Israel - Palestine Discussion | Post Respectfully | Discuss more, tweet less

Cloud7 said:
They should not have voted for Hamas. Israel has a right to defend itself. What do you expect them to do in this situation.

I think I’ve covered all the talking points there
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It’s already been said numerous times that around half of the population of Palestine was not alive when the last elections were held. And about another 25% were alive but not old enough to vote. It confuses me that you are ignoring the 1.5m (out of 2m) who had no say in this.

I just know that you will find a reason to discount this; your stance is, shall we say, rather transparent.

This whole situation is absolutely horrible, but let’s not deliberately turn it into the good guys defending themselves, against the bad guys who put Hamas in power. It really surprises me that you’ve taken the time to adopt a really strong, hardline position, and yet you’ve not taken the few minutes you’d have needed to educate yourself about Palestinian demographics in what is currently a single party state.
 
Cloud7 said:
I’m covering the usual talking points that have been used to justify the mass murder of civilians. Those should apply in this situation as well right? If not then how can this be explained away?
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You’re aware that far far more Palestinian children have died in the last couple of weeks than Israeli? Are you happy to state openly that you think all child deaths are equally awful?
 
NicolaSacco said:
It’s already been said numerous times that around half of the population of Palestine was not alive when the last elections were held. And about another 25% were alive but not old enough to vote. It confuses me that you are ignoring the 1.5m (out of 2m) who had no say in this.

I just know that you will find a reason to discount this; your stance is, shall we say, rather transparent.

This whole situation is absolutely horrible, but let’s not deliberately turn it into the good guys defending themselves, against the bad guys who put Hamas in power. It really surprises me that you’ve taken the time to adopt a really strong, hardline position, and yet you’ve not taken the few minutes you’d have needed to educate yourself about Palestinian demographics in what is currently a single party state.
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He was being sarcastic
 
MDFC Manager said:
No point in it just being reported because nobody wants to push Israel to reign in these fecking terrorist settlers. It's infuriating and basically why many people are loath to offer even deserved sympathy.
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Attention in Israel to whatever is going on in the WB is low in normal times. Now it's really non existant. Add the fact that the govenment is pro-settlers, that the IDF helps them at times as well and that its attention has also been diverted, and you get this terrible situation.

Some settlers are truly scum.
 
ZupZup said:
For me, the fact that you refer to Occam’s razor shows significant bias given what we know as fact. There were multiple Israeli strikes in that part of Gaza in the preceding few minutes to the hospital being hit. That we know as fact. We also know that the hospital had been previously struck. We know the hospital had received warning to evacuate. It is absolutely plausible that it could have been an Israeli strike whether you think there was a rocket malfunction or not. Then the analysis on both sides ignores the fact that Israel have more ways of intercepting rockets than just Iron Dome.

What is also interesting is the best footage we have of the strike on the hospital has largely been ignored by those who want to say it was a malfunctioned rocket. That should be the footage that adds credence to that claim, but it doesn’t at all.

Then we have other factors like Israeli representatives claiming they did the strike before deleting tweets. The inconsistencies in their explanations of where the rocket was fired from. The falsified audio recordings.

At this point, if you’re still confidently clinging on to it being a rocket malfunction… you have your head in the sand.
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Yes, there were certainly Israeli attacks in the area and it is certainly possible for Israel to have struck the hospital. In fact I almost expect it of them. As you say they've done it before and initially that is what I thought happened here. They've killed thousands of innocent people, they don't have too many qualms about it. The problem with this analysis is that the signature of the strike on this particular hospital at this particular time doesn't seem to match the signature of the weapons Israel is regularly using. Not enough physical destruction, too much fire damage. Right, then maybe Israel used an unusual munition for this specific attack. Ok, but if we accept this then we're adding to the leger of doubt aren't we? It's an out of character munition.

You then add into that the fact that anyone with eyes can see an erratic rocket zipping about and exploding above the hospital in the moments prior to the ground explosion. No-one's "confidently clinging", it's just that the evidence is right there in your face. You say that Israel has more ways of knocking rockets from the sky than just the iron dome. Ok, but is this a usual occurrence? Are there other examples of Israel regularly shooting down missiles above Gaza, or is this the only one? Again I feel we have to make the scenario more unusual in order to implicate Israel. Say Israel did use an alternative interception technique; would this automatically destroy the missile mid air, or is it more feasible for it to plummet from the sky and potentially cause a ground explosion?

Talking about the IDF I don't believe a single word that comes out of their lying mouths. What I think is that in the moments after the explosion everybody panicked. My first thought was that these feckers had killed hundreds of innocent people. Similarly I think it highly plausible that many Israelis thought they had probably hit the hospital. Some went for justifications, others went into blanket denial mode and decided on concocting a bullshit story. That audio recording seems far too convenient to be true; I agree that it's exactly the sort of bullshit someone would come up with if they thought they had something to hide. I'd argue that this is because Israel absolutely did think it had something to hide. Neither side waited for the dust to settle before embarking on narratives.

I'm not sure what you mean about the best footage of the strike. Are you referring to the hand held camera with the whistling?
 
owlo said:
The government itself has 2 of these terrorist loons in Ben gvir and smotrich. Hard to rein them in when their “security minister” is fecking complicit. Hopefully/likely a byproduct of this will be that Netanyahu and his loons are out on their asses next election.
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Didn't Ben Gvir arm them with assault rifles?
 
Giggsyking said:
Emergency arabs summit ongoing now.
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:lol: As if they'd achieve anything.

Just like the rest of the international community, they only wake up when the situation explodes and worry about their own streets turning against them.

The real pressure will come from the major players, that's what the Hamas is betting on. They can jump on the bandwagon then.
 
Ekkie Thump said:
Yes, there were certainly Israeli attacks in the area and it is certainly possible for Israel to have struck the hospital. In fact I almost expect it of them. As you say they've done it before and initially that is what I thought happened here. They've killed thousands of innocent people, they don't have too many qualms about it. The problem with this analysis is that the signature of the strike on this particular hospital at this particular time doesn't seem to match the signature of the weapons Israel is regularly using. Not enough physical destruction, too much fire damage. Right, then maybe Israel used an unusual munition for this specific attack. Ok, but if we accept this then we're adding to the leger of doubt aren't we? It's an out of character munition.

You then add into that the fact that anyone with eyes can see an erratic rocket zipping about and exploding above the hospital in the moments prior to the ground explosion. No-one's "confidently clinging", it's just that the evidence is right there in your face. You say that Israel has more ways of knocking rockets from the sky than just the iron dome. Ok, but is this a usual occurrence? Are there other examples of Israel regularly shooting down missiles above Gaza, or is this the only one? Again I feel we have to make the scenario more unusual in order to implicate Israel. Say Israel did use an alternative interception technique; would this automatically destroy the missile mid air, or is it more feasible for it to plummet from the sky and potentially cause a ground explosion?

Talking about the IDF I don't believe a single word that comes out of their lying mouths. What I think is that in the moments after the explosion everybody panicked. My first thought was that these feckers had killed hundreds of innocent people. Similarly I think it highly plausible that many Israelis thought they had probably hit the hospital. Some went for justifications, others went into blanket denial mode and decided on concocting a bullshit story. That audio recording seems far too convenient to be true; I agree that it's exactly the sort of bullshit someone would come up with if they thought they had something to hide. I'd argue that this is because Israel absolutely did think it had something to hide. Neither side waited for the dust to settle before embarking on narratives.

I'm not sure what you mean about the best footage of the strike. Are you referring to the hand held camera with the whistling?
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This is my take as well. The risk of the peace talks, the incoming President and the sheer fecklessness of the current leadership will have put real pressure on the IDF to release something, immediately showing they were not responsible for 500 odd civilians killed in a hospital. That's the kind of mistake that can turn a PR-war against you. So I can 100% believe the audio is doctored, created fake whatever. It's amateur hour if so, but there you go. They needed something before the light was back and any actual evidence could be gathered, so this is what they did.

Since then, we have actual photographs of the site, numerous additional videos and major military powers have also weighed in using their technology. And so far, those are all pointing in one direction.

Again, the reason I personally am sticking on this point is two-fold:
1. It is textbook misinformation leading to real-world consequences - this misinformation caused the peace talks the President of the US was flying over to attend to be cancelled and
2. The desperation and lengths that some people are willing to go to simply to avoid the cognitive dissonance is a case study imo

When it happened I like everyone else figured it was the Israelis. Given all I've been able to now see, coupled both EU and US military sources saying the same thing point me very clearly towards the most obvious scenario.
 
VorZakone said:
Everyone doing their own analysis. Now it's AP's turn.

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Encourage anyone on the fence just read this, it's pretty thorough and addresses almost all aspects with what evidence we have to date.
 
ZupZup said:
For me, the fact that you refer to Occam’s razor shows significant bias given what we know as fact. There were multiple Israeli strikes in that part of Gaza in the preceding few minutes to the hospital being hit. That we know as fact. We also know that the hospital had been previously struck. We know the hospital had received warning to evacuate. It is absolutely plausible that it could have been an Israeli strike whether you think there was a rocket malfunction or not. Then the analysis on both sides ignores the fact that Israel have more ways of intercepting rockets than just Iron Dome.

What is also interesting is the best footage we have of the strike on the hospital has largely been ignored by those who want to say it was a malfunctioned rocket. That should be the footage that adds credence to that claim, but it doesn’t at all.

Then we have other factors like Israeli representatives claiming they did the strike before deleting tweets. The inconsistencies in their explanations of where the rocket was fired from. The falsified audio recordings.

At this point, if you’re still confidently clinging on to it being a rocket malfunction… you have your head in the sand.
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We can't be 100% certain in the circumstances but a malfunctioning Islamic Jihad missile is by far the most likely cause. No matter how much people may want it to be an Israeli attack.
 
Beachryan said:
Encourage anyone on the fence just read this, it's pretty thorough and addresses almost all aspects with what evidence we have to date.
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Ultimately, the only people who know what happened are Hamas/IJ, the Israelis, and the US. Both of the latter have made their case, which is now being reinforced by most mainstream media. But ultimately, that won't convince the other side since they would like to use the possibility that it came from the Israelis as a way to generate protests in other countries, so absent an Islamic Jihad TikTok video of their members taking selfies prior to launches then reacting to the misfire, I think people will continue to believe anything that supports their political views.
 
the hea said:
I'd suggest all the new explosive experts and splash analysts in here read this thread.

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Unfortunately the Hospital (or its parking lot) isn’t the only place where civilians got killed…


This is the moral stance of what you are all supporting:
 
Pintu said:
Unfortunately the Hospital (or its parking lot) isn’t the only place where civilians got killed…


This is the moral stance of what you are all supporting:
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This has been going on for about 10 days now, where Israelis have been asking people to move south because they are going to invade North Gaza and Gaza City.
 
Raoul said:
I think people will continue to believe anything that supports their political views.
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This is the essence of the debate. If you are left wing or Muslim you support the Palestinians. If you are right wing or Jewish you support Israel. The facts in between are hopelessly lost as both sides are quite happy to fabricate unashamedly and behave appallingly by western standards. Judging either side through the prism of our own secular liberal democracy is to misunderstand everything about the conflict.
 
Giggsyking said:
But you want us to believe the IDF and "neutral American, british analysis"

A second thing. They slaughtered other 3000 human beings in 10 days. Do they not count?
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No. Though I would say that analysts who don't openly align themselves with one side in their twitter bio would be an improvement.

I've already posted in this thread that the most credibly unbiased opinion I've seen so far is from the below:




And he's credibly unbiased because he previously authored this HRW report that found Israel had violated international humanitarian law by targeting civillians in drone strikes, before leaving HRW under a cloud after allegations of pro-Nazi sympathies which senior HRW directors described as an attempt by the Israeli government to smear NGOs who criticise the conduct of the IDF in Gaza.

Therefore his opinion in this case is running against his perceived biases.
 
glazed said:
This is the essence of the debate. If you are left wing or Muslim you support the Palestinians. If you are right wing or Jewish you support Israel. The facts in between are hopelessly lost as both sides are quite happy to fabricate unashamedly and behave appallingly by western standards. Judging either side through the prism of our own secular liberal democracy is to misunderstand everything about the conflict.
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This is factually not true.
 
sullydnl said:
I've already posted in this thread that the most credibly unbiased opinion I've seen so far is from the below:
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It's quite clear that the Israelis did not hit the hospital and 500 people did not die. It was propaganda. The only people still repeating it are those for whom facts don't matter.

That said the Israelis almost certainly will attack the main Gaza hospital at some point in some way given they repeatedly claim that Hamas' main command centre is underneath it. So it was perfectly reasonable to think they had attacked this one. It just so happened not to be true on this occasion.
 
That_Bloke said:
This is factually not true.
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Of course. It's far more complex than that. It is the headline trend though. If you dig down the soft left tends to be more pro Israel (Starmer for example). Some on the far right are anti-semitic. Some Jews are anti-zionist etc.
 
glazed said:
Of course. It's far more complex than that. It is the headline trend though. If you dig down the soft left tends to be more pro Israel (Starmer for example). Some on the far right are anti-semitic. Some Jews are anti-zionist etc.
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I agree with you, and that's exactly why one shouldn't go on making blanket statements or fall for it. The general trend tries to make you pick a side. It's a false dichotomy, there is no side.

In that particular god forsaken region, both people, who have much more in common than what the average Joe knows, want and deserve to live in peace. Side by side, without fearing for the life of their own children.
 
Denis79 said:
Didn't Ben Gvir arm them with assault rifles?
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Yep. His national militia bs. Ironic as gun control laws in Israel are super strict, which was partly why the Hamas attacks in the south were so successful (pistols only apart from the odd communal rifle in synagogues etc)
 
Carolina Red said:
No worries, it happens. The fatal flaw of text messaging… you can’t hear their tone
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I think that discussing this topic, more than any other I can think of on the Caf, I’m guilty of making snap-responses without taking the few extra seconds I probably should to gauge the post and the poster.

It’s such an emotive situation.
 
NicolaSacco said:
It’s already been said numerous times that around half of the population of Palestine was not alive when the last elections were held. And about another 25% were alive but not old enough to vote. It confuses me that you are ignoring the 1.5m (out of 2m) who had no say in this.

I just know that you will find a reason to discount this; your stance is, shall we say, rather transparent.

This whole situation is absolutely horrible, but let’s not deliberately turn it into the good guys defending themselves, against the bad guys who put Hamas in power. It really surprises me that you’ve taken the time to adopt a really strong, hardline position, and yet you’ve not taken the few minutes you’d have needed to educate yourself about Palestinian demographics in what is currently a single party state.
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NicolaSacco said:
You’re aware that far far more Palestinian children have died in the last couple of weeks than Israeli? Are you happy to state openly that you think all child deaths are equally awful?
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Come on man I don’t think I could have been more direct with my sarcasm there
 
That_Bloke said:
I agree with you, and that's exactly why one shouldn't go on making blanket statements or fall for it. The general trend tries to make you pick a side. It's a false dichotomy, there is no side.

In that particular god forsaken region, both people, who have much more in common than what the average Joe knows, want and deserve to live in peace. Side by side, without fearing for the life of their own children.
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There’s no side even within sides, especially on the Jewish/israeli/Zionist side. There are basic principles but the opinions range from very moderate to kill all Muslims in our lands.

And I’m on some Pakistani navy officers telegram; obviously they are very pro Palestinian (they generally advocate even more militant action, describe all israelis as the enemy etc) but a couple of them just shrug and call it fair game and there’s a clear range of opinions, even in that relative extremist fringe
 
NicolaSacco said:
I think that discussing this topic, more than any other I can think of on the Caf, I’m guilty of making snap-responses without taking the few extra seconds I probably should to gauge the post and the poster.

It’s such an emotive situation.
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Think we’re all guilty of it to some extent honestly! I certainly am. (Note to self which I will ignore inside 30 seconds: don’t argue with extremists who wont look at evidence anyway)
 
glazed said:
This is the essence of the debate. If you are left wing or Muslim you support the Palestinians. If you are right wing or Jewish you support Israel. The facts in between are hopelessly lost as both sides are quite happy to fabricate unashamedly and behave appallingly by western standards. Judging either side through the prism of our own secular liberal democracy is to misunderstand everything about the conflict.
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I vehemently disagree. I think a large percentage of people posting here have put politics and religion aside and are just commenting from the heart. I think many are just horrified at the whole situation and disgusted at both sides for the needless loss of life and horrific and brutal events and methods causing so many innocent victims.

I think it goes without saying that everyone here is disgusted at the attacks by Hamas. I also think the majority are disgusted at Israel's response. Some are justifying the response from Israel, but a larger percentage of posters are not justifying or agreeing with Hamas or what they did and are doing, but explaining why and trying to help others understand. Again, I reiterate that doesn't mean people are agreeing with Hamas or supporting them. Again, I think the vast majority, even those with a bias, still are here on the side of the innocent people suffering this nightmare.

I am neither Jewish or Muslim, but I am a socialist. I have posted only a few times in here because I freely admit I am not well versed in the finer intricacies of the history of the region. This thread, from its inception has been incredibly informative and helped me understand more than anywhere else I have seen it discussed, and it has also provided many useful links to outside sources too.

However, the last few pages have been bogged down with some atrocious takes, needless retorts and some incredibly unhelpful posts. That being said, on the whole it's still far more balanced than anywhere else I've seen and again, although bias is clear from some, the majority are only taking sides of the innocent people in the middle of all this, no matter if they are Jewish or Palestinian or a members of the UN or the press or foreign visitors. I would say the facts certainly do matter, it's just that sadly they can be lost or missed due to the needless and pedantic arguments that can overshadow the thread at times. However, that is to be expected in a thread where the topic is highly sensitive and so much emotion, passion and history is present and being discussed.
 
langster said:
I vehemently disagree. I think a large percentage of people posting here have put politics and religion aside and are just commenting from the heart. I think many are just horrified at the whole situation and disgusted at both sides for the needless loss of life and horrific and brutal events and methods causing so many innocent victims.

I think it goes without saying that everyone here is disgusted at the attacks by Hamas. I also think the majority are disgusted at Israel's response. Some are justifying the response from Israel, but a larger percentage of posters are not justifying or agreeing with Hamas or what they did and are doing, but explaining why and trying to help others understand. Again, I reiterate that doesn't mean people are agreeing with Hamas or supporting them. Again, I think the vast majority, even those with a bias, still are here on the side of the innocent people suffering this nightmare.

I am neither Jewish or Muslim, but I am a socialist. I have posted only a few times in here because I freely admit I am not well versed in the finer intricacies of the history of the region. This thread, from its inception has been incredibly informative and helped me understand more than anywhere else I have seen it discussed, and it has also provided many useful links to outside sources too.

However, the last few pages have been bogged down with some atrocious takes, needless retorts and some incredibly unhelpful posts. That being said, on the whole it's still far more balanced than anywhere else I've seen and again, although bias is clear from some, the majority are only taking sides of the innocent people in the middle of all this, no matter if they are Jewish or Palestinian or a members of the UN or the press or foreign visitors. I would say the facts certainly do matter, it's just that sadly they can be lost or missed due to the needless and pedantic arguments that can overshadow the thread at times. However, that is to be expected in a thread where the topic is highly sensitive and so much emotion, passion and history is present and being discussed.
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Solid post mate. Bolded bits are exactly where I’m at.
 
Raoul said:
This has been going on for about 10 days now, where Israelis have been asking people to move south because they are going to invade North Gaza and Gaza City.
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Telling people who hesitate to get ethnically cleansed that they are « terrorist » for 10 days or 20 days don’t make it any more palatable. It is still crazy borderline genocidal rhetoric.

 
Pintu said:
Telling people who hesitate to get ethnically cleansed that they are « terrorist » for 10 days or 20 days don’t make it any more palatable. It is still crazy borderline genocidal rhetoric.

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That's not what they're telling them though. They are asking them to move south. In many ways, it is somewhat unprecedented for a military to give a population a 10 plus day warning that their area isn't safe and that they should move further south.
 
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