Middle East Conflict

[Manchester33]

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, there was no discussion of proportionality until Japan surrendered.
Same thing happened when Hitler attacked Britain.
Sadam was bombed back to the stone age in order to get him out of Kuwait.
The military objective is clear - uproot Hamas from Gaza. Any amount of force it take to achieve that objective is considered proportional according to a British military expert.
America deployed two atomic bombs to force Japan to surrender. Israel will drop any amount of ordinance that is required to force Hamas to either surrender or be defeated.
You may not like it. But that is the rule of war.
Israel has asked civilians to move to the South. According to international law, they have complied with the rules. Any civilian that gets caught in the cross fire will be treated as collateral damage. It is unfortunate but that's what happens when you go to war.

Mine and your views on this subject are so far apart it's probably not worth debating this any further.

If you think that killing thousands of completely innocent, defenceless children is acceptable under any circumstances, that's very, very sad. To describe Israel's response as proportional is utterly warped.

The right path is often the hardest and Netanyahu is not a strong enough person to walk it.

 

[Postman Pep]

 

[Don Karleone]

That will be the same Refaat in Gaza who tweeted this.


It’s probably best to leave the propaganda war on Twitter rather than bring it to Bluemoon because you never know whether you’re just giving a platform to someone who only wants to stir up hatred by using video clips with no context.

People are still claiming that Israel cares about civilians, they need to see things like that. In what context is it okay to blow a car up that is trying to move away from you?

 

[west didsblue]

People are still claiming that Israel cares about civilians, they need to see things like that. In what context is it okay to blow a car up that is trying to move away from you?

You don’t know who’s in the car and whether they’re armed combatants and neither do I. Knowing that would add some context. Relying on a tweet from someone who jokes about baking babies is probably not advisable.

 

[inbetween]

Israel and the IDF know just as well as the rest of us that no terrorist group has ever been wiped out by force, and in fact most attempts to do so have made the situation much worse.

They can kill every Hamas militant in Gaza today and Hamas will keep existing. Their numbers will be replenished by the end of the year with civilians they are radicalising right now. The leadership is safe outside the region.


If Israel genuinely wanted to destroy Hamas then they would start opening up diplomatic talks with Qatar, because as long as Qatar is providing safe haven for the leaders and a stream of money then Hamas is going to still exist.

But you cannot tolerate a terrorist force on your doorstep and certainly not one that has proven that it can kill a large number of people with relative ease, that was my point. Obviously Israel isn't going to wipe out Hamas in reality. However if Israel destroys 99% of Hamas's ability to attack Israel then their military goals have been met.

The alternative is Israel does nothing and Israeli's die and that isn't acceptable. They can stop and try to negotiate with Hamas but Hamas does not have a policy where Israel and Palestine live together happily ever after so what is going to be on the negotiating table for Israel?

You have to remember that the only reason to be diplomatic with Hamas is to achieve safety for Palestinians. If the Palestinians were otherwise safe then why should we care if Israel decided to blow Hamas into non-existence?

The Hamas ideology goes away very quickly if the Palestinian people are made safe but the second problem is Iran. Iran are naturally going to cause trouble and they're supporting the Hamas regime because their general geopolitical aim is to eliminate Israel but that isn't going to happen. How can you negotiate out of this?

It's a mess but that's just what the main antagonists want. In the meantime of course Israel is going to line up its threats one by one and attempt to eliminate them for their own safety. I don't really see the problem with that unless you have a greater solution that removes the greater problems such as the Iranian problem too.

 

[Vialli98]

Genocide was what Hamas did to the Israeli civilians on October 7.
Asking civilians to move out from a war zone is complying with the international rules of engagement. The civilians can choose to stay put but Israel will not be held responsible if the civilians get caught in a crossfire.

I'm sorry but this is nonsense. There are people in hospitals literally incapable of moving anywhere. There are elderly people, sick people, literal children whose parents are already dead and no idea what is going on or where to go.

Israel can absolutely and should be held responsible for the horrific war crimes they're committing. Also, the 'warnings' tell people to leave the north and go to the south, where they face more indiscriminate bombings, death and destruction.

Genocide is exactly what Israel is doing. They've so far murdered over 7000 people, many of them children, levelled entire neighbourhoods, left thousands of people homeless, traumatised and severely injured. The idea that they can just order them out of the homes, and if they don't leave, it's they're own fault when they get bombed into oblivion is honestly a disgusting thing to say.

It sounds like Israel can literally do no wrong in your eyes because of Oct 7.

 

[grunge]

You don’t know who’s in the car and whether they’re armed combatants and neither do I. Knowing that would add some context. Relying on a tweet from someone who jokes about baking babies is probably not advisable.

Agreed, we have no idea who was in that car, its entirely possible it was full of civillians trying to leave, its also entirely possible it was a modded car with a rocket launcher in the boot designed as an improvised anti tank weapon.

Currently the information on twitter is all about trusted sources. there is soooooo much crap on there right now if its not from a known well trusted source I tend to think its something untoward.

If this starts to get picked up by reputable sources then thats a different matter.

 

[domalino]

But you cannot tolerate a terrorist force on your doorstep and certainly not one that has proven that it can kill a large number of people with relative ease, that was my point. Obviously Israel isn't going to wipe out Hamas in reality. However if Israel destroys 99% of Hamas's ability to attack Israel then their military goals have been met.

The alternative is Israel does nothing and Israeli's die and that isn't acceptable. They can stop and try to negotiate with Hamas but Hamas does not have a policy where Israel and Palestine live together happily ever after so what is going to be on the negotiating table for Israel?

You have to remember that the only reason to be diplomatic with Hamas is to achieve safety for Palestinians. If the Palestinians were otherwise safe then why would we care if Israel decided to blow Hamas into non-existence?

The Hamas ideology goes away very quickly if the Palestinian people are made safe but the second problem is Iran. Iran are naturally going to cause trouble and they're supporting the Hamas regime because their general geopolitical aim is to eliminate Israel but that isn't going to happen. How can you negotiate out of this?

It's a mess but that's just what the main antagonists want. In the meantime of course Israel is going to line up its threats one by one and attempt to eliminate them for their own safety. I don't really see the problem with that unless you have a greater solution that removes the greater problems such as the Iranian problem too.

You keep talking about eliminating threats as if that's what Israel is going to do by launching a full scale war against Hamas in Gaza. They aren't going to elimate threats any more than the US has elimanted the threat of islamic extremism with its own wars.

Stopping another attack like 7/10 is going to be achieved entirely by looking at Israel's internal problems. Why did it take 12 hours for the military to respond? How is it that civilians from Tel Aviv got to the attacked kibbutzes before the IDF? Why was the border wall rendered completely useless by a bulldozer? Why did all the intelligence and warnings get ignored?

The US didn't stop another 9/11 by invading Afghanistan, it did it by creating the TSA, bringing in xrays of all checked baggage, expanding the air marshalls service, putting reinforced cockpit doors on aircraft, banning passengers from the cockpit, gave guns to pilots, banned liquids, made us remove shoes, full body scanners, put canine units in airports.

That's what stopped a repeat of 9/11, not 20 years of war and occupation in Afghanistan.

As for why Israel would negotiate with Hamas - I didn't say they should - but I would imagine the lives of the 200 hostages would be a pretty good reason. There is no scenario where dropping over 1,000 bombs per day on an area 1/5 the size of greater Manchester is making it more likely they come out alive. Similarly, I don't see how trying to wipe out Hamas in Gaza entirely makes those hostages more likely to survive, it seems to me that if you remove all hope of survival from the hostage takers they have no reason to spare the lives of the hostages.

Now obviously they were always going to do something military in response, and I'm sure that destroying the tunnels and factories where Hamas assembles their rockets is both accomplishable and would have real benefits to Israeli security. Some small targetted assasination raids like they have done countless times before? That would also be effective.

Levelling the Gaza strip and driving the population out of their homes and cutting off all their food doesn't really make Israel any safer, it's just a collective punishment for civilians that isn't actually going to achieve the stated goals of the IDF.


The Iran question is a difficult one, and there's no easy solution, but it's not a coincidence that Iran's influence has risen as the peace process has been abandoned by Israel in favour of slowly annexing Palestine via settlements and evictions.

 

[domalino]

I'm sorry but this is nonsense. There are people in hospitals literally incapable of moving anywhere. There are elderly people, sick people, literal children whose parents are already dead and no idea what is going on or where to go.

Israel can absolutely and should be held responsible for the horrific war crimes they're committing. Also, the 'warnings' tell people to leave the north and go to the south, where they face more indiscriminate bombings, death and destruction.

Genocide is exactly what Israel is doing. They've so far murdered over 7000 people, many of them children, levelled entire neighbourhoods, left thousands of people homeless, traumatised and severely injured. The idea that they can just order them out of the homes, and if they don't leave, it's they're own fault when they get bombed into oblivion is honestly a disgusting thing to say.

It sounds like Israel can literally do no wrong in your eyes because of Oct 7.

It's worth pointing out that the "warnings" are being broadcast by IDF spokesmen in English & Hebrew, over the internet or on TV.

The people supposedly being warned don't speak English and have no internet access or electricity.

They are nothing more than a fig leaf to excuse the death and destruction that has happened and is to come. "Oh well we warned them, not our fault".

Straight out of the IRA play book.

 

[inbetween]

You keep talking about eliminating threats as if that's what Israel is going to do by launching a full scale war against Hamas in Gaza. They aren't going to elimate threats any more than the US has elimanted the threat of islamic extremism with its own wars.

Stopping another attack like 7/10 is going to be achieved entirely by looking at Israel's internal problems. Why did it take 12 hours for the military to respond? How is it that civilians from Tel Aviv got to the attacked kibbutzes before the IDF? Why was the border wall rendered completely useless by a bulldozer? Why did all the intelligence and warnings get ignored?

The US didn't stop another 9/11 by invading Afghanistan, it did it by creating the TSA, bringing in xrays of all checked baggage, expanding the air marshalls service, putting reinforced cockpit doors on aircraft, banning passengers from the cockpit, gave guns to pilots, banned liquids, made us remove shoes, full body scanners, put canine units in airports.

That's what stopped a repeat of 9/11, not 20 years of war and occupation in Afghanistan.

As for why Israel would negotiate with Hamas - I didn't say they should - but I would imagine the lives of the 200 hostages would be a pretty good reason. There is no scenario where dropping over 1,000 bombs per day on an area 1/5 the size of greater Manchester is making it more likely they come out alive. Similarly, I don't see how trying to wipe out Hamas in Gaza entirely makes those hostages more likely to survive, it seems to me that if you remove all hope of survival from the hostage takers they have no reason to spare the lives of the hostages.

Now obviously they were always going to do something military in response, and I'm sure that destroying the tunnels and factories where Hamas assembles their rockets is both accomplishable and would have real benefits to Israeli security. Some small targetted assasination raids like they have done countless times before? That would also be effective.

Levelling the Gaza strip and driving the population out of their homes and cutting off all their food doesn't really make Israel any safer, it's just a collective punishment for civilians that isn't actually going to achieve the stated goals of the IDF.

But what is your solution? Israel can't negotiate with Hamas and it can't apparently bomb or attack Hamas. So really all you're allowing Israel to do is to passively defend itself from Hamas attacks.

Basically you're saying that Hamas are going to attack Israel and Israel should just take it.

Mentioning the US response is quite silly because where are Al Qaeda and where are ISIS/ISIL now? Osama Bin Laden is dead and the leader of ISIS was vapourised, both organisations have been degraded into essentially nothing. The only comparison is the Taliban but they survived because they were sheltered by Qatar just as Hamas are here.

I noticed that you instinctly jumped to criticise the western response to terrorism but you said absolutely nothing about the fact that Syria and Russia did and are still doing exactly the same thing but worse given they bombed civilians in the process....... Interesting!