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

Yes they need to leave a place they're penned into.

"Fish, we are offering you the option to leave this barrel before we shoot you. Any injury such as death which you may sustain if you do not take this option will be your fault."

The abduction, if true, of small children from a crèche is particularly troubling. A lot of these tactics are from the Isis playbook.

Nonsense. Nearby Palestine are the Syrian Arab Republic and the Arab Republic of Egypt. It is admittedly bordered by a monarchy - the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, but we can't impose our views on governance on other countries. Saorstát Éireann isn't exactly democratic - it was clearly a dictatorship during the COVID years.

There is no such place as "Israel" - only Palestine, and the people of Palestine have the right to use any level of military force to free their country. I salute this spectacular operation.

As with seemingly everything nowadays, the culture wars destroy everything. So much of the internet discussion and indeed wider offline discussion on this is driven by idiots who refuse to see beyond their own internet "tribe". Everything is either black or white, there is no nuance.

Thus we get people who are openly defending the mass slaughter which was perpetrated by Hamas yesterday, because to say otherwise is to give some succour to the other "tribe". If you say that it's wrong and it's sick and it's grotesque to parade the dead, raped body of a woman on the back of a pick up truck, somehow, you are "selling out".

We then get people calling for the wiping out of Gaza. If you say that's wrong, those people round on you, because somehow then you're apparently giving succour to the murderers yesterday.

If you say that the murders yesterday did not happen in a vacuum, that they are a tragically inevitable outcome of seven decades of systematic Israeli oppression against Palestinians, you're apparently "condoning terrorism".

If you make the point that western media don't care about Israel's systematic oppression, war crimes, demolition of communities and colonial expansion, you're apparently "with the terrorists".

If you make the point that you greatly sympathise with the plight of the Palestinian people but you reject Hamas and you fear what Hamas is, you're classed as being "with the war criminals of Israel".

If you make the point that many people who support the plight of Ukraine are being total hypocrites by supporting Israel, woe betide you.

If you make the point that many people who support the plight of Palestine are being total hypocrites by supporting Putin's Russia, woe betide you.

It is remarkable and almost impressive how stupid public discourse on so many issues has become. Thank you INTERNET and INTERNET TRIBES.

the sad reality is the vast majority of people outside the immediate area do not really care what happens there. of course people will tune into SkyNews or whatever for their daily/weekly dose of "isn't it awful/what's the world coming to" News bulletin, but then they will quickly move onto the Match, the Budget or whatever.

most people will view this as a religious/land dispute. i remember being abroad during the Troubles, and in my naive youth being slightly offended that nobody gave a fiddlers about Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, the Shankill Road or any of that. and in all honesty you cant blame them.

Gr8 win for Ireland last night btw!😁

Irish people empathise with the Palestinian people in a general sense for very understandable reasons - the fact they were ethnically cleansed off the land they lived on by an invader. Because they are penned into small parcels of that land, are under siege, regularly have their homes demolished, see family members slaughtered by IDF bullets, because Gaza has regularly come under the fire of Israeli fighter jets with massive loss of civilian life. Because what Israel has imposed on Palestinians is barbaric.

That the Jewish people suffered the greatest historical outrage humanity has ever seen doesn't change the fact that what Israel has done over the last seven decades has been barbaric.

To acknowledge this does not mean you support Islamism. It doesn't mean you support Hamas, no more than sympathising greatly with the plight of Catholics in Northern Ireland meant people supported the Provos. It doesn't mean you support slitting the throats of civilians. It doesn't mean you support parading dead, raped bodies of women on pick up trucks.

I don't share the values of either the Israeli government or Hamas. Both are repulsive. Political Islamism, of which hatred of Jews is a central part, thrives throughout the Arab world now because of hardship, because of oppression, because of naked propaganda. Israeli society has become radicalised into fanatical hatred of Palestinians because of suicide bombings, also because of historical echoes, also because of naked propaganda, in a state which has never had a real desire for a fair and just peace.