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

I have every concern for the victim and all the victims of this dreadful, murderous rampage. I also have concern about people making up things to make an already horrific situation worse by stoking hate. Dismissing claims of a mother that her daughter may be alive as having no evidence while the same poster claims that the women’s daughter was raped without any evidence.

America are pressuring Egypt to open a corridor on the border as they know that world opinion could start to turn against Israel once the ground invasion starts ,particularly if it drags on.

The whole concept of a "proportionate" or "appropriate" response, to me, is flawed. We're talking about an extremist terrorist organisation who are hiding amongst an innocent civilian population, and the "response" is predominantly going to impact the latter.

Frankly, Israel would have the support of nearly every sane/moral person on the planet to do whatever the hell they like to Hamas and their terrorists. There is an argument that no punishment is too harsh, and no direct response too extreme, for the subhuman actions carried out over the weekend, and previously.

But, and it bears repeating because I feel like people here are willfully just breezing past the distinction - the Palestinian people at large are not Hamas. Israel largely do not have the ability to effectively target Hamas in Gaza in a way that even remotely minimises civilian casualties. This idea of a "proportionate" response is in reality then a question of "well what level of violence should we tolerate against a captive and defenceless Palestinian population via collateral damage, until Israel feel justice has been done". Because we all know you aren't going to eliminate Hamas (or probably even significantly handicap them) unless you are prepared to either raze Gaza to the ground from the air, or carry out a ground invasion.

The people dying in the hundreds and soon to be thousands there currently, and the people who are about to get caught up in the ensuing starvation and humanitarian crisis, will overwhelmingly be INNOCENT Palestinians, not terrorists (who will control what little resources are available, or will be the few who have the means to escape the blockade).

People think Israel are entitled to their justice - I get it we'd all want the same after what happened this weekend but that justice shouldn't be at a cost of the deaths of INNOCENT civilians who had nothing to do with what happened on the weekend, but we the west (and Israel) know fine well it overwhelmingly will be and yet will do the square root of feck all to stop it, hell we won't even try to talk them out of it.

I think they’ve been given the western world green light to massacre indiscriminately and they will with pleasure.

Absolutely dreadful if true but irresponsible of a major newspaper to headline an unverified story that will inflame tensions and hatred.

Yeah, 'cynical' would be one way to describe the idea that real life humans might be having children solely as a policy to supply fighters.

The Simpson's joke refers to people using children as a way of hystericising problems. It doesn't apply at all to children living in horrific circumstances or being killed. This is the precise opposite of what the meme is about. (And it's not Maude Flanders either).

Sure let's just bring back the crusades!

I would agree it would take time but peace was actually achieved and the IRA was defanged. The Americans surprisingly enough in Iraq did try to win hearts and minds and did do house to house raids rather than bombing from the skies. The Israeli have to some extent created a more moderate Palestinian entity in the Palestinian Authority so they could possibly create this in Gaza but I don't think how they are operating now this is the way to achieve this.

I think people do get emotional about the subject but the refrain this is just part of war is not helping take the heat out of the discussion.

A "country of fa550ts and whores" as a Palestinian in London described Israel to me. Nice.

The amount of hypocrites on here is amazing. Imagine trying to convince people that children always die in war because that's what always happens in war. The Israelis are targeting huge buildings where they are living for God's sake. Deliberately targeting them. They are no better than the Hamas murderers. Equal and opposite. Call a spade a spade. Hypocrites.

Your posts have the effect of downplaying it, when they focus only on these questions, forgetting to focus also on the victims, and the horror of what has been established about the attacks.

Babies were slaughtered.

Children were slaughtered.

Women were raped. Does that constitute mass rape? How does it matter to the point you think you were trying to make?

There were beheadings. Perhaps only of men, we don't know the full extent. Again - how does it matter to the point you think you're trying to make?

Yes it is important to question the claims, but not to the extent that it drowns out the scale of the murderous brutal terrorist attacks we do know about.

Condemnation of the attacks or concern for the victims had to be dragged out of you in recent posts.

This is a survivor talking about witnessing rapes: