They were told to leave their homes. They did. They were still bombed
Palestinians in Beit Hanoun were instructed by Israeli army to leave their homes and head for city centre. Hours later, the city centre was targeted
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Yeah, but because amongst all those people killed by the Israeli army in the very place they told them to shelter, there isn't a nice looking western girl with glamour pictures on social networks, the murder of those people will never cause the same disgust in the West as the plight of the girl kidnapped by Hamas which has been turned into a constantly repeated Israeli propaganda piece (you can tell it's now being pushed as propaganda because it's been repeated well beyond its newsworthiness and always with the same glamour picture).
The gapping chasm in numbers between those murdered by Israel and those by Hamas is inverted in terms of the disgust they cause in the West exactly because Israeli has a vastly superior propaganda machine.
Thinking people would start wondering why, reliably, 100s of murdered palestinians are portrayed with less emphasys than 1 kidnapped israeli-german teenager.
See, on the one hand you're validly calling out sensationalism and propaganda, but on the other you're kind of going further the other way. She wasn't kidnapped, she was murdered and her corpse mutilated, paraded and spat on. And it isn't her vs 100s of murdered Palestinians, she is but a figurehead representing hundreds dead in Israel.
In any case, tallying up which side did what and who was worse really isn't productive here, it won't lead to any useful kind of resolution. The issue isn't what they do, because at this point they've pretty much done it all before. The issue is that people on both sides keep doing it.
Agreed. There's only one solution. The UN needs to disarm both sides, depose their governments and make the whole area a UN protectorate. Remove any illegal settlements. Try anyone on both sides involved in war crimes or human rights violations.
Israel and Palestine can not behave like grown ups? Take away their toys and put them in time out.
A foreign military occupation of an entire region in the Middle East to ensure peace.
Does anyone remember how this one goes?
I'll take standing under a mission accomplished banner on an aircraft carrier for $200.
Absolutely agree. The two sides need to be separated and put in time out.
However disarming Israel is politically impossible when they're a cyber weapons super power.
Israel is a way more prosper place than Palestine and hence its people have way more to lose if the country is placed under sanctions, its companies cut off from trading with the West and its members of governament personally held accountable internationally.
(Basically they're susceptible to the same kind of pressure that forced the authorities in South Africa to end Apartheid and have genuinelly democratic elections)
Those who have the most to lose are the easiest to convince, which is also why, on the other side, not even treating Hamas as a terrorist organisation (which is an even harder thing than "mere" sanctions) has stopped them from finding "soldiers" - as long as Israel makes sure those born in Palestine have nothing to lose, for many even joining an organisation internationally viewed as terrorist is still a step-up in life.
If you pardon my language (but I think the situation deserves it), it's quite paradoxical that the International community has to fuck up Israel enough so that they stop fucking up the life of Palestinians so much, to the point that the lives of said Palestinians improves enough that they end up having enough to lose from siding with or joining Hamas (which is alread being fucked up).
Then again, maybe it's not a paradox: look at how the only way to stop a similar bully, Russia, requires "fucking them up" in that way (being more integrated with the West, not having natural resources like that, and being a whole lot more democratic (even if imperfectly so) Israel would be a lot easier to sway away from acting as a bully.
As far as I can see, it's either that or the genocide of Palestinians and I would hope that not even in this day and age and not even if it's one of the "slow boiling" kind, most people in the West would be ok with a genocide.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!! ....oh, you're serious.
I mean they can also just keep bombing and torturing each other for the next 100 years, it's been working so well so far.
Sadly, as history shows, humans actually keep doing just about that.
Yeah, nobody has quite the strength even for these two sides. First, war is not a linear application of resources, it's unpredictable. Second, that'd be a precedent every nation with conflicts would try to prevent, and such nations are usually the strongest. Third, we've all seen over the years how well UN missions, peacekeepers etc work.
You're acting like we're just talking about "actions" that people are "doing."
What you're ignoring is the apartheid society created by Israel. They're directly responsible for the conditions that foster this type of response.
This isn't a "both sides are just as bad" thing. One of these groups has been horrifically oppressed and kept in the largest open-air prison on the planet for nearly 100 years. Any time Hamas has attacked Israeli soldiers (you know, because they're literally kicking them out of their family homes they've lived in for generations. Which is genocide btw), Israel has responded by slaughtering hundreds to thousands of Palestinian (not Hamas) civilians. It's completely disproportionate.
I'm not defending or justifying, just trying to explain.
Displacement isn't genocide.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention#Definition_of_genocide
Seems to fit to me.
It seems to fit to you because your initial operating assumption is that you should support the terrorists here and everything else you believe is distorted to meet those expectations.
For instance, Israel told the civilians to move to the city of 120k people that is called a refugee camp, but is in fact a full on 80 year old city, and fourteen people died in an airstrike on a Hamas position.
But you didn't Google the city "camp" or look past the claims at all, because your initial assumption is "Israel bad, Hamas good."
You are indeed defending terrorists who kill families of civilians with no overarching military goal in mind at all.
no one says hamas is good. but they don't need to be in order for israel to be bad.
It seems to fit to you because your initial operating assumption is that you should support the terrorists here and everything else you believe is distorted to meet those expectations.
You know nothing about me, and fuck you for making an accusation like that. Shameful.
I know what you state, and that's what you stated.
If that offends you, take a long look in the mirror and sort your life out
Lol ok bud. Can you tell me my star sign too?
terrorist is loaded language.
Terrorism is indeed when you kill civilians with no military aim in mind. Invading a country specifically to murder their families in their homes is absolutely terrorism.
Invading a country specifically to murder their families in their homes is absolutely terrorism.
by this definition every colonizer is a terrorist, which means that the israelis are terrorists. maybe we just shouldn't use the term, and instead condemn bad actions and bad actors on the merits of the actions without the political label.
Maybe you shouldn't use the term "colonizer" since that's a dumb fuck term.
Maybe you shouldn’t use the term “colonizer” since that’s a dumb fuck term.
colonization happens, and it's perpetrated by colonizers.
Terrorism is indeed when you kill civilians with no military aim in mind.
why should the military aim matter? THAT'S PURELY POLITICAL. terrorism just means you don't LIKE the politics of the person doing the killing.
Terrorism is explicitly killing done without military targets in mind. It's explicitly political, and targeted at civilians, to instill terror.
I'm sorry you don't like the definition of the word, but it is the definition of the word.
Terrorism is explicitly killing done without military targets in mind.
like police shooting black men
I wasn't really ignoring it, merely addressing the point that was raised.
I've said this elsewhere, but going through and trying to tally up who's done what and which side is worse is pretty much a futile exercise. It won't lead to any useful resolution. They've been going at it for so long, both sides have done horrific things that were disproportionate responses to the other side. They've pretty much done it all. The bigger issue is less what they do, more that they both keep doing it.
They've been going at it for so long, both sides have done horrific things that were disproportionate responses to the other side.
This just is not true. There is a massively imbalanced power dynamic there. They've been keeping the Palestinian population in an open-air prison for at least half a century. They're literally incapable of responding disproportionately to what Israel is constantly doing to them. They don't have the resources or freedom of movement.
Just look up the casualty statistics on both sides since at least since the end of WW2. It's been some time since I've looked at them, but we're talking at least one (possibly more) order of magnitude difference between the two.
They’re literally incapable of responding disproportionately to what Israel is constantly doing to them.
I would say raiding towns and villages and beheading babies is a disproportionate response to anything.
There is definitely a power imbalance, and Israel has probably killed more Palestinians overall than the other way around. However, Israel have also shown some measure of restraint up until now - they've never completely eradicated Palestine, as Palestinians frequently claim to want for Israelis and have previously attempted to do, even though Israel actually could. Israel has definitely not shown enough restraint, but they've shown more than they would likely face if the balance of power was the other way around.
There's also the twisted mess of politics. Members of the government of Israel have at many times over the years promoted the support of terrorist groups in Palestine as a way of destabilising Palestine as a nation. So, even while the actions of Hamas on Saturday were horrific and unforgiveable, some Israelis have actively been encouraging this kind of thing.
Like I say, tallying up who's done what doesn't really get you anywhere. Both have done horrific and unforgiveable things. It's like comparing shit covered apples to shit covered oranges, you can talk about the differences as much as you like - and you might even be correct in everything you say - but at the end of the day the biggest problem is that they're both covered in shit.
The IDF are no saints. They've done some awful awful things. Including targeting clearly marked medics and press, and murdering children for throwing rocks at them.
Yep, it is relatively easy to find video of IDF humiliating and torturing young people at checkpoints or around their home in the most cowardly manner on earth, seriously it was hard to see.
The Israeli-German girl is apparently still alive and in criticial condition in the Indonesian hospital in Gaza. She wasn't murdered (though of course she could still succumb to whatever was done to her).
And she's also 30 while somehow being 22. The reporting on this has been atrocious.
Got a link?
Sorry for the German link. It's the most reliable source I could find, tho.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/shani-deutsche-hamas-israel-100.html
tl;dr her aunt says she's alive in a hospital. No way to verify. Assumption that she's alive is based on credit card activity.
Assumption that she’s alive is based on credit card activity.
Surely credit card activity isn't a strong indicator.
Of some bearded terrorist guy going to belly dance clubs in Cairo, surely.
Two points:
I'm disgusted that a few days ago some terrorists attacked a music festival and killed hundreds and you're defending the terrorists. It sounds like you've been taken in by some propaganda yourself.
If condemning terrorists attacking innocent people at a music festival means I'm a product of propaganda, then so be it.
You're absolutelly right in condemning terrorist attacks like that one.
All terrorist attacks should be condemned, including ordering people to shelter in a specific place and bombing them as describe here.
If your condemnation is indeed Principled, then all such acts of murder for the purposed of terrifying the rest are equally repugnant and you'll condemn them equally no matter the "side" of those who did such disgusting acts.
As Principle seems to be notably absent in how so many commenters have tackled the subject matter (with only some murders being important, not others, depending on which "side" did it), I pointed it out.
Let's not forget that the act of using civilians as shields is a warcrime in the first place to prevent this kind of situation from occurring.
If Israel tells Palestinian civilians to evacuate because there's Hamas military targets in that building, and Hamas troops tell them no. Then they die, and Hamas can cry wolf.
It would be Israel who is following international decorem and Hamas making it difficult for any country to support them.
Just now, Austria cut off aid to the Gaza region. Is that Israel's fault? Nope.
Hamas had good PR going and they fucked it up by escalating with brutality.
Cutting off power to Palestinians is also a war crime. Why are war crimes only bad when Palestine does them an not when Israel does them 5x as often?
I'm not justifying anything that Israel has done in the past. The main point of my comment is that Hamas made a really poor decision here on behalf of the Palestinians. There is absolutely no doubt.
There is no moralizing or whataboutism.
The fact of the matter is that this caused a divided Israel to unite in anger. And support for Palestine has been cut by all European nations and Australia. Palestinian sympathizers and charity leaders have been among the victims.
The question you should be asking is if you support the Palestinian people is...
What the actual hell is this bonehead decision-making by Hamas? There is no scenario of success in this endeavor unless the Western world decided to withdraw all support from Israel and give it to Hamas.
Was that going to happen? No. Hamas never tried to establish good diplomatic relations with anyone.
The world stage is a democratic club, and Hamas rejected it all. Hamas burned every single bridge with other countries no matter how many citizens of those governments complain.
Please don’t talk past me.
Okay I'll answer you. It's wrong for Israel to cut power to civilians. It's right for Israel to cut power to military targets.
If military targets embed their infrastructure with civilian infrastructure. Oopsies. Civilians are now military targets.
Palestinians MAYBE shouldn't have Hamas in power if they're going to power their military operations with civilian power. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every world power knows that, that's why most have pretty much gotten behind Israel, regardless of any apartheid Israel has done.
The US did the same thing when 9/11 happened. The US did the same thing in Operation Desert Storm along with other NATO countries who joined the US in operations in the middle east.
Nobody in the west complained then, and nobody's complaining now, because Hamas did the dumb dumb.
If military targets embed their infrastructure with civilian infrastructure. Oopsies. Civilians are now military targets.
NO! What the fuck NO! Even if that was true it's disgusting but Israel routinely lies about the presence of Hamas and then never even bothers to doctor proof.
Every world power knows that, that’s why most have pretty much gotten behind Israel, regardless of any apartheid Israel has done.
Lol nah, its because the US and UK use Israel as a FOB. That's it. It's strategically advantageous so they will get behind any lie Israel makes up that helps them keep it as a base.
Nobody in the west complained then, and nobody’s complaining now, because Hamas did the dumb dumb.
Yes they did. Bro lie through your teeth more. And you act like what the US did after 9/11 was a good thing? It fucking wasn't. WE ALL KNOW THAT NOW. We accept that Bush did war crimes. No one argues about that. We don't do anything about it but we all look back and are like "wow that was really fucked up"
Literally the first thing the US does in any engagement is cut the power.
Israeli authorities' cutting off electricity to Gaza and other punitive measures against Gaza's civilian population would amount to unlawful collective punishment, which is a war crime, said the Human Rights Watch on 9 October.
Human Rights Watch is an activist group with no authority.
You are free to agree or disagree with them. Clearly I disagree here, but I do agree with their condemnation of the Palestinian attacks.
As if the US gives a single fuck about war crimes. If we did, at least 5 people from George W. Bush's administration would be rotting in prison right now.
Yes, it's still a war crime when we do it.
That terrorist attack has already happened, and there's another terrorist attack underway, this time with cassette munitions and white phosphorus and in general very different capabilities, done by another side.
Attacking kids at a music festival? Or attacking a terrorist organization? Your false equivalency is despicable.
Just admit it. You hate Jewish people. Stop pretending there is some moral equivalent for Hamas attacking and indiscriminately killing innocent people, and Israel trying to stamp out an entrenched terror cell that is using their people as meat shields to somehow manipulate people like you into thinking they're the good guys. 🙄
First, you wrote some incomprehensible bullshit, second, I'm part Jewish.
That sucks that you're part Jewish and still hate them so much that you go on the internet and support killing them.
Why do you keep posting nonsense? Anything about me anybody can judge for themselves from my comments. You look like a moron. Things don't become your way just cause you say so.
At least try to pretend you're here for a real discussion.
Sure buddy, I am also Steve jobs
See, on the one hand you’re validly calling out sensationalism and propaganda, but on the other you’re kind of going further the other way. She wasn’t kidnapped, she was murdered and her corpse mutilated, paraded and spat on. And it isn’t her vs 100s of murdered Palestinians, she is but a figurehead representing hundreds dead in Israel.
You know, google for "Anush Apetyan" and consider that Israel is Azerbaijan's main military supplier after Russia, and almost an ally, and nothing from what Azerbaijani troops are doing (just the same Hamas stuff) seems to have any effect.
Also Israel is a genocide-denier state. Israelis on the Web like to behave all cynical and realpolitik-enjoying and "what are you going to do" on subjects similar to what Hamas has done in Sderot etc.
I'd say there is an element of crocodile tears in this.
Action should be taken to prevent anybody doing anything like this again, to Israelis or anybody else, but that doesn't mean Israel somehow got moral. Promoting that would be exploiting events for propaganda.
Action should be taken to prevent anybody doing anything like this again, to Israelis or anybody else, but that doesn’t mean Israel somehow got moral. Promoting that would be exploiting events for propaganda.
Absolutely agreed. Israel is justified in some measure of response, to prevent future attacks and rescue hostages. They are not justified in the bombing of Gaza that they've been doing instead.
The point I was making though is that using Shani Louk as some kind of figurehead is in no way disingenuous. It's somewhat unfair that Palestine doesn't have similar figureheads of their own to garner support (and indeed this is a direct result of Israel blocking media access), but that doesn't mean that what happened to Shani isn't a valid symbol of everything that was wrong with the attack on Saturday.
The only reason it's not productive, in your opinion, is because it makes the side you support look REALLY fucking bad.
"Why can't we all come together and forget the 6+ decades of horrific oppression and wildly disproportionate warfare, and all just get along?"
No, the reason it's not productive to dig through all the atrocities is that, provided you keep at least something of an open mind, you'll quickly get sick of both sides and not even want to bother finding any solution.
Both sides have indiscriminately murdered civillians and children. They might have done it in different ways, one side might have managed to kill more than the other, but they've both done barbaric things.
I don't support either "side" in this.
“Why can’t we all come together and forget the 6+ decades of horrific oppression and wildly disproportionate warfare, and all just get along?”
This kind of strawman statement confirms that you aren't arguing in good faith, you've only come here to spew bullshit.
tallying up which side did what and who was worse really isn’t productive here
rephrased...."Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who". Serious conversation and that is what my mind locks on. Go figure.
It's actually because the "refugee camp" is a city of 120,000 people that have been there for 76 years in permanent buildings.
It was struck because militants were firing from it. Yes, there will be civilian casualties while Hamas is hiding in civilian structures. That's what Hamas does.
You're falling for their playbook, their propaganda machine, so to speak.
Everyone knew this was going to happen the moment Hamas struck.
This. All part of the terrorist's playbook - invoke persecution to radicalise more people.
It doesn't make Israel's behavior ok, but the crocodile tears are a bit sickening.
Beyond just 'not ok', Israel's response is playing out exactly how the terrorist's playbook says the terrorized country should respond: terrorist launches a terrorist attack, terrorized country responds with forced, civilians hit in the crossfire blame the terrorized country and move towards the terrorists.
In the past few days, we have been hering Israeli officials refer to this as their 9/11. What they do not seem to appreciate with their comparison is that the emotion ladden responce the US engaged in after 9/11 proved to be one of the greatest military blunders in the countries history.
If they want to learn a lesson from 9/11, they should address the immediate military threat, fix the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to be so successful (such as diverting soldiers away from the Gaza border; and (allegedly) ignoring warnings that Hamas was planning an attack). Once the immediate concerns are addressed, they should back off and allow time for cooler heads to think through what a strategically effective response would look like and implement that.
Unfortunately, such a response is politically difficult in the best of circumstances. Given that the current ruling coalition is almost the definition of hotter heads, built itself up on the promise of "security", and was already on shaky ground domestically, I don't think they have many options other than a rash response.
Hopefully they constrain themselves to just responding in Gaza. If they decide to respond by going after Hamas's supporters in, say Iran, we are looking at a major regional war.
Yeah, everyone is focusing on the brutality of Hamas' murders instead of the numbers.
I'm sure Hamas would be using airstrikes against Israel, if they could.
War is horrible and the granparents of today's Palestinians were unjustly hunted and hurt.
But if Hamas had not gone on slaughter spree on civilians and their fighters would not be hiding behind their their own kids and women to protect themselves from retaliation, maybe the fight would take place strictly between combatants or even better, on the social media and internet to show what's wrong.
And no, it doesn't matter whether kid is EU, Arabian or any other looking. When there was earthquake not long ago, everyone was sympathetic with middle east looking kids being pulled out of debris.
There's been an earthquake just a few days ago in Afghanistan, Pakistan etc, killing more than 2000 people, and by your comment I can see you don't even know about it.
And I was arguing against Hamas immediately after it happened, but now I'm arguing against Israel because the original comment is right, they have now adjusted all their propaganda tools to use the events to justify ethnic cleansing with lots of civilian dead right now.
Gazan women and children are not responsible for "their fighters" or Hamas, just as Israeli women and children are not responsible for bombs falling on Gaza.
I'm disgusted with both, but proportionally to their strength.
just as Israeli women
They could be part of IDF as military service is mandatory for every israeli whatever the gender (~3y for men and 2y for women).
so don't speak in term of gender but in term of class.
Strictly speaking, there are very few women in the combat units of the IDF.
But yes, you understood me correctly. I meant civilians.
You missed my point or are trying to twist it.
I have not said that world is informed about everything that happens everywhere all the time. I have said that people feel sad for any hurt kid regardless of colour of their skin and I gave an example which you totally ignored. I could very well blame you for bad things happening to the kids in Mexico or Latin America in general if you aren't informed about that but that would be stupid wouldn't it?
The feel sad on different levels. For some kinds of sad billions of military aid are warranted, and for other kinds of sad thoughts and prayers, and there are even situations of "sad, but they had it coming".
You forgot to mention that in some places if you come with aid your lifeless body gets paraded half naked through the streets on pickup truck and spitted on or mutilated on spot.
You also forgot to mention that while EU people feel sorry for suffering of all kids. Some places you talk about celebrate death of every caucasian looking kid as new year event.
It might be one of the reason why some place don't get e.g. international humanitarian help.
Yeah, only there's no correlation at all usually between this and my comment.
It does, think about it.
The "human shields" reasoning has been circulating for at least a decade. "Look, we had to kill the civilians, the militants were hiding behind them!" I don't know on what planet that reasoning is supposed to be acceptable.
War or killing is never acceptable. Unfortunately in this case it seems less of the two evils due to Hammas making sure everyone can see what atrocities they are capable off instead of showing world what Palestinians hardship is like.
Its 2023, we catch the American government trying to cover this shit up all the time https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html
Why are so many people willing to believe "Hamas uses human shields" without even a shred of evidence? How is acceptable to keep funding and arming Israel when there is no accountability for how they use those weapons?
Can you prove they are not? Like where in the Gaza is their military base e.g. ? If they aren't mixed in Civilian where the hell are they? Also acts like murdering kids don't really add them any credibility. To me it looks rather that their fighting tactics is trying to exploit the fact that enemy is not so willing to shoot at civilians as they are to shoot combatants.
can you prove that they’re not?
That’s not how this works dawg. You can’t commit war crimes and expect everyone to be cool with it if you’re not providing evidence to back your claims of “they took human shields, there’s nothing we could do”
If they’re not mixed in Civilian where the hell are they?
If they don’t know where Hamas is, if they don’t have evidence, then what is the plan? To level all of Palestine?
Remember when the US thought Iraq had WMDs? Woulda been nice if we like… had evidence first right? Coulda saved a lot of money and lives, no?
the enemy is not so willing to shoot civilians
Wtf are you talking about? You’re literally spreading the propaganda that has allowed Israel to kill 36x as many children as Palestinians have killed
They took the hostages and killed tons of people , it's all over security cameras, there are witnesses, people from German and other countries recognized those hostages as their family member. Hammas posted video of dealing with those hostages. Hostages are women, kids and men. Are you saying that is not hiding behind the kids and women? I have tons of proofs to believe they do this.
You got only "Nana they are actually good people"
So that it actually how this not works.. That's why I gave you opportunity to present evidence that Hammas is not lowest scam in the region. You presented nothing.
I have tons of proofs to believe they do this.
To be clear, I also think Hamas took hostages. I just don't think most people consider that "being a human shield" unless there is imminent danger to the hostage taker.
You got only “Nana they are actually good people”
You realize that you can't prove a negative empirically?
I'll prove Hamas isn't using human shields when you prove the tooth fairy don't exist.
in other words, you got nothing to prove your OP, so you play it into corner, so to speak. You started with claim that is against existing evidence and when challenged you can't prove the evidence wrong.
BTW taking civilian hostages is very well definition of human shield. That's the whole point of hostages. Your terrorists friends use them as meat shield, so their oponent is forced into dilema, either risk loosing their people or to give in. Bank robbers, airplane highjackers, etc... use this all the time.
You might be confusing it with taking enemy combatants into jail to prevent them fighting in war. But even those are not paraded trough streets, naked, half-dead/ dead, with dislocated limbs, on truck, while being spitted on.
Hamas had not gone on slaughter spree on civilians
Israel has killed 22x more Palestinians than Isralies have died from all pro-Palestine groups https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
And Germans caused WW2 that had mutliple times higher dead count than all Palestinians together. Yet I don't see countries like Polland going terrorist against German civilians. The way you think is best, (kill as many children as brutal as possible) will only lead to more casaulties but it won't make life any better for Palestina's civilians.
Just look at this comment, Hamas clearly has the superior propaganda machine.