead and those that are still captive - will be...

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501175#Comment_121501175

The reaction to the killings by the Israeli bots on social media is depressing and grim btw. They clearly couldn't give a flying fig about the dead hostages : it's all about defending the regime (I suspect many of the non Jewish ones don't even like Jewish people....it's more that they hate Muslims).

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501231#Comment_121501231

The Allied bombings went far beyond the controversial episodes in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Way beyond that. In later stages, carpet bombing of German, Japanese and occupied cities was a nightly routine extensively covering both countries. My point is that nobody considers, for example Operation Meetinghouse as being particularly controversial, even though civilian deaths and suffering were enormous. The reason was simple - it was war.

Israel seems like it's being held to a different standard, despite the fact that they've been under attack constantly since 1947 and are seeking a decisive outcome against a mortal enemy. My question is why? Why was basically every other belligerent in history was allowed to do whatever they had to, but Israel is expected to co-exist with mortal enemies?

Odhinn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501443#Comment_121501443

....because it's colonizing their lands.

dmcdona

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501443#Comment_121501443

I think know what you're getting at - I agree that there were many atrocities in WWII - and the countless other wars before and after. Man's inhumanity to man.

But I don't get the standard bit. I don't think you can directly compare what is happening in 2023 to anything that happened in the 1940s. Today, Israel has a well equipment military - accurate weapons systems, accurate delivery systems, good intelligence etc. In WWII, a fair few of the bombers directed to bomb Dresden actually bombed Prague. I would expect an army today to a lot better than that.

So perhaps Israel is being held to a different standard - because these are different times.

I have no difficulty in holding the two views at the same time - that things that happened in WWII were beyond cruel and that things happening in Gaza are also beyond cruel and should stop.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501443#Comment_121501443

Keep in mind that the modern and updated Geneva Conventions plus the International Criminal Court didn't even exist during WW2. They were largely set up in direct response to the multiple war crimes and atrocities against civilians that had taken place during the war.

Also, what might have been deemed acceptable in war even 20 or 30 years ago would be much more likely to be frowned upon in 2023.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501443#Comment_121501443

Why do you just blindly parrot guff that the likes of that evil bitch Ambassador to the UK come out with? Why stop at 80 years ago? Why not go back to the Mongols FFS to set the standard for the Israelis of today. I mean, why should the IDF care about Human rights when nobody on this site was protesting Genghis Khan or has included a statement condemning him before first criticising Israel. Such a glaring omission clearly makes any attempted condemnation invalid.

But your arguments are always asymmetric and only ever one-sided. You will no doubt resile from those arguments if they were applied to what you consider the "other side".

Hamas could consider themselves at war with Israel since their inception. With legitimate reason. Tens of thousands of Palestinians being held hostage in Israeli facilities (aka detention without charge or trial). Over a decade of sanctions keeping the Palestinian economy in a perpetual state of bare subsistence and a large part of the Palestinian population being held in an open air prison. The portion that are not in an open air prison are not kept behind fences simply for the reason that the absence of fences makes it easier for settlers from the US etc to come and conduct raids on them and their properties and later steal that property.

So, given Hamas were at war with Israel prior to Oct 7th, and given that wars in the past involved raids where people were murdered, maybe even raped, and taken hostage, you are logically then ok with the events of October 7th.

Or are you a complete hypocrite?

BTW, you may think the IDF and Israelis are your friend. The sad thing is that if you visited the West Bank or Gaza, or even a border somewhere with Israel, you would be far more likely to be summarily executed or killed on sight by the IDF than any other group in the area. And without any compunction whatsoever.

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121500905#Comment_121500905

I mean the human shield argument never stood up to any scrutiny from anyone with the slightest modicum of intelligence or anyone who's capable of basic human empathy. You don't blow up a school to put an end to an active shooter situation. Even if someone actually was being a used as a human shield (and there was never any independent evidence of this being the case), that doesn't give you the right to intentionally brutally murder them.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501603#Comment_121501603

It's quite simple. After blockading the territory for over a decade, the Israelis have more recently invaded it and sealed off it's borders and left the population without food or water.

You'll find people on here trying to say that that is wrong. That Israel should not be starving the Gazan population. But those people on here are hypocrites. And their criticism is wholly invalidated as it is purely driven by antisemitism. What is the proof for this? - Well it is obvious. They never - and I repeat, never - start off by condemning the Moroccans for their 26 year long siege of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from 1694-1727.

So not a word about the Moroccans, but they want the IDF to be held to higher standards. It's just antisemitism. It's all fine for the Moroccans to do it but as soon as the Israeli's do it, the hypocrites have a problem with it. Coincidence or wha?

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501693#Comment_121501693

There was a video doing the rounds the other day of the IDF demolishing a UN school and cheering as the explosives detonated and reduced it to rubble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPjIZP6sZw

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501443#Comment_121501443

Do you realise how bad it sounds when the best defence of Israel you can muster is to go back to some of the worst atrocities in all of recorded human history that we all learned about in school in the context that this must never ever be allowed to happen again, and in response to which most of today's international organisations, treaties, conventions and laws around war were created in order to stop such crimes against humanity ever happening again, and then declare Israel are totally justified in what they're doing because maybe it has possibly not quite reached that level yet?

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501715#Comment_121501715

He's just blindly parroting the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. She has given a few interviews now to the UK media where she springs the "gotcha" about Dresden to them. SeanW may not be aware that Ireland did not take direct part in WWII and so - if it has any smidgin of relevance in the UK (I'm not convinced it would) - it has zero here.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501725#Comment_121501725

Dresden was controversial, even at the time. There was disquiet in England once it gradually became clear that a non military city had been attacked and destroyed and tens of thousands of innocent civilians had been killed. There were even editorials in the British press seriously questioning what had happened and why it had been necessary to bomb the city.

Israel and pro-regime extremists seem to be under the impression that the bombing of Dresden was popular and deemed necessary at the time.

scottser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501158#Comment_121501158

I wasn't born then. I never lived through them and neither did you.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493772#Comment_121493772

You're confusing non-Israelis, residents of the occupied territories, with Israeli Arabs, who are 20% of the population of Israel, and have the same legal rights as any other Israelis. Non Israelis don't have the same rights as Israelis, same as non Americans don't automatically have residency/working rights in the US.

The reason Israel is occupying territories goes back to the attacks on Israel by neighbouring countries who thought their numerical superiority meant they'd easily destroy Israel completely. They lost those wars, and while Israel continues to occupy some of the territory they won back then, they've given most of it back, including Gaza, the Sinai and most of the Golan Heights near Syria.

Israel claims that while Hamas, PIJ and others continue to launch rocket attacks from the areas it controls, they can't allow Palestinians to control strategic areas that would make, for example, life in Tel Aviv completely impossible.

And yes I know there is also an extremist section of Israelis who think that the only solution is to annihilate Palestine as a political entity completely - but that's a view that only gained significant support as Palestinian terrorism within Israel has proved impossible to eradicate by other means. The Oct 7th attacks will likely have strengthened that view, not diminished it.

But to come back to Israeli Arabs, many of them are choosing to join the IDF to fight against Hamas: significant majority of them support Israel in this war. They know they don't live in an apartheid state.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492392#Comment_121492392

And there were more deaths again due to Allied actions in WW2 - but that's not an argument to prove that the WW2 Allies were worse than the South African apartheid regime.

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501934#Comment_121501934

" Do you think Iran or USA is the bigger destabilizer in the middle east?"

You need to ask the people of the region for the answer and i would be 100% certain that we know what the answer would be.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493199#Comment_121493199

They say they are respecting humanitarian laws, eg by calling people up in the areas they're about to bomb and warning them to leave. You can disagree, but at the moment we just don't have the detail to prove that either way. It's not a simple number count, no matter how much the pro Hamas people want it to be.

Did the Allies warn civilians to leave Hamburg before they bombed it, killing about 40,000 in a single town? In fact they were moving towards deliberately targeting civilians as an easier way to destroy morale than by trying, and often failing, to hit munitions factories and storage centres.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121502326#Comment_121502326

Eh? Israelis are annexing land and building settlements because they want land not because of any threat to them. Unless the Palestinian children in the west bank routinely murdered by both IDF and Israeli settlers were threats to the state?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121502380#Comment_121502380

You must have missed years of rocket attacks and previous attempts at incursions into Israel from various Palestinian zones then: four civilians killed in August 2023, four in June, two in May, three in April, etc. All before the Oct 7th attacks. It's been going on for years.

in 1996 45 Israelis were killed in the Jaffa Road bus bombings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Road_bus_bombings

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/comprehensive-listing-of-terrorism-victims-in-israel#2023

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501843#Comment_121501843

The controversy was not so much that they did it, but that at that point in the game they didn't need to do it. Either way, it is a false equivalence for people to trot it out.

Whatever strategic argument you could have for bombing a city in WWII, there is no argument in Gaza. Gaza is full of people who have been living on the breadline for generations. It isn't exactly a manufacturing hub for military operations

macbanana

But isn't it the Palestinians who are being occupied by the israelis remember the country was taken from them in 1948 by force of arms. They are refugees in their own country and why shouldn't they fight back ?The genocide which is being committed is totally unprecedented in modern times but nobody has got the nerve to do anything about it because the Americans wouldn't allow it. Over 10,000 children have been murdered in the last few weeks for Christ sake..!!!

bnt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121501707#Comment_121501707

So, are you just learning that common soldiers can be a-holes? That’s been true of every war throughout history, whether it’s been English soldiers in Ireland in 1649, or Napoleon’s forces at Austerlitz in 1805, or pretty much everyone on the ground in WW2, or American soldiers in Vietnam. I would want to see those IDF soldiers getting a bollocking from their sergeant for cheering like that. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking this cheering is some official Israeli government policy.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121502474#Comment_121502474

Ah, that makes it alright so. Sure weren't there a few dickheads in 1649. Nothing to see here lads.

The mistake is you thinking that it isn't official policy. Or at least that it is against it. Naivety in the extreme

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121500725#Comment_121500725

I’m sure Israel has intelligence that Hamas wear clothes, therefore anyone in Palestine wearing clothes is a legitimate target.

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121500510#Comment_121500510

By Jewish settlements you mean places they’ve stolen Palestinian land and Palestinian people have the right to defend??

Same as Ukr with Odessa, Crimea etc

NIMAN

I think it's high time a proper worldwide boycott against Israel was put in place. They have taken this too far now at this stage.

Yes they lost 1200 of their people, but I don't see how killing 15000 of 'the other side' balances things out. And by the time they are done, who knows what the final death toll will be?

Throw them out of all sporting competitions etc.

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121502723#Comment_121502723

I'm sure it's as simple as any male of fighting age, treat like they are Hamas and shoot first and ask questions later.