What I tend to see is mostly an overlooking of one side's actions while condemning the other side, with different people favoring different sides. So you have people who make excuses for Hamas like "they are just responding to an existential threat" while strongly condemning Israel, and people who make similar excuses for Israel while strongly condemning Hamas. Personally I feel that there are no heroes and everyone sucks in this situation, except for the innocent bystanders on both sides who are being caught in the crossfire.
Ok, the big problem in this whole thing is assymetrical nature of the thing. The Israelli military is a military funded and shaped by the US one, and it’s a mammoth in all the ways that matter.
Hamas, after years of being supressed, is a group of militants with handguns.
The Isrealli response to those terrorist with guns killing and abducting some of their people, was to flatten and impose collective punishment on the whole country that those people came from.
I have no issues with them defending themselves, but I do with the disproportionate nature of what has been happening.
It’s especially ironic because the jews are one of the few people in the world that should have learned that lesson.
The thing with Gaza is that HAMAS there had 20 years of unlimited power, wholly funded by the UN/US/Qatar aid. Gaza literally has no other significant income streams.
HAMAS spent this time to build a network of tunnels below the streets, and to stockpile ammo/explosives. They could care less about the people, using them only as human shields. They also actively brainwashed the population: https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/b1fjucpdgg
So what would be a "proportional" answer from Israel? They don't have any good options.
> The Isrealli response to those terrorist with guns killing and abducting some of their people, was to flatten and impose collective punishment on the whole country that those people came from.
To give you the sense of scale, HAMAS murdered 1195 people, and they also took 250 people as hostages (somehow pro-Palestinian protesters almost never knew about this!). And 1500 people is a HUGE number for a tiny country like Israel (Jewish population of 7200000). Scaled to the size of the US, this would be aroud 70000 people, many times the size of 9/11.
Not to mention that as soon as the IDF pulled out, Hamas immediately started dragging Palestinians out into the streets and publicly executing them for “collaboration” crimes real or imagined. The #1 killer of Palestinians is Hamas itself.
It’s pure cowardice that they fight the way they do, mixing all their military equipment with civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools, and they rely on propagandizing gullible Western liberals (as well as anti-semites) to get support for their murderous cause.
There is no way to fight them that doesn’t endanger civilians. And there’s no way for Israeli Jews to continue breathing without fighting Hamas. Anyone who doesn’t believe that is living in a fantasy.
> They executed them due to treason, a law that the USA also has.
With full legal proceedings, lawyers, appeals, appeals to the European Court of Human Rights, etc.?
> The number of Palestinians executed is far less than those killed by Israeli aggression. Don't minimize the war crimes of Israel.
Yes, "aggression" that happened on its own, completely unprovoked.
But I'm sure that even if Israel had been provoked, then such a lawful and peaceful state as Gaza would have had no problems extraditing all the responsible criminals. Or maybe applying the same death penalty to them?
Surely, if they have the death penalty for treason, then they should also have the death penalty for terrorism?
> Your comment reeks of propaganda - or severe misinformation at the least.
You are seriously justifying rampant murder by terrorists.
Sorry, but if this IS what Gaza stands for, then I sure as hell don't want it to be independent.
> Yes, "aggression" that happened on its own, completely unprovoked.
Ahh, propaganda again. You really are a victim of propaganda, or believe history started on Oct 7. Predictable.
> You are seriously justifying rampant murder by terrorists.
I'd say, and most people around the world, that that's what you're doing. I'm recognizing resistance, and calling out crimes where it occurs. I'm not one to tell oppressed people how to be oppressed, how to be the perfect victims. When you oppress people, it's going to backfire at some point in time.
As far as I recall, Hamas has openly called for, and encouraged, third party involvement to investigate any war crimes committed on Oct 7th and to prosecute the perpetrators. Israel? Not so much...
> As far as I recall, Hamas has openly called for, and encouraged, third party involvement to investigate any war crimes committed on Oct 7th and to prosecute the perpetrators.
Sorry, I'm going to need an actual source before I believe that. ("As far as I recall" is not a source.)
Search for Basem Naim (Hamas' political bureau member).
In late 2023 and early 2024, Naim repeatedly said that Hamas was ready to welcome an international inquiry mission into allegations about what Hamas fighters did on October 7.
In a statement responding to a New York Times report on sexual violence on Oct 7, he said Hamas had “on various occasions… welcomed any international inquiry mission to look into any allegations” and contrasted this with Israel allegedly blocking investigations.
And from Anadolu Ajansi:
"Urged “a neutral international commission of inquiry” to look into allegations of sexual violations committed by its fighters during the Oct 7 attack"
> Ahh, propaganda again. You really are a victim of propaganda, or believe history started on Oct 7. Predictable.
Let's look at 2005, then? When Israel forcibly displaced people out of Gaza. That is, Jewish settlers. Giving HAMAS full control over the land.
Or maybe 2011, when Israel exchanged more than a thousand prisoners (convicted through a regular legal process) for Gilad Shalit.
Sorry, but in the case of Gaza it's completely black-and-white. There are really no shades of gray there. HAMAS was given free rein, and they paid back by committing the worst terrorist act in Israel's history. HAMAS did nothing to help their people, using Gazans as puppets, while funneling money to criminals.
And I actually support sanctions against Israel for their West Bank settlers and discriminatory laws that result in the displacement of Palestinians there. Israel is certainly not blameless.
> When you oppress people, it's going to backfire at some point in time.
Who exactly was oppressing Gaza? Except HAMAS, of course.
> As far as I recall, Hamas has openly called for, and encouraged, third party involvement to investigate any war crimes committed on Oct 7th and to prosecute the perpetrators. Israel? Not so much...
Links? I'm _sure_ they must have at least detained some of the estimated 6000 people participating in the raid?
Nobody has ever shown that IDF puts military installations under or in hospitals or schools, as Hamas exclusively does. In fact Hamas slaughtered women and children in places like a music festival and kibbutzim that had zero military connection at all. These are not legitimate targets, making Hamas war criminals. On the contrary, when you put your fighters and your military hardware in a hospital, that becomes a legitimate target, according to the standard rules of engagement used by every military force in the world. Hamas chooses this. They choose it because they believe there is no downside to civilian death and suffering:
1. Martyrdom is supposed to be the top aspiration of their fanatic version of Islam, so they’re doing them a favor getting them killed
2. Everyone who knew the dead becomes more filled with hate for the enemy
3. Every civilian death gains Hamas more support among the gullible Western liberals who have been funding and supporting Hamas for decades.
They want this, they choose this, it’s all in their control and they prefer this. All because of their pure hatred for Jews, which will only be sated by actual genocide.
They murdered 1195 people, and on a country of 7 million? That is terrible you say?
How about murdering 17,000 children in a country with a population of 2M total?
Does that sound better?
Nearly one in 20 people in Gaza was murdered by the Israelli military. That’s an ridiculous number. Since Nazi germany managed about 10% of their occupied population in 5 years, I guess they were right on track to hit those numbers before (can’t believe I’m saying this) Trump thought it was necessary to intervene, whatever his reasons.
Hamas was an aspiring near-peer military force with a conventional order of battle and a multilayered supply chain. It obviously was not "militants with handguns".
(It hasn't been militarily meaningful for over 18 months; you could call it that today! If what you are, principally, is angry about war crimes in Gaza, you have ample evidence to muster without telling fairy tales about what the situation was in 2023.)
You can avoid a lot of trouble by avoiding sentence structures where the subject is "Jewish people" and the verb is "should (x)".
This is beyond ridiculous. Israel is a nuclear-armed regional power with tanks, a modern navy, a state of the art air force, the best missile defence system in the world, and one of the best counterintelligence operations. It can project force thousands of kilometres away into Iran. Hamas is none of that.
Even on sheer manpower, sources from 2023 put Hamas at 3 to 30 times smaller than the IDF, depending on who you trust and how you count reservists. [0]
If Hamas had been a near peer to the IDF, the October 7th attackers wouldn't have been shootings and stabbings within 5 miles of the Gaza border, they would have been successful missile attacks on Tel Aviv or tanks rolling down the streets of West Jerusalem. Or do you think Hamas just wanted to start a limited war with border skirmishes and kept its real military might in reserve?
Perhaps "small arms" or "light weapons" would be more precise than "handguns", but Hamas's capabilities have always been closer to the latter than to Israel's.
> they would have been successful missile attacks on Tel Aviv
--- start quote ---
In January 2008 the border between Gaza and Egypt was breached by Hamas. It allowed them to bring in Russian and Iranian-made rockets with a larger range.
In the first half of 2008, the number of attacks rose sharply, consistently totaling several hundred per month. In addition, Ashkelon was hit many times during this period by Grad rockets.
...
In 2012, Jerusalem and Israel's commercial center Tel Aviv were targeted with locally made "M-75" and Iranian Fajr-5 rockets, respectively, and in July 2014, the northern city of Haifa was targeted for the first time
--- end quote ---
> Perhaps "small arms" or "light weapons" would be more precise than "handguns"
Where "light weapons" are literally thousands of rocket launches against various targets in Israel.
Iron Dome exists due to "small lightly equipped militia" in Palestine.
I can call throwing a grenade in Jerusalem a successful attack with an explosive device, but all those attacks together over the past decade haven’t even come close to scratching the deaths inflicted by a single Israelli bomb. I can’t even imagine how people keep repeating that. The attacks two years ago were noteworthy exactly because they were so relatively effective.
Literally hundreds of rocket attacks per month, including foreign rockets.
"Oh it's just a single grenade in Jerusalem or something"
Iron Dome literally built to protect from hundreds of rocket attacks.
"Oh, it's not even close to scratching the deaths from Israeli bombs"
A well-organised organisation easily orchestrating the attacks, and with a funding at lower estimates of at least $200 million
"Oh, it's just militants with handguns. It's just $100 million, not that much" [1].
> I can’t even imagine how people keep repeating that.
Yes, yes I can't imagine how people keep being Hamas apologists in the face of actual reality.
[1] My original comment said "I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas had total funding near the same level as IDF.". This is definitely not true. But man. To dismiss the lower estimate of ~$200 million dollars as "it's nothing" and to pretend that Hamas is neither well funded nor well organised is just absolute insanity.
> Hamas, after years of being supressed, is a group of militants with handguns.
I can't believe people still peddle this bullshit. Hamas are a well organised and a well-funded terrorist organisation that is also the governing body in Gaza.
So anything from "back alley" support from Iran to fingers in hundreds of millions in yearly humanitarian aid. I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas had total funding near the same level as IDF.
You don't get a separate "rocket attacks on Israel" Wikipedia entry with "just guns": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_... You don't get to fire Russian- and Iranian-built Grad, Katyusha, or Fajr-5 and pretend "it's just a group of militants with guns"
I'm assuming that bit you're quoting 'militants with handguns' was hyperbolic, but it serves its purpose to compare and contrast the two.
How much damage has those Russian and Iranian built rockets done in Israel?
How many tanks do Hamas have?
How many fighter jets do Hamas have?
How many nuclear weapons do Hamas have?
The fact is, Hamas is a product of being a military in a territory that is subject to blockade by Israel. You can say Israel left Gaza in [insert year], but the fact of the matter is that a blockade has been there up to now.
And so if Hamas was a democratically elected government of Gaza, with the opportunity of becoming a 'Singapore' of the Middle East and having full agency (as Israel claims), why is it outside the bounds of reasonableness that they do acquire weapons from Russia and Iran, just like any other country in the world does for their own military needs?
> How much damage has those Russian and Iranian built rockets done in Israel?
Enough for Israel to build Iron Dome. Iron Dome literally exists because these "poor militants with handguns" were firing hundreds of rockets per month at targets in Israel. From Wikipedia:
--- start quote ---
In January 2008 the border between Gaza and Egypt was breached by Hamas. It allowed them to bring in Russian and Iranian-made rockets with a larger range. In the first half of 2008, the number of attacks rose sharply, consistently totaling several hundred per month.
--- end quote ---
The rest of your message is a non-sequitur on top of non-sequitur.
Hamas is not, and never has been "militants with handguns". They are, and have always been, a well organised organisation with huge funding.
Agan. Wikipedia.
--- start quote ---
Hamas has reportedly accumulated over $12 million per month from taxes on goods imported from Egypt into Gaza as of 2021. Iran provides some $100 million annually to Hamas and other Palestinian groups
--- end quote ---
These are just some estimates. Actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher.
Check out Israels geography. If those "militants with handguns" hadn't gotten themselves distracted massacring people at a festival, they may well have reached Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in a couple of hours. As it is it's practically a miracle there wasn't a mass uprising of armed palestinians in the West Bank and Israel proper.
Your "assymetrical" point is especially bizzare. Palestinian terrorists have shown nothing but tremendous willingness and enthusiasm for attacking jews with literally anything they can lay
their hands on including screwdrivers and vehicles. The total imbalance of forces doesn't deter them at all. Why would they having more weapons or Israel less change anything?
The main reason large portions of the strip has been flattened is because Hamas built tunnels underneath it.
You say it's disproportionate, but spend a couple of hours reading up israels history and geography. You might arrive at some conclusions about the nature of Palestinian terror (if the parent story wasn't enough). I doubt you could come up with literally any other solution. The only one i can think of is a mass evacuation of the gaza strip. It would have prevented a huge amount of deaths.
I think the main lesson jews learnt from the holocaust is not to rely on the rest of the world to help them when they are in trouble. I have absolutely no idea why you would think they must prioritise the moral lessons they learned above their own safety.
This is the same logic that led to people throughout the 2000’s laying the blame for 9/11 at the feet of all Muslims to such a degree that a then-candidate Trump was elected saying he wanted to institute a “Muslim Ban” 15 years later. You still have people repeating his lie that Muslims in the US were “cheering on the rooftops.” The FBI attempted to bait “terrorists” at US mosques into extreme action and were themselves turned in.
I don’t blame all the Jewish people for the actions of Netanyahu and his government despite the large swaths of support his government enjoys in Israel. It would be unacceptable to express that kind of view - and rightfully so. But that shouldn’t go in one direction and we all have to be capable of not only holding a nuanced opinion but extending a more charitable interpretation to the people we disagree who also likely have equally nuanced views.
Talk to people. Hear them out. We can not assume the caricatures we’ve built in our heads are accurate. I have to remind myself of this constantly when I think about people I disagree with politically and I fail constantly but we man do we have to keep trying or we’re in serious trouble as a society.
There’s objective facts about the two combatants. One weighs more and hits harder. The bigger one argues that a fight is a fight, and should be allowed to use their full fury.
In full anarchy, the bigger person is rational. Regardless, the bigger person seeks to make some semblance of a case of why their perspective is not immoral, and they mostly can’t. It’s not both rational and moral (as much as they want delude themselves out of moral accountability), it is simply just rational which means one actor is truly psychopathic.
> Personally I feel that there are no heroes and everyone sucks in this situation, except for the innocent bystanders on both sides who are being caught in the crossfire.
Wow, what a daring and brave opinion. I'm in awe that you're willing to share it publically!
Like, a bunch of my local social media bubble has been talking about "media literacy" and "illiteracy" and related concepts and this is a great example.
If, for example, someone is telling you that a publically terrible act of violence by someone associated with palestine is probably a response to previous israeli actions, they are not, in fact, secretly trying to imply that the terrorist is a hero.
They're simply trying to explain the likely consequences of actions.
One of the things that I find most frustrating in certain types of discussions is the idea that we can't do something that will improve the lives of large numbers of people on the off chance that a bad person won't get punished or someone undeserving will be rewarded.
It's entirely probable that the solution that improves the lives of the most people in that region will also involve quite a few awful people not getting punished.
The point of course is that it's not about whether or not guilty people escape.
It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing.
If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal.
This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense.
Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part.
People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering.
Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.
