What’s your most controversial opinion? **Read OP** **Mod Note in Post #3372**

It must come as a bit of a shock to parents actually having to pay for something though.

Most controversial opinion of mine especially when in Ireland:

I strongly dislike Palestinian flags in public, especially if waved by Irish people wrongly believing that anything Palestinian is good, and anything Israeli is bad.

Usually flown by the local nut jobs, unemployed trouble makers, do-gooders, attention seekers etc

The people I know who waive the Palestinian flag do so because they are of the opinion that mass murder of women and children should not be tolerated by the Western world.

Ireland is only militarily neutral. And at that it’s only a historical government stance. It’s not written into our constitution. Historically we’ve been politically aligned to many different sides of particular conflicts. Look at Ukraine vs Russia for example… even then beyond politically our armed forces have provided some weapons training to Ukranian forces… so we pick and choose our relationship with neutrality.

I have never waved a Palestinian flag. But if I did it would be because of the reason above and also because I'm not keen on ethnic cleaning.

I don't excuse any of the violence committed by Palestinians. I do however acknowledge that violent resistance* is a natural consequence of prolonged oppression. We all understand that fact when we look at Irish history and see they did a violent rebellion every 30-50 years.

*violent resistance doesn't have to extend to non-military people and targets. If the Palestinians only attacked isreali military targets and only killed military personnel, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Nor would I have a problem with isreali military killing Palestinian military (which gets tricky because isreal control Palestinian affairs and explicitly forbid them having a military).

Oversimplified, Judaism is the Abrahamic OG, Christianity and Islam are reforms and evolution. One guided by a pacifist carpenter, the other, well, we all know by whom.

Yes, imagine the other one, how can that even dream of being pacifist.

Something that's interesting is people are very fact to say they support Palestinian and not Hamas fair enough. Yet according to the same people everyone from Israel is branded the same and should be boycotted etc

Agreed… and Israels use of white phosphorous missiles (restricted under international humanitarian law), targeting civilian populations, early in the conflict, is another example of utter inhumanity.

This post clearly shows that you know nothing about the conflict. If a terrorist takes control of a school obviously the teachers that work in the school are just as bad as the terrorist, maybe the children are terrorists just for existing.

Hamas attacked Israel not Palestine, its important to be aware of the actual basic facts before you discuss a topic. Yes Israel have every right to exist and defend itself, but they do not have a right to target locations full of children.

Why didn't the Provos just surrender to the British government?

If you don't talk to the other side, strike a deal, no matter how much it disgusts you, you're going to have a forever war.

The Provos goal was a United Ireland through armed struggle, they didn't get that. Not yet at any rate.

Point still stands. You kick a dog continuously, you shouldn’t be surprised if that dog bites you.

That's simply not true. There is a tendency for good teachers gravitate to better schools, if only for career fulfillment purposes. Also, like in any other profession, people will take jobs in good areas ahead of working somewhere dodgy.

Here's a contraversial opinion. Many schools in these areas have teaching staffs who are the dredges of the teaching profession. No real intetest in the kids, who they (wrongly) regard as having no prospects. Then throw in the odd nutcase who believes their superior to the kids because they come from a more middle class background.

In many cases the schools fail the children.

It's not the schools who make dodgy areas dodgy.

Controversial opinion. I don't really care about the whole Israel/Palestinian thing.

Both side have gone so far down the rabbit hole of hate, that a state of perpetual oppression/war/terrorism is going to be the norm.

Neither side really wants peace. Both sides seem intent on committing war crime after war crime.

The only difference between the two that I can see is Israel have more and bigger guns. Give the Palestinians the same weaponry, and they'd happily wipe each other out.

Neither side seems to care for human life. I would argue that both sides have lost a significant sense of their humanity, and and both sides have become truly hateful people. As for their leaders, whether Israeli or Hamas, they only exist to punish the other, which tells a lot about the will of their people.

I don't doubt for a second that there's a significant percentage of the population of either side that simply want to live in peace. But I also believe they'd be happy to have that if it meant the genocide of the other.

And I find it hard to feel sorry or empathize with either side because of it. If they want to be that inhumane to each other, to perpetually hold each others children accountable for past grievances and be happy to slaughter each other, then I don't see why I should care for either side.

And I don't. As much as it horrifies me seeing Israeli forces blow apart Palestinians or Palestinians kidnap and murder/torture/ launch attacks against Israeli's, at the same time I've become numb to it because I know nothing will ever change, and both sides are so full of hate that it'll be the same thing over and over until one wipes out the other.

And I care for neither side or the horrors they have inflicted on them, because they're willing to do the same. And the longer they do, the more I don't care. As inhuman as that sounds, there's simply no hope there, and personally I just fell numb to it all because of it.

It's not about opinion, it's about a poster ignoring basic facts. What if a poster says Russia are and good guys and Ukraine are the bad guys, is this perfectly ok because opinion is more important than facts?

Hamas and Palestine are not the same thing, this is a 100% fact just like the way Dublin and Ireland are not the same thing, you cannot blame children for what terrorists are doing.

Hamas are scum and I would love them to release the hostages but for them to stop Israel need to agree to a peace deal. Why should Irish people call for this solution when Israel are not willing to agree to a ceasefire or a peace agreement. The USA have been pleading with Israel to make a peace deal and Israel are still not doing this.

I can understand how the trouble in the Middle East is getting more and more irrelevant, or interesting, for a lot of folk.

Maybe not irrelevant, as if there is an all out war, it'll cost us all more in the long run.

But for any conflict situation to work, there has to be compromise on BOTH sides, and in this conflict it appears neither side is willing to compromise, so any hope of a solution is near null.

Negotiations don't happen happen quickly. They take years in most cases and decades in some. They involve lots of cases of parties walking out of talks and resuming months later.

It's just how these things work, if they work at all