“No one is looking at us or the extent of this disaster or the crimes that we are experiencing in Gaza,” he said. Still holding his microphone, he slid off his flak jacket marked with the word PRESS and unstrapped his helmet.
“These protection jackets and helmets don’t protect us,” he said, flinging the equipment to the ground. “Nothing protects journalists. … We lose our lives for no reason.”
Whether you agree with Israeli attacks or not, obviously the answer to this is because it’s impossible to filter out Hamas terrorists, which is the main thing they’re trying to prevent.
Your right, best to kill them all then. What do you agree with btw?
Where did you get that?
I’m not happy with what Israel is doing. But I don’t know of a better way to get rid of Hamas either. And I’m convinced that if we want a free Palestine and a working two state solution, freeing it from Hamas has to be the first step without which no sustainable situation with Israel can ever be achieved.
I’m sure this will work about as well as the US attempt to get rid of the Taliban. Or as well as any of the other instances in the past of trying to get rid of an ideological group through violence.
It doesn’t work. It makes everything worse. It radicalizes survivors and kills lots of innocent people.
Some day maybe humanity will collectively abandon these cycles of hatred and violence played out over decades. But I doubt it.
You have a point, but it’s not really the same thing and there’s a very good recent counter-example too. ISIS was effectively dealt with despite being spread out over a much larger area. Taliban won, but it had a whole huge country to work in and was nowhere near as violent as Hamas, so it had more support. Gaza is tiny in comparison, blocked on all sides and neighbors of Israel don’t want anything to do with them either, even if they don’t like Israel. There is also at least some alternative in Fatah, which didn’t lose the 2005 elections by that much.
Imo it’s clearly possible to get rid of Hamas, though I’m not making any claims about the probability that it will happen.
Mostly, I don’t really see an alternative. Some radical action needed to be taken because anything else would be interpreted as a clear proof that large terrorist attacks against civilians work, and Hamas should continue committing them. You cannot appease someone whose reason for existence is violence. And keeping Hamas sort of in check, only killing or capturing the worst terrorists, which is what was being done in the last two decades, clearly did not work either.
You don’t see any alternative to the slaying of people in a 10 to 1 ratio in what is an offensive reprisal attack? I mean Machiavelli would agree with you.
Why does “radical action” always mean “radical violence”?
“Radical action” can and should include radical kindness in which past wounds can be forgiven and a cooperative future can be built. Right now, all the violence is doing is ensuring that Hamas will be enumerated and maintained for generations by the people that Israel is considering to be sub-human and disposable. Radical violence creates radical ideologues and only ever begets further violence in the absence of total and absolute annihilation.
Radical kindness will specifically tell Hamas “yes, brutal terrorist attacks work, keep doing them”. That is unfortunately not an option. It’s also just a fantasy because it would understandably never be supported by Israeli population for this reason.
I’m interested in seeing alternative solutions that could actually work and be realistically implemented, but outside of understandable positions like “ease off with the fucking bombing and do more work on the ground” that don’t change the goal of what is being done I have not seen any.
This reads like “we don’t care about the hostages or their families. We must complete our noble work of eradication of the people we deem “hostile.” Also anyone that gets in our way is fully excusable and at fault for their own death by being around where we decide to kill.” Do you even possess empathy for anyone you don’t directly support? Wild.
It’s naive to say that kindness is going to stop violence from a group who in their founding charter call for the death of the opposing group. Hanas isn’t a good faith group and no amount of kindness will change that.
Any solution that will be durable requires that Hanna’s is not a part of it.
If the citizens of Gaza aren’t offered anything better, why would they gamble what little they have on overthrowing the local oppressors? They don’t really have anything to gain by overthrowing Hamas and trying to do so would be putting their lives and their families at risk. If Israel and the wider international community can offer them something better than life under Hamas and the Likud, they’d be much more likely to eschew Hamas’ control.
I should have put an /s there I guess. You don’t know a better way than genocide? If the treatment kills the host then it is not in fact a cure.
If Israel wanted to kill all people in Gaza, they could just carpet bomb them without ever stepping a foot in. The only reason to do a ground invasion that will inevitably bring a ton of Israeli casualties is to reduce civilian deaths.
So less deniable war crimes?
You seem to be implying that israelis are not people or that their lives are less valuable.
Edit: you should look the definition of imply in the dictionary. responding that you didn’t say something you implied is not a valid argument.
where did I say that? Must be hard juggling a victim complex with 4000 murdered children. Oh, maybe not?
edit: K, where did I ever come close to implying any civilian life (that’s universal jackass) is less worthy or valuable. What a fucking coward, coming in and editing the original as a way to skip a response. Here’s one in return piss pants.
Better way is easy: a one state solution like Israel claims it wants would be better than this. Declare everyone in Palestine an Israeli citizen, move in law enforcement in force, and arrest murderers for murder.
I agree that it would be better for the Palestinians, clearly Israeli Arabs have better lives than people in Gaza and West Bank despite also facing some discrimination, but Gazans would never agree to this (that is clear from public opinion polls done by PA institutions - for example over 70% of people in Gaza support violence against Israeli civilians), so the end result would be exactly the same is this one. You would still have an army of violent murderers hiding in tunnels with almost two decades of preparation for exactly this.
The cost of 4000 dead children perhaps.
So, you believe Israel can identify a Hamas terrorist remotely to bomb them, but can’t identify Hamas terrorists when they are at the border in person?
The people IDF is targeting are Hamas leaders or “officers”, who need to communicate a lot and sometimes even show in public, so they can be tracked with enough time. Boots on the ground soldiers are a completely different problem and Israel doesn’t even have the resources to track all of them because there are so many. How is that not obvious??
So 10,000 people have died now to kill how many? Here’s a question, what number is okay to kill? You seem to know these things so the answer should be obvious.
Apparently they can: https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-tried-to-send-fighters-to-egypt-in-ambulances-for-wounded-gazans-us-official/
Why are they murdering all those journalists then? Seems… Evil.
They weren’t journalists, they were Hamas fighters, dressed as journalists. /s
So your point being is let’s question Hamas propaganda but not IDF propaganda?
My dude has never seen a customs office or checkpoint in his life
No its obviously because Israel doesn’t care about Palestinians lol. They wouldn’t have literally any of these issues if they hadn’t been doing like 80 years worth of state sponsored occupation and murder.
You really think the people in Gaza chose to willingly leave their former homes and land to move into a military enclave?
You are extremely naive if you think that a military checkpoint would solve this problem. Egypt was not able to stop Hamas terrorists and their supplies going back and forth through the Rafah border crossing to commit acts of terror in the Sinai peninsula for example. And that was during “business as usual”, not in a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people would likely have to go through.
Bold of you to assume Egypt isn’t complicit in letting that happen lol.
Their military literally runs on bribery. So much so that there’s a local conspiracy there that Egypt provided Israel with all the intel during the 6 day war because they had no intention of fighting and negotiated to get Gaza off their hands in exchange for never having to worry about Israel again.
Again though, my point is that Hamas as an entity wouldn’t exist if Palestinians were considered regular citizens and not forced off from their own property.
This may be true and it would be good to consider this when deciding what to do after Hamas is gone, but it doesn’t change anything about current situation. The fact is that thinking a military checkpoint would filter out terrorists is incredibly naive, and whether Israel cares about the lives of civilians or not likely wouldn’t change this particular issue at all.
Either they’re armed and easy to identify or they’re not at which point there’s one less person to worry about shooting Israeli soldiers while their tunnel network is dismantled. I don’t see the problem.
No, now you have two more people inspired to shoot Israeli soldiers and civilians. It’s like you don’t even understand how people’s minds actually work.
And Israel’s current strategy isn’t carrying water for Hamas recruitment right now?
Israel’s strategy over the last 70 years created Hamas and has ensured that it has continued to hold power in Gaza. I don’t know what that other commenter is thinking, but I think characterising Israel’s strategy as carrying water for Hamas recruitment is a strong understatement. They’re not just carrying water; they’re pumping it from the ground, putting it in containers, divvying it up, and carrying it as far as they’ll go. Hamas exists because of Israel, much as how Al Qaeda and ISIS exist(ed) because of the US (and allied forces) and Russia.
Do you honestly not see the problem with letting out at the very least tens of thousands of people, possibly hundreds of thousands, and guarding them all well enough so that none of them can do any hostilities that can be done without smuggling arms out of Gaza (whether it’s sabotage, inciting violent protests to keep the IDF occupied or terrorist acts using weapons smuggled into Israel from elsewhere)?
It’d be hard sure. Still better than bombing the spots they directed people to and killing droves of civilians.
Why does Israel not let people leave and use its famed intelligence services to identify who the Hamas fighters are? It is looking like the Israeli government simply prefers collective punishment or even genocide.