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

The war on hospitals rages on. I bet they will bring in the bulldozers next.

The bulldozers arrived yesterday or before

The area behind the very nice curtains?

Hamas, or rather their military wing, are on the brink of defeat in Northern Gaza.

Now the focus is shifting to Southern Gaza...

Palestinians in the south of Gaza have been warned to leave. Where are they supposed to go to?

I see no command center has been found under the Al Shifa hospital as of yet. The goalposts have shifted on that one. It was good of the al qassam brigades to leave behind some weapons and equipment as a clue to their presence under the hospital, despite having weeks to clear out the command center and bring the hostages with them. According to the Times of Israel, the IDF knew the layout of the command center due to spies within the hospital. Yet despite all this, Hamas were able to do a disappearing act and escape the hospital without being detected by these spies. I see the Americans can't share their intelligence regarding the command center being under the hospital. Convenient.

Or, Hamas killed them. Always a possibility.

I've no real dog in this fight, and IMO the thread was informative and interesting once upon a time, but to be fair the last few pages have really descended into a pedantic petty tit for tat with both sides repeating points over and over (and over). Does anyone really think there will be a gotcha moment when the other side says "you know what, you're right" ? Not trying to back seat mod or anything like that, and its not directed at yourself, just an observation from a reader of the thread.

But you're not debunking anything, you're presenting stuff that supports your own agenda and opinion on the matter and multiple people have taken it apart, one poster multiple times and you've ignored him repeatedly.

I don't deny any evidence that Hamas were in hospitals but the evidence I've seen so far I'd consider flimsy at best to justify the scale of the operation against the hospital and those patients who died inside it. No i don't take Hamas for idiots at all, idiots couldn't have planned and carried out the scale of butchery they did on 7th of October, savages definitely but idiots definitely not.

I know nothing is black and white in this conflict and the full truth will take a long time to come out if it ever does. However, it seems yourself and other posters have set a position of taking whatever the IDF present as evidence as gospel immediately, even though they have at multiple times over many years been caught out releasing fake videos, images etc.

Then when the Gaza Health ministry ( I know, Hamas controlled) make statements or produce death toll numbers you and others are quick to pour scorn on them even though, in the cases of death tolls especially, they have been proven to be extremely accurate by multiple outside agencies, this evidence has been routinely ignored by the pro Israeli posters because it doesn't back their narrative.

So I've answered your questions, so can I ask if you consider Israel to be an occupying force in gaze after reading all the information provided to you in this thread?

Tbf you’ve never once addressed principles of distinction.

Where did I pour scorn on Hamas reports of casualties?

I have said this many times. Israel did not meet the definition of occupying force on 6/10 because they did not have troops on the ground and did not have security control of Gaza. The extent of the Hamas actions of 7/10 are the clearest evidence that I am correct on this.

There is no point in addressing the rants of posters whose whole argument is based on Israel as an occupying power as this is not accepted.

The "rants of posters". You mean informed posters right?

Here is a list of well respected organisations that have studied the situation in Gaza and consider Israel an Occupying Power since 2005 (and before Oct 7)

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) 

UN General Assembly

UN Security Council 

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory

European Union (EU)

African Union

International Criminal Court (ICC) (both Pre-Trial Chamber I and the Office of the Prosecutor)

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

UN Relief Workers Agency

The Israeli High Court of Justice has itself emphasized that the state is nonetheless required under international humanitarian law to allow Gaza to receive “what is needed in order to provide the essential humanitarian needs of the civilian population” (Jaber Al-Bassiouni Ahmed 2008, para. 11).

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So this is not accepted by you and Israel. Is that your argument?? No reply expected.

The facts may be ignored so I will send you the reasoning...

Specifically, experts from the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found “noting” positions held by the UN Security Council, UNGA, a 2014 declaration adopted by the Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the ICRC, and “positions of previous commissions of inquiry,” that Israel has “control exercised over, inter alia, [Gaza’s] airspace and territorial waters, land crossings at the borders, supply of civilian infrastructure, including water and electricity, and key governmental functions such as the management of the Palestinian population registry.” They also point to “other forms of force, such as military incursions and firing missiles.”

For the Gaza-Egypt border, they hold that while the Palestinian Authority operates the crossing under the supervision of EU monitors, Israel ultimately has control. Israeli security forces supervise the passenger lists—deciding who can cross—and monitor the operations and can withhold the “consent and cooperation” required to keep the crossing open. In that vein, experts note that Israel’s “coercive measures” have further “impeded efforts to build proper democratic institutions,” and that Israel still has not transferred sovereign powers and instead maintains control over “the [Palestinian Authority]’s ability to function effectively.” Based on the actual exercise of effective control, they, therefore, find that Israel has occupied Gaza since the broader occupation of Palestine began in 1967.

There is strong justification in the Torah for those who believe that it is the word of God to kill every man woman and child (and their cattle) in the West Bank and Gaza that isn't Jewish. It's all laid out in The Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth and last Book of the Torah.

The Book of Deuteronomy is also the fifth Book of the Old Testament so if you are a Christian and believe that the Bible is the written word of God then you must also support the annihilation of those not of the Jewish (or Christian) faith in the region. 'cause God said so and he'll always right.

And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest inherit his land. Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz. And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.

— Deuteronomy 2:31-34

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.

— Deuteronomy 7:1-2

Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

— Deuteronomy 13:15

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee

— Deuteronomy 20:16-17

For those of us who don't believe in the supernatural or magic and take our moral guidance from the Enlightenment and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights such notions are abhorrent.

But if you're a Christian, a real Christian, you must be impatient and disappointed that Israel isn't doing the Lords work with the appropriate amount of vim and vigour.

If you are a Muslim you will, quite naturally, be lamenting that the opposite isn't happening.

The only difference between a religion and a cult is time. Posters here can argue over who is right and wrong, or more right or more wrong, but in the end it all comes down to religion and how it gives people the moral justification to commit evil. A plague on all their houses.

Israel still blocking aid. I’m also concerned with the Israel notifications for people to move further south, before what looks like now southern areas to be attacked. There’ll come a stage where there isn’t anywhere else to go.

That hostage, like the others, died because they were kidnapped from their homes to be used as human shields and/or as insurance against Israeli retaliation. They are being killed to try to get the IDF to back off. Hamas attack residential areas and a music festival, murder, mutilate, gang rape and burn innocent people then take hostages as human shields and run back into their tunnels. The intelligence on the hospital may be wrong, maybe not, but the IDF wouldn't be anywhere near there only for what happened on 7th October.

lol, another Bible scholar...well the Devil can quote scripture to his purpose!

I actually agree with guts of your post (+ all religion is not worth all the [violent] baggage that goes with it), just not with your claim that somehow bible beaters quoting fire and brimstone wrath of God stuff from the OT to justify violence are the "real" Christians.

It doesn't stand up IMO.