And yet Israel itself calls it a preemptive attack.

And those missile attacks were in response to Israel's unrelenting and brutal genocide in Gaza, so the 'preemptive' term is still nonsense.

Why is Israel in Gaza? Oh yeh, because Hamas invaded Israel on Oct 7 2023 and killed 1,200 people. To put that death toll in perspective, it would be like a Mexican Cartel invading the US and killing 41,000 people. For China it would be 174,000 people.

And why, pray tell, was Hamas the only organization wielding some semblance of power in Gaza in 2023?

because usa forced elections to palestine assembly in 2006 despite objections of israel and pa government (which was afraid that hamas that will win).

when hamas won, usa was horrified by outcome and "sponsored" PA security forces to get rid of hamas in gaza, but hamas prevailed and killed everybody who were against (throwing from buildings, dragging behind bikes) it or tortured them into submission

Because Hamas gleefully kills anyone who opposes them.

Israel is in Gaza because they have funded and supported Hamas, in the hope they would use those funds to invade them, giving them pretext for a genocide.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...

That is some very stupid conspiracy theory BS.

It's an unverified quote which Netanyahu denied saying. In any case, Israel never funded Hamas as many claim; they allowed aid from Qatar which is pretty different.

I'll add that Israel allowed aid from Qatar after pressure from west and headlines in mass media that hundreds of thousands are going to starve in gaza if israel won't allow money from qatar.

the underlaying issues was that after PA tried to depose Hamas in Gaza and failed, it stopped paying salaries to everybody so Gaza was broke

'Put it in perspective'

https://visualizingpalestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/...

Put in in perspective https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket_Attacks_fired_at...

Israelis make Palestinian territories into hell on earth and then when a handful of the victims fight back ever so slightly, make themselves out to be the victims and use it as justification for limitless levels of escalation. It's the kind of self delusion that's only possible through deep & pervasive narcissism -- no wonder so many of them have to take psychedelics all the time.

If you will have a closer look, rocket attacks started to climb up after Israel left Gaza.

There was expression during the disengagement process from Gaza: Palestinians can build either Singapore or Somali. It's their choice to make.

They made choice in 2006 when they elected hamas. You can see on graph how Hamas elected to use resources

A less militant government would have simply been rolled by the rabid dog that is the Israeli state sooner. The eliminationist ethnocentrism from both officials and citizenry has been consistent and not at all hidden.

Rolled like The West Bank? Hamas's stated goal is to destroy Israel. You pro-Palestinian types are always so hypocritical.

It is quite clear that ever since Yassar Arafat walked away from a deal with Israel during Clinton’s Presidency Israel has deliberately made Gaza and most of the West Bank a giant prison. Over the last 50 years far more Palestinians have been killed by Israel than Israelis killed by Palestinians. Palestinians have no navy, air force, tanks, or helicopters. The power differential between the two sides is vastly in Israel’s favor.

Arafat walked away because the ‘peace’ plan didn’t produce a viable state – West Bank was divided up in smaller enclaves

An Israeli they killed then own Prime Minister because he was willing to make peace

In my assessment, the assasination of Rabin is one the most successful assassinations in history, in terms of achieving the objectives of the assasin.

Yup, but consider how much death and injury that action has caused

Why?

Israel has had plenty of votes since then to elect another Prime Minister who would push for peace.

Why is this considered a success of one assassin instead of a failure of a broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution?

In fact, the protests against Netenyahu and young people refusing to serve the IDF shows that Israel was trying to push for peace internally.

Then Hamas decided to attack a music festival of teenagers and young adults who want a free palestine. They spent over a year planning this operation all to kill a bunch of Israeli's who didn't exactly disagree with their cause.

If Hamas hadn't attacked, Bibi might already be in prison. You know, I'm not convinced Hamas wants peace any more than Bibi does.

multiple rounds of negotiations happened after rabin death. camp david in 2000 for example which resulted in second intifada. taba. etc. negotiations continued till 2013 or so.

even Netanyahu, which was elected after Rabin death signed follow up agreements to Oslo as result of which Israel handed over Hebron and additional areas in west bank to PA.

It wasn't failure of "broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution" but violence of second intifada and non-compliance of PA with oslo accords from very beginning: http://israelvisit.co.il/BehindTheNews/WhitePaper.htm

That’s link is a highly polarised view of what happened

I’m not claiming it was a good deal. I’m claiming that since he walked away from the deal Israel has decided that it will slowly consume all of the West Bank and make living there and in Gaza a hell for Palestinians. It’s a slow genocide. Though now in Gaza it’s been sped up.

It was in fact a fantastic deal the Palestinians were fools to reject it.

If you look at the rest of the maps https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/maps-from-the-2000-camp...

You’ll see the one you posted was unrepresentative of what was actually on the table and what the Israeli’s would agree too wouldn’t deliver a viable state and it was divided up by Israeli roads and other security apparatus

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-the-israeli-offe...

Then 100x those figures and you find the proportion that Israel killed in Gaza versus its population, significantly women and children, for perspective.

Why is that relevant? Israel is justified in killing as many people as they need to to ensure their security. The number of dead seems irrelevant to me, you need to convince that the people killed died needlessly. I just really dont get this argument I guess. Every war between a technological power and a non technological power will have lopsided casualty numbers.

When a people are oppressed and suppressed enough they fight back. People fight back using methods that are available to them. Palestinians have been systematically oppressed by Israel. Gaza is basically a giant prison. The people there have no navy, tanks, helicopters, or air force. They did inflict some damage. The response has been so disproportionate that it is rightfully viewed as immoral. Palestinians deserve peace and pursuit of happiness too. So do Israelis. One side has that much greater than the other and one side has been denying the other side those things for decades.

I agree with all of this. So what do you think the Israelis should do? Ive been against the war from october 8th saying Israel should focus on border control instead but I can see why the Israelis wouldnt be happy with that solution. Tel Aviv has been pretty continuously bombarded for the last 2 decades by Hamas, hard to say they just have to live with that.

Israelis have a right to live peacefully. Unfortunately they are not peaceful toward Palestinians. They continually encroach and annex Palestinian land in the West Bank oppress Palestinians. Palestinians fight back but it’s a hopeless cause for them.

From my understanding Israel tried to make peace by exchanging land for peace treaties. Only the Egyptians took them up on that. I think Israel is done seeking a moral solution and are now slowly annexing all of the West Bank and now Gaza. Palestinians should be given land somewhere and/or forced to emigrate. They’ve clung to what was once theirs but the reality is they are never getting it back.

But Israel is being immoral and their treatment of Palestinians is deplorable.

Im not seeing a plan here. I agree that the Israeli rights goal to annex the west bank is a huge problem and probably makes a peace that the palestinians accept impossible. Im not so sure Israelis want to annex gaza as much as expel the gazans. The more analysis I do the more doomed the situation looks.

> Palestinians should be given land somewhere and/or forced to emigrate.

This is what the Israelis are trying to do. No one is willing to take them.

Hitler said "lebensraum" was for 'security' too. It did not in fact make Germany more secure, and the same will ultimately prove true for Israel's very transparent attempts to use the Oct 7 ghetto uprising as a pretext to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

It was a gamble, if Japan hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor it certainly seems possible Germany would have taken most of Europe and had enough juice left over that their Russian incursions wouldn't have been fatal.

> It did not in fact make Germany more secure

Yes, focus on this part, not the lopsided casualty count. Much more convincing argument.

I find the crimes against humanity more persuasive than concerns for the security of an irredeemable ethnostate but you do you.

> because Hamas invaded Israel

And why did they do that? It's like gang warfare, never ending. It started long before Hamas and we've all lost track of why so finger pointing only makes it worse.

Because Hamas loves killing Jews.

And Jews love killing children. See how easy that is?

The difference is I'm correct and you are not. Hamas decided to attack a music festival of teenagers and young adults who want a free Palestine. They spent over a year planning this operation all to kill a bunch of Israeli's who didn't exactly disagree with their cause.

If Hamas hadn't attacked, Bibi might already be in prison. You know, I'm not convinced Hamas wants peace any more than Bibi does.

> The difference is I'm correct and you are not.

This is the kind of thinking that keeps this insanity going on forever.

You're demonstrating my point: we've lost track of "who started it" and it doesn't even matter now. It's too easy for each side to claim it's the other side's fault. They both have legitimate reasons to so it's easy to get support for those claims, too.

But I would argue that correct vs incorrect is entirely irrelevant. Nothing you or I can say can justify their actions.

You obviously haven't read the Hamas charter in which Hamas says their goal is the destruction of Israel.

You're doing it again.

For every point you make about Hamas I could match you with one about Israel. But what's the point?

" I could match you with one about Israel"

The point is you would not be correct. Hamas wants to end the existence of Israel but lacks the ability. Israel wants to coexist with Gaza but Hamas doesn't want that.

> The point is you would not be correct.

You know I'm wrong before I even say anything? That's...impressive.

Yes. Because your fundamental premise that Hamas and Israel have the same goals is false.

I didn't know what you're talking about. I never once commented on either of their goals, or who was right or wrong. That was my entire point.

So either you are not following the conversation or you are trolling. Have a nice day.

You say you can match any claim I make about Hamas with an equivalent one about Israel.

I say that yes but my statement about Hamas would be factual while yours would not be because Hamas really does want to destroy Israel while Israel just wants coexistence with Palestinians. At its core Hamas is an Islamic Theocratic Supremacists group that truly hates Jews. Just read their charter.

The point you continue to miss (or ignore) is that equivalence doesn't matter. Hamas is bad. Israel is bad. Neither is going to admit it. Ever.

But since you asked:

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-m...

Israel isn't as bad as Hamas because if Hamas stopped attacking Israel Israel would stop attacking Hamas. This isn't that hard to understand.

How is that coexistence? Can a Palestinian acquire Israeli nationality? Do they already have actually or they don't have passport?

Can a Jew live in Gaza without being murdered?

Is Gaza a country?

> And why did they do that?

Because in 2023 Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s most powerful enemies in the region, was expressing willingness to normalize relations with Israel. So Iran orchestrated attacks via its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in order to torpedo the normalization process. (People forget that Hamas wasn’t the only one attacking Israel in October 2023—beginning October 8th Hezbollah began firing rockets and artillery into northern Israel, forcing over 90,000 Israelis to flee for safety.)

Israeli and american intelligence agree that Iran was not aware of the October 7th attack. Hamas did that by themselves. In hindsight we also know that Israel thoroughly infiltrated the Iranian forces, so if they had known, Israel would have known in advance as well.

Would you think the same if, for example, Russia started attacking manufacturers in the EU that supply weapons to Ukraine?

If Russia had the capability to do so without facing an extreme counter attack you better believe they'd blow the shit out of weapon manufacturers.

The problem for Russia is that such an attack would bring in all of NATO which they likely can't defend against. And either way would result in massive damage to nearly everything in Russia.

OTOH, Israel can attack Iran and as shown in the past[1], Iran will roll over and only send a weak-ass slow drone attack as a response.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...

I wasn't asking about capabilities. I asked the user if he believed Russia has the right to attack EU countries providing weapons to Ukraine, possibly causing civilian deaths, just as he thinks Israel had the right to do so in regards to Iran.

There is no “right” in geo politics. Might has made right throughout history.

I think this is lost on many people. There's no authority overseeing sovereign nations, no real law or consequence to law-breaking even if there was one. There's only allies, treaties, pacts between nations, military might, and the consequences of aggression that keep the peace. Russia would be bombing all the supply lines of weapons flowing into Ukraine if the consequences weren't so high. There's certainly no law that is preventing them from doing so, only the consequences of their actions.

I doubt that “many people” are ignorant of the fact that there are no real supranational authorities that can stop wars. But it seems that some people gloss over the fact that these discussions aren’t about stopping nations from waging war, as if the UN (let alone a comment section) could do that. For some reason which goes beyond smug “might makes right” apparent-truisms, even mighty nations justify their wars. Perhaps especially to their own citizens. Which in turn means that discourse on what is “moral” might matter a tiny bit.

> Russia would be bombing all the supply lines of weapons flowing into Ukraine if the consequences weren't so high. There's certainly no law that is preventing them from doing so, only the consequences of their actions.

Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and people in the comments threw their hands up and said the strong take what they can? No, me neither.

This question is difficult to answer because it's unclear what you mean by "right" in this context. The moral high ground? Russia doesn't have that now, nor has it ever had it throughout its history of military expansionism.

Well, by "right" I meant the same thing the user I was replying to said Israel had when attacking Iran.

Reality is that any sovereign country has the right to do whatever they want.

Russia HAS attacked and sabotaged arms storage facilities in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_... is one such example.