You'd do well to remember there are two sides to any conflict (as my parents drilled into us whenever my brother and I would blame each other).
In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint, evacuating people from a target first when possible, firing warning shots before the real attack. Hamas on the other hand is indiscriminately firing over 3000 rockets at Israel civilians. That's like what the Nazis did to London with their V2 rockets. Now there is a big power imbalance here, and I feel for the Palestinians, but they're hardly the good guys here. That's terrorism, plain and simple. No country would tolerate that.
Do you need to write "the Palestinians"? Sounds as if everyone were to blame for the rockets, but less than 1% of the people in Gaza, are in Hamas military wing.
Would it be weird to write "Hamas" instead about those who fire rockets? Or "terrorists in Hamas". (but please don't blame everyone for what a few are doing)
And in the same way, I wouldn't say that the Israelis are taking land from Palestinians on the west bank -- instead I'd write "the state and the settlers" take land. And that's also a small percentage of everyone, .. hmm seems it's somewhere between 5 and 10%, so more than 90% never did that
Don't forget Hamas is the legitimate elected government in Gaza, you cannot just say they're a fringe group not supported by the people of Gaza.
Now Palestinians also encompass the West Bank where Hamas is not the government. But part of the reason for these rocket attacks is Hamas trying to demonstrate that they're the representatives of all Palestinians in a bid to rule both Gaza and the West Bank. Regardless of their actual chances of pulling that off, it does seem to be part of the calculus here.
What do you think is the background for that?
I had a look at Wikipedia about Hamas, look how they grew more popular and became more violent:
> ... Jewish settler in military fatigues, massacred 29 Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron [year 1994] in the West Bank during the month of Ramadan. An additional 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the ensuing riots
> ... Hebron massacre had a profound effect on Hamas' militancy. For its first seven years, it attacked only what it saw as "legitimate military targets," Israeli soldiers and military installations.[77] But following the massacre, it felt that it no longer had to distinguish between military and civilian targets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Origins
Seems to me it's a spiral of dislike and violence, driven by a few violent people among both groups.
Then, about the elections: (same Wikipedia page)
> ... Hamas ran on a platform of clean government, a thorough overhaul of the corrupt administrative system, and the issue of rampant lawlessness.[190][191] The PA, notoriously riddled with corruption ...
Does it sound as if the voters voted for rocket attacks? Or did they vote for stopping corruption (and then, years later, turns out Hamas is equally (or more) corrupted and worse in so many other ways)
> Does it sound as if the voters voted for rocket attacks?
In 2007 not rockets, but they knew Hamas had a history of attacking civilian targets. I suppose they can't very well be blamed for what it became. I don't doubt s lot of the locals support Hamas, but many are likely caught between the two sides and want no part of it.
They're about as guilty as the Germans were for Hitler and the Nazis. They voted them in to begin with and didn't resist when they saw the monster they'd created. Seems like a very similar situation.
I didn't say that (and I don't think that).
Also, there's a difference between the people in Israel and the state. Most people don't do bad things; the government in Israel sometimes does. So just saying "Israel" is confusing, makes it seem as if you don't see a difference between the gov and the people. A government often does things that are bad for the voters.
Anyway I'm not sure it's helpful to compare "who is worst". It's not as if beating someone a bit, gets less bad, just because a different person beats another one even more.
> One side cares about preventing civilian casualties, the other does not. It's like comparing Isis and the US military. Very different approach and rules of engagement.
Agreed that Hamas doesn't care, instead, directly attacks civilians.
I think most, almost all, people in IDF do care -- that they don't want to hurt civilians.
At the same time, if you look back a few years, 2018, you'll notice that individuals in IDF shot a thousand people in Gaza, most of them unarmed. Killing about a hundered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
> an independent United Nations commission set the number of known militants killed at 29 out of the 183.[4] Other sources claim a higher figure, of at least 40
To me this shows that there are some people in IDF, who do enjoy killing Palestinians.
Maybe almost all of those in IDF don't want to hurt civilians, but those few who do want, get to do that quite a lot, sometimes, no consequences for them it seems.
> as guilty as the Germans were for Hitler and the Nazis
In the Israel-Palestine, there was an ongoing conflict when Hamas got the power -- and massacres had been done already by individuals from both sides. So it seems like a poor comparison, to me.
It's odd that you write about one side that it "cares about preventing civilian casualties" -- when individuals from that side, did what to me looks like a massacre a few years ago (2018), and now continues bombing although they know how many civilians get killed. And then you go on compare the other side with nazi voters.
It seems to me your world view is more black and white, than what you're aware about? And probably I'm not going to reply any further here.
I'd just like to say, to anyone in IDF reading this, that I think it's wrong by Hamas (or anyone else) to attack people in IDF. I don't think people are "legitimate targets" just because they're in the army -- they're still people, and most of them (although not exactly all) never did anything bad. I'd like to give a hug to you in IDF who didn't do anything bad personally (that's almost all of you), and to the civilians in Israel and Gaza.
What if the entire world was watching while you shaved your brothers head? Your lies would be pointless, because the entire world has seen what you were doing.
> In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint
Almost 200 dead in days. If you call that restraint, I think it's you who's gone off the deep end. Restraint would be doing nothing because barely anything has been done to you. Or shooting 10 Palestinian freedom fighters. That would be restraint. Firing missiles into a populated city isn't restraint.
> Hamas on the other hand is indiscriminately firing over 3000 rockets at Israel civilians.
Surely you jest. Those fireworks do almost nothing. A single Israeli missile is more deadly than 3000 Hamas rockets, so you have it backwards.
> Now there is a big power imbalance here, and I feel for the Palestinians
No you don't. Quit the propaganda.
> but they're hardly the good guys here. That's terrorism, plain and simple.
How is defending yourself terrorism? They're slowly been driven off the map. They should be firing 3000 rockets every day, and the world should be sending them more so they can fight for their families. Next you'll tell me that the Jews who fought back against Hitler were terrorists.
It's totally reasonable to attack your enemy with the intent of crippling their capabilities of harming you. Standard fare in any conflict. Doing that when the enemy is using their own population as a human shield and only having 200 casualties is an achievement of sorts.
> Surely you jest. Those fireworks do almost nothing. A single Israeli missile is more deadly than 3000 Hamas rockets, so you have it backwards.
Thank God they only have rockets and not the military power of the IDF. I'm pretty sure they'd use those nukes if they had them. As I said there's a big power imbalance here. But it's not the effectiveness of the attacks that determine their morality.
> No you don't. Quit the propaganda.
I don't appreciate you calling my feelings propaganda or claiming to understand my state of mind better than me. Both ridiculous claims.
> How is defending yourself terrorism?
The IDF only attacked them after they fired 500 rockets at Israeli cities, an act of terror in every sense of the definition. That's not defending yourself. What the Israelis are doing, that is defending yourself.
> Next you'll tell me that the Jews who fought back against Hitler were terrorists.
If they were attacking civilian targets with the intent of causing innocent casualties - sure, that'd be terrorism. I'm unaware of any instances of that happening, but I don't claim to know everything.