Death toll surpasses 1,300 as Israel strikes Gaza and fierce battles intensify between Hamas gunmen and Israeli troops.

Hamas’s Qassam Brigades has threatened to execute Israeli captives if Israel continues to bombard and kill civilians in Gaza.

“Any targeting of innocent civilians without warning will be met regretfully by executing one of the captives in our custody, and we will be forced to broadcast this execution,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades.

“We regret this decision but we hold the Zionist enemy and their leadership the responsibility for this,” he said.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
    4519·
    9 months ago

    If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine. It is their historical sensitivity to genocide and limitations placed on them by international law and foreign pressures that imposes on them very different standards of behavior in this war. If they operated by the same set of rules that Hamas does, this conflict would have been over long ago.

    Others were captured and bound and kidnapped. “I saw videos with a male getting held by a group of Arab kids. Like, they’re like 16, 17,” one survivor recalled. “They’re kids, but they’re young men already, and they’re holding this guy, and he looks as his girlfriend is being mounted on a bike and driven away from him. God knows what she’s going to experience … Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies.”
    Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs.
    One survivor who’d returned to the scene later in the day to look for his friends spoke, in a breaking voice, of what he’d seen. Of the bodies, mainly of young women, lying cold and mutilated. Of scantily clad corpses, many of whom appeared to have been shot at point-blank. Of cars, perforated by bullets or blown up by grenades.
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/israel-music-festival-massacre-eyewitness-account

    Israel does not perform atrocities like this. This wasn’t collateral damage, this wasn’t an attack on a valid military target, it was intentionally kidnapping, raping, and murdering civilians. This sort of behavior makes it very hard for me to swallow the, “both sides are equally bad,” narrative. I had a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian situation before, it is quickly evaporating.

    • NevermindNoMind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      199·
      9 months ago

      Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide, but I’ll save that criticism until it actually plays out. In general, Israel is an apartied state. Hamas is a bunch of murderous terrorists committing war crimes, doing far more harm to their supposed cause than good. This attack will result in far more of their people suffering. But they count on that, hate within the Palestine community in Gaza is what gives them political power, so the civilians Isreal is currently killing will just continue to fuel the cycle of violence.

      Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn’t make Israel “good”. If you compare Nazi Germany to apartied South Africa, the former is going to win the evil country contest everytime. But that doesn’t make apartied South Africa good. If it wasn’t for the Book of Revelations, America (it’s government and it’s people) would care as much about this conflict as it does about various civil wars and genocides happening all over the world, which is to say not at all (unless oil or other natural resources are imperilled).

      • DarkGamer@kbin.social
        101·
        9 months ago

        Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide

        My understanding is the border crossing with Egypt is still open, so Palestine can still have access to all of that.

        Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn’t make Israel “good”.

        You make a good point about no one having clean hands in this conflict, but one party here seems willing to commit atrocities that the other is not. One party is historically willing to compromise and negotiate for a viable solution and the other has not, and in fact has it in their charter that they will not negotiate or compromise.

        [Hamas’s charter,] article 13, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

        What we need to end this amicably is a solution that neither party is happy with, one they are equally dissatisfied with, because that is a hallmark of compromise. If one or both parties are unwilling to compromise, the erosion of Palestinian lands and power will continue as it has, and such atrocious acts may serve to hasten it.

        • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          9 months ago

          My understanding is the border crossing with Egypt is still open, so Palestine can still have access to all of that.

          The border crossing to Egypt is usually only for people when it’s open. As I understand it, all goods have to use a different crossing passing into Israel first and then Gaza.

          • jcit878@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            9 months ago

            The border crossing to Egypt is usually only for people when it’s open.

            why all the innocent palestinians arent rushing for the border to get out is beyond me. you know what’s coming. being dead and saying ‘i told you the bastards would kill me’ sounds great up until the point you are dead.

            Hoping Israel doesnt unleash possibly the most intense campaign of this generation is a fools dream really and unless you are a combatant, you’d get the hell out ASAP. Hamas is going to be blown to limbs and those that survive the bombings and full scale assaults are going to wind up Munich’d after all this is over. They cant do what they did and not expect utter retribution

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      123·
      9 months ago

      If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine.

      Hate to point out the irony, especially in this context… but at the rate things are going, in another 5 years there probably won’t be a Palestine.

      • DarkGamer@kbin.social
        32·
        9 months ago

        “Israel are the good guys because the international community has stopped them from completing the genocide at a quick pace”

        Work on your reading comprehension, because you conveniently ignored much of what I wrote. The Jews were genocided. They don’t want to genocide others, unlike their opponents.

        20% of the state of Israel is Palestinian/arab, with full citizenship and rights. It seems their behaviors are motivated by self-defense, not destroying an ethnic group.

        God I really hope a ethno state claims your own land as theirs, puts you in an open air prison as it gradually steals pieces of it for its owns settlers year after year, denies you food and medicines. Shoots women, children, medics and reporters in your community.

        If I my country theoretically started a losing war with our neighbor and then refused to make peace when we lost, I’d expect to be occupied by hostile soldiers and be denied autonomy until my country did. When a hostile army is occupying and guerilla attacks or riots/uprisings happen, people get shot. It’s almost like there are consequences for endless violence and open warfare against one’s neighbor. No side has a monopoly on victimhood here.

        The fact that you would wish such ills on others for recognizing this, that you look at this conflict in such a reductive way, is telling of your character.

          • DarkGamer@kbin.social
            2·
            9 months ago

            And muslims were killed on mass as part of that same genocide, so that means they physical cant be involved in a genocide of their own right?

            This seems incoherent, I don’t follow. What are you trying to say?

            Can you read your own wikipedia article?

            I did read the article, you seem to have difficulty with verb tenses. That was in the past. At present Arab Israelis have the same legal citizen rights as Jewish Israelis.

            Or can we talk about how whats going on in Israel is recognised as apartheid?
            www.amnesty.org/…/israels-system-of-apartheid/

            Thanks for the link, I will watch that when I get the chance.

            You people are physically incapable of having a good faith thought on this issue. The Palestinians didnt “start a war with their neighbour” They had their land taken from them by the west so they could replace their Jewish populations.

            “You people,” classy. What people are you including me among in order to dismiss my opinion? Spell it out for me.

            This conflict is a long and winding road, but based on my understanding that’s exactly what happened. Palestinians didn’t like the UN partition plan so they resorted to violence and attacked their Jewish neighbors, triggering the Arab-Israeli War of 1948:

            The United Nations resolution sparked conflict between Jewish and Arab groups within Palestine. Fighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. These groups launched their attacks against Jewish cities, settlements, and armed forces. The Jewish forces were composed of the Haganah, the underground militia of the Jewish community in Palestine, and two small irregular groups, the Irgun, and LEHI. The goal of the Arabs was initially to block the Partition Resolution and to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. The Jews, on the other hand, hoped to gain control over the territory allotted to them under the Partition Plan.

            Lmao cope.

            Grow up.

              • DarkGamer@kbin.social
                1·
                9 months ago

                You’re arguing Jewish people would perpetrate genocide simply because Jewish people on the past were victims (despite all the evidence that they are currently commiting a genocide) so I took that same logic and applied it to the Muslims of palestine.

                I never wrote nor implied that, in fact I wrote the opposite; Israel is not willing to commit genocide, unlike Hamas. You do have terrible reading comprehension.

                You people as in people who go out of their way to disregard reality to simp for a religious apartheid ethno state that is commiting genocide.

                Riiight. Nice misdirection. I think we all know what you meant.
                Israel is a theocracy, but it can’t be an ethnostate when other ethnicities have full citizen rights and live among the population.
                The only party here out to commit genocide is Palestine, Hamas is very explicit about that. See my link above.
                Your worldview is completely twisted when fighting back against genocidal terrorists slaughtering your civilians is genocide and the slaughterers are the sympathetic party.

                Again, you’re phrasing it as if Israel and palestine had coexistence as neighbours then palestine decided to attack out of no where. The UN (or more specifically the British) decided they were just going to take the Palestinians land to make a country of their own in an act of blatant colonialism. So they were responding to being invaded.

                I didn’t say out of no where, but according to my reading they did in fact start the war. There were other ways to respond to the UN partition plan than through violence. Palestine chose violence and continues to choose violence up to this day, and they are still suffering from that decision. Had they been willing to peacefully coexist history would have played out differently for them.