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

I'm not against attacking hamas but bombing civilians areas to do that is wrong. Under the method you support God knows what the civilian bodycount will be at the end of this. Your crocodile tears for people in Yemen are clear when you don't question Israeli methods which is resulting in such carnage.

So you are waiting for Israel to declare victory then.Given hamas are a terrorist group how will you know when this has happened, will you just blindly believe Israel when they announce this? And are Israel going to occupy gaza then or let a new Palestinian Authority take over that could be just a front for hamas. And this " success" on the back of 10s of thousands of civilian deaths.

I would go after the leadership of hamas have direct assassinations using the network of moles that the idf has in gaza. I know its bit as sexy as demolishing while residential areas. And then put political pressure to isolate them from their allies in the region.

International law is clear AFAIK, military targets are fair game. If one side chooses to use human shields, then they bear sole responsibility for what happens to them.

Targeted assassination of the leadership. The method of not killing innocent people wholesale. But hide behind international law all you want for something that is moralIy wrong. Guess you were a supporter of Gitmo Bay and waterboarding cos they were legal.

..and the same would naturally apply if the IDF hid behind baby Israeli civilians .

They could walk into Gaza and the surrounding Arab countries unopposed.

They could take as much land as they wanted until they were met with fierce resistance from the columns of similarly infant protected opposing armies.

That said ,it is still not clear to me why so many civilians have been killed

Is it entirely Hamas' fault or has the IDF simply found it too difficult to combat Hamas in its "civilian terrain" in a timescale or rate of it's own casualties that it is willing to accept?

Right at the start they realized that public opinion's support would fall away once the memory of Oct7 faded(I remember this fear being expressed at the time) and that would have been a motivating force to get the job done at whatever cost and as quickly as possible

Do you really think the Israeli public is of the mood to make them stop. They don't care.

I am against the killing of innocent women and children that is the difference between is. We are both only armchair warriors.

No I'm looking at Gaza. And your support of the killing of innocent people. But I guess you think trh operation should end whenever the Israeli government decides it should. Nothing to do with the civilian bodycount.

Now you're lying: you brought Gitmo into it, a subject on which I've never posted here, and attributed an opinion to me on it that comes straight from your own head.

This is bickering now. This will get us banned. We just fundamentally disagree on the ethics of this operation

But you're really not, except in a "Oh let's all be nice" way, which is meaningless and actually counterproductive.

The reality is that Hamas chose to go into Israel specifically to target civilians including babies because of their ethnicity, and you say that the IDF is not entitled to respond militarily to that because Hamas has also put its own civilians, including babies, in the way of the IDF trying to attack Hamas fighters.

If that is allowed to become protection for an army, then only armies which deliberately sacrifice civilians can ever fight from now on. It's an imparable defence. And I think that's a worse outcome for people everywhere than this one war. Like the Nazis, I think Hamas have to be fought on this because otherwise, it will happen again and again, and not just to Israelis.

Another anology could be as follows. The League of Nations, aided and abetted by bribery from Britain, awards them 21 counties in Ireland with 11 going to the Republic. The latter, not being willing to 'suck it up and compromise even though there would be 2 nations' decided to rise up against Britain and in the ensuing battle were reduced to say Wexford, Cavan and Monaghan. Even then the Brits decided to continue taking more land in the latter 2 counties and settling more Brits. They also control power, water and goods going into Wexford, severely repress them and make their lives a misery. Would you still expect Wexford to suck it up? Or would they be a 'death cult' by rebelling?

I condemn what Hamas have done but there are 2 sides to the story and neither side has right on their side. There is a reason why the current conflict is taking place. Israel are currently acting as 'Might is right' and are not using their power wisely and have managed to alienate most countries in the world. Given how Jews have suffered through history, I hope they find compassion rather hard hearts

No, the first reason your analogy fails is that Britain already has a country. The Jewish people had nothing, as well as a history of being hunted down and killed pretty much everywhere else in the world.

Also, no idea where your claim about bribery is coming from. Are you saying that the only reason Israel was given recognition as a state was because someone bribed the United Nations? And not, say, the effects of the Holocaust? Who paid, and how much?

There were a number of reasons why Israel were given a disproportionate amount of territory. Part of the reason was the empathy felt by many countries because of the Holocaust, guilt also by many countries that they did little to stop the genocide. However, this is not a good reason to take land off others. The Belgian Prime Minister in 1947 acknowledged the decision would lead to bloodshed. France and others were against the resolution but pressure was put on American senators to say post war aid would be withheld unless they supported the resolution. Financial pressure was put on smaller countries and it is acknowledged in articles published by Mosaic that Zionist bribes were paid to countries such as Costa Rica. Indeed, the tactics used to gain a disproportionate amount of land were rightly seen by Ben Gurion as an extremely successful starting point in their acquisition of land, the 1948 war with the assistance of Russian arms was another successful step. In many ways, you have to greatly admire their tactics. However, it meant that many people were ousted from their land unjustly. You might think that they should just 'suck it up and compromise' but you can trace the current conflict to unwise decisions made back then. It is still no excuse for Hamas

In 1947, Jews comprised less than 1/3 of the population and owned 7% of the land but got 56% of the land. Israel now controls 77% of the land even excluding the West Bank settlements