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

Oh it happened but you leave out Bibi's motive for allowing it to happen. You are quite correct that Hamas has no interest in a democratic Palestinian state, that's something Sinwar and Bibi see eye to eye on. Also you mention Russia and Iran being delighted, they certainly are and Israel due to their reckless disregard for civilians has certainly obliged them. At least you have finally admitted there are scumbags on both sides.

About the only good thing that might come out of this war is that Israel's ambivalence towards Russia will be terminated.

Killing with kindness was a quote from a previous poster. I don't know what relevance the rest of your post has, since I already explained what exactly the expression was referring to.

No rant, just a considered response to this nonsense: "Perhaps though you are not aware of such matters."

If my response took more than a quick sound bite, that doesn't make it a rant for all that. Just not a soundbite, of which there are too many IMO.

You were making out that you had some understanding of Northern Ireland when you clearly have no personal experience of living there, never mind of living there during the troubles, as I did. You suppose that anyone who disagrees with you is just "not aware", rather than having a different opinion to you.

Some of us, however, come from Northern Ireland - and just don't accept your poor attempt to "read" the Israel-Palestine conflict as a version of your misunderstandings about the NI conflict.

The end of Hamas and Bibi too,hopefully

Maybe I am being a bit cynical, but I think Joe has one eye on the November election with these recent comments.

Donald, the North is about as far from the middle east as you can get in situation like this. We have peace now Thank God, and the Catholic / Protestant divide are living with each other in the North. In the middle east, that's not possible because one side is Islamic and the other Jewish. No discussion about it, but what's happening in Palestine is terrible, and has to stop, end of story, but to my way of thinking, and I've lived in that part of the world, its all happening against the wider backdrop of Christians, Jews and non-Muslims being removed from the middle east generally. Even if there was peace there in the morning, you will still have this hatred of non-Muslims. Because it's something that Islam teaches, from childhood.

The point JM, was about the conditions in which these groups can prosper. Those conditions are universal and not restricted to any geographical or religious parameter.

I would say good luck to you if your mission was to go into an average secondary school in Dublin today and get 50 16-year olds to get off their iphones and tiktok and pledge themselves to becoming soldiers for the upcoming fight to the death against the British (which you tell them is coming)

Would it be easier for a Hamas recruiter to get a 16 year old in Gaza or Palestine as a whole? One would have to undoubtedly say yes.

That recruiter can point across the barbed wire fence at the place where the kid's grandfather was born, the stolen land where his ancestors had farmed for generations, and where some yank has built their nice new fancy house while he lives in a cramped hovel. The yank exercised a "right to return" to land that was never his. The kid has no such "right of return".

The kid who watched their brothers and sisters being killed and maimed. Their mother being shot in the head by a sniper. Being harassed and humiliated on the street daily by Israeli soldiers if they are lucky enough to live in the West Bank. The kid who has no future except to wait for the day when Israel kills him one way or the other. Directly or indirectly. Do you not agree that it would be easier to convince that kid to join your mission than the 16 year old in Dublin?

Or people might agree with those that think the reason the Palestinian kid is more likely to join those groups is because of some inherent inhumanity or sub-humanness. And despite what those people will try to deny, there is a large element of truth to me saying that. Because they think that deep down.

As regards teaching of hatred, there are plenty of videos proudly showing classrooms of Israeli kids boasting that when they grow up they will kill arabs.

https://www.facebook.com/DAILYSABAH/videos/israeli-students-say-they-want-to-kill-arabs-as-teacher-promotes-hatred/1019595848197507/

Those kids grow up, they give them machine guns and sniper rifles and let them know there will be no consequences for anything they do on a Palestinian. What else is going to happen.

You only have to look at the current impasse over the Ukrainian aid package to realise there is a great deal of difference between the two parties.

Do you think does your own background influences your apparently blind, unquestioning and unconditional support of Israel? Was it ingrained in you from a young age by any chance? Did you or your neighbours fly Israeli flags outside your houses or on your estate?

That's fair enough. It just seems very strange to me that you would be on the side of the occupier force harassing one section of a population while only being interested in "protecting" the other side.

Well if you'd have been calling for, and happy with, the British similarly periodically "mowing the lawn" in Nationalist areas, then at least you'd be consistent.

The way the Israeli's think of, and portray, the savage Palestinians is the same as how the British though of the Irish for a long time.

I won't ask you your thoughts on Bloody Sunday in Derry. If you are consistent with your position vis-a-vis the IDF and Palestinian civilians, we'd know your answer anyway.

Oh this, BTW: you are joking when you try to imply that if Israel did not exist, that Palestine would be a stable democracy? Aren't you?

One of approximately zero in that part of the world - right?

Well, except for Israel, which actually is a democracy.

If Israel did not exist, statistically the likelihood is that Palestine would be an authoritarian hellhole. Quite possibly with a latent or open civil war between Muslim and/or tribal factions. That's what the other similar countries around it are like, after all.

Grand. It's ok to annihilate them so. It's not a genocide to kill them all once we know that they probably wouldn't have had a democracy even if their oppression didn't make it de facto impossible.

lol.

“Those people don’t have a democracy and therefore they do not deserve to live”

literally the only person saying that on boards is you.