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

Israel receives international condemnation for killing and settling in the West Bank but they receive international support for bombing refugee camps and hospitals in Gaza. Yes, they would prefer for Hamas to be in control in the West Bank.

The polls and lack of trust in Netanyahu in Israel would strongly suggest that Israelis feel this is the sort of thinking being used at the top end of this right-wing government.

I cannot see any other logical explanation for the views of Israel when its leadership and supporters believe that a religion, not a people, owns a land for all of eternity, and thousands of years later, people of that religion are right and correct to move from their homelands in America etc. and take land from Palestinians already living there and settle it.

Israel gives tax cuts to these people leaving their homelands to come and settle this ancient piece of land they believe is theirs because of their religion. It's like something you'd see in the 14th century. You may as well argue that pagans would be right to resettle Ireland and forcefully take the people's land.

I believe that settlements would ramp up dramatically with the end goal being to remove Palestinians from being in control of the West Bank. You cannot settle hundreds of thousands of people in an area unless the end goal is for all of that area to be one cohesive part of your own nation.

International condemnation is the one hinderance to doing this, and replacing moderate politics with extremists would remove than condemnation.

Thoughts with the doctors, patients and civilians seeking refuge there

Israeli military has finally entered Gaza's al-Shifa hospital.

Hamas gunmen may be hiding in hospital beds with guns under the sheets and 9,000 human shields - it is like something from a game of Call of Duty now. Absolutely nuts.

Is it relevant at this stage?

Source or hyperbole?

The death toll has thankfully been revised downward to 1200. You have increased it to 1500.

The Israeli response is simply "they started it, so we can and will kill as many as we want in return. Anyone who criticises our approach in any way is a Nazi and/or anti-Semite", and the vast majority of Western governments simply fall silent.

And virtually no mention of the 240 odd hostages including that little girl, Emily Hand, who has an Irish father compared with the anti-Jewish state posts here?

Can you imagine the terror that little girl has endured over the last month? Considering what we already know about Hamas, her father was relieve when he thought she was dead.

I don't want to ruin you game image but the 9000 people went there to shelter from relentless bombing and maybe get some food/water. If Hamas have an labyrinth of tunnels, wouldn't they be long gone by now? Hiding under sheets...

That is nuts. Israel built the bunkers and tunnels under Al-Shifa that they will show everyone very soon.

But you have picked a side yourself its obvious from your posts. Citizens on both sides are suffering in the conflict, no side holds a monopoly.

I agree that Israel is creating a new generation of people who hate them but the aim of the current Israeli government is to remove the possibility of a two State solution. They are not ethnically cleansing Gaza or any related childish emotive hyperbole but they, along with their Arab neighbours, do not want a thriving Palestinian State. It's worth remembering that David Ben Gurion, the leader of the Jews in Jewish Mandated Palestine and subsequently the first Prime Minister of Israel, was a supporter of the two State solution which would have seen the region divided into Jewish and Muslim Mandated countries. It was Egypt and Jordan that ensured that there was no Palestinian homeland when they invaded and occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Jordan formally annexed the West Bank in 1950. It's also worth noting that Israel became a State in 1948, with Syria and Jordan coming into existence as modern States only two years earlier in 1946. It was Arab armies that extinguished the possibility of an Arab Palestinian State (there is a Jewish Palestinian State. Its called Israel) when they invaded Mandated Palestine in 1948.

The population of what is now Israel in 1882 was 300,000. By 1914 that had doubled, mainly as a result of the Zionist movement with an influx of Jewish homesteaders, and a much larger influx of Arab labour to work for them. The historical familial claims to the region by most of the Arab population of Israel and the Palestinian areas beside dates back to around the same time as the start of the influx of Zionist Jews.

I have a serious dislike and fear of people who claim a mandate from heaven to justify their actions. In this case both sides make such a claim.

Hamas are of the same ilk as ISIS and the Taliban who murder LGBT+ people, oppress and murder women and murder their political opponents. Anyone who thinks there is a free and open flow of information from Gaza is wilfully delusional or seriously stupid. Any Gazan that speaks out against them will be murdered.

On the other side is a Jewish fundamentalist with the same hubris and moral standards as Trump, kept in office and therefore out of prison by even more fundamentalist Jews who do want a war to ethnically cleans Gaza and the West Bank. But Israel is a democracy, a weakened one but one none the less. It has a free press, a free political opposition and, despite the best efforts of its Prime Minister, an independent Judiciary.

I don't know how anyone is stupid enough to think that Hamas aren't happy to see dead Palestinian children, to them a blood sacrifice in the fight to turn moderates against the Jews. I don't know how anyone thinks that Israel is acting with anything other than a callous disregard for the lives of Gazans. I don't know how anyone can think Israel should allow a free flow of fuel and food into a territory controlled by a terrorist organisation which holds over 200 of their citizens hostage and will use any resources it can get to kill Jews before it will use them to save Muslims.

I don't know how anyone unequivocally takes sides in that boiling cesspool.