At the start of this conflict I was all about revenge against Hamas. I still am. But Israel has taken it too far. They really are showing very little disregard for the innocent people in Palestine. I'm sorry but they do exist.
At some stage, justifying the destruction of thousands of children just to say you're trying to defeat Hamas no longer holds water.
This can never be walked back. What has taken place here will never be forgotten
I agree Hamas should give hostages back and surrender, but tell me what this has to do with a 5 year old child being blown to pieces again? Why should they have to pay for what some "adults" have done?
I have friends within Gaza. And guess what also hostage friends in Gaza.
Don't believe Israel won't bomb the Gazans. But do believe Israel won't bomb the hostages... They don't know where they are so OBVIOUSLY they won't blow up random locations so they won't hurt them... You are falling for Hamas lies.
> I agree Hamas should give hostages back and surrender, but tell me what this has to do with a 5 year old child being blown to pieces again? Why should they have to pay for what some "adults" have done?
Israel never aimed at 5 year olds and specifically warned about the places where it would attack. The Hamas places civilians in these areas so they can sway minds exactly like in this case...
But it's easy to get up on a high horse here... What do you suggest? A ceasefire is like a surrender. They will gather their forces and keep the poor hostages. Every ceasefire in the past was used to get more weapons and fight harder. This has to end for the Gazan people too. They have been under the yoke of the Hamas for too long.
Rubbish, complete rubbish.
Israel never aimed at 5 year olds
Well that's odd, because hundreds, thousands are dead, so they're aiming at soething nearby aren't they?
But it's easy to get up on a high horse here...
You are the one on the high horse, trying to justify the murder of many, many children to meet some end is fine ?
A ceasefire is like a surrender.
No it's not. Israel controls basically everything, food, water, electricity, internet. They can perform siege warfare and win the battle that way. There is no need to level the whole place.
What source do you have for that? The Hamas is in control of all the information that comes out of these...
> Well that's odd, because hundreds, thousands are dead, so they're aiming at soething nearby aren't they?
Thousands of kids aren't dead. So far I saw a Hamas representative on the BBC claiming that they didn't kill civilians. Another one claiming that they won't bring civilians into their secure tunnels because they are only for the Hamas...
Why is Israel at fault here and not the Hamas?
In WW2 in 1944 the allied forces aimed at a Gestapo headquarters and hit a hospital. This was a mistake. It was not their fault. Modern warfare is more accurate. Israel doesn't hit hospitals even though the Hamas placed its headquarters under a Hospital.
Still the casualties can't be blamed on Israel by any stretch of the imagination.
> You are the one on the high horse, trying to justify the murder of many, many children to meet some end is fine ?
Whose justifying?
It's terrible. I'm just casting the blame in the right direction.
> > A ceasefire is like a surrender. > > No it's not. Israel controls basically everything, food, water, electricity, internet. They can perform siege warfare and win the battle that way. There is no need to level the whole place.
If Israel controls everything then where do the Hamas get all these anti-tank missiles and the rockets sent into Tel-Aviv on a daily basis? Even now???
You are being fed a narrative and bought into it. The Hamas is the one robbing its people of these things. Siege warfare would harm the civilians far more, it would starve off these children first and the Hamas would deny them the water/fuel reserves they keep in the tunnels. Just for the photo-op to show the "cruelty of Israel". They would starve every child in Gaza and blame it on Israel while sitting in the tunnels and eating the reserved food. They would also starve the hostages and send those videos. That's the type of monsters we're dealing with.
Again, don't get me wrong. Israel is terrible in the west bank and on normal days I would agree. But there's terrible/bad, then there's pure evil. Pure evil can't be fought off easily. It will kill everyone it can.
Israel isn't "leveling the whole place". It is targeting very specific areas where they know about Hamas activities. E.g while the south was bombed too, it is mostly untouched by comparison to the north.
But let's talk about ceasefire and deals with terrorists. A few years ago the Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israel agreed to release 1,000 prisoners in exchange. They promised that they would not participate in further terrorist activities and were releases. Approximately 70% of them took part in October 7th. They spent years arming up for that day and practicing in Iran for that "mission".
These people have used every ceasefire and every negotiation as a weakness. They are motivated by a singular religious goal. The destruction of Israel. They will never stop and they will never stop sacrificing their own people as pawns in the "game". The only chance the Palestinian people have to get out of their control (and Israels control) is if the Hamas is gone completely.
We want thoughtful, respectful, curious conversation across differences. I know that's virtually impossible with emotions as strong as with this particular set of differences, but in that case it's best to just refrain from posting.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
We want thoughtful, respectful, curious conversation across differences. I know that's virtually impossible with emotions as strong as with this particular set of differences, but in that case it's best to just refrain from posting.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
From the article [1]:
Hamas’s armed wing, al-Qassam brigades, said seven civilian hostages were killed in the strikes on Jabalia, including three foreign passport holders.
So they did blow up seven hostages.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/jabalia-camp-a...
All told, the process of eliminating ISIS’ control over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria led to many thousands of civilian casualties. And yet, everyone seems to agree that between that outcome and the possibility of allowing ISIS to persist, this was the preferable choice between two very bad outcomes. It was a goal that, although briefly and inconsistently, was shared by the US and Russia, all sides of the Syrian Civil War, Turkey, and even Iran.
Just like ISIS, allowing Hamas to persist is no longer a viable possibility. People call for a cease fire, but the last cease fire was broken by Hamas when they committed the bloodiest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust—itself an atrocity that was only ended through a war that entailed the deaths of probably millions of German civilians at the hands of the Allies.
Innocent people in Gaza do exist. They exist as hostages of Hamas. I don’t mean just the hundreds of hostages they captured on October 7th; I mean that Hamas is holding the entire population of the Gaza Strip hostage. They build underground tunnels to protect their fighters and their weapons, but nothing to protect civilians. Instead they place refugees on top of their underground command centers and weapons caches. Even when they fire their terror rockets into Israel, many of them never make it past the borders of Gaza. And when this happens, they lie, they accuse Israel of committing attacks on the innocent people of Gaza that actually happened at the hands of Hamas and their allies, and they completely fabricate numbers. Any of the numbers you see reported and attributed to a “health ministry” in Gaza are Hamas fabrications; Western media is strangely gullible about this sort of thing for reasons I can’t explain. And so claims about “the destruction of thousands of children” are little more than Hamas propaganda.
Israel has held back their offensives for weeks, provided directed warnings to Gaza residents (at the expense of tipping off Hamas when and where they would strike), and given several days’ warning for Gaza residents to evacuate south of the Wadi Gaza. In response, Hamas blocked the roads and bombed Palestinian refugees traveling towards this safe zone.
The only path to a peaceful future for the people of Gaza and Israel is the elimination of Hamas, just as ISIS had to be eliminated. It is a horrible situation, but it is Hamas who has made it this way and that is why Hamas needs to be destroyed. Just because they have better PR than ISIS did doesn’t change the situation on the ground.
I mean considering Israel has had the upper hand and controls access to basic services, I can't imagine there aren't other options.
When you kill that many innocent people who live next door to you, you can never just "destroy hamas" unless you basically destroy all those people.
It's not a good situation.
At any rate, the target wasn’t the civilian settlement. It was a Hamas headquarters and weapons production facility. Hamas tends to build these things underneath and around civilian population centers.
If Hamas attacks innocents for leaving and the IDF attacks them for staying, it's kind of a shitty thing to do then to just blow them up right?
Considering Israel has for sure the upper hand, I don't see why they need to be so hasty to just blow the shit out of everything really?
I'm not sure if you have Children but good luck just "fleeing south" with a family. Heavily pregnant wife and 2 kids for example.
Experts on international humanitarian law said asking civilians to leave did not absolve Israel of the responsibility to protect those who chose to stay, when it was launching attacks.
“Civilians that that cannot leave or do not leave are still civilians. And so the same rules apply,” said Helen Duffy, professor of international humanitarian law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
“You cannot target civilians. You cannot carry out indiscriminate attacks and you cannot carry out attacks that have disproportionate impact on civilians and civilian objects.”
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/jabalia-camp-a...
It is a very shitty situation, which is why Israel spent the last 17 years following the exact policy you’re advocating, including refraining from airstrikes when Hamas had enough human shields in place. After October 7, that’s no longer a viable policy. Hamas needs to be removed from power, not just for the security of Israel but also for the good of the Palestinians in Gaza whom Hamas has been murdering and robbing for the past 17 years. Allowing Hamas to protect themselves by using the civilian population of Gaza as human shields only incentivizes that behavior and protects Hamas.
Israel has “the upper hand” only because of the weapons that you’re demanding they don’t use. No urban battle in recent history—not Fallujah, not Mosul where ISIS was defeated—has ever taken place without airstrikes and civilian casualties. There is no way to win the battle for Gaza without any civilian casualties, and that’s a deplorable state of affairs, made worse by the actions of Hamas. Unfortunately, allowing Hamas to stay in power would be even worse.
Prisoners who get trials, lawyers, visitations etc.
> some as young as 3
Nope. Not even teens. A teenager who stabbed an Israeli a couple of years ago was released because there's no jail for teen terrorists. Israel doesn't have that. You're just making shit up.
Israel signed a peace accord with the Palestinians and it worked great until the Hamas started blowing up busses with suicide bombers. Their official charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Yet Israel, which has the weapons to do so, chose not to blow up Gaza...
You're very ill informed about the facts.
You can't attack other users like this, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that do it, so please don't do it again.
You need to make your points by focusing on the topic at hand, not swiping at the person you're arguing with.
Israel could be argued as retaliation but it's really trying to destroy the Hamas. The Hamas could stop Israel by:
* Returning 240 hostages including 3 year old children
* Letting Gazan residence into their huge under city tunnels so they won't die in the crossfire
* Surrender
Instead they keep firing missiles daily. They prevent Palestinians from moving to the safe areas and keep firing their own missiles next to hospitals (and blaming Israel when their own missile hits the hospital).
YOU are a useful idiot for a genocidal entity that is murdering its own people.