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

The number of troops and logistics required to maintain the Gaza settlements was deemed to be unsustainable. The resources were redirected to the West Bank, along with the 'setllers'. It also wrongfooted the Palestinians.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3720176.stm

That is so utterly naive that it defies comprehension.

1. Sanctions? How the hell will sanctions work? You are one of the ones complaining that Israel is blocking fuel and water supplies to Gaza. That is a sanction, and so far Hamas haven't surrendered, so any sanctions would have to be more severe than the ones you are complaining about!!!
2. Mossad? Do you understand how the tunnel system works. Designed and set up to use civilians as shields. Hamas leaders cower in the tunnels, knowing that an awful lot of civilians will need to be killed to get to them, no matter who goes in. Israel, by demanding civilians leave northern Gaza, took a route to remove the civilian shields that Hamas hide behind and minimise civilian casualties.
3. This does not make any sense. The Palestinians want the elimination of Israel and all the Jews, they have consistently voted for that ideology. Hamas is their chosen way, they voted for them. So the only way that Israel shows the Palestinians they don't need Hamas, is by going away.

No, the route to peace is simple. Release all the hostages without conditions. Hand over Hamas leadership and those involved in 7/10 to the International Criminal Court for trial. Recognise Israel's right to exist.

"if the International community and by and large Israel, supported the Palestinian civilians, respected the agreed borders, assisted them with aid, education, opportunity etc Hamas would never have the foothold they have now."

Surely that's blindingly obvious to anyone capable of rational thought.

If you stop oppressing people, if you stop brutalising them, if you stop violently taking their homes and forcing them into what everyone openly describes as an "open air prison" despite the fact they committed no crime other than being the wrong ethnicity and being indigenous to the land you've decided to steal, if you stop murdering their friends and family routinely because they dared step too close to a fence you erected to pen them in or dared to peacefully protest against their treatment, if you stop describing them as "animals" and deliberately dehumanising them at every turn, if you stop creating massive bureaucratic systems specifically designed to segregate them, to stop them from moving freely or working freely or even having the freedom to supply their own running water, then those people will be less likely in their desperation to turn to extremists as their only possible option to try to change something for the better. If you'd even just stop murdering defenceless innocent children in their thousands that would be a start.

With our own history in Ireland and how peace was achieved we can see this. The IRA would be stronger than ever right now had the UK acted with the sort of barbaric brutality that Israel routinely does.

Russia is effectively an ally of Hamas and Iran. It all comes back to Russia, including the events in the Middle East. Russian involvement with Syria. Russian involvement with Iran and proxies such as Hamas. The risk of a wider conflict comes from Russia and Iran, not Israel. That is why the US has sent forces to the Middle East to deter that.

They are meeting in Moscow at the moment.

https://www.barrons.com/news/hamas-iran-officials-in-moscow-for-talks-301d7d6a

see your third point? there haven't been elections in gaza since 2006.

as for the way to peace, what you've just described is a surrender, and a surrender is no basis for peace.

250 lawyers submit legal advice to UK government that they must act or they will be in breach of the Geneva conventions.

Letter in full. KC is a King's counsellor

Anyone revolted against Hamas? No.

If there are such fierce resistance fighters why they didn't revolt against Hamas? Why they didn't reach out to the other side for negotiations? They agree with Hamas and they celebrate their terrorism.

Hamas/Gaza had plenty of opportunities to find a solution since 2006, didn't they? They rejected all of them. They chose a coup, violence, war and terror repeatedly (see the stats below). They want to destroy Israel as an entity, they don't want to negotiate, they don't want to compromise on a two-state solution. OK, but then if you repeatedly attack a neighbouring soveign state and maintain that the state should cease to exist what do you expect the state will do? Thank you for that? Everything is of their own making. If a two-state solution not acceptable - they will get nothing in the end. They overplayed their hand hugely and all of the people of Gaza will suffer because of it.

I know very well the leaps and bounds that were made in the depiction of war in the movies and what film makers can get away with in the modern times, without restrictions like the Hays code or imposed cuts by organisations like MPAA or the BBFC restraining them. In the "modern" era - since the end of the 60's - movies have been able to show much more blood letting and violence until we've reached a point where a director can show, if he wishes, how excruciating a particular wound can be or what it looks like to see a human body blown apart. One can debate how necessary, or how good or bad it is for ordinary viewers and, indeed, the advances in special effects make up has allowed film makers of all kinds to indulge in all sorts of grisly scenes. From Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) to Steven Spielberg (Saving Pvt. Ryan) and beyond, the horrific nature of war has been more open to modern era film makers than it would have been to someone like Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front). It's unfortunate, therefore, that the impact that's often desired by the film maker is usually lost on far too many people in the audience, most of are there only to see a "cool" movie.

In addition, I have interviewed a number of WWII veterans in my time, who have told me directly what it is like to be in combat (including what the smell of human death was like*). My own father was in the Royal Engineers during the war and my mother was an evacuee from the Channel Islands. I've been studying that particular conflict since my dad put Len Deighton's 'Battle of Britain' into my hands when I was still in single figures, so forgive me if I blow my own trumpet and say that I know a thing or two about the Second World War after 40 years of reading about it.

That being said no film, Hollywood or otherwise, has truly depicted war and most people who've seen it up close would tell you that there's only been a handful of them that have come near to replicating the experience. And, as far as I'm concerned, there's probably only about 5 war films that I would consider to be truly great.

As to the question of whether a Marine or any other service man would happily drop the atomic bomb, I'm sure a possible majority would. But that's neither here nor there to be frank about it. Asking someone who's been fighting face to face with an enemy if they've wipe out an enemy isn't going to produce to most balanced of replies, is it? However, that doesn't take away from the fact that the actual scientists who created the weapon petitioned Truman to restrain himself from using it because of the stage that the war was at in 1945. The likes of Leo Szilard and many of the people working on the weapon saw no need to use it at that particular juncture because they were aware of the terrifying nature of the weapon they helped give birth to and what dropping meant for the future. The end of the Second World War was already in clear sight, but what many people in the Manhattan Project also had clear vision of was what the decades after the war would look like too, and that scared them more than a couple of months added time to a conflict that was already in it's sixth year.

Look, I'm sure that we could argue to the death about the necessity of dropping the bomb, and I'm aware of all the arguments for and against. I've been having that particular conversation for many years. But, for myself I would fall into the camp of it being completely unnecessary when all things are considered. A position that's held by many historians, and no not "revisionist" historians, but people like Richard Overy or the aforementioned Basil Liddell Hart.

Into the bargain, many historians will tell you that the atomic bombs weren't actually the biggest factor in the Japanese decision to finally give in to unconditional surrender, as they hadn't the time to study the effects of the weapon to any real degree. Instead, it was the Russian declaration of war on the 8th of August (ironic since the Japanese were trying to put out peace feelers through them a month before) and the terrifyingly easy way with which the Red Army had been slicing through the ill equipped, ill trained and underfed Kwantung Army in Manchuria that had the biggest weight in their final decision. The Japanese had rightly assumed two things. 1. the possibility that the US only had a very limited supply of their new super weapon, and 2. that the Russians would have been far more brutal occupiers of the home islands than the Americans would be, should they be allowed get near them. As such, it was decided that to surrender to the Americans was the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, this is the last detour into both movie and WWII territory from me on this thread.

*not unlike clearing dead rotting animals on a farm, one chap said to me.

This is also the main reason why you have a lot of self proclaimed right wingers supporting Israel right now, and I guarantee you that there would be a very different song being sung by those same right wingers if the Knesset was under a left wing custodianship.

There is nothing pertinent or relevant in that graph. The fact that Hamas shoots poor man's rockets still means they are shooting rockets, but they're bad at it. Israel is not. Hamas is virtually always the first one to shoot, and Israel responds. What would you want them to do? Dig out their pipes and turn them into rockets like Palestinians do?

Why don't Hamas take independent journalists to the fuel tanks, photographed by Israel, & show that they are empty?

Exactly. They repeatedly chose violence, terrorist attacks, and confrontation. Then they're whining they're the victim if the stronger side retaliates. It's pathetic.

If they could work something out with Fatah, something real could have been achieved on the ground. Contrary, they attacked Fatah militarily instead.

But think about it - why would they want to find agreement? They don't want peace or some conclusion, that would evaporate Hamas, because they wouldn't be needed anymore. Their sole existence is based on keeping the status quo and the repeated cycles of attacks & retaliations from Israel going, this generates their source of income and they can hapily keep stealing it and rule the Gaza prison. Gazans are only their puppets in this whole game. They don't have an iota of regard for Gazans or Palestinian cause itself, that's obvious to anyone with a brain who paid attention the last 17 years. They're mafia thugs of the worst order, with no regard for human life.