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

Plenty of you guys on here. Defend to the hilt the rights for Israelis to arbitrarily murder and maim countless others based on their religion. But at the same time sneer at other religions.

There is a recognized phenomena in the US of American paedos within the Jewish community using the "right of return" to Israel escape sanction in the US.......................and of course, if one mentioned wealth in the same sentence as "jews", one would be accused of antisemitism.

The preceeding is as relevant to the thread topic as your own tangential soapboxing about the Vatican

What's the end game here? What's the acceptable revenge kill rate for Israel - it's clearly not an eye for an eye?

Wipe out Hamas, wipe out the concept of Palestinian state, raze the housing and infrastructure in Gaza?

This is exactly the point. Right thinking people have no issue with Jews per se. Jewish citizens in Ireland have the same rights and obligations as the rest of society here.

The problem arises with the aggregation of Jewish people into the state of Israel and how that state has conducted it's affairs with it's neighbours and with displaced people of the region. They have lost the right to be considered a civilised state and must now be isolated and prosecuted for war crimes. I expect that this onslaught has sowed the seeds of terminal decline for Israel. They are the authors of their own misfortune.

It baffles me that people still have this view. It's as if there were no jews in the area in 1946. Or 1846. Or AD46.

You can see from past conflicts and wars Israel always does this. You kill one mine I'll kill 10 of yours.

Seems to be the plan. Seems unreasonable to me. But then Israel has done this in the past. I guess Hamas upped the ante, thus so did Israel. Entirely predictable.

Circle of violence continues.

I guess I remember the Lebanon war/invasion. Feels like deja vu.

But they've well passed 10:1 now, have they not? I put it to you that they have no plan at the moment other than maybe to make Gaza uninhabitable, at whatever cost of human life.

The neighbouring countries tried that before. It didn't go well: they ended up losing the wars they started, losing territory themselves (Sinai and the Golan Heights in particular), and having to take in the resulting Palestinian refugees, and finally in some cases ended up themselves killing, blockading or deporting said Palestinian refugees. So I think they may pass on that unless they're sure the west is all-in with them and will take the Palestinians as needed. Another reason not to support Hamas, IMO.

I think Iran and Russia are happy to help Hamas though (and are probably behind the Oct 7th attacks), because they're that bit further away that they won't have to assume the consequences of their actions. Not sure about Turkey though: despite Erdogan's undoubted sympathy for fellow Muslims, I expect they won't want to get too involved in supporting troublesome guerrilla fighters using terror against an organised state - for obvious reasons.

Your figures are off.

The increase in numbers started before the Balfour agreement. Thus imo it's misleading to imply the great powers initiated it.

None of this happened in a vacuum.

I asked the above question a couple of day ago, and was specifically interested in the views of Israel supporters. It looks like no one has responded to this so am pointing to it again, with an added angle.

If you think that Hamas is likely to be able draw on greater recruitment resources as a consequence of the last 10 weeks, would you say that this means that Israel's approach was flawed?

Look down that same wikipedia page and you will see population of Ottoman Palestine is more or less what I said, this might depend on which source is used but the McCarthy one is much more detailed as it gives yearly figures whilst the one you are quoting are less detailed and says estimated underneath.

Zionism started in the 1890s, so that was when the idea of a Jewish state started and Jewish people were encouraged to move to Palestine. The area was under Ottoman rule, so the chances of a Jewish state were pretty .minimal. It was the Balfour declaration that promised the Zionists a Jewish state in the region after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after WW1. Following WW1, a Commission of Enquiry was set up during the Peace talks to figure out how to best break-up the Austria-Hungarian, German & Ottoman Empires. That was primarily at the behest of the Great Powers, Britain, France and to a lesser extent Italy with the US overseeing things. The Commission looked at the feasibility of the creation of the various new states and made recommendations on what should happen. In most cases, they were listened to, but on Palestine they were ignored due to the interests of Britain & France. The British wanted control of Palestine as they had wanted to fulfil the promises they made in the Balfour agreement.

So this is very much the fault of the Great Powers as they ignored their own commission and put their own self-interest ahead of the wishes of the local populations. The whole theme post WW1 was self-determination, were the Palestinians afforded that right? Of course not.

I didn't see your post before, but TBH I think the urgency for Israel now is to prevent more attacks such as already happened on Oct 7th. I mean, I don't really see how the risk of more supporters in the future can make the problem significantly worse than the existing crowds cheering as the brutalized corpse of a young woman was paraded through Gaza that day.

Hamas have said they plan more Oct 7th attacks. I think Israel has decided that they need to deal with that immediate threat, and that any future potential threat has to come second to that. Especially as people saying that this will increase support for Hamas never seem to have any practical suggestions for reducing support for Hamas - other than for Israel to stop existing.

But maybe you're an exception, and you do have alternatives to propose that will ensure that there isn't another Oct 7th in January or February? Or next year?

I think Israel's reaction to Oct 7th played into Hamas's hands. Israel is becoming increasingly isolated internationally and a huge swathe of Israeli citizens and Jews alike are becoming disgusted by the actions of Netanyahu's government. The most sensible, logical and beneficial thing Israel could do is agree to a ceasefire but they're obviously too far gone for that.

It really is horrible to watch.

You mean, 'In your words'.

Absolutely. They are heading towards apartheid era South Africa status at this rate - a pariah state that nobody will want any dealings with. Anyone can see they are aggressive in the extreme and are not 'defending' anything.

Any objective assessment would conclude that is the end goal. Allowing millions of people to flood into another country will change the demographic makeup of that country.