Israeli airstrikes destroyed a tower block in Gaza City after Hamas militants launched a rocket and air attack on Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The Israeli army launched Operation Iron Swords against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the country, is ‘at war’.

Al Jazeera journalist Youmna El Sayed was reporting live from Gaza the moment the missile struck Palestine Tower behind her.

Sources in Gaza said at least 198 Palestinians were killed in the strikes

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So order of things in this video is wrong. First one is the reporter with explosion behind her. Explosion is suppose to make noise and do no damage. Israel calls this “roof knocking” as it gives warning and time for people to flee. Fifteen minutes later first part of the video happens and building is leveled to the ground. Building destroyed is a communication tower, which as you can expect is the first to go in such situations.

    • ???@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Are you sure it’s a communication tower? If they flattened “Palestine Tower”, then that’s a mix of commercial and residential apartments. Apparently it had 14 stories and also housed clinics and media agencies.

      (Wiki page is in Arabic)

  • turbonewbe@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Please explain like I’m 5 : why Israël doesn’t go after military/strategic targets instead of destroying city blocks?

    • Nihilistra@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because this was probably a military target.

      A lot of militant groups use civilians as human shields to either completly prevent a strike or a least create bad publicity to spin their propaganda.

      There were a lot of Israelis taken into Gaza by force, my guess is they are kept in the most important places to create a moral dilemma.

      You either attack and kill your own civilians or let the enemy have undisturbed action.

    • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Gaza doesn’t have anything else. It is not a country, it is a concentration camp and it in general is not permitted to have anything resembling an organized self defense.

      It makes it easier to bulldoze over their towns on Ramadan and then act shocked when some of them retaliate during your high holiday.

      Israel could simply stop settling the land that doesn’t belong to them and exterminating Palestinians, and Hamas could stop lashing out and killing Israelis but the only way that happens is if the political leadership of those two selfishly monstrous regimes were to simply all die.

      There can be no peace as long as one country is allowed to make another into an apartheid state while they ethnically cleanse the population from land they feel entitled to control.

      • ???@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Or maybe Israel could use all that money they have to remove the separation walls and allow Palestinians to integrate into society and return lands that settlers recently took. That’s a start.

        • Custodian1623@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Hamas doesn’t want to be part of Israeli society. These are not two groups that can co-exist peacefully.

    • magikmw@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      City blocks are military targets when your goal is to get rid of people living there.

      • WhyDoesntThisThingWork@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The correct answer is that Hamas purposely launches these attacks from city block, schools, hospitals, etc which is literally a war crime so when there is retaliation they can cry foul. Don’t believe terrorist apologist.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Have you ever looked at a map of Gaza, the place is all civilian infrastructure, they have to operate from inside it there’s no other choice the place is completely overpopulated. Which very much makes it not a war crime as the Geneva convention is about avoiding avoidable civilian casualties, not unavoidable ones.

          • Custodian1623@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Shooting rockets indiscriminately is definitely an avoidable action. They don’t have to do it. Unfortunately people do need to defend themselves from Israel but the rockets are just to inflict suffering.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Palestine has all the right in the world to combat an occupying force. What are you going to say next “Ukraine doesn’t have to shoot rockets at Russians”?

              Then Gaza, in particular, has the right to defend itself against a blockade threatening the wealth, health, and indeed survival of its people. Don’t want poor people to fight dirty? Don’t oppress them, it’s that simple. If Israel ever goes around stopping to do that (probably will require re-animating Rabin) they get the right to complain, but not before.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Let me know when Ukraine bombs civilian hospitals inside Russia or massacres Russian civilians at a music festival.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  Let me know when Gaza has surgical strike capability. With the type of rockets they’re using you can’t really target hospitals because you can’t really target them at all, they’re ludicrously imprecise. Little better than a potato cannon.

                  People fight with what they have. The more desperate, the dirtier. It is way too easy to sit in your chair in front of your computer, presumably with a fully stocked fridge, reliable water, sewage, and electricity, technical marvels just a mouse click and next-day delivery away, and make moral judgements about people fighting for sheer survival with little more than sticks and stones.

                  Do I condone it? Nah. Both sides are invariably assholes, and not everything Hamas does is goal-directed enough to be categorised as “dirty war”. There’s lots of plain hatred in there. But then that hatred isn’t exactly unfounded.

                  And at that point we’re getting to a “If you deny me things, then I will deny you things” territory. The mutual assured destruction instinct: “Sure I may lose but I’ll make sure that you lose, too”. Eye for an eye. That, yes, means simply inflicting suffering. We’re past morals at this point, this is human instinct, or one branch of the genome telling the other “yo, cut it out”. It’s bigger and way more natural – in the metal sense – than the quaint and lofty systems we build in our heads.

                  …which brings me to why I even replied to your comment: We wouldn’t be in that situation, we could make moral judgements we’d actually feel good about, if Israel wasn’t tightening thumbscrews to mush levels just to inflict suffering, like the whole water situation in Gaza. And there’s no, absolutely no justification for that, as Israelis very much are not struggling for survival themselves.

  • WuTang @lemmy.ninja
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    1 year ago

    YouTube is actually displaying pro-isreali ads displaying colonized people as terrorists. Without discomfort.

    David against Goliath they said at the IDF center behind their joysticks.

    We are really in up is down era.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When you shoot up a music festival then parade the bodies of the civilians you murdered through the streets, you are, in fact, a terrorist.

      • WuTang @lemmy.ninja
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        1 year ago

        palestinian == local isralian == colonist

        You could bend the reality as much as you can - and pay all the ad campaign on youtube - but by definition, the offenser is pretty well identified.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yep it is. It’s the person murdering and kidnapping civilians, whichever “side” theyre on.

  • HerzogVonWiesel@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Palestine strikes Israel: 22 dead (huge outcry) Israel strikes Palestine: 200 dead (nobody bats an eye)

    Israel is a problematic subject with how imbalanced it is handled in media, resembling more propaganda than anything else.

    • ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      So you think Israel should just accept that a genocidal terrorist organisation attacks its civilian population? Yes, Hamas uses civilians as meat shields but what are the Israelis supposed to do? Let themselves be slaughtered?

      Jesus fucking Christ. Terrorist supporters all around here. I’m genuinely disgusted.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is the same Israel with their elite mossad forces, yes? “Meat shields” are a poor excuse for indiscriminately bombing a city block when you have elite spec ops units. They don’t do it because they have no other choice, they do it as a threatening show of force. “Fuck with us and we’ll kill anyone even near you”.

        There’s a middle ground that doesn’t involve slaughtering innocents.

        • Huntersli@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Any chance you can school me in the rights and wrongs of this situation, I have tried to read up on the situation between Israel and Palestine and I just can’t work out who, if anyone is at fault. It just seems like a crazy unresolvable mess.

          On the face of it I would just think the solution is to let the Palestinians have their bit of land and be done with it, why is it not that simple?

          Also it’s really hard to understand who is justified in their actions. I often find myself feeling sorry for the Palestinians but then I see them riding through London celebration the murder of innocent people and it makes it really hard for me to feel sorry for them. Similarly with Israelis, it’s horrible that they have innocent civilians murdered but killing 250 in response is just crazy…

          I’m not trolling or shit posting I honestly can’t work it out.

          • fishos@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I appreciate your thoughtful response. Unfortunately it is an incredibly murky mess at this point. Say you side with Palestine and say it’s their land. Do you then kick out the people who were born on the land after the conflict started? Innocent people who’s only crime is the location of their birth? Or do you side with Israel and claim it’s their land now and do the same to Palestinians? Where do you put the people you relocate?

            I won’t pretend to have an answer to that. Just pointing out that either answer has numerous problems which is part of why no solution has been reached yet. Few, if any, solution will be a “win-win”. Someone will have to concede, and neither side seems willing to right now.

            That said, indiscriminate violence from either side is abhorible. I detest the death of any innocent civilian in all of this. “Two wrongs don’t make a right” and all that. Both sides have committed crimes and those responsible should all be held accountable for turning the area into a warzone.

    • jcit878@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      what are your thoughts on the rockets that came from the other side first, killing over 100 civilians?

      real example where both sides are fucked. no, there is no excuse for any of them

      • HEISENBERG@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “First” is very relative. If you count that as the first action, sure. But others might say it has been going on for decades with one side being oppressed by the other, being treated as sub-humans and expelled from their homes.

          • HEISENBERG@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Typical Zionist reaction to make that assumption. What is happening now is a disgrace, Hammaz are terrorists. But the people living in Palestine have been treated less than poorly by the Israeli government.

            • jcit878@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Zionist? what’s that, someone who supports the humans in the machine war? fuck me you aren’t even part of reality champ

                • jcit878@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  tell me what Zionism is, why I am one, and why exactly you are in favour of killing civilian children.

                  because to be honest holding opinions like that and throwing out tin foil hat names at people, is pretty fucked up, and sad.

                  Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if you are wearing a cape right now posting from your dads computer

      • Deceptichum@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I think it’s acceptable.

        These people contribute to the pain, suffering, discrimination and oppression of the Palestinian peoples.

          • Deceptichum@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I know right.

            These people allow their representatives to murder and kill in their name, they even go so far as funding a terrorist state to oppress the inhabitants of the land they are colonising, while corralling them into ghettos or as second class citizens.

            Truly disgusting of them.

            • jcit878@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              you literally said it’s acceptable to murder kids.

              you don’t get to try and justify that.

              • Deceptichum@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Israel murders far more Palestinian children, do you not understand why people would fight back against that?

                • jcit878@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  if some guy kills your kid does it make it ok for you to kill his? your view is what keeps this bullshit conflict going. HAMAS loves Israel. gives those murdering fucks a reason to live. they don’t care about the dead palestinians