Over 100 Israelis have died and more than 900 were injured after rockets were fired from Gaza by Hamas militants, Israeli officials said Saturday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 198 were killed in Gaza and at least 1,610 were injured Saturday in retaliatory attacks from Israel.
“We are at war. We will win,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.
The Israeli Defense Forces earlier declared “a state of alert for war,” according to a statement issued by the IDF.
“Over the past hour, the Hamas terrorist organization launched massive barrages of rockets from Gaza into Israel, and its terrorist operatives have infiltrated into Israel in a number of different locations in the south,” the IDF said early Saturday.
Telling people to just lie down and let their oppressor keep oppressing has historically never worked. Israel will never experience peace without coming to terms with that, because every new generation growing up in those conditions will learn from a young age to hate.
If the Palestinians were actually interested in stopping their oppression, they would stop trying to fight an insurgency against the Israelis. As it is, they are a security threat, and for good reason.
I don’t see why Israel should give quarter to Hamas now, nor should they entertain the idea that Palestinians are being sincere in co-existing with Israelis.
It would be so much easier if Israel just considered them as the enemy, and throw them out of the territory of Israel as they wished. It’s only right for a bunch of sore losers. Let them resist from outside the territory of Israel proper, and seek help and refuge from their Arab “allies”.
Which oppressed peoples have come well out of surrendering to a party that has refused to give concessions?
This is classic victim blaming. It’s also demonstrably false: There have been many lullls in the fighting. And yet the Israeli oppression has never stopped. If anything, Israeli has continued the war crimes of settling occupied territories, and the crimes of Apartheid by tightening the control of the borders of the occupied territories and limiting the movement of the Palestinian position, as well as ramped up racist laws such as the nationality law, and this expansion of oppression has never once stopped when resistance has abated.
This notion that you can end oppression by appeasing your oppressor is not one that has a very successful history in general, and Israel has proven time and time again over a period of decades that it definitely does not work with Israel.
And irrespective of that you fall in the typical trap of thinking you can talk about Palestinians as a unified, single entity, rather than as a mass of people with different views where even if 99.9% were to suddenly decide they trusted Israel would treat them fairly if only they stopped fighting, that would not stop the remaining 0.1%.
Notice how you yourself de facto treats Hamas as a proxy for Palestinians as a whole:
Consider e.g. the IRA, which saw support diminish substantially (while Hamas’ support is still high), and yet still continued an insurgency in a far less oppressive situation until the UK government sat down and actually listened to their concerns and gave concessions.
Israel has created a population where sufficient numbers of people feel they have nothing to live for. There is no realistic scenario here where the insurgency ever stops unless Israel commits total genocide or seeks a negotiated settlement including giving substantial concessions irrespective of whether or not they think they can trust any of the parties.
That is not a question of whether that is fair, or reasonable, or whether it’s the smart think to do for Palestinians to continue.
It is what will happen when you create a situation like this.
So you talk about what Palestinians are “actually interested in”, but the Palestinian people as a whole have zero power to end this because it’d require the total agreement of each and every one of five million individuals. Israel on the other hand has the power to end this, because on their end it only requires the agreement of the state to dial back the oppression enough that support for groups like Hamas loses support, and then negotiate an end to it.
Not even Israel considers the occupied territories theirs. They are not the territory of Israel even under Israeli law. As it is what you’re suggesting here would be a severe violation of international law, a crime against humanity, a violation of a number of UN decrees, and would violate Israeli law as well, as Israel’s actions are only accepted by their own Supreme Court on the basis that Israel’s own government have consistently insisted it’s done under a doctrine of belligerent occupation: In other words, they do consider them the enemy and despite their many war crimes, not even Israel is prepared to commit the level of war crimes you suggest.
It is fairly fascinating yet also shocking how many people here argue for a maximalist position so extreme that even the far-right Israeli government rejects it as too extreme, as have every Israeli government since 1967.
What matters is that they must unequivocally reject Hamas, and work with Israel to eradicate these factions as best they can so that Israel can trust their populace to not harbor terrorists. Only then can the Israeli leadership end the restrictions placed upon the Palestine territories that seek to prevent the inflow of arms and rocket artillery to Hamas.
It is not an illogical act that Israel has done to secure the safety and security of their people.
With the recent artillery attack by Hezbollah, I don’t think there is much question as to where the Palestinian people stand with regards to the Hamas attack on Israel.
Israel does not owe the Palestinians a good outcome. If they keep testing Israel, there is no limit to what Israel can do short of mass-killing genocide. Displacement is the best outcome in an Israeli victory.
False. It takes the will and the courage to out the terrorists amongst them to the Israelis so that the terrorists will be hindered and slowly wiped from prominence.
Or perhaps Hamas will benefit from the reprieve in state suppression, and use the opportunity to import more arms, equipment, and training from Arab countries and bide their time.
Which is why I said it would be so much easier if it could be done. It regretfully can’t be done which is why there’s so much conflict up till this day. The keyword is “if”.
And besides, the Israeli goodwill is running out. I wonder if they might just throw caution to the wind and just do it, given how right wing their government is getting. It would be just, and there will be popcorn in the aftermath and subsequent war for sure.
Asking an oppressed population to collaborate with their oppressors like a bunch of quislings in order to appease the oppressor before they can get peace has never worked.
The have not secured the safety and security of their people, though. What their decades of oppression has bought them is continuous warfare.
So doubling down on the approach of assigning collective blame to a whole population for the actions of some. Who typically assigns collective blame to a whole people for the actions of some? Can you tell me?
So you keep arguing for massive war crimes of a level too extreme even for the far-right Israeli government, in other words.
Ah, so you just want them to be quislings and collaborate with their own oppressors. When has that ever worked again, remind me? This is nothing but an excuse to justify your support for continued oppression.
That is the risk you run when you oppress a population for decades. But if that were to happen, at least they would actually have a moral leg to stand on. Now they do not.
So to make this clear: You’re regretful Israel is unable to carry out what would be one of the worst crimes against humanity since World War 2? Something which would reach stage 8 of Stantons 10 stages of Genocide?
Yikes.
Well, yes, gross human rights violations for decades do eventually tend to piss people off.
Calling crimes against humanity “just”. So much for caring about the millions of innocents you casually are arguing for harming.
Time for a block - debating people who openly not just argue for crimes against humanity, but describe them as “just” is giving extremism unjustified attention.
Oh yes, what reason do they have to not intensify that effort militarily now? They aren’t going to look for peace to solve this anytime soon.
I can blame the whole Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip when Hamas is what they voted for, democratically.
I am an online commentator. Do I look like I hold sway over their policies? This is just the outcome that I expect Israel to pursue, given that the Palestinians have been so belligerent.
And so I see that you support terrorism. A shame.
And so Israel is justified to be worried about the risk, because you handwaved it for them because “they would deserve it”.
If you could relocate these troubled Palestinians somewhere that they can form a new state without all this constant conflict - without breaking up families, I will call that a win because they would have a chance to have a future in autonomy rather than little while in oppression.
It isn’t a humanitarian failure if done right, just don’t scatter them to the world like refugees. It’s not that hard to avoid “genocide”.
I do actually mean that the Israel’s patience has run thin on being amicable with the Palestinians. I don’t know what meaning you had in mind.
The Palestinians started the conflict before the independence of Israel, and they lost even with the aid of the Arab League. If that isn’t a lost cause, I don’t know what is. It’s only just that Israel be given the peace that it has earned, multiple times over.
If you don’t like it, the Arab world is free to try their luck again. It’s better when Israel’s enemies take off their mask so that they can openly wipe the floor with them.