Israel are going to start WWIII

Good summary of the last 12 months and some predictions - Jeremy Bowen, BBC

while Israel coordinate closely with US they will make their own decision on how to respond..

Israel defence minister says 'everything is on the table' for retaliation against Iran

If you happen to live beside a drug dealing family is that an excuse to target you as well? It seems to be what you are suggesting.

Why would you conflate citizens from Gaza with Hamas terrorists?

I would not call you a drug dealer for living beside one.

If there is one thing I dislike profoundly about the Irish is their support of Palestinians.

I've also never met a Palestinian supporter who was open minded and tolerant. Most react hateful to my opinion.

It's been the biggest raid and murder of Jews ever since the Holocaust, kidnapping and repeated rape inlcluded by a terrorist organization and the Irish still don't want to see it that way.

May glory come over Israel and the Israeli Defence Forces.

Why do the Irish have to take the same side of the terrorists? An old IRA gene out of the troubles? It would sometimes seem so.

With that attitude Ireland is not only in disrepute, it's in decline due to stubbornness to see the reality.

Ireland fought the mighty Britsh empire, and so does Israel have the right to fight the enemy as well.

Ireland is proud of being neutral, so, please Ireland, be neutral in this conflict as well.

Great. They can stop bombing the strip now.

That's what one would imagine… I won't hold my breath.

IDF remaining "to ensure Hamas does not regroup" sound suspiciously like the start of the reoccupation of Gaza.

It's been the biggest raid and murder of Jews ever since the Holocaust, kidnapping and repeated rape inlcluded by a terrorist organization and the Irish still don't want to see it that way.

My friend, there was a lot of crazy tales told about what Hamas did or didn't do on Oct 7th - mass rapes, babies heads sawed off, all sort of ghoulish tales that really make you wonder who dreams this stuff up. None of it has been substantiated. For all the deaths, there has been some acknowledgement that a large proportion of the israeli deaths were actually inflicted by a panicked, chaotic israeli military response where they began firing at vehicles returning to Gaza.

The greatest threat to an israeli hostage in Gaza is an israeli soldier as demonstrated by israeli soldiers murdering two hostages who escaped and approached them seeking rescue. Several of those hostages who have been released by Hamas have said they were reasonably well treated. The worst complaint one woman had was she was expected to wash the dishes. A mother of another israeli hostage complained her daugher was made to cook and clean. By comparison, the israelis are provably gang raping their hostages. All these lurid claims are entirely projection by israel.

There is 90+ israeli hostages left in Gaza, still held by Hamas, and israel has effectively abandoned them and their families.

"the worst reputation of any country in Europe"

Somebody seems to have forgotten a certain regime who murdered millions of jews back in the day … such a short memory.

If Hamas hadn't carried out such a stupid, futile and murderous incursion Gaza would still be standing today and we wouldn't have the chaos we now have with Israel with it's blank cheque to take over new territory and expel the natives.

It's impossible to try and understand what they were thinking. They sowed their own destruction and many of their own people.

Sure, but if israel hadn't carried out such a stupid, futile and murderous incursion into Palestine, we wouldn't have the chaos we now with israel with its blank cheque to take over new territory and expel the natives.

I don't want to be too harsh - you're voicing a view I held several years back. But israel has and always will take over new territory and expel the natives. They'll never stop, until they are stopped. You're effectively asking the Palestinians to lie down and die quietly.

Sure, the Palestinians could have thrown down their weapons, lived in peace and watched year by year as the settlements expanded and their people were ground out decade by decade by "facts on the ground". It would have been calm, peaceful and orderly. But there is no future for the Palestinians on that path. So they have to fight, no matter how hopeless or futile it seems. Because that at least offers a possible future for Palestinians.

And because there's an upcoming election and the Zionist influence is big in the US.

iranian flights given green light again..

Hey, lets not overstate the israeli rules of engagement. Any Arab child is a valid target under idf rules.

You might still believe the fairytale about Plucky little Israel having the world's best intelligence organisation. Being able to pinpoint any enemy they wish and then drop a bomb on him, or murder them in some other way.

Have you ever sat back and wondered how such a small country with such a small population would have the resources to carry out all of this? I do not believe that they have the capacity to do this alone - meaning that their intelligence agency is most likely a branch operation of the CIA (you will have heard of the "five eyes", Israel would make a 6th eye), that the information that they require is fed to them while they are supplied with the resources to carry out their murderous operations. In this case, the whereabouts of whoever, while the US provides the material to kill whoever is being fingered.

At the risk of going off-topic - the US has been teaching other countries lessons for decades. Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, there's hardly a state in Latin America that hasn't suffered US interference, many of them on several occasions. Inform yourself about the School of the Americas, now rebranded to distance itself from its noisome past.

Then there's Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan/China … in the Far East.

Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia.

But they are becoming less able to keep other countries in line as the years go by, and depart each time with their tail between their legs, having sown chaos and leaving a trail of destruction behind them - but even worse are the destroyed lives, the dead and wounded in their hundreds of thousands. Never mind that though, the MIC does very nicely out of all this.