Israel formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday, setting the stage for a major military operation in Gaza as fighting rages on Israeli soil. The declaration comes after Hamas, an Islamist militant group, launched a surprise assault this weekend that has so far killed over 600 Israelis.
Saturday was the deadliest day in decades for Israel and came after months of surging violence between Palestinians and Israelis, with the long-running conflict now heading into uncharted and dangerous new territory. Questions remain over how the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus appeared to be caught off guard in one of the country’s worst security failures.
Over 400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as Israel responds with airstrikes in the densely-inhabited enclave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation, warning his country would take “mighty vengeance” and was readying for “a long and difficult war.”
He urged Palestinians living in Gaza to “leave now.”
Whose soil? The soil that was handed to the Zionists by the British? Or the soil that the Zionists violently forced people off of to form a country on stolen land?
Ah yes, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria have no blame for this situation. It’s not like there was a major international body that attempted to create borders and one side agreed to and the other side attempted to exterminate the other in a belief they could win a war, then attempted again a few decades
A party that should be holding the major bag is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Hamas is a major wing of their organization and yet, they keep the border closed. They could set up a major airport in Rafah and open trade routes into Gaza. Israel would have no say, but they don’t.
The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t hold power in Egypt, a military dictator does. Egypt cooperates with Israel on most security matters concerning Gaza, and events of the past few days have shown why. They don’t want extremists running around their country either.
The soil of the sovereign state of israel.
whenever someone uses the term ‘zionist’, you already know they don’t have a clue what they are talking about
In this case it was used absolutely correctly in the first sentence, but retirement in the second. Zionists were the Jewish organization that strove towards a Jewish nation in the location of the biblical land of Zion.
It’s used sometimes to refer to the Israeli people, as descendants of these people, but the term loses meaning when the nation of Israel was created.
So they can/could leave Gaza? People often say they can not just leave Gaza due to checkpoints and what not?
There are multiple cities in the Gaza Strip, the largest being Gaza City. They can leave Gaza City to another city in Palestinian territory but can’t cross the border into Israel/Egypt.
Does this include the West Bank? Cause I don’t see how that’d work…
I’m not sure what you mean by that, the West Bank is on the other side of the country
Edit: Nevermind, I get it. I’m really not sure, I guess Egypt/Jordan could facilitate people moving from Gaza to the West Bank
Netanyahu is saying that for show. It gives the Israeli government a blanket justification to ignore any collateral damage caused in this conflict because they will just claim that they warned them to leave.
Does anybody really believe that the insanely sophisticated security apparatus of Mossad didn’t know these attacks were coming in advance? This has the same stink of the Bush administration ignoring repeated warnings of attacks by Al Qaeda pre-9/11 to justify war in the middle east all over again.
This has the same stink of the Bush administration ignoring repeated warnings of attacks by Al Qaeda pre-9/11 to justify war in the middle east
but did he wanted a war in the middle east?(not trolling i never knew about that teory)
That is such murky territory that any answer requires some degree of speculation.
What is clear is that the Bush administration ignored direct warnings from the CIA regarding credible threats of attacks from Al Qaeda within the United States, and both the FBI and CIA were aware of the identities of some of the hijackers previous to the attacks.
Additionally, the Bush administration overtly and continuously lied about the presence of WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in order to justify their offensive invasion and continued occupation of Iraq.
So, whether they were complicit in allowing 9/11 to occur through malice or incompetence is almost irrelevant because it was still used as a carte blanche excuse to push pre-existing neo-conservative foreign policy objectives.
He wanted an excuse to go after Saddam Hussein, who had reportedly put together and assassination attempt on Bush Sr during a trip to Kuwait. Bush Jr was also surrounded by the PNAC crowd, who had published (before getting into the white house) goals to have a permanent US military presence in theiddle east to secure oil interests, and that they would likely need some catalyzing event to garner public support in the US.
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Bush wanted to finish his daddy’s war, because the Saudi government wanted Iraqi oil production disrupted/brought to heel.
Bush was trying to drum up support for military action against Saddam from day one, but in a sort of lazy way. He spent several months of his first year in office on vacation.
Anyway, Bush had been told about Bin Laden, and Bin Laden’s people being in the US in early August 2001.
There were other warnings, but all of them were ignored.
Here’s another fun fact, Daddy Bush was in a meeting of the Carlyle group on 9/11. Also present, were members of the Saudi royal family, and the Bin Laden family.
Baby Bush personally granted exemptions to the nationwide no-fly zone after 9/11 to let the Bin Laden family members flee to Saudi Arabia.
Also of note, the Carlyle group made a shitload of money in the newest venture, Defense Contracting. Specifically, they owned the production facilities that made the Abrams tank.
There’s going to be some warcrimes coming. I’m not looking forward to this, nor am I looking forward to the increase of Nazis and Communists using this as justification to tar all Jewish people as evil.
My thoughts exactly. The reality of sectarian violence (whether it be ethnic or religious in nature) is the justification of more atrocities. Hurt people hurt people, and the historically oppressed can sometimes find themselves becoming the most effective oppressors. It’s all bad, it’s all sad, and it’s all a reflection on the failures of humanity in extending the saber far more often than the olive branch…
Extending the olive branch certainly has a closer to home meaning when it’s Israel.
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Coming? My guy there are already decapitations, slaughtering civilians in their homes, the music festival massacre, POW executions, rape, idk if it’s specifically a war crime, but the whole kidnapped Jewish children in cages.
I looking forward to the increase of Nazis using this as justification to tar all Jewish people as evil.
Fixed that for you.
Not really. The Communists were quite happy to play into antisemitism and even encouraged it painting all Jewish people as bourgeois elites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union
I’m already seeing users from .grad and .ml defending Hamas’ actions.
Doesn’t matter if left, right, religious, secular, whatever, fascists who think any means justify the ends of the “perfect” state are an ideological cancer and therefore should not be tolerated in a tolerant society.
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This is standard policy for Israel, the same entity that pretends giving people a ‘warning’ before blowing up their home is a good enough excuse.
What a stupid take.
Israel goes out of us way to destroy terrorist INFRASTRUCTURE instead of people, and you whine about it like it’s a bad thing?
If some organization thought my home was an enemy base, and sent me an SMS message to give me enough time to get my kids out, I’d be pissed about the house, but my family would be alive.
Compare that to Hamas who deliberately target civilians.
Any reimbursement for the home and whatever wealth you left there?
We need to get the hard proof out there so we can discredit Bibi and destroy the Israeli far right altogether. It’s the only road to lasting peace
The only road to lasting peace is for Palestinians to agree to a peace deal that doesn’t call for the dismantling of Israel.
They won’t. They choose terrorism every single time.
Stick to dental advice
Not all of them, no.
But that warning will surely save some lives.
Okay “Bibi”? Where are they supposed to go? Are you going to let Palestinian civilians enter Israeli territory? Is the border crossing with Egypt open? Will Egypt let them in? Or do you just want to say this so the thousands of dead civilians get blamed for not leaving?
If people actually cared about the Palestinian civilians, they would have been encouraging them to make peace.
Instead, for decades people have been cheering on their terrorism as if their indiscriminate killing of Jews was justified.
FWIW I agree that the Palestinians haven’t been trying for peace, but at the same time, Israel hasn’t really been serious about keeping the peace either. The whole thing is a mess and each side can go on listing grievances and doling out recriminations, but more violence solves nothing.
Historically, violence has solved a lot of things. Notably the civil war and WWII, which ended slavery and Nazis, respectively.
And Israel kicking their aggressive neighbors’ asses as solved the problem of them worrying about their existence.
And violence against terrorists has greatly reduced their ability to hurt Israel in the long run.
I’d argue that history has shown that violence has been working out pretty well for the Israelis.
Now, the Palestinians on the other hand… They never take out military targets, only civilians, which does nothing to weaken Israel, and only strengthen’s Israel’s resolve.
I think it’s clear that the Palestinians are the ones who need to take a note from Martin Luther King or Gandhi about the benefits of passive resistance.
Nice b8 m8
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Way to go getting angry at random people on the internet.
Is the border crossing with Egypt open? Will Egypt let them in?
Honestly, what’s up with Egypt? Just reading comments one could get the impression Gaza was entirely encircled by Israel. But Egypt is mostly Muslim, too? And shares a 12km border with Gaza.
Goes on to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt–Gaza_border
Ok, I’m at a loss.
Gaza was occupied by Egypt, then by Israel.
Israel is building a steel wall near the Gaza-Egypt border and demolishing homes while fighting terrorists.
Egypt is building a steel wall near the Egypt-Gaza border and demolishing homes while fighting terrorists.
Either way, it seems Egypt is also not an option.
Egypt was the first of the Arab countries to make peace with Israel (tired of getting their asses kicked). They tend to cooperate quite a lot with Israel with respect to the border checkpoints, blockade, etc. My question about it was semi-rhetorical as I know Egypt probably isn’t going to let a flood of Palestinian refugees in.
They’ve been pushed to evacuate to shelters further south from Gaza, which is kind of the only option aside from Egypt opening up. Given that this is all caused by Palestinian terrorists entering Israel, I don’t think anyone can blame them for not opening up their border to let more in
And obviously there’s plenty of innocent civilians who could be admitted no problem, but Hamas is still the governing party with majority support and would undeniably use that as an opportunity to sneak more militants in
It’s hard to believe all of the 400 deaths in the immediate reprisals were military casualties.
Killing civilians just stokes the war engine, driving recruitment up on the military, perpetuating the cycle.
Hamas wants the total destruction of Israel, we can’t make peace with Hamas. Driving the population into supporting Hamas is going to extend the conflict. Giving people better options and hope then Hamas is required for some stabile solution. (Not peace, to have peace people need to be free)
Palestinians voted Hamas into power. They did this to themselves.
After decades of terrorism not working, they opted for more terrorism.
Winning hearts and minds means we have to try to understand why the average person thought Hamas was their best option, and giving them better options.
Also your logic is inconsistent. Palensteniens did this to themselves, so Palestinien civilian deaths are ok and unavoidable… that logic also works if you reverse the names.
So either killing civilians is bad and nobody should do it, or killing civilians is acceptable… both sides have to be measured by the same metric, you can’t have both.
The problem with that argument is that you’ve completely removed intent from it.
Hamas INTENDS to murder innocent civilians… Hamas INTENDS to use civilians as human shields seek that any retaliation will get them killed.
Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to minimum civilian casualties, calling ahead to give I people a chance to evacuate military targets before demolishing them.
So by all means, measure the same metric: intent
Much like the US, when Israeli soldiers and LEO fuck up I’m not convinced they’re held properly accountable. The official purpose isn’t to murder civilians but that only holds water if there’s accountability.
I don’t disagree.
On the other hand, Palestinian police make literally zero effort to reign in their own terrorists.
Intent is interperative and very hard to prove, we can measure non-combatant deaths. If a building is bombed to kill a single solider does it matter if there are 99 non-combatents in the building? What if the wrong building was hit and no soldiers die?
Air raid reprisals by their very nature will have civilian collateral, explaining to people that these civilian deaths are ok but not opposing civilian deaths… is not going to erode support for Hamas.
There used to be a military doctrine that all able bodied people of fighting age were legitimate military targets, the intent isn’t to harm civilians but to diminish military man power reserves. Does that makes it ok to kill civilians who are potential soldiers? If that’s ok, then a dance party is filled with military candidates as well as a refugee shelter…
There are no winners when we say civilian deaths are ok for me but not for thee. Civilians should be able to opt out of fighting… by fleeing to safety…
Intent isn’t hard to prove at all.
Hamas expressly and proudly states is trying to kill Israeli civilians.
Israel has very openly and transparently shown that time and again they give civilians warnings ahead of time that buildings are being targeted and they are given time to evacuate.
This isn’t a mystery.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-airstrike-gaza-kills-8-children-u-s-envoy-arrives-n1267490
Clearly the warning and timing has some flaws…
From all the nations in the world one would expect that Jews should have learned that being an oppressor is not a recipe for peace.
At the end of the day all comes to politics and media propaganda on both sides. Both sides think they are morally right, but the truth is that neither is and that in most cases innocent civilians are suffering the most as a result. Really sad!
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Now what in the goddamn fuck does the jews have to learn from the nazis? What are you talking about man?
Well instead of learning that say oppression of an entire peoples is bad, they’ve gone and done exactly that.
Israel has never had a choice.
Palestinians have NEVER agreed to any peace deal that wouldn’t fully destroy the state of Israel.
Cause Israel is founded upon stolen land.
… Which was formally stolen from the Jews.
I mean, my support for Israel has nothing to do with ancient history, but if your want to go down that road, you lose pretty spectacularly.
Honestly land should belong to the people who live there, not a religious faction. How can Muslims and Jews, who both have claims to the area, ever live in peace when one religion wants to rule over the other? This is why most civilized countries seperate church and state.
Careful, that logic can easily be used to justify prejudice and bigotry towards native populations.
“We’ve had this land for hundreds of years, it’s ours now; doesn’t matter that it’s holy to you or that it was taken from you by force, we’ve been here long enough that it’s ours now.”
To be clear, I’m not defending Israel; just that the argument that the land should belong to whoever lives there could easily be used to justify an American corporation bulldozing a Native American religious site because the site isn’t part of the tribal lands recognized by the US government.
Sounds great. When is the appropriate time to claim “The land belongs to those who live there” in this conflict?
While a great argument at first, it struggles when you consider strategic settling. Russia did so in Crimea and Donbas, Israel does too.
If “land belongs to people who live there” was the decisive law, that would be a strong incentive for genocide and settlers, which we rather want to prevent.
Because of that, I feel the acquisition must not be ignored.
I despise the government of Israel, and everyone who supports it, but killing civilians is not acceptable. I don’t care about dead military personnel, soldiers are a legitimate target, but civilians? Th fuck, Hamas, THE FUCK.
With the acknowledgement that the current attacks are mostly along the Gaza border, where do the West Bank settlers fall in that dichotomy? Because they’re not just passive citizens of an oppressive nation, they’re very much a participant in the oppression. And on the other side, military service in Israel is compulsory. There are soldiers who didn’t want to be soldiers and think occupying the West Bank is wrong that are in that set of legitimate targets. Maybe it just sucks to be them and they should have tried harder to pursue a non-military service option, but it’s not an easy sort where uniform = agent of oppression and civilian = neutral third party.
Settlers moving into occupied territories blur the line. They are neither fully civilian, nor clearly military. Something in between. They fulfill a strategic role, following and protected by armed forces. They also fulfill a strategic role for the negotiation table. And I guess they all know they run a greater risk, if alone for being closer to the frontlines.
The military is the main tool of oppression and as such is a valid target. The individual soldier might not be the issue but the military in its entirety. Of which said soldier is a part of. The individual soldier simply doesn’t matter. And that has been the case in every war that was ever fought. The individual does not matter.
Seems like the Israeli military is a good shield against people fighting “oppression” by slaughtering random innocents at a music festival and stating their goal as eradicating all Jews from the “river to the sea.”
In a country with mandatory military service, I disagree that soldiers are a legitimate target as a blanket statement. As the rich and powerful wage wars, it’s the poor and those with limited options who die.
This is what Hamas is, what they believe, what they do. They’re religious extremists who want genocide, and the only thing that’s stopping them is their physical inability to make it happen.
Tbf it is also what israel is doing in retaliation. Both sides are absolutely terrible
They’re going to eliminate the threat. Which is going to mean hundreds or thousands of deaths. But Hamas knew that. They hide behind civilians to try to make Israel kill them, so they can get more recruits. It’s an intentional strategy. I’m not really interested in people both sidesing this. It’s a dishonest tactic intended to excuse the actions of monsters.
I have many criticisms of Israel, but they do not wish a genocide. Hamas does. There is no both sides. Hamas must be eradicated, and if the Palestinians won’t do it, Israel will, and the Palestinians in Gaza will have no one to blame but themselves for all the pain that process will involve.
it doesn’t seem like you know what criteria makes something a genocide. Either that or you are just bias.
In the same breath you’re expecting Israel to cause thousands of civilian deaths you talk about how it’s wrong to excuse the actions of monsters. At best we can hope the “kills thousands of civilians” is bundled up in your tidy “I have criticisms”.
Hamas is ultimately causing those deaths by forcing the war and then hiding among civilians. It’s unfortunate that Israel doesn’t have magic powers and cannot eliminate these monsters without civilian casualties, but the only way for the Palestinians in Gaza to be free from threats caused by Hamas is to kick Hamas out.
Shit sucks, I get it, but life is a bitch and if you support terrorists you can’t be surprised if the people they attack don’t just bend over and take it up the ass.
Shit sucks, I get it, but life is a bitch and if you support terrorists you can’t be surprised if the people they attack don’t just bend over and take it up the ass.
The exact same words could be applied to Israel.
Nah. They don’t support genocidal terrorists. If Israel wanted a genocide against Palestinians, it would happen.
Well, this sucks
The only truth here
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Saturday’s shock attacks by Hamas led to the deadliest day in decades for Israel and come after months of surging violence between Palestinians and Israelis with the decades-long conflict now heading into uncharted and dangerous new territory.
Netanyahu announced Israeli forces have started an “offensive formation” which will “continue without reservation and without respite until the objectives are achieved.” Among the decisions made by the cabinet is to stop the supply of electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.
The highly coordinated assault, which began Saturday morning, was unprecedented in its scale and scope and came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 War in which Arab states blitzed Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
“We had no warning of any kind, and it was a total surprise that the war broke out this morning,” Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, Israel’s Intelligence Service, told CNN.
“This Iron Dome is being fired up all around us right now, it’s illuminating the sky here,” said CNN’s International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson in Zikim, Israel, referring to the Israeli rocket defense system.
On Saturday he tracked her phone and saw it was located in Gaza; later that day he recognized her in a viral clip of people loaded into the back of a truck flanked by Hamas militants.
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