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

No - wrong again.

Netanyahu allowed funding to reach Hamas so they would win elections in Gaza and shut out the PA. Divide and conquer.

How many War Criminals have a soft spot for preventing humanitarian crises? Answer - zero.

Are you suggesting that US multinationals, even if not impacted directly by the OTB, would pull out of Ireland and throw away millions and in some cases billions of euros of investment based on an extremely vague (and massively incorrect) moral viewpoint?

There's an explainer here : https://www.trocaire.org/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-occupied-territories-bill/ At the moment it's just Palestine (point 2).

I can't believe how naive most of your posts are. Do you honestly believe that Hamas would have to pay for fighters? They are probably more numbers now than there were before Israel began murdering and bombing. If you lived there and your family members were blown apart, sniped, locked up without trial and abused in prison you would probably join too.

Indeed. I'm fairly sure there's no obligation during wartime to deliver aid to enemy belligerents.

I will be the first to concede that war crimes may have occurred, such as the case with the paramedics. What I dispute are a number of claims - often with data of my own that has gone uncontested.

1. That there is a "genocide" going on.
2. That Israel is not a legitimate belligerent in a legitimate war, and that it is Israel that is the obstacle to peace.
3. That Israel should be forced to withdraw to the 1967 borders, and this would bring peace.
4. Comparisons between Israel and Russia, claiming both are alike.

All of these claims are false, the "genocide" bs which has been claimed since the 7th of October, despite Israel having legitimate reason to go all-out to destroy Hamas, and causing limited collateral damage despite perfidy by Hamas (hiding among civilians, using human shields etc).

I don't know exactly how Israel is supposed to co-exist peacefully with not just Hamas, but also Hezbollah and the Houthis, all of whom on behalf of their puppet masters in Tehran are absolutely dedicated to Israel's total destruction. Because it's clear to me at least that the obstacle to peace is not Israel but the fundamentalist whackjobs in Iran and their web of proxy belligerents.

Not only do the pro-Palestine crowd avoid discussing Iran and its efforts to grid the Jewish state out of existence, not only do they continue their nonsense despite being told in no uncertain terms that they are acting in sync with the Ayatollahs, but many of them seem to be happy to march alongside flags of Hezbollah and signs with stuff like "LGBT = Let's Go Bomb Tel-Aviv" which was seen at a recent Irish anti-Semite … sorry pro-Palestine peace rally.

I've explained why Israel has positioned itself outside the 1967 borders and why no sane government of Israel would withdraw to them under any circumstances. Those points have gone unanswered.

The comparisons between Russia and Israel are of course absurd - for one thing Iran is arming both Russia to wage its war against Ukraine and also arming its terrorist proxies closer to home, in both cases one larger country (Russia and Iran) seek to grind a smaller neighbour out of existence (Ukraine and Israel), both terrorist dictatorships trying to destroy democracies.

I wish posters would stop using the phrase human shields to excuse the killing of kids or innocents. They are not shielding hamas or themselves when the idf blows them up. It's really just to excuse any amount of collateral damage (I.e. killing of civilians).

And excusing the starving of civilian population should be called out in any conflict. It's a sad reflection on any poster that tries to defend this practice.

I'd imagine some will be gushing with praise for the latest from Smotrich.

As well as "concentrating" Palestinians to the South of Gaza (his words remember and his plan certainly evokes "Concentration Camps") he is going full blown Likud Mantra - "Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty".

Now that Gaza is razed to the ground, the West Bank is firmly in his sights. I'd imagine the ICC and ICJ have him firmly in their own sights.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that in the coming months the government will move forward with plans to approve construction in the E1 area of the West Bank, a step that would effectively bisect the territory from east to west. "We're already working on it professionally," Smotrich said at a settlement conference organized by Israeli right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon, adding that "this is how you kill the Palestinian state de facto. God willing, there'll be [Israeli] sovereignty [in the West Bank] during this term."

Indeed. I'm fairly sure there's no obligation during wartime to deliver aid to enemy belligerents

So blockading food to millions of people is ok? Do you consider starving children to be enemy belligerents?

I wish people would stop using the phrase "Using human shields" when they simply do not understand it and continue to misrepresent it. They also ignore the obligations around attacking those purported "human shields".

Gaza is a very small and densely populated area. How could members of Hamas live there and not be embedded among the civilian population? The Israeli supporters are parroting garbage they have been fed by their propaganda machine.

How is it a human shield if the shield doesn’t do anything and they get bombed anyway?

How so you hide among civilians if israel will just bomb away anyway?

If we are at the stage that Israel is acting as bad as hamas then I can't see why posters still support their actions.

Where are a militia like Hamas supposed to locate themselves? Gather in a group of 1000 men in an olive field away from any civilians, wave to the Israeli drones and say 'Here we are, please attack us and kill us'?

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that in the coming months the government will move forward with plans to approve construction in the E1 area of the West Bank, a step that would effectively bisect the territory from east to west. "We're already working on it professionally," Smotrich said 

at a settlement conference

 organized by Israeli right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon, adding that "

this is how you kill the Palestinian state de facto. God willing, there'll be [Israeli] sovereignty [in the West Bank] during this term."

It never fails to amaze me when I see a Genocider using the phrase '' God willing ''. Some of them even say repeatedly that God gave them '' the Promised Land ''. Yet for all their quoting of from the Old Testament or it's equivalent (Talmud etc) they never mention breaking the word of God, example - stealing (lands of others) or murdering. They pass no remarks at all to most of God's teachings. They are a right hypocritical bunch of Genociders.

They could surrender … that's usually what stops the violence in a war. It worked for Germany in 1945. After which, the US, British and Soviets stopped pummelling Germany.

Considering that Israel is at war with multiple Iranian proxies, it would take a lot for me to carry water for the Ayatollahs. Not so much for some of ye, it seems. Especially when this conflict is linked to so many others by explicit the involvement of a CRINK power, e.g. the Russo-Ukraine war.