Netanyahu tells Israel ‘We are at war’ after Hamas launches an unprecedented attack, killing at leas

They were worse than an act of war dude, and they were organized by the governing body of Gaza.

What comes/came next is fair game.

 

Of course it isn't. In fact Iran based on "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" rationale is a strong supporter of Hamas while it was instrumental in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq through its backing of Shiite militias in that country. That being said Hamas is a fundamentalist Sunni Islamic organization that has come to bear a strong resemblance to ISIS. Although it hasn't been nearly as brutal as ISIS Hamas treats the remaining 1,000 (out of a population of around 2 million) Palestinian Christians as second class citizens.

 

Fair or not, no one is going to stop them from doing anything, they have the worlds biggest economic bully and arms dealer on their side

 

At what point will you guys stop giving these people the benefit of the doubt?

My goodness.

 

It's because we've seen this dog and pony show before.

The second the left sees an image of a dead Palestinian child, they will ask Israel to stop.

Innocents will die, and that is sad and we will mourn dead, but we ought not even put a pinky between Israel and Hamas the second things get ugly the other way.

 

From a more recent poll. Not exactly positive but it is significantly different than the poll in your link.

How Many Palestinians Currently Support Hamas? Delving into the Latest Dynamics

Perhaps the ultimate irony, ranking right up there of our support of the organization that became al Qaeda when it was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It

 

The West may be foolish and idealistic about the realities of war and collateral damage, when they attempt to ameliorate between these factions. At least there are segments of Western Society that recognize it and don't arbitrarily dismiss it as "thats war".
Perhaps that is the only "saving grace" we have in this situation.

 

So should we hold all republican GWB supporters responsible for the killing of 100s of thousands of Iraqi civilians?

Why give them any benefit of doubt? Why not just slaughter them all?

 

True, but first I think the IDF will have to fight its way east to west across that slice of the Strip that borders Egypt. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the IDF maintained a border presence. If they had, Hamas probably would have destroyed it like it did the other border forts on the north and east side of the Strip.

 

You are drawing a moral equivalency between the American military and Hamas.

There's collateral damage that inevitably comes from war, then there's selectively targeting civilians, terrorizing them, and bragging about it.

There is no comparison.

 

You realize there were Americans who did brag about doing war crimes, there were even pictures. Convictions too. Trump pardoned a literal war criminal.

 

This passage from a piece I posted may be relevant. Never knew about the underground wall, which I feel I should have. Part of why border presence was reduced

Miri and I moved to this community in 2014, immediately after the war that took place that summer between Israel and Hamas, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. We were living at the time in Tel Aviv, a young couple with no children. And the communities on the Gaza border during that war suffered from Hamas’s use of attack tunnels into Israel. They basically dug tunnels under the border. The fighters would emerge from underground on the other side, and they killed and kidnapped soldiers. The scariest thing back then were the tunnels.

But successive Israeli governments, all of them led by Benjamin Netanyahu, invested billions of dollars—I think some of them actually from U.S. support—in constructing an underground wall to prevent Hamas from using those tunnels again. This was a major infrastructure project for the state of Israel. And that project allowed us to sleep at night, because you can deal with rockets falling over your head if you have a safe room in your house, but if terrorists are infiltrating underground and they can walk into your community, that’s a game changer. And so the reason we could live there, and that’s true for everyone, is because of this underground wall that Israel constructed. And in the morning hours of Saturday, October 7, when we heard the gunfire outside our window, we realized that this project is an utter and complete failure.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/amir-tibon-how-his-family-survived-hamas-massacre/675596/

 

If you can't tell the difference between the American military and Hamas you are either evil or an enabler of evil.

 

I am drawing a parallel between arguing for holding ordinary Palestinians responsible for what Hamas does with then also holding ordinary Americans responsible for what American government does.

That was what you were implicitly suggesting in bringing in the poll--never mind that even if it was 53%, that means 47% of Palestinians don't support Hamas as government. But I guess it's also okay to slaughter them as well, right?

You can call it collateral damage.

 

14 Americans killed

 

The difference is obvious, while members of both have committed atrocities and kill civilians unapologetically in wars (and not declared wars mind you), one has the worlds largest economy and nuclear weapons behind it (and a seat on the UN security council) and the other doesn't it, it doesnt even have a state behind it. There is nothing sacrosanct about the US military or Hamas that absolve them from wrongdoing or put them above reproach because of some imagined ideal they purport to be defending.

 

Doesn't surprise me people think this way, our own politics are full of people who are like "guess you shouldnt have voted for Republican if you died of COVID" or "you got mugged, thats what you get for voting Democrat." We have conditioned ourselves for collective punishment too!

 

I am not holding all Palestinians responsible. But at some point, you have to say that the Palestinian people as a whole share some blame in this because they elected Hamas.

That's not to say Israel should be targeting Palestinian people. Of course they shouldn't and they won't. But if they're confronted with the choice of taking down Hamas at the expense of civilian casualties after repeatedly warning Palestinians to leave... I don't expect them to hesitate... nor should they.