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

Hamas are a terrorist organisation, Israel are defending themselves against a terrorist organisation.

Combined with crying for help in Hebrew.

You quoted where I said "disproportionate"... but then blindly ignored it. A person is certainly not interested in discussion if they do that.

You'd have to ask why provoke the same response over and over without being willing to explore other avenues of compromise.

Makes no sense to me, what either side hopes to achieve going around in circles as they are.

Ignoring the high numbers of women and children and just saying that this is what happens in war is just not cutting the mustard in this conflict. There is a huge difference in accidental civilian deaths than deliberately targeting them and that's what is happening here. Murder.

Teams should refuse to play them or take part in anything they are in.

They are both terrorist organisations. Both murdering scum.

Exactly. I do agree that average Israeli citizens have the right to ask serious questions now, as to how things got to this point.

Holy $#%&, that is pure evil. I am not in the least bit surprised @brickster69 edited post 25023. Where does one even find an image so vile? Is Stormfront still a thing? No wonder this poster has such a problem with "Israel."

As to substance, the Jews who supposedly "own" these media conglomerates don't actually own them. They're publicly traded companies whose shareholders appoint these people as officers. If one has a problem with the editorial content of these companies' productions, those responsible are the shareholders and sometimes other stakeholders, not the C-suite officers. At least not in full.

How is this any different to saying "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free?" Both phrases call for the obliteration of the others: The original phrase calls for the destruction of Israel and the endangerment of the 7.4 million Jews who live there. The new one just seems to be a mirror image of the first.

An outrageous image indeed. But there are plenty of images even more vile than that...

"Pure evil" is expecting Israeli civilians to have to co-exist with those who want them dead. Even before the 7th of October, Hamas was regularly committing small scale acts of war against Israel (firing rockets over the Israel/Gaza border into civilian settlements) to the point where much of Israel has air raid warning sirens everywhere and civilians had to have bomb shelters they could flee to with little warning any time of the day or night.

You can argue about how Israel goes about destroying Hamas, but they are entitled to do so.

How does the trap work? It would look a little suspicious if someone "surrendering" tried to lead you away from your position and break cover. I'd expect them to come towards my position. I'm sure there are plenty of dirty tricks being played in this conflict, but I'm fairly sure the IDF are trained to deal with perfidy like this. The more plausible explanation is that some members of the IDF are opening fire on white flags and in one particular example the surrendering people happened to be hostages.

There are thousands upon thousands of documented incidents of Israeli forces committing crimes against the Palestinian population yet it is the Palestinians who are denigrated. If it not the IDF it is the settlers backed up by the IDF. Israel is a terrorist state.

Actually, it is very easy to defend Israel.

1. With regards to the current conflict, the 7th of October attacks were merely an escalation of what Hamas Gaza have been doing for the last ~16 years. Hamas have made it clear that theirs is a fight to the death.
2. Israel only blockaded the Gaza Strip AFTER Hamas took it over.
3. More broadly, Israel has been fighting for its existence since it was founded.
4. Israel is the worlds' only Jewish state and it is the only home for a plurality, verging on a majority, of total Jewish people.
5. Up to 70% of Israeli Jews are native to the Middle East. And 80% of Israeli Jews in all were born in Israel. It is their only home.
6. Radical leftists scream "From the river to the sea" based on their view that Israel is a white supremacist, colonial-settler apartheid state. None of these claims stand up to scrutiny. This is a genocidal call to obliterate Israel, which Israelis have a right to take very seriously.
7. As we've seen, the Far Right (with their bizarre claims of Satanic Jews manipulating the media) the Far Left (with its equally insane claims about Israel) are working hand-in-glove with each other and evil powers like Iran and Hamas on a shared goal - the total destruction of Israel and the endangerment of the Jews who live there.
8. Israel and Jewish people more broadly have a long history of excellence in the fields of science and technology. Few peoples, if any, have contributed so much to mankind. Their collective record is impressive considering how few they are in number.

So, yes, for all of these reasons, I am an avowed Philo-Semite and am 100% behind Israel's right to exist and to defend itself vigorously. I think their militaristic attitude is understandable given their history. If some Nazi, Far Leftist or Islamist doesn't like that, so be it.

So 20k civilian deaths, 8k under the rubble. Starving a population, destroying their hospitals and energy supply, ethnic cleansing... That's self defense in your eyes.

What's the latest terrorist death figure? 5k... So another 180k civilians to go.

So you think Israel can defend itself without, ya know causing the massive death toll they have done already?

Israel are not even using all smart bombs and just recently decided to target Hamas leaders... Like wtf.... Wouldn't that be the first target? Cut the head off the snake? If your goal was the elimination of Hamas and not an actual genocide.

Here's the thing, if you don't like the way Israel is conducting its retaliation, you should note that the majority of support for the right wing government parties (and thus Israel's defence policy) comes from the Mizrahi Jewish community.

The irony is that for Israel to have a less militaristic policy, the Ashkenazi population would have to take over the country and oppress the Mizrahi, actually turning Israel what the Left accuses it of: being a white supremacist, settler colonial apartheid state. Obviously for a variety of reasons, that's not going to happen.