An English family who’d emigrated to Israel not long before were murdered in their car in April. Got a bit of coverage here but these things are so common it takes a major one for it to really be newsworthy.
There's evidence too from Hamas body cameras. Even the TV showed Hamas driving about celebrating with the naked body of a young woman aboard. So, there's plenty of prima facie evidence of atrocities, but hopefully the eventual UN report will be conclusive
As I said, I don't doubt that Hamas atrocities took place. I didn't say that it was all made up, did I? I said that there's a danger of exaggeration. The '40 beheaded babies' is a case in point. It seems that there was a report of a baby having been beheaded and another report of 40 bodies having been found in one location, including babies. This became conflated into 40 babies having been beheaded and reported around the world as fact - even by the POTUS, until the White House had to issue a disclaimer. The whole Hamas operation was a war crime and there were undoubtedly individual atrocities committed within it - which should be condemned by all - but I think we should be careful not to take these sensationalised, and as yet unconfirmed, stories at face value.
Amazingly you still concentrate on the possibility of exaggeration. Although, then again, maybe not amazingly. What do you make of Hamas saying October 7th was "just a rehearsal" and that they'll never stop wanting to wipe Jews off the face of the earth?
What do you make of Israel resuming its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza? How do you think they might achieve their goal of eliminating Hamas? How many more innocent Palestinian children must die?
Yes, and there are rules as to how war should be conducted as set out in the Geneva Conventions. Israel, in engaging in collective punishment, is committing a war crime. Of course, Hamas didn't follow any rules on October 7, but Israel's response can only be justified if you believe that all of the Palestinians of Gaza (nearly half of whom are children) are as guilty of the horrific crimes of that day as the terrorists that committed them.
Nearly all the information coming out of Gaza is controlled by Israel and has been for quite some time.
You say, with confidence, they are Israeli war crimes, but Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. It has chosen to site missiles around schools and hospitals. That's a key factor when determining, in due course, whether Israel's acts in defending its people against more Hamas atrocities, is proportionate. At the end of the day, the problem for the Gazans is not Israel but Hamas, yet they cling onto it like a drug that's killing them.
Of course I don't think any of the innocent victims are guilty of what Hamas did, just as ordinary Jews aren't responsible for the actions of Israel. However, many, many innocent people are dying because Hamas put them in harm's way and couldn’t give a **** about the Palestinian people. We'll just go around in circles on this.
By definition in a strip of land which is as small as the Gaza Strip such things as missiles are always going to be located close to civilian infrastructure. Actually over 50% of the housing units in north Gaza have been destroyed - did they all have missiles stored in them ? Or the water sanitation works which have also been destroyed, or the bakeries. Did the 5,000+ children who have died all have Hamas missiles hidden up their trouser legs ? Or the 64 dead journalists ? Did the use of phosphorous bombs have anything to do with taking out Hamas ? Hamas is, of course the elected government but of what ? A state which has been under constant blockade by Israel not just through the course of this war, but for the last 40 years. I am not siding with Hamas here but the creation of this organization has a lot to do with Israel having progressively stolen Palestinian land over the last 70 years (all of it illegally) and erected an Apartheid state for Jews only on it. The Gaza strip is an overpopulated and narrow strip of land left over after Israel has gorged itself on the rest of Palestine - a strip of land populated by about 50% refugees who belong somewhere else. Israel gave birth to Hamas.
Palestinians are largely authors of their own misfortunes. They have rejected a two state solution. Why did they reject the Oslo Accord? Their only policy is Hamas's, to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. And as for Gaza being so tightly packed that the only place to site a major military facility is under a hospital, that's risible. The billionaire Hamas leaders are more than happy to sacrifice any number of patients to gain a public relations coup. There is no answer to this issue while Palestinian leaders won't compromise. So, in my view, Israel is right to protect its citizens, after it failed to do so in October.
You have to be very naive to believe that the Oslo Accord was anything other than a flawed document - it did not address any of the Palestinian concerns of the time and actually enabled Israel to vastly expand its illegal settlement enterprise.
No one wants to see children injured or killed, Col, and all reasonable steps should be taken to prevent this. But the blame lies only in one place. Hamas were worried that increasingly, Arab states were trading with Israel, and had grown weary of the constant Hamas victimhood. So Hamas's barbaric attack on the kibbutzes was designed to provoking Israel into spilling Muslim blood. Meanwhile the Hamas fat cats live well in Qatar etc. To Hamas, any number of Palestinian children are dispensable.
It is widely seen as a huge opportunity for Palestinian self-governance squandered. Rabin would not have been executed by his own people if it had been favourable to Israel.
I've already had this discussion with him mate. He'll never accept that Palestinians could ever do any wrong.
£38k threshold in the latest Tory attempt to appeal to the base. There’s probably a really obvious reason it’s a dumb idea.
