Middle East Conflict

[Tim of the Oak]

Israel aren't targeting Palestinians, they're targeting Hamas. It's really important to make that distinction.

Would you sit across the road with the general population when Israel bombs a Hamas target?

There’s no huge distinction to me because the end result is lots of civilians get killed.

 

[Postman Pep]

Kay Burley managing to outdo Kirsty Wark in the **** stakes.

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Putin comments. Working to an ‘independent Palestinian state’ is a bit rich (Ukraine, anyone?), and Netanyahu will be wondering why they cosied up to Putin at the expense of Ukraine given an independent Palestine state is the opposite of what Netanyahu wants.

Putin will hedge his bets as much as he can, but when push comes to shove Iran is of more value than Israel.

To take a lesson from your earlier post, Palestine was the land of Palestinians long before Ukraine saw itself as an independent Country. One thing they arguably links Ukraine and Israel is that they haven’t been separate countries for all that long ( in the bigger picture of history). I support Ukraine btw.

 

[inbetween]

If you bomb a city then there will be civilian casualties. The more you bomb, the more men, women and children you will kill.

Not from what I could see. They are targeting areas that have civilians and Hamas in, I would suggest probably a lot more civilians.

And what about the Israeli civilians who are being indiscriminately attacked by rockets fired into Israel? Is that okay and should there should be no response then?

The only way to stop that is to stop it with force I reckon?

 

[Don Karleone]

 

[Postman Pep]

Israel aren't targeting Palestinians, they're targeting Hamas. It's really important to make that distinction.

Why? To perpetuate the myth of 'purity of arms'?
Why pretend when the Israeli defence minister isn't even bothering this time?
It's collective punishment.

 

[inbetween]

Why? To perpetuate the myth of 'purity of arms'?
Why pretend when the Israeli defence minister isn't even bothering this time?
It's collective punishment.

But that comes from the tactics of Hamas who want this to happen. Unfortunately the Israeli's will play that game however their argument will come from self-defence and that's how Hamas have allowed it to be framed.

Either way it's a zero sum game.

 

[domalino]

If you bomb a city then there will be civilian casualties. The more you bomb, the more men, women and children you will kill.

Roughly 1 in 100 people in Gaza is a Hamas combatant. There’s 30,000 of them and 2.5m people total.

Given how inaccurate their chosen weapons are (see direct hit to UN run school yesterday) and the extraordinarily high population density of Gaza meaning it’s impossible to find clear boundaries between civilians and combatants, it’s quite likely they’ve not done much better than that ratio and killed fewer than 8 Hamas for the 742 civilians who died yesterday. 45% of Gaza’s population is children, so probably 300-350 of those dead are children.


Collateral damage is part of any war, but there has to be a limit on what’s considered acceptable by most people and its orders of magnitude below what Israel is OK with.


Israel aren’t going to win this war and wipe out Hamas with bombs, we know that because they’ve been doing it for 15 years and only gone backwards in terms of their own national security and weakening Hamas militarily and politically.

So if they keep using them then it shows us if they’re actually serious, or this is just yet another biennial war between the two where a few thousand people die and then the world keeps spinning.

 

[Postman Pep]

But that comes from the tactics of Hamas who want this to happen. Unfortunately the Israeli's will play that game however their argument will come from self-defence and that's how Hamas have allowed it to be framed.

Either way it's a zero sum game.

So the distinction that you said was important to make doesn't apply after all. Glad we cleared that up :)

 

[BringBackSwales]

And what about the Israeli civilians who are being indiscriminately attacked by rockets fired into Israel? Is that okay and should there should be no response then?

The only way to stop that is to stop it with force I reckon?

I didn’t say that. But let’s not pretend this isn’t disgusting on both sides. Just that one group of terrorists seems not to be condemned