67 Palestinian and 7 Israeli Civilians Killed in Conflict

[Insaanistan]

Strawmanning me is not going to help you here.

What Hamas is doing is wrong. My point isn't that it's morally justified to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. It isn't. Civilians shouldn't be targeted by anyone, even as "collateral damage" or as vengeance for Israeli atrocities against Palestinian civilians.

My point is that you and others have gone out of their way to absolve the Israeli government of all responsibility, and you've done so on misleading premises. Namely, that Hamas' violence was what started this, completely unprovoked. It wasn't. The Israeli government created the conditions for that violence when it brutalized civilians in Al-Aqsa and proceeded to keep escalating the violence.

If the Israeli government is willing to deescalate but incapable of doing so, then the Israeli government is a failure.

Okay well let me make it very clear for you then

Both israel and Hamas(including the palestinians who prop them up) are garbage people, its people like them that have brutalized, launched holy wars and in general fucked many parts of the world up.

These people are just one of many reasons why i left those religions.

In general i don’t care for the Jews
In general i don’t care foe the Muslims

I care for the fellow Pagan(Hindu)woman who got blasted by a fucking Hamas rocket

You know there are loads of Hindus who aren’t Pagan, right?

[Punished UMN]

How exactly did they give the warnings and when?

So it's plausible that Hamas can give warnings, but if Isreal does then it's suddenly beyond the realms of science?

Hamas is firing Soviet surplus unguided rockets, they don't know what they'll hit. Israel is firing precision munitions. Israel is more accountable for civilian deaths because they choose their targets.

[Fahran]

It's easy, just expel them from the WB or refuse to protect them. It's precisely what was done in Gaza and the illegal settlements there.

This would not end the conflict.

Beyond that, it's not politically feasible for any Israeli government at this point.

[Immortan Khan]

It's easy, just expel them from the WB or refuse to protect them. It's precisely what was done in Gaza and the illegal settlements there.

This would not end the conflict.

I never said it would but it would be a big step towards ending it. The Palestinians are never going to accept those settlements and they shouldn't be expected to accept them either.

[TENNOHEIKA BANZAI NIHON]

They also gave warning to the inhabitants of the tower to leave the buildings before the strikes occurred. This clearly prevented the deaths of dozens of civilians, and likely some Hamas terrorists as well. You also are seeking to ignore some facts. These "residential towers" housed prominent Hamas leaders, one of their command centers, and a Hamas government center. These are legitimate military targets which are being stuck because of Hamas' continued attacks on Israel.

How exactly did they give the warnings and when?

That has not yet been made clear, but it has been officially expressed warnings have been given. It is good enough for me that they completed their objective to get everyone out of the building.

"A multi-story residential and office building was heavily damaged. No one was in the building at the time."

[SD_Film Artists]

So it's plausible that Hamas can give warnings, but if Isreal does then it's suddenly beyond the realms of science?

Hamas is firing Soviet surplus unguided rockets, they don't know what they'll hit. Israel is firing precision munitions. Israel is more accountable for civilian deaths because they choose their targets.

If someone fires an unguided rocket at some suburbs in Europe or America I doubt that "it was unguided, it could've gone anywhere!" would be a good defence in court.

[Muzehnaya]

So in general, you lack empathy 23.4% of the world's population based on the God they follow?

It's amazing how many people try and shove religion everywhere when there's clearly more factors at play, just so they can close their eyes and claim it's a religious feud and ignore the dead civilians.

Your religion and its followers have done enough damage to the pagan world, were treated like “shirk” dirt, and i dont owe you any sympathy.

Its sad children die, but grow men fighting eachother? Get over yourself

The fact that you are incapable of seeing beyond actions that have occurred hundreds of years ago and act as though innocent people who are killed are guilty of the actions of their ancestors says all anybody needs to know about you. Throughout this thread you have repeatedly failed to differentiate civilian from militant, and this either comes as a result of you deliberately misunderstanding the situation, or the belief that all people who follow Abrahamic religions deserve to die, in which case you are no better than the people you condemn.

People who are incapable of seeing this simple difference have done enough damage to the whole human race, and have been the cause of wartime brutality and suffering throughout history. And the same arguments about collective guilt have been used to justify horrendous atrocity after horrendous atrocity. I would bring up the holocaust as an example, but that doesn't really work, since I suppose by this argument, no sympathy is given for the Jews who were killed there either. They follow an Abrahamic faith after all, so by this same reasoning, I guess even the slaughter of 6 million innocents wasn't that bad.

This mentality has done enough damage to the whole world, and likewise, it is undeserving of sympathy.

[Punished UMN]

Hamas is firing Soviet surplus unguided rockets, they don't know what they'll hit. Israel is firing precision munitions. Israel is more accountable for civilian deaths because they choose their targets.

If someone fires an unguided rocket at some suburbs in Europe or America I doubt that "it was unguided, it could've gone anywhere!" would be a good defence in court.

Good enough excuse for the Allied Powers, wasn't it?

[SD_Film Artists]

If someone fires an unguided rocket at some suburbs in Europe or America I doubt that "it was unguided, it could've gone anywhere!" would be a good defence in court.

Good enough excuse for the Allied Powers, wasn't it?

Whataboutism with an 80 year difference.

[Fahran]

I never said it would but it would be a big step towards ending it. The Palestinians are never going to accept those settlements and they shouldn't be expected to accept them either.

At least some portion of the Palestinian leadership is unwilling to accept the existence of Israel. The remainder want a return to the 1967 borders as precondition for negotiations on a final settlement. Israel isn't going to return East Jerusalem because of how the Jordanians governed it when they controlled it. They were willing to cede most of the West Bank to a Palestinian state in 2005, and I think that's a sensible starting point for negotiations.

The issue here is we're expecting Israel to give up a lot of concrete advantages for nothing in return. A lot of y'all aren't going to give them the moral high ground even if they remove all the settlements in the West Bank. So what exactly would be gained from an Israeli perspective if rocket attacks are going to continue and folks'll still be clamoring for Israel's destruction?

[Kowani]

on the recent barrage
Israel was warned ahead of time that this would only happen if they destroyed another residential tower
they then bombed not one, but two
blaming Hamas here is a bit nonsensical

I mean... you can blame them in so far as they're firing the rockets.

...no
no you can't
this is ridiculous
if i say "hey, i will hit back if you hit me" and then you punch me twice, blaming the person who got punched is beyond nonsensical

On a similar note, you can blame Israel for airstrikes in so far as they're carrying out airstrikes. Both sides are engaging in retaliations at this point, and neither will hold themselves accountable at this juncture.

i realize that people are fans of bothsidesing every conflict that exists but this isn't really applicable here
saying "both sides are engaging in retaliation" ignores the force differential and disparate moral responsibility on the part of each side

on the recent barrage
Israel was warned ahead of time that this would only happen if they destroyed another residential tower
they then bombed not one, but two
blaming Hamas here is a bit nonsensical

They also gave warning to the inhabitants of the tower to leave the buildings before the strikes occurred.

a warning of "we dropped some flyers 2 hours before dropping bombs leaving hundreds homeless in a highly impoverished and unstable area" is not the defense you think it is-especially since it only seems to have been the first one that was destroyed

This clearly prevented the deaths of dozens of civilians, and likely some Hamas terrorists as well. You also are seeking to ignore some facts. These "residential towers" housed prominent Hamas leaders, one of their command centers, and a Hamas government center. These are legitimate military targets which are being stuck because of Hamas' continued attacks on Israel.

you know, i'd like to see some facts on this
not "it was a government centre"
but that there were hamas military leaders living in that building
as 'ran has noted, hamas is both a military organization and a civilian government
and then you'd also have to prove for the buildings to be a "legitimate military target" that it was actually being used to launch or plan rocket attacks, and not just "place where hamas rando slept"
the burden of proof here is high

[TENNOHEIKA BANZAI NIHON]

If someone fires an unguided rocket at some suburbs in Europe or America I doubt that "it was unguided, it could've gone anywhere!" would be a good defence in court.

Good enough excuse for the Allied Powers, wasn't it?

An unguided rocket is still aimed. A bullet is unguided but you still end up having a good idea of what you are shooting at. A good rule is to not aim at anything you don't intend to destroy. Hamas is completely responsible for civilian deaths in Israel because they are firing rockets and know that it could hit anything, and are still carrying out these strikes.

Even when Hamas fires guided munitions, such as the anti-tank missile they shot at a civilian car, they know they are attacking civilians and that is what they intend to do. This is a terrorist organization, not a legitimate military.

[Fartsniffage]

At least 65 people in Gaza, including 14 children, and six people in Israel have been killed since then.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-57094737

How can people be so stupid? A year from now nothing will have changed. Just more dead people.

[Velem]

post edited until i can confirm


EDIT: confirmed

https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1392551091968040964
Young jews lynching arab man

The victim is not actually arab-he was a Jew that was mistaken for a Palestinian and attacked

Wow.

[Punished UMN]

Good enough excuse for the Allied Powers, wasn't it?

Whataboutism with an 80 year difference.

If the Israelis don't want to be shot at they should make their government withdraw from the occupied territories. This is a war for God's sake. Should the Palestinians just sit there and wait for the Israelis to wipe their country off the map? I suppose that would be the civilized thing to do? The Palestinians are justified at shooting back, whatever the means are, that is what we did in the Second World War and it's what the Palestinians are doing now.

[Fahran]

...no
no you can't
this is ridiculous

You absolutely can. Governments are not in the habit of ignoring acts of war simply because they come from much weaker opponents resorting to unconventional warfare.

if i say "hey, i will hit back if you hit me" and then you punch me twice, blaming the person who got punched is beyond nonsensical

Again, this ignores the largely cyclical nature of violence. The initial airstrike was a response to Palestinian rocket attacks after all. So the situation here is more akin to two people punching each other multiple times, each time in response to the earlier punch. Even the expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem stretches back to the expulsion of Jews from East Jerusalem back in 1948.

[Senkaku]

How exactly did they give the warnings and when?

For the first tower struck, they dropped pamphlet two hours before the airstrike, allowing civilians to evacuate before the building was hit. With regard to the latest two residential buildings struck, I have no idea at this time.

How do those things go, anyways?

“Okay, hundreds of people in this building, you have two hours to read this pamphlet, or have someone tell you about it since it might be nighttime (hope you’re not a heavy sleeper), and get everything you own out of this tower, or else everyone and everything in it will be incinerated and/or torn to pieces by high explosives. See you soon!”

You do know Israel used to occupy Gaza, right? And still blockades it, and easily has the forces to invade and reoccupy it, or to support the PA doing so?

Neither Israel nor Egypt wants to occupy Gaza because doing so means having to impose martial law on the local Palestinians, perhaps indefinitely. Israel did allegedly conspire with Fatah in 2007 to stage a coup against Hamas, but this led to the purging of political opposition in Gaza. I say allegedly because I have yet to find concrete confirmation of this.

Israel is in every sense responsible for what goes on in Gaza, they’re still its lifeline for water and power, they’re just unwilling to spare the expense and take the trouble to actually govern it, because it’s more convenient for them this way. Let religious fanatics take control of the desperate, blockaded city, and when they do crazy, religious fanatic type things in response to your measured and deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing and religious-ethnic oppression, you say that anyone who opposes said campaign actually is in league with crazy fanatical terrorists. What you’re looking at is all part of the same machine for producing ultra-Zionist pro-settlement sentiment and discrediting the opposition.

Hamas won elections. It's a bit misleading to paint them solely as dictatorial or something that was forced upon the local population in that context.

That’s how Israel paints them to the outside world! I think my posts here should tell you I see the rocket campaign with a bit more nuance than “it’s just a crazy terror campaign,” even as I don’t like that they’re killing civilians with it. But I think there’s an implicit assumption in American media portrayals and audience receptions (could just be me thinking this but idt so bc usually I don’t have original thoughts) that if Hamas is so rabidly anti-Israeli, and so nakedly criminal, and basically just anti-Semitic terrorists (as we are told they are) who repress the opposition, that they must not have “real” democratic support but rather are just an armed group of thugs and gangsters who’ve basically taken hold of the city. What’s left out, frequently, is that their rise to power— whether you view it as a legitimate democratic mandate or as a terrorist clique who’ve acquired a democratic patina after a coup (or perhaps tapped into genuine popular support in the face of the threat of national annihilation)— is only possible because Israel has permitted it. These were territories Israel occupied and then left; they’ve threatened and certainly have the capacity to launch ground incursions.

Holding the city, however, is much costlier at this point than simply blockading and bombing it while providing it with a meager subsistence. They’ve created a vast open-air prison, withdrawn all the guards, and just bomb them when some of the prisoners misbehave. It’s deranged, and it becomes in Israel’s interest to simultaneously portray Hamas as the absolute worst of the worst (so Americans will support fighting them, since they’re so bad no one would ever want to leave another human to live under their boot, surely) and as having a democratic mandate (see, all the civilians are guilty too because they support the government, the Arabs operate all in lockstep so we must cordon off the whole city, no exceptions).

[TENNOHEIKA BANZAI NIHON]

I mean... you can blame them in so far as they're firing the rockets.

...no
no you can't
this is ridiculous
if i say "hey, i will hit back if you hit me" and then you punch me twice, blaming the person who got punched is beyond nonsensical

On a similar note, you can blame Israel for airstrikes in so far as they're carrying out airstrikes. Both sides are engaging in retaliations at this point, and neither will hold themselves accountable at this juncture.

i realize that people are fans of bothsidesing every conflict that exists but this isn't really applicable here
saying "both sides are engaging in retaliation" ignores the force differential and disparate moral responsibility on the part of each side

They also gave warning to the inhabitants of the tower to leave the buildings before the strikes occurred.

a warning of "we dropped some flyers 2 hours before dropping bombs leaving hundreds homeless in a highly impoverished and unstable area" is not the defense you think it is-especially since it only seems to have been the first one that was destroyed

This clearly prevented the deaths of dozens of civilians, and likely some Hamas terrorists as well. You also are seeking to ignore some facts. These "residential towers" housed prominent Hamas leaders, one of their command centers, and a Hamas government center. These are legitimate military targets which are being stuck because of Hamas' continued attacks on Israel.

you know, i'd like to see some facts on this
not "it was a government centre"
but that there were hamas military leaders living in that building
as 'ran has noted, hamas is both a military organization and a civilian government
and then you'd also have to prove for the buildings to be a "legitimate military target" that it was actually being used to launch or plan rocket attacks, and not just "place where hamas rando slept"
the burden of proof here is high

If that information was out there for the average person to know, then the Hamas leaders would have moved. This is what the Israeli military has reported and most major news organizations have corroborated this.

"The building had the Hamas leader’s office and the group’s main television channel."

Hamas is a terrorist organization. A "government" leader is just as guilty for the rockets as a military commander. They are equally a military target. In every major war, government buildings have been targeted because they are military targets. The Allies still bombed the Reichstag and the Imperial Diet even though they were "civilian leaders." This is no different.

[Senkaku]

...no
no you can't
this is ridiculous

You absolutely can. Governments are not in the habit of ignoring acts of war simply because they come from much weaker opponents resorting to unconventional warfare.

Governments exercise restraint all the time, not every country reacts to minor terrorist attacks the way the US and Israel do.

[So the situation here is more akin to two people punching each other multiple times, each time in response to the earlier punch.

Physically, a better analogy might be an adult hitting a toddler with a baseball bat, and the toddler trying to claw the human’s legs.

[Immortan Khan]

At least some portion of the Palestinian leadership is unwilling to accept the existence of Israel.

Yeah and the same is true in Israel in regards to Palestine.

The remainder want a return to the 1967 borders as precondition for negotiations on a final settlement. Israel isn't going to return East Jerusalem because of how the Jordanians governed it when they controlled it.

Maybe but accepting a complete withdrawal from the rest of the WB would a least open genuine grounds on what to do with East Jerusalem. The fact is that Israel won't do this, every offer is "most of the WB" not all of it.

They were willing to cede most of the West Bank to a Palestinian state in 2005, and I think that's a sensible starting point for negotiations.

See the prior point.

The issue here is we're expecting Israel to give up a lot of concrete advantages for nothing in return.

The chance for actual peace? As has been oft said, Israel will either have to accept a two state solution or it will be forced to absorb the Palestinians...who would then naturally just vote in mass to turn Israel into Palestine.

A lot of y'all aren't going to give them the moral high ground even if they remove all the settlements in the West Bank.

Actually I would, so your assumption about me is wrong.

So what exactly would be gained from an Israeli perspective if rocket attacks are going to continue and folks'll still be clamoring for Israel's destruction?

Last time I checked the rockets weren't coming from the WB and if a peace agreement was done that obtained the support, even if begrudgingly, of most Palestinians then their legitimacy is reduced. Then it becomes easier for the Israelis and Palestinians to actually work together to get rid of Hamas.

[Herzpunkt]

You absolutely can. Governments are not in the habit of ignoring acts of war simply because they come from much weaker opponents resorting to unconventional warfare.

Governments exercise restraint all the time, not every country reacts to minor terrorist attacks the way the US and Israel do.

Physically, a better analogy might be an adult hitting a toddler with a baseball bat, and the toddler trying to claw the human’s legs.

Hamas isnt a fucking ignorant toddler its made up of many very grown ass men

[Fahran]

How do those things go, anyways?

“Okay, hundreds of people in this building, you have two hours to read this pamphlet, or have someone tell you about it since it might be nighttime, and get everything you own out of this tower, or else everyone and everything in it will be incinerated and/or torn to pieces by high explosives. See you soon!”

It worked well enough that Al Jazeera reported no civilian casualties as a result of the initial airstrike. The damage was confined to the residential tower, which was a valid military target in light of the fact that it was used by a militant group for propaganda and storage purposes.

That’s how Israel paints them to the outside world!

There's some truth to portraying Hamas as Islamists. They literally call themselvles the Islamic Resistance Movement after all. Of course, the situation is a good deal more nuanced, but nobody forced the Palestinians to support escalation in Gaza. In fact, Israel tried deescalation right up until 2006. Part of the problem is, again, that this violence is cyclical to the point that deescalation alone won't work - on either side of it.

I think my posts here should tell you I see the rocket campaign with a bit more nuance than “it’s just a crazy terror campaign,” even as I don’t like that they’re killing civilians with it. But I think there’s an implicit assumption in American media portrayals and audience receptions (could just be me thinking this but idt so bc usually I don’t have original thoughts) that if Hamas is so rabidly anti-Israeli, and so nakedly criminal, and basically just anti-Semitic terrorists (as we are told they are) who repress the opposition, that they must not have “real” democratic support but rather are just an armed group of thugs and gangsters who’ve basically taken hold of the city. What’s left out, frequently, is that their rise to power— whether you view it as a legitimate democratic mandate or as a terrorist clique who’ve acquired a democratic patina after a coup (or perhaps tapped into genuine popular support in the face of the threat of national annihilation)— is only possible because Israel has permitted it. These were territories Israel occupied and then left; they’ve threatened and certainly have the capacity to launch ground incursions.

I don't think wiping out Hamas with a ground incursion is the less bloody option here, and it's not really possible to go back in time and prevent the continuous cycle of violence that ultimately has roots in the 1948 War. Hamas is, for all intents and purposes, here to stay, for numerous reasons.

Holding the city, however, is much costlier at this point than simply blockading and bombing it while providing it with a meager subsistence. They’ve created a vast open-air prison, withdrawn all the guards, and just bomb them when some of the prisoners misbehave. It’s deranged.

Short of a peace settlement, there's not really a practical alternative. The peace process has been mangled and halted, and Hamas's leadership doesn't really have the same investment in peace that Fatah does. The blood-letting is likely going to continue until the Israelis and Palestinians can find a solution that works for them.

[Senkaku]

...no
no you can't
this is ridiculous
if i say "hey, i will hit back if you hit me" and then you punch me twice, blaming the person who got punched is beyond nonsensical

i realize that people are fans of bothsidesing every conflict that exists but this isn't really applicable here
saying "both sides are engaging in retaliation" ignores the force differential and disparate moral responsibility on the part of each side


a warning of "we dropped some flyers 2 hours before dropping bombs leaving hundreds homeless in a highly impoverished and unstable area" is not the defense you think it is-especially since it only seems to have been the first one that was destroyed

you know, i'd like to see some facts on this
not "it was a government centre"
but that there were hamas military leaders living in that building
as 'ran has noted, hamas is both a military organization and a civilian government
and then you'd also have to prove for the buildings to be a "legitimate military target" that it was actually being used to launch or plan rocket attacks, and not just "place where hamas rando slept"
the burden of proof here is high

If that information was out there for the average person to know, then the Hamas leaders would have moved. This is what the Israeli military has reported and most major news organizations have corroborated this.

"The building had the Hamas leader’s office and the group’s main television channel."

Hamas is a terrorist organization. A "government" leader is just as guilty for the rockets as a military commander. They are equally a military target. In every major war, government buildings have been targeted because they are military targets. The Allies still bombed the Reichstag and the Imperial Diet even though they were "civilian leaders." This is no different.

If this is a war between states, and Israel wants to change the regime in Gaza, why haven’t they already invaded? The Allies didn’t just lob bombs and missiles into Continental Europe for years on end without any follow up on the ground, after all.

This is in practice a rebellious province acting up that Israel is unwilling to either fully cut loose or fully deal with. They’re keeping Gaza on ice until they can finish off the West Bank, frankly, and what that looks like is an open-air prison full of disgruntled amateur rocket scientists.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Strawmanning me is not going to help you here.

What Hamas is doing is wrong. My point isn't that it's morally justified to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. It isn't. Civilians shouldn't be targeted by anyone, even as "collateral damage" or as vengeance for Israeli atrocities against Palestinian civilians.

My point is that you and others have gone out of their way to absolve the Israeli government of all responsibility, and you've done so on misleading premises. Namely, that Hamas' violence was what started this, completely unprovoked. It wasn't. The Israeli government created the conditions for that violence when it brutalized civilians in Al-Aqsa and proceeded to keep escalating the violence.

If the Israeli government is willing to deescalate but incapable of doing so, then the Israeli government is a failure.

Okay well let me make it very clear for you then

Both israel and Hamas(including the palestinians who prop them up) are garbage people, its people like them that have brutalized, launched holy wars and in general fucked many parts of the world up.

These people are just one of many reasons why i left those religions.

In general i don’t care for the Jews
In general i don’t care foe the Muslims

I care for the fellow Pagan(Hindu)woman who got blasted by a fucking Hamas rocket

Why would you choose to feel sympathy for someone based on them being Pagan?

[Muzehnaya]

Okay well let me make it very clear for you then

Both israel and Hamas(including the palestinians who prop them up) are garbage people, its people like them that have brutalized, launched holy wars and in general fucked many parts of the world up.

These people are just one of many reasons why i left those religions.

In general i don’t care for the Jews
In general i don’t care foe the Muslims

I care for the fellow Pagan(Hindu)woman who got blasted by a fucking Hamas rocket

Why would you choose to feel sympathy for someone based on them being Pagan?

Because people are apparently responsible for the crimes of their ancestors, and (also apparently) all pagans are the most beautiful, innocent, wholesome people who have never done any wrong.