Starker on 14/12/2023 at 03:16
I am also correct about West Bank. The international community considers those settlements illegal as well. And Israel is planning to only increase them. I am also correct about the blockade of Gaza causing immense economic distress for the inhabitants, impacting the quality of their lives in ways you can't (or don't want to) imagine.
Tocky on 14/12/2023 at 04:00
I never questioned the west bank. However you are wrong about Gaza being occupied. As I said, that ended in 2005 and Israel even bulldozed their own settlements there.
And I'm sure that importing missiles instead of food and other goods does impact their lives. A shame. When Hamas was elected was when the full blockade of some things not food started. Reckon why?(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
Nicker on 14/12/2023 at 06:22
Palestinian civilian casualty count - rapidly heading towards 20,000 = Likud (yawn).
Ten Israeli soldiers killed during operations = Likud (worst day ever!)
Quote:
Israel ended occupation of Gaza in 2005.
Nope.
mxleader on 14/12/2023 at 11:45
Quote Posted by Nicker
Palestinian civilian casualty count - rapidly heading towards 20,000 = Likud (yawn).
Ten Israeli soldiers killed during operations = Likud (worst day ever!)
Who's counting the bodies? Is an independent organization doing these counts or at least verifying them? Every body count from Hamas is about as believable as the US body counts of NVA and Vietcong guerrillas during the Vietnam war.
Nicker on 14/12/2023 at 14:05
Quote Posted by mxleader
Who's counting the bodies? Is an independent organization doing these counts or at least verifying them? Every body count from Hamas is about as believable as the US body counts of NVA and Vietcong guerrillas during the Vietnam war.
(
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-have-died-gaza-war-how-will-counting-continue-2023-12-06/)
Point is, disproportional response. Not only disproportionate in the casualty count but in the hue and cry over deaths. Likud kills thousands of civilians and it's just the price of war. Hamas kills ten soldiers and it's headline news.
Tocky on 14/12/2023 at 15:27
I think you know Hamas has killed more than soldiers and did it first. As a matter of fact, the key word is response. There is never a "okay boys, time to knock off, we have reached the even quota" in war. Or do you think Israel should take a lot of young female Palestinians and rape them now?
I too think it is past time to hunt down Hamas on foot to lessen civilian casualties though. Palestinians will never have a future until Hamas is gone. Surely we can all agree on that?
mxleader on 14/12/2023 at 15:27
Quote Posted by Nicker
Point is, disproportional response. Not only disproportionate in the casualty count but in the hue and cry over deaths. Likud kills thousands of civilians and it's just the price of war. Hamas kills ten soldiers and it's headline news.
To be fair Hamas is roughly 20-25k strong and is made up of civilian militant terrorists. It's estimated that 75% of Palestine's civilians support Hamas without being forced to. Those are terrible death toll numbers but Hamas started a war they can't win. In this day and age there are far better ways to go about garnering public support for your plight than kidnapping civilians from a neighboring country and stock piling tons of weapons in miles of underground tunnels. Israel isn't going anywhere anytime soon and Palestine should probably sort themselves out soon or they will most certainly be flattened. The reason I say this is because Israel is backed by the west and that means the west has a foothold in the middle east politically, logistically and tactically. The US can tell Israel to back down all it wants and threaten aid but the harsh reality is that the US can't afford to lose Israel as an ally so it will fund them overtly or covertly. And the big and powerful middle east countries don't really want to support Palestine because they are destabilizing the region and that hurts oil profits.
Aja on 14/12/2023 at 16:05
Who estimates that? A poll taken just before the war showed 27% support. You can't trust any polls that are conducted while people are dragging their families' dead bodies out of rubble.
(
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/) This article has interviews with seven "current and former members of Israel's intelligence community," and they basically confirm the obvious, that Israel is treating this war as an excuse to cause as much damage as possible regardless of the civilian cost.
Quote:
“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added...
Quote:
“They will never just hit a high-rise that does not have something we can define as a military target,” said another intelligence source, who carried out previous strikes against power targets. “There will always be a floor in the high-rise [associated with Hamas]. But for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is clear that the target doesn’t have military value that justifies an attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle of a city, with the help of six planes and bombs weighing several tons.”
Indeed, according to sources who were involved in the compiling of power targets in previous wars, although the target file usually contains some kind of alleged association with Hamas or other militant groups, striking the target functions primarily as a “means that allows damage to civil society.” The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.
Tocky on 14/12/2023 at 17:31
Sounds like the perfect example of human shields to hide your offices in with civilians.
