On Wednesday, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said in its latest update that Israel’s ban on entry of aid has continued for nearly a month and that no aid entered the enclave throughout this period. All requests by humanitarian agencies to coordinate access with Israeli authorities have been denied.
Helles recalled when the blockade was imposed. The shops were empty within hours, and what was left was too expensive, she said. Even the charity distributions, which once offered a variety of meals, have dwindled, now providing only small servings of rice at the time of Iftar.
After days of eating little more than rice, Huda couldn’t sleep at night, suffering from severe stomach pain and colic. She was diagnosed with a stomach infection two weeks ago.
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After seeing how Hamas is torturing and executing Palestinians who protest against them, while Israel is bad they may as well share responsibility for this most recent conflict.
Damn the IDF is executing Palestinians who protest against them?
Oh wait they did that in 2017 in broad daylight.
If only there was any evidence for Hamas doing it. The 4k projector must be on again.
Yes, yes, idk how many cam phones are in Gaza these days but imagine far fewer than before.
Don’t forget this latest conflict started because Hamas raided an Israeli concert for hostages and were always throwing so many missiles at Israel, Israel invented and built the most advanced missile defense system in the world.
Here’s how I see it, Jews shouldn’t have been given Israel after WW2 because it was already settled but it happened. When the Jews won the wars to hold Israel, the Palestinians never accepted defeat and because of it, never made peace. Because they never made peace and have lived for vengeance for decades, they are now doomed. The smart ones left, and will likely be all that is left of Palestine when Israel is done.
Is this just? No, and what really doesn’t help is both people think god is on their side when it seems to me, god isn’t with either of them.
No this conflict started because Israel violated a ceasefire on March 18 and massacared more than 200 Palestinian children in terror bombings.
There was a ceasefire on March 18. There was no ceasefire on October 7.
I consider the current conflict having started in October 2022 because a lot of these ceasefires feel more like a pause in a war not the end of a war. Wars end with leaders dead or lasting agreements.
No that is not how it works.
Hamas and Israel accepted a ceasefre leading to a lasting peace agreement. Then Israel violated it.
The current genocide in Gaza started on 18 March.
My bad, I thought it was temporary not lasting.
That said I stand by my doubts that this will end without total annihilation on either side. Israel can’t forgive Hamas or Hamas Israel without either side literally changing theirs beliefs and values which ain’t happening.
It’s like October made Israel snap and escalate their mindset to, ‘this isn’t over until they are, no more peace only war’ which is where Palestine has been since the 40s.
Hamas refused temporary ceasefires multiple times in 2024. The only reason Hamas agreed to this one was the promise of a lasting ceasefire.
Which also contradicts your second argument, Hamas is actively working to reach a peaceful solution. Israel is refusing every attempt and violating ceasefire agreements.
This is not a both sides issue. Only one side is the problem.
Unconscionable. What Hamas did was inexcusable, but Hamas doesn’t treat Palestinians any better than they do Jews as a matter of public record. I get that Hamas have exploited just about any effort to help the average Palestinian ever attempted, but that should not be an argument against helping what amounts to more victims of Hamas.
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Hamas are the good guys.
In the fight against Israel. Let’s not forget that they’re still a brutal authoritarian regime that must go immediately after someone does something about Israel.
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Okay dude that’s not what happened. If you want the end of Palestinian democracy you should be looking at the Gaza civil war, and while it was Fatah who moved to override the democratic process Hamas jumped at the opportunity to turn their government into an autocratic regime. There was no reason they couldn’t hold elections in times of relative peace, or respect freedom of speech or do all that other democracy things.
Fatah engaged in a coup, locking up elected officials. It succeeded in West Bank and failed in Gaa. Why should those remaining officials reconcile with the people who did that coup and openly took aid from Israel to topple that democracy?
There were attempts to unify and move forward, but this is a thorny issue because they don’t trust one another. Meanwhile, Netanyahu took advantage of the division to steal more land and refuse peace negotiations .
It succeeded in West Bank and failed in Gaa. Why should those remaining officials reconcile with the people who did that coup and openly took aid from Israel to topple that democracy?
They shouldn’t that’s not what I’m trying to say. The Fatah coup justifies banning Fatah party in Gaza and some emergency measures, but it does not justify not holding elections entirely and abolishing civil and political rights permanently. The fact that Gazans only had one election ever is nothing short of a crime by Hamas against the people of Gaza, independent of their crucial role in the Palestinian resistance.
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I get that Hamas have exploited just about any effort to help the average Palestinian ever attempted,
So claims Israel, which has published more lies than truths throughout this genocide.
This has nothing to do with “Jews”. You differentiate Hama’s and Palestinians. Why not the other way. Most Jews aren’t even in Israel. Many in Israel don’t support it even. I’m all for calling out Israel.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. Substitute with ‘citizens of Israel’ then.
What Hamas did is very excusable.
the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has explicitly affirmed the right of Palestinians to resist Israel’s military occupation, including through armed struggle.
Armed struggle != war crimes. One does not justify the other. The October attacks were like 5% achieving military objectives, the rest mindless slaughter, to the point where one can legitimately question whether the military objectives were not completely incidental. Hamas could have bee-lined for as many IDF outposts as they could, they didn’t, they shot up Hippie Kibbutzim of all places. (Which is also why Netanjahu and triply so the Kahanites don’t care about the hostages: They’re by and large lefties).
Same, of course, goes for the IDF and what they’re currently doing. If both sides kept to not even self-defence but only military objectives there might actually be peace in sight.
the rest mindless slaughter
Hasbara. Hamas wanted hostages and had no incentive to commit “mindless slaughter” - they’re not mindless demons. It’s likely the majority of the deaths were from the Hannibal Directive, which is why Israel won’t let the UN conduct an investigation.
May be the case, we’ll probably see when the dust has settled. OTOH, it’s still a war crime to abduct non-combatants so my point stands. And no, reservists aren’t combatants.
The hostages aren’t even particularly valuable because the Israeli government couldn’t give less of a fuck about hippies who do things like protecting the Palestinian olive harvest from settler interference. Nab an in-service right-wing IDF commander off the street and you have something much more valuable and it’s a legitimate prisoner of war.
Or, differently put: Don’t get your strategic and tactical advise from the Russians of all people.
it’s still a war crime to abduct non-combatants
And yet Israel has kidnapped thousands of Palestinian children and holding them without access to lawyers or contact by their families.
There needs to be war crimes investigations and charges against both sides, and yet the US is sanctioning the international bodies that adjudicate this.
Israel doesn’t give a fuck about any of its people, whether they’re civilians or soldiers. There’d be no difference if the kidnapped were all soldiers.
Also the thing about international law is it has to apply to everyone or it doesn’t exist. Israel, by not following internatonal law, has forfeited its protections. Hamas simply followed the same rules of war that Israel does. Israel brought this on themselves.
Different administration controlled by a different party and before they reformulated the Hannibal Directive in 2016.
That said, Hamas probably did make a strategic mistake by thinking Israel would give a shit about its people, but in so doing they also achieved another strategic objective - the heightening of contradictions within Israeli society by showing Israeli citizens how little their government cares about them and how willing it is to kill them for a strategic advantage. They also managed to show the world that Israel is a rogue state and it has become more isolated than ever before as a direct result.
We’ll see how this works out in the long run, but don’t discount Oct 7th as a failure just yet.
The dust has very much settled and Israel is very much refusing to release the numbers.
The best illustration is probably this one. Why do you think all the holes are in the car roofs?
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Months? More like decades. We’re at more than half a century of this shit by now.
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No. The attacks were originally aimed at a military base; they had no idea that a music festival was going on. The death count is roughly 300 soldiers dead and 900 civilians. By Israel’s own logic, this ratio of civilian deaths is acceptable in war. (I disagree which is why it’s wrong for both sides) Hamas claimed they were taking enemy fire from these locations, and by Israeli logic it meant that these Kibbutzim were now legitimate military targets. (Again, Israel has done this to Arab towns using the same rationale). Israel doesn’t like hoisted on their own petard.
To be fair (???) they did need the hostages so they needed to go to the kibbutz anyway, but yeah too much mindless slaughter. I will note though that by casualty numbers alone we’re looking at 33% achieving military objectives rather than 5%. Same difference but yeah.
What Hamas did is very excusable.
They killed and kidnapped civilians which isn’t excusable. It would have been excusable to attack the military, not civilians.
I don’t like to get into this debate because it’s pointless this late in the game, but here goes:
1-If you’re going to fight apartheid, you will have to play dirty. Yeah yeah hostages bad, but Palestinian detainees (which are, to be very fucking clear, also hostages) won’t be freed by vague platitudes and appeals to the rules of war. They can be freed by hostage exchanges, which need hostages on your side to exchange. Those who make humane revolution impossible make inhumane revolution inevitable.
2-The deaths on October 7th are not solely deliberately Hamas-inflicted. There’s a whole host of people who died in the crossfire, either by Hamas or Israeli fire, and many who were killed by Israeli friendly fire. Look up the Hannibal directive.
3-They did attack the Israeli military. 33% of people killed during the attack were military or security forces, and if you look up the towns they attacked on October 7th (which isn’t hard to do; there’s a list on Wikipedia) you’ll see that almost every one has an IDF base. I can’t tell you how much because nobody involved cared to run that sort of analysis and Israel had unqualified people do work that was crucial to that sort of analysis (these are the same people who made later disproven mass rape allegations).
Understandable, yes.
Predictable, yes.
Deserved, yes.
Effective, perhaps.
Excusable? No.
Are we really debating whether it’s okay to rape / kidnap / slaughter civilians?
Read this New Yorker interview of a Hamas leader. Palestinians tried everything the “right” way. They engaged in nonviolent protest and were shot by the IDF. They went to the UN and Israel called it “diplomatic terrorism” and sanctioned the PA. They offered deep concessions to move forward on a two state solution and Netanyahu refused with no counter offer. They called for new elections and were blocked. There was really no way to left to resist Israel peacefully. The IDF was and is raping Palestinians.
“We rolled down all of the pathways to get some of our rights—not all of them. We knocked on the door of reconciliation and we weren’t allowed in. We knocked on the door of elections and we were deprived of them. We knocked on the door of a political document for the whole world—we said, ‘We want peace, but give us some of our rights’—but they didn’t let us in.” He added, “We tried every path. We didn’t find one political path to take us out of this morass and free us from occupation.”
Palestinians tried everything the “right” way.
I’m well aware - have been following this conflict for 40 years, generally siding with the Palestinians. I will say however that no one has done such a clean job of “trying it the right way” as you make out here. It’s been far more morally grey from the start.
But let’s accept your point and the language you’re establishing here. They tried everything the right way. Now they’re trying everything the wrong way. It’s like I said: they stopped waiting for the world’s moral outrage to save them, went it alone, and have played it as dirty as they think they need to. Understandable. Predictable.
They don’t need me to think it’s excusable, and it happens that I don’t. They’ve discarded any hope of moral rectitude and are simply trying to win the fight in practical terms by whatever means available. They’re not trying to be right, they’re trying to be effective - to control land, repel Israel, and help Palestinians.
How would you say they’re doing?
Instead of quibbling over whether suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism are orally excusable, judge them by their effectiveness on behalf of the Palestinians.
It’s hard to say what their condition would be without the suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and hostage takings over the last 20 years since the second intifada. No one knows what would have happened in an alternate reality where they continued doing things “the right way.”
But from what I see, “the wrong way” is not only wrong but ineffective. The October attacks have succeeded at the impossible: restoring Israel’s moral standing in the eyes of the world. If the west were silently complicit before, they are actively and vociferously complicit now. Gaza is nearly sanitized of all life. There isn’t even a bargaining table at which to give everything away at. Palestinians are being erased from existence.
So maybe, just maybe, on “effectiveness” grounds, these tactics are a practical failure as much as they are a moral evil.
They’ve discarded any hope of moral rectitude and are simply trying to win the fight in practical terms by whatever means available.
Children. Are. Dying.
Standing on principle for decades is good, but you cannot ask people to watch whole families die and do nothing. Israel shooting and killing hundreds of unarmed protestors with no consequences from the rest of the world showed that the Gandhi-style strategy will never work. You ask about effectiveness, Israel showed that they won’t allow nonviolent protest, they lock up moderate politicians and fund extremists, and make any sort of peaceful reconciliation impossible. The large majority of Israelis and Palestinians who want peace are actively blocked by the Netanyahu government. It’s nice to tell people how they should do things from the comfort of your safe home with electricity.
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Are we really debating whether it’s okay to rape / kidnap / slaughter civilians?
For the rape* and slaughter part, obviously no. I’m not denying the actual atrocities that Hamas committed during the attack; they did rape and murder civilians and heads need to roll for that.
For the kidnapping part, the question still remains: What else were they supposed to do? Under the assumption that all lives are equally valuable, I see no reason to denounce taking hostages unless there was another effective way of gaining leverage to negotiate with Israel. Otherwise the only options left for the resistance are to give up or fight fire with fire.
Edit: *Apparently the rape part is completely made up.
Hamas did not rape any civilians. This is recently been fully debunked. The Israeli october 7 investigator said there was no evidence of any rape happening.
Any rape at all? I thought they’d only confirmed that no mass rape happened? If I’m misremembering that’s great.
Palestinians heartily agree with your “what else are we supposed to do” notion and long since stopped waiting for the world’s moral courage to come to their rescue. When they did that they also said that they no longer cared what anyone thought of the morality of their actions. They don’t need them to be excusable by us and frankly they aren’t. I’m past excusing anyone involved in this conflict.
Do you really tjink the October attacks gained them any “negotiating leverage?”
Do you really tjink the October attacks gained them any “negotiating leverage?”
Given how thousands of detainees have been freed since October 7th, I think the answer is yes. That said I’m pretty sure even they didn’t expect the Israeli reprisal to be this big, so this whole thing is in a way one big miscalculation.
More than 33% military without counting all Israelis as IDF reservists which they have proven to be over the last year.
And the kidnapping is done becsuse it is the only way to get their own people free. Israel has been kidnapping Palestinians for decades in far larger quantities. Hamas doing to same thing back should not raise eyebrows.
Israel killed a Palestinian child they kidnapped recently. Did not even make the headlines.
These the same civilians letting genocide happen right next to them? They have just as much blood on their hands.
