Israel/Palestine Thread

That this whole war is some ruse to depopulate and annex Gaza and all of the West Bank.

There is ZERO evidence to support this conspiracy theory.

A few things here.

Yes, this is a wider conflict, that started, some say in 1948 or some say earlier.

Hamas has turned down the latest peace plan according to reports. Nothing to say about that?

Say Israel stops the attack now, what happens to the hostages? You tell us.

You are ignoring the elephant in the room, violence doesn't happen in a vaccum. This is why I brought up irgun. There was no shortage of recruits for Irgun in the 1940s. As long as there is subjugation and occupation of people there will be no shortage of recruits for groups who advocate violent resistance. I think the likes of BiBi knows well that Israel will never have long term security through military means, but this actually suits him perfectly well to maintain the status quo. As I have said previously he and his backers don't want a moderate Goverment in Gaza because it makes it harder for him to justify his policies. He is only intent on destroying Hamas to cling on to power, when he thought Hamas could serve his agenda he was happy to prop them up in order to weaken the PA. It's an utter disgrace he is being invited to speak in the US.

Summed up pretty well today here

Israel did not start the war in Gaza. Hamas did. On October 7, they broke a ceasefire and slaughtered, raped and tortured innocent civilians. Hamas could end this war today. They could free the hostages, renounce their pledge to wipe out Israel, and stop hiding among civilians in and around schools, mosques and hospitals. They won’t and the result is immense suffering and heartbreaking Palestinian casualties.

It does not seem likely that Hamas are going to surrender themselves or their hostages anytime soon, so i'm really not sure what the plan of the Israelis is. It seems every other day they are killing civilians by accident, yesterday in a UN school and even then their supporters here don't seem to care.

Not a single rebuttal to a thing I wrote. I get it, you don't have a clue about the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, but there is no anti-western rhetoric, there are only facts. Who created the borders of most Middle East countries? Britain and France with Sykes-Picot. Who came up with the idea to create Israel? European Zionists. Who created mandatory Palestine for the purpose of establishing Israel and encouraging Jewish immigration? The British. How much input did the local populations have in any of those those decisions? Zero. If you still don't get it, I won't be shocked.

Oh look it is the usual antisemitism trope. OK let's substitute Jewish state for Christian or Hindu or African or Asian or even Persian, do you think the Arabs would have been unopposed to the creation of any state by foreign powers in their territories for a foreign people without any consultation? In fact do you think there is anywhere in the world that would have accepted such a situation that wasn't a result of colonisation? Look at the reaction to immigration in Europe currently and that is without any suggestion of a state just for those peoples.

As for antisemitism, remind us again why the European Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state and who carried out the holocaust? Stones and glasshouses and all that.

Thankfully Tom Hands views are not influencing government policy. Poor Tom is conflating our recognition of a state of Palestine, and the right of self determination of the Palestinian people, with recognition of the legitimacy of Hamas - the Irish government condemned Hamas and its actions but Tom and his ilk (Bibi and his supporters) appear to be anti Palestinian and expect everyone else to make no distinction between Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters - the wholesale slaughter of civilians can be passed off as enemy casualties

Watched his interview on the Six One News just now. Some of what he said is nonsense, like him saying that the Irish government is pro Hamas. I've no time for our shower of leaders, but they're not pro Hamas, they're pro Palestine.

This from Tom Hand who was relieved when he thought his daughter Emily was dead, when she was in fact kidnapped. What a weird thought process. If you call that a "blessing", what do you call her being returned unharmed?

She's not dead, maimed or scarred for life. The same cannot be said for the thousands and thousands of dead children in Gaza. Not to mention the many thousands more who are maimed and scarred for life. I didn't hear him say anything critical about Israel and how they've responded.

Israel has basically reached the status of a terrorist state at this stage. Any country which fails to uphold international law and engage in wholesale slaughter of civilians deserves the classification of terrorist state in my opinion. An entire people subjugated and dispossessed since 1948, with a large number corralled into a concentration camp in Gaza - a lull in the 76 year struggle and you refer to it as "quiet" as if it was normal