Israel are going to start WWIII

Islamics….. when you're not quite sure what they are but you dislike them anyway….

I'm sure you're also aware that most Muslims in that area were also originally Jewish but converted and with an extended unbroken history in the region are the original Semites…. So you could almost say the most antisemitic thing you could do is to kill Semites but this is the world we inhabit right?!

Why the restrictions on DNA tests in Israel?

Israel is a sick and depraved society (as well as the useful idiots that supports them) that treats their soldiers as heroes because they take the fight to Palestinian children

A human rights lawyer said this, Golda Meir would be proud.

Another famous Israeli Zionist quote is

“We can forgive them for killing our children but we cannot forgive them for making us kill their children”.

And if you disagree with their claim then you’re just a dirty old anti semite.

It doesn't matter now what Israel should have done IMO. They've done what they did, they well and truly broke Gaza, and have therefore bought it.

Their own since sacked general (edit: defence minister) (Gallant) I think has said that militarily the IDF have achieved all they can in Gaza (as regards destroying Hamas, presumably).

While he may be a horrible man and up on war crimes charges in future, we will give him the benefit of the doubt (for purposes of this post) and assume he (mostly) tried to keep the IDFs military operation within the bounds of obligations under Intl. law etc.

So what purpose does the continuation and enhancement of the military operations in Gaza serve now, one wonders, if its not a directly military one regarding Hamas?

Will any supporters of it all spell it out for "slow learners"?

You have made all sorts of assumptions about me there, put words in my mouth and so on. I would appreciate if you would not do so in future.

From my reading, Jews were probably only ever a small minority in Palestine, probably mostly herders living in the hills, while the better land was inhabited by other groups.

Not to say that Palestinian Jews didn't convert, but it is likely that most Palestinians in antiquity weren't Jews.

So basically, are you saying Muslims deserve to have genocide and ethnic cleansing inflicted upon them, but Jews don't deserve to be chased down the street?

I'm sure you don't mean that, but it reads like that. you should really read your posts before you hit send

This is going to be a fairly long post as it is in response to a post that attempts to refute/ridicule a number of arguments I have made over the past days. Please accept my apologies in advance.

I think to be fair the focus on the football match is about a lot more than just what might have happened.

If the entire thread took a consensus along the lines of "you know what, Israel is a piece of garbage nation committing war crimes,but that doesn't mean it's ok if, and if, there's mobs hunting down Israeli supporters".

I would say it would've started and ended there.

What gets a lot of people's backs up is the claims that the world media and dutch authorities are involved in a global conspiracy to hide "what really happened".

Yes, Israel – as you say – is a garbage nation. That’s an astute observation, and thank you so much for pointing it out.
However the point about the football match isn’t (mainly )the Israeli hooligans, it is that the media, the Dutch authorities, the Dutch police made this be about the response to the Israeli hooligans rather than the trouble that the Israeli hooligans went out of their way to foment.
This really, really gets people’s backs up.

And then we have people saying on one hand that we have to completely discredit Dutch police accounts until a "full and thorough investigation" is carried out, yet simultneously the same people making all sorts of claims based on pretty much nothing but their feelings and selected Twitter videos.

Do Dutch police have it wrong? Who knows, maybe they do. Are Dutch police involved in a global conspiracy involving the media? Step too far for me personally. Especially considering the same Dutch media published reports that paint Israel in a terrible light a few days prior.

I think to be fair if you are replying to my post, you could do so in a less oblique way.
That said, nobody feels that we have to completely discredit the Dutch police– they have done this all on their own.
Apart from the sheer stupidity of the Dutch police’s statements - how many times have we heard Schoof criticising the daily massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese? When did we hear king Willie criticise the daily massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese? How many times has Halsema criticised the daily massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese?And let’s not forget VD Lyin’ who has constantly offered support for genocide.

For me personally it's the same reason I get dragged into the debate when people post deluded nonsense like Iran has a world class military, the IDF is a feeble, crumbling military, Iron Dome doesn't work and has never worked, etc.

Deluded nonsense? Sometimes people look at the evidence,sifting through it to first set aside the propaganda (which is always the vast majority where there is an armed conflict) and look at what is left to try and make sense of the situation.
I’m not aware that anyone has claimed Iran has a world-class military, but they clearly have pretty good missiles, and good drones too. Good enough drones that there is an export market for them; and this is no surprise as some years back they captured a US drone and were able to take it apart and copy it – so their drones should be as good as the US model they had, and it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that they have introduced improvements into their own drones since that time.

The Israeli army (it’s not a “defence” force) has one thing going for it: their neighbours’ lack of effective air defences. They have managed to turn most of Gaza into a heap of rubble, and parts of Lebanon too, from the air. This is due to US-supplied aircraft, along with some local copies. The rest of their military hasn’t displayed much in the way of effectiveness. They haven’t managed to conquer southern Lebanon, but they are experts in murdering defenceless civilians. Hurrah for them!

Opinions are absolutely fine in the main. If that opinion is that Israel is a rogue terrorist nation, or otherwise, I have no problem with it whatsoever.

But there has to be a line drawn somewhere in terms of objective facts. "Israel is committing horrific war crimes" is a valid opinion. If someone wants to insist it's a fact, I have no problem there either.

But weird claims that Iran has a secret world class military that has Israel running scared, or that Israel's air defense network is a sham and has never worked, are just pure nonsense that are contrary to logic, reason, and established fact.

There are a number of ways to establish how good Israel’s defences are.

One would be to see how effective they are against enemy weapons. Clearly they usually work against Hamas’ fireworks. They have been shown to be less effective against Hezbollah’s missiles, as quite a number have successfully landed in Israel and done considerable damage – this has been reported in spite of Israeli censorship of such matters.
Quite a number of Iran’s missiles have also definitely breached Israel’s defences and done some level of damage, although in their case as the targets were military ones, the censorship has been more effective so we cannot say just how much damage they did.
Hezbollah’s drones also clearly breached Israeli airspace, as there were videos doing the rounds a few months ago demonstrating some of the spying they carried out.
All of this goes to show that Israel’s air defences are regularly and seemingly easily breached by both Hezbollah and Iran; facts not opinions.

A second way to discover how effective Israel’s air defence network is, would be to look at orders by foreign countries for such systems. I’d be particularly interested in new orders and also in cancelled orders. If/when I come across information on either I’ll post it in this forum.

Contrary to your belief, whatever happened on Oct 7th, Israel do have an undoubted responsibility to avoid civilian casualties on the other side.

That's not contrary to my belief at all. Of course they do. But it's a limited responsibility, and it doesn't, for example, mean they're entitled to kill the same number of civilians but no more.

Considering accounts of what is happening, they are outright targeting civilians. Starving them, cutting their power, blowing them up, shooting them, driving them from their home, blockading medicine, arresting their doctors, is Genocide. Do you think that is a valid response from Israel?

I agree that there are almost certainly war crimes happening in Gaza. What war hasn't had any? Anyone involved needs to be punished for that. Your claim that it's genocide, however, is unproven IMO for a number of reasons which I've pretty much stated in the past and don't have time to go into here anyway. This weekend perhaps if you're actually interested. But basically the Geneva Convention excludes hospitals which are being used for military purposes, and many of the doctors and administrators have turned out to be Hamas militants (unsurprisingly, TBH: Hamas are hardly the type of organisation to hold free and fair recruitment processes for well-paying jobs like running a hospital. You may be sure that ONLY Hamas loyalists got permanent jobs in anything that the Hamas health service had any control over.)

That's only one point, there are others.

With regard to what Israel should have done in response to the massacring of 1200 people. What kind of question is that? It completely absolves Israel's role in creating the situation where what would otherwise be ordinary people in Gaza felt extremism and terrorism was there only way out and voted in a terrorist death cult.

So look. Either the situation in Gaza was so horrific because of Israel that people were entitled to murder children and old people living in what is legally Israel - not Gaza, nor even disputed parts of the West Bank or Jerusalem - or that was a war crime which is out of all proportion to the harm suffered by the people of gaza in their everyday lives.

If you looked at the links I posted of life in Gaza before Oct 2023, you'll see that this cannot possibly be the case: some people did live in horrendous poverty - but that is because Hamas was in the habit of taking much of the aid that was coming in and using it to create a military structure to attack Israel. Hamas' leaders were multimillionaires. There was a thriving middle and upper class in Gaza - Humza Yusuf's parents-in-law were visiting their wealthy son there when the invasion happened: there were pictures of his appartment, which would not put a wealthy family in Ireland to shame.

So the poverty in Gaza was due to Hamas more than to Israel. Israel only shut the airport in Gaza down because of the second Intifada. If there had been no fighting, it would still be open. And Egypt has long kept Gazans from crossing their border too: in fact nearly the first thing Egypt did when Israel attacked was to hike up the fees for Gazans trying to flee. So would Gazans be entitled to sneak across at Rafah and murder any Egyptian families they found?

I would say Israel should have made a point militarily, and then tried to prevent another massacre happening again via political means. That would require somehow changing their culture to treat the Palestinians, politically at least, as people, and finding people on the Palestinian side who wish to do the same with Israel. Politics can overcome militancy. The EU did this in Europe. The peace process did this in NI. You may say that wouldn't work, but the British would have said that about us too in 1972. In 1945, noone would have said France and Germany would be breaking bread together. Imagine the pain and anger that had to be set aside to allow that to happen after hundreds of years of brutal warfare...

Again, far too complicated to deal with here - and we've already been told not to compare the situation in Gaza with Northern Ireland on this thread, so I won't go there, but it's a false equivalence for many reasons. Not least the complete absence of any similar massacre of thousands of British civilians at a concert etc.

I will point out the irony of Hamas targeting the Kibbutzim and killing or kidnapping the very Israelis who had for years been trying to push peace with Palestinians. Some of those they murdered had regularly taken Gazans for treatment in Israeli hospitals.

Meanwhile the right wing extremists in the West Bank settlements are not the ones getting murdered.

What message do you think that sends to Israeli society?

As a flip side to your question, what should the people of Gaza have done in response to being constantly abused, forced form their homes, degraded, and of course massacared in far higher numbers than Israelis, in the years prior to Oct 7th? Was Hamas and terrorism the only option for them? Is Hamas a valid a response for their woes, as you seem to think Genocide is for Israels?

I did answer your question btw, so hope you can make a similar effort in answering mine.

Again: deliberately massacring civilians for no military gain is strictly forbidden by the Geneva Convention. What was the possible military aim of Hamas?

If none, then no, there is no possible justification.

Unlike Israel's attack on Gaza, which had a clear and legal military aim.

Whether they've now gone past that is a different question. It's quite possible.

(FYI, I've been saying for months on the US threads that idiots shouting about Genocide Joe, and telling people not to vote for Kamala Harris to punish her for not being clearer about the so-called "genocide" would end up causing Trump to be re-elected, and that they would then need a new far "bigger" word than genocide to describe what the extremists in the US Republican party and Trump's personal entourage would enable. Sadly it's turning out even worse than I expected.)

I think I said it before but their attitude reminds me of the husband who goes home drunk every night who beats his wife and tells her that it is her fault and not his because she forces him to beat her.

Apologies but I'm not sure how to show quotes the way you did.

1. There is a difference between war crimes and genocide. Israel is undoubtedly committing genocide against Palestinians. There is no military justification for the horror they are unleashing beyond "If you attack us, we will wipe you out any way we can, men, women, children all".

2. The situation in Gaza was undoubtedly horrific. I don't know how you can honestly talk about people with swimming pools as though that is the norm, and ignore there has been a dire humanitarian crisis going on there for decades. It is a slum hell hole that was forced on the Palestinians that they didn't deserve.

3. I'm not comparing Israel and Palestine to Northern Ireland, merely showing an example of hatred and violence being tempered by politics and compromise. It has proven time and again to be more effective than war. The EU is perhaps the greatest example of this in world history. Is this not something you agree with?

4. Do you really think, objectively, that the severely overwhelmed doctors who were treating thousands of severely wounded men, women and children, had time to pick up a rocket and fire it at Israel. Do really think Hamas, whose people can get sick and injured, who's kids can get sick and injured, created a society where no real doctors exist, and only Hamas fighters can act as medical staff? And that Palestinians were happy with this? Absolutely ludicrous. It hasn't entered your mind that Israel could be arresting genuine doctors in order to let sick and wounded Palestinians die?

5. You still haven't answered my question - if you hold the view that what Israel has done aka between 40k and 100k Gazan civilians killed, why don't you also think terrorism is a valid response from Gazans who had no proper country, no proper military, and had suffered thousands of civilian deaths at the hands of the IDF since 1948? How else should they have defended themselves.

And I am not saying Hamas are justified, but you hold exactly that view in reverse.

I'm sure Hamas had military objectives too when they crossed into Israel and butchered those Israeli civilians in cold blood. That doesn't justify it, and you shouldn't attempt to justify Israel's butchering of Gazan civilians either.