Hamas blindsides Israel with most serious attack in a generation
Hamas blindsides Israel with most serious attack in a generation
Risk of flare-up between Palestinian militants and Israel has been deepening for months, writes Jeremy Bowen.
Israel was taken by surprise by the most ambitious operation Hamas has ever launched from Gaza.
The scale of what's been happening is unprecedented. Hamas breached the wire that separates Gaza from Israel in multiple places in the most serious cross-border attack Israel has faced in more than a generation.
It came a day after the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 that started a major Middle East war. The significance of the date will not have been lost on the Hamas leadership.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is at war and will exact a heavy price from its enemies.
Videos and photos of dead Israelis, civilians as well as soldiers, are all over social media.
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Everyone choosing a side between Palestine and Israel, but I'm going to take the mega unpopular stance of fuck both these people. Fuck the fundamentalist followers of Abraham, no matter what branch.
They would visit great violence on you in the name of their god if they had the chance. They are murderously self-righteous.
Yeah I'm with you here.
Seems so strange that two sects of the same religion would commit horrid acts of violence against each other, against children, all because at some point some dude may have said some different shit than some other dude at a place like 60 miles away.
I also don't get the side picking. This attack was violent and horrible, but does that wipe away the decades of horrible shit Isreal has done? Seems like two toxic groups are doing toxic shit at each other.
I only feel sorry for the innocent people caught in the cross fire.
They are too similar, so they must go out of the way to villainize and demonize the "other" lest people not feel like they are 100% in the right. Something similar to you but not you might make the regulars of society realize the invisible lines and honestly they don't really want to think about it anyways. Us vs them and the more alike the mora adamant the existence of differences.
Enlightened centrist
Which side should you support? Maybe the only side actually facing genocide.
Israel is kettling Palestine. Palestine has no option but to fight back against israels apartheid.Both sides say they want to eradicate the other but only Israel is actually doing genocide.
I get it. if I was born in Palestine I'd fight too. But if I went to Palestine in the body I currently inhabit, I'd be raped and stoned in the streets for the way I dress.
I've seen videos of children of both cultures calmly telling tourists they should die, that god will kill them, that the children themselves would kill them if they could. The Israeli children are dressed nicer, but the raw hatred is the same. Both cultures suckle their children on self-righteousness. On stories of being 'gods chosen'. If their cultures grow and succeed they wont care that you helped, they'll use their power to subjugate you to their god all the same. Because they're 'special'
You keep talking about rhetoric. Now do reality. Who is being exterminated?
Hint it's not the Jews this time.
Theyre both exterminating each other, and the one with the most power is doing better at it. If Palestine suddenly had more power, they would be doing better at it. HAMAS has as much chance of establishing a peaceful secular democracy as ISIS
No they're not that's the point. Palestine cannot destroy Israel. You act like both sides have the ability to wipe each other out.
Palestine can't destroy Israel, but there are quite a few like minded governments surrounding the country that have attempted that before.
Even specific to this invasion, hamas is suspected to be receiving considerable backing from another country to destabilize Israel or any other myriad reasons. This conflict isn't happening in an isolated bubble with just two sides.
and Israel has had a few years to create a more stable solution.
I would suggest continuing to support illegal settlements in Palestinian land is not conducive.
I agree with you, but I dont agree that they wouldn't destroy Israel given the power.
People forget only one side has access to nuclear weapons on top of a very modern military arsenal.
And? If I blow up somebody's house and family with a $1,000,000 missile while they blow up mine with $150 worth of explosives, does that make one side more right?
No, both side are cooking in hatred. The bigger question isn't "who has the better ability to kill the other side" but rather "who has the better ability to break the cycle, and what can they do towards such means"
The thing is, they were objectively Palestinian homes that were getting blown up and literally stolen right out from under them. It's not "trading blows," it's "this is our land now because God said so, and we have the most high tech weapons on the planet (thanks US) to enforce it.
And apparently they immediately "forgot" what they vowed never to.
To suggest the cost of the armament isn't going to be in any way proportionate to it's capacity for destruction is silly.
They're absolutely not "both exterminating each other". Please do yourself a favor and find some (accurate) death count numbers for every single clash between Israel and Palestine, AT THE VERY LEAST since they began building settlements on Palestinian land.
Every single time, it is the opposite of proportional response. They kill 100x-1000x more. They are slaughtering several orders of magnitude more (and we'll just see it again in the coming days/weeks). The majority of Israelis that have died in these conflicts are IDF. They are soldiers.
On the other hand, Israel TARGETS civilians (including people clearly marked as civilian medics and the press) and fucking children in their "response".
Palestinians could never actually put up an even, proportional battle (for example, Ukraine and Russia seems at least relatively proportionate). What's happening in Israel isn't a battle or a war, it's genocide.
Has your country been attacked / been in any wars?
I assure you no one is trying to do 'proportional' damage. Thats not how anything works. Someone attacks you, you try to crush them.
All the same I wish the US would stop subsidizing Israel because they suck too. They might not do so well against Palestine then.
Maybe the only side actually facing genocide.
For better or worse (probably worse though) the British gave Israel to the jews because they were also facing genocide. So it's not quite as clear cut as you'd like it to be.
Calling this a religious war completely misses the socioeconomic context. Palestine is extremely poor, but they've also been systematically oppressed, had their homes stolen from them, had their rights ripped away, and are treated as basically subhuman.
Religion is the power that's organizing revolutionaries, but it's not the power that's creating revolutionaries.
I think calling it a socioeconomic war strips away all the context of the last 100ish years. These groups are fighting over who gets Jerusalem, because they believe it's holy. The socioeconomic conditions in Palestine are the result of a long holy war that they are losing. Tell me I'm wrong.