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

It's unidirectional? Hamas aren't defending themselves? They've stopped aggressively launching rockets? That'd stop the fighting for sure. Try again.

Actually it's nothing like the Vietnam war. For one thing, the VC were not the government of South Vietnam. They were an actual irregular force. Hamas relationship with Gaza is closer to that of the Nazis to Germany, or other "traditional" wars. I.E. they are government forces.

Also, none of the Vietnamese were a mortal enemy of the US, the Vietnamese Communists were clear that once the US left, that was the end of it. Also Vietnam was nowhere near the US on the map. The opposite is true in Gaza, Israel's problems with Gaza began when they left and Hamas have made it clear that their quarrel is a fight to the death.

This conflict is the exact opposite of the US-Vietnam War in every conceivable respect.

Do you have any evidence that the Allies had some sort of "idea of the number of civilians they were willing to accept" before they felt they'd have to ceasefire, thereby letting the Nazis win??

I've never heard of any such calculation existing.

In fact I know that in occupied France, where the Nazi occupiers prioritised their solders' safety over that of the civilians (rather like Hamas in Gaza, except Hamas are supposed to be on the same side as Gazans) the death rates from the Allied bombing raids over cities like Brest, Lorient or Toulon were far higher per capita than London. IOW they were bombing people they were also fighting to free - and nobody protested there that there were too many deaths. Neither before nor after.

So I think you're just making that up.

Clearly you don't though. What have you had to say about (for instance) Saudi Arabia killing Yemenis? Or deaths in Sudan/Southern Sudan? Thousands dead - how many civilians were acceptable to you there? Have you even posted about any of that, pre Oct 7th?

You're also just making stuff up about previous wars having had a theoretical "acceptable" number of dead civilians, so as to hold the Jews to a standard that nobody else is held to.

The "hue and cry" as you call it was around the fact that not all of those humiliated men were Hamas combatants.

"In a New York Times public opinion survey this week, only 33% of registered American voters approved of the president's handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. A plurality, 44% to 39%, said Israel should end its military campaign."

full article:

I'm not sure what you mean. It's not about "look over there", it's about pointing out double standards. And they are double standards, and only apply to Jews. Make of that what you will.

I agree by the way about Netanyahu - way before the Hamas attacks I was hoping he'd end up in prison. Not just for his rejection of the two-state solution but also that.

But Hamas are propping him up too. In fact it looks to me like Hamas prefer having someone like him in power than someone who actually wants peace.

I think it's more complicated than that. Many observers are of the opinion that the IDF are also quite deliberately attacking the Gazan population (a repeat of Dresden etc) nothing to do with collateral damage. Yes, they are indeed trying to wipe out Hamas and kill all its members, but a far more sinister element is that they may be deliberately attempting to terrorise the entire Gazan population : 'put manners on them' so to speak.

There is no point arguing with posters who are bringing up antisemitism. They are completing ignoring thr emotive effect of the killing of women and children. If they were massacring Hamas only, people wouldn't care.

They are just repeating whatever is the current Israeli government line because that is basically their positions. The operation should just end in theirminds s whenever the Israeli government unfurls their mission accomplished banner and declares victory.

If this were true, people would care more about the deaths of children in Yemen than they clearly do.

I don't think people care about Muslims killing Muslims in general. They didn't care when the Shia and sunni militant were blowing each other up in Iraq when the americans were there. Do you care about when Jewish people are killing Muslims or only when Muslims kill Jewish people?

This doesn't even make sense. I don't see it as Jewish vs the rest, I see it as one small nation that is fighting to survive, and whose people have nowhere else safe in the world, as their history shows. Unlike the Palestinians who, for centuries, even by their own reckoning were "Arabs" rather than Palestinians, and who for decades didn't even want Palestine to exist, because they mostly saw themselves as part of "Greater Syria".

The Palestinians were given the option of their own country, but they didn't want that, because they wanted to destroy Israel rather than create their own functioning state. All their resources have been funnelled into weapons to destroy Israel, which is why they have now lost what they originally had. But them's the breaks when you choose to go to war.

If Ireland had rejected the treaty and gone on fighting the English, would we now be a modern state that is part of the EU or would we be a war-torn shithole?

So no, it's not about who's killing who, but about why the war is happening in the first place.

Palestinians could have accepted the existence of Israel - it was only a small percentage of the total land the Arabs were given - but no, they wanted it all. They lost that fight, so they needed to suck that up, and compromise. Like us with the treaty. You can hate a situation but not everything justifies going to war over it. And you can use peaceful means to change something. That's what we agreed with the GFA.

Instead of that though, Palestinians went all-out for a death cult that prefers constant war to building a state. And this is the result.

Meanwhile, Israel has tried all sorts of ways (some worse than others) to find ways to create a stable state next door to the death cult, but the Oct 7th attacks were an attack too far for many ordinary Israelis. Because you can't farm land or do anything normally when you're likely to be kidnapped at any moment. Hamas became an existential threat to ordinary Israeli civilian life at that stage. And nobody who is saying that Israel has overreacted seems to have any alternative suggestions to make as to what Israel could reasonably have done instead.

That makes me think that they all know well that there was no alternative, but that they want Israel to sit there and take it anyway. IOW they're perfectly content to see Israel being destroyed.

They're just not quite ready to say so out loud. Yet.

I do not want to see israel destroyed and am against this operation continuing so you can take that bogus conspiracy theory elsewhere.

There is no alternative to the slaughter of women and children with end in sight in your mind? To be honest that may be because you just take what the Israeli government line is and run with it. If Israel had not taken 20k lives in last two months they would still be in existence today.

What is your perfectly reasonable end game solution for this conflict or are you waiting for the Israeli governmentcto tell you this?

You cannot expect us to take this seriously. You supposedly don't want Israel to be destroyed but you don't want them to defend themselves against a mortal enemy bent on their annihilation?

These two positions are mutually exclusive. Israel cannot be expected to co-exist with Hamas.