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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
