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

Source or hyperbole?

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

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.

"The United Nations has said it estimates that at least 2,300 people – patients, staff and displaced civilians – are inside and may be unable to escape because of fierce fighting."

But sure there are no Hamas in the hospital according to some deluded people on this thread? Israel is only targeting the hospital just to commit murder / war crimes / genocide / ethnic cleansing (fill in your favourite word of misplaced outrage here)

+1

It's a brutal situtation. Hopefully the casualties stay as low as possible. But this is on Hamas. This is their war crime.

You sincerely believe IDF is just shooting at unarmed civivilians for the sake of it in the hospital and that's what the United Nations has called "fierce fighting". Seriously?

Your post literally confirms the act of a war crime (Article 33 of Geneva Convention - applying collective punishment) in the preventing of fuel being delivered to an area holding over 2M people for 5 weeks.

I've nothing but complete and total empathy for the Jewish people who have suffered greatly in the past, and I already have repeatedly extended that sympathy for them for the attacks on the 7th and the isolated events that are undoubtedly happening across the world as individuals are targeted (this is happening for Muslim people also right now of course).

But I've been appalled at the implied right the Israeli state and IDF have displayed indicating that because they have had grievances inflicted on them, no one can question anything they do, no matter how disproportionate it is.

The behavior of Israel in the UN has been unacceptable for a long time, their actions in recent weeks (wearing the star of David on the floor) has really shown them in a bad light.

The millions of people protesting and calling for a ceasefire worldwide are doing so because of Israels actions since the 7th of October. Calling Israel out on this does neither qualify as antiSemitic, or devalue the lives of those who died on the 7th.

It's not a war crime is up there with Trump is not a rapist.

According to Al Jazeera