Gaza

[Nick]

If you are equating Gandhi and Mandela with the likes of Hamas, you are clearly being ridiculous.

Mandela was personally responsible for the murder of over 200 people. Could you explain to me how you separate one murderous terrorist from another? Are you saying they are different because one used a gun and one used rockets? The end result is still an innocent person is dead. 

[srb7677]

Gandhi, like so many are held in high regard when infact they are just another form of terrorist. Mandela being the prime example of a terrorist hailed as a shining light.
Steve Biko knew how to bring about change, unfortunately he was accidentally thrown from a window whilst in police custody.

If you are equating Gandhi and Mandela with the likes of Hamas, you are clearly being ridiculous.

[morayloon]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/live-blog/rcna120978

Like I said, the Americans are very much on Israel's side. Did you really expect Biden not to go along with the propaganda. AFAIAA there has been no conclusive evidence to prove which side was at fault. Unfortunately for the West, The Arab and wider Muslim world have made their minds up.

[Nick]

No? The Americans said "we've got your back". Of course they are going to back the Israelis

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/live-blog/rcna120978

[morayloon]

American intel is saying conclusively that Hamas fires 10 missiles and it was one of those that hit the hospital. I can't image that they would just make that up. 

No? The Americans said "we've got your back". Of course they are going to back the Israelis

[Nick]

I have my own disagreement with the BBC and the biased reporting of Independence and the SNP.
However, the Beeb has reporters in Gaza who know better what is going on than you or I. They reported the Hamas claim that it was an Israeli missile strike. They then reported the Israeli denial. The original claim did not say the hospital was flattened. On the Israeli side, photos can be doctored. There must be something dodgy about the Israeli claim because both Al Jazeera and the BBC have not, AFAIK, came out and said one side or the other is wrong.

Thousands of innocents have been killed. You don't carpet bomband launch thous a densely populated area like Gaza without an extreme number of casualties. It has been said that the Israelis have fired more missiles and dropped more bombs in two weeks than the Americans did in the illegal Iraqi war campaign.

Where is YOUR evidence that the Hamas figures are suspect? The Israelis haven't disputed them. They know that what they are doing is killing and maiming thousands of non combatants.

The only explanation for your explanation is that you have swallowed the Israeli propaganda hook, line & sinker. Do you really think that all Palestinians belong to Hamas and are, therefore, fair targets?

As for calling Hamas terrorists, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. The level of retaliation shows that terrorism is not one sided. Although the 7th October was a heinous crime, the actions of the Israelis are not 'proportionate'. 

I heard Hilary Benn, on QT last night, speaking of the 'slaughter' of Israelis, but, when he spoke about the Palestinians, the word used was 'deaths'. Words count and can enflame an already tense situation.

American intel is saying conclusively that Hamas fires 10 missiles and it was one of those that hit the hospital. I can't image that they would just make that up.  

[morayloon]

Oh dear, that's where you are going wrong. Have the BBC apologised yet? Have the BBC called Hamas terrorists yet?
I didn't put any words in your mouth. I said you believed Hamas.

If you are referring to the current conflict, I don't believe thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and maimed, however the Gazan ministry of health make figures up all the time - they are, of course, Hamas.

Please point out where I have called anyone an antisemite. This is a silly strawman argument

Oh, the irony. Any evidence of a flattened hospital or 500 deaths? Or just a crater in a car park with some damaged motors?was 

I have my own disagreement with the BBC and the biased reporting of Independence and the SNP.
However, the Beeb has reporters in Gaza who know better what is going on than you or I. They reported the Hamas claim that it was an Israeli missile strike. They then reported the Israeli denial. The original claim did not say the hospital was flattened. On the Israeli side, photos can be doctored. There must be something dodgy about the Israeli claim because both Al Jazeera and the BBC have not, AFAIK, came out and said one side or the other is wrong.

Thousands of innocents have been killed. You don't carpet bomband launch thous a densely populated area like Gaza without an extreme number of casualties. It has been said that the Israelis have fired more missiles and dropped more bombs in two weeks than the Americans did in the illegal Iraqi war campaign. 

Where is YOUR evidence that the Hamas figures are suspect? The Israelis haven't disputed them. They know that what they are doing is killing and maiming thousands of non combatants.

The only explanation for your explanation is that you have swallowed the Israeli propaganda hook, line & sinker. Do you really think that all Palestinians belong to Hamas and are, therefore, fair targets?

As for calling Hamas terrorists, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. The level of retaliation shows that terrorism is not one sided. Although the 7th October was a heinous crime, the actions of the Israelis are not 'proportionate'.  

I heard Hilary Benn, on QT last night, speaking of the 'slaughter' of Israelis, but, when he spoke about the Palestinians, the word used was 'deaths'. Words count and can enflame an already tense situation.

[Nick]

What Hamas did was utterly indefensible, and the scum responsible need insofar as it is possible to be killed or captured. No state can allow an organisation like this to exist just across its borders.

But let us not forget that in the usual tit for tat killings, the atrocious Israeli death count already appears to be surpassed by Gazan civilian deaths.

Didn't that Gandhi guy once say that an eye for an eye just makes everyone blind? Wisdom such as that has long been in short supply in the Middle East.

But stepping back for a moment from all the death and fury and anger, the Palestinian Arabs have a great deal to feel aggrieved about and have done for decades, with settlers stealing their land building illegal settlements defended by the IDF, the Palestinians denied their civil rights and a state of their own, many of them suffering decades of military occupation.

This is inevitably going to breed a huge sense of justified grievance and anger, and creates the ideal petri dish for organisations like Hamas to grow and sustain themselves in. Peace can only come in one of two ways. Either a unified state with full and equal rights for Arabs as well as Israelis. Or two separate sovereign states. Israel will never concede the former through fear of so many Arabs outvoting them. And any prospect of the latter is being undermined constantly by settler land grabs and total opposition by right wing elements inside Israel itself, who insist the entire West Bank - which they call Samaria and Judea - is or ought to be an integral part of Israel because the bible says so. Yet never a thought of granting full rights to the Palestinians already living there. They are simply regarded as an encumbrance that should just go away someplace else.

The last time a leader of Israel sought genuine peace with the Palestinians based on the idea of a two state solution, a right wing Israeli assassinated him for it. Whilst hostile extremist elements amongst the Palestinians constantly sought to undermine progress towards peace by continuing to attack Israel. When the last Israeli leader to seriously seek peace was assassinated for doing so, the Israeli people voted for a right wing government which quickly collapsed the Oslo peace accords.

We now have in the Middle East a self perpetuating and self reinforcing problem guaranteeing much hostility and bloodshed, with Israeli hostility and land thefts constantly strengthening Palestinian extremists, whilst the attacks of the latter constantly push Israel ever further to the right and away from peace.

It seems unlikely to me now that any genuine initiative for peace can emerge or survive within either Israel or the Palestinians, and even if it does the other side is unlikely to cooperate. Peace can only really be brought about now by pressure from outside, but there is little sign of that either.

The atrocities of Hamas in their latest deadly attack, and all the Gazan civilian dead since then, have just driven both sides into positions of ever greater intransigence and hatred towards one another.

Israel needs to stop the land thefts and withdraw all its settlers from the West Bank, in return for an international guarantee of its borders. But it also needs to deal with the threat of Hamas as well. Both sides need to create a sound basis for a working peace whilst dealing with extremists on their own sides. Yet the will to do any of this seems lacking on both sides right now, both fuelled by rage at what the other has done or is doing to them.

Gandhi, like so many are held in high regard when infact they are just another form of terrorist. Mandela being the prime example of a terrorist hailed as a shining light. 
Steve Biko knew how to bring about change, unfortunately he was accidentally thrown from a window whilst in police custody. 

[srb7677]

Oh, the irony. Any evidence of a flattened hospital or 500 deaths? Or just a crater in a car park with some damaged motors?

This has not just been something put out by Hamas, but reported on by reporters on the ground working for a variety of fairly reputable news outlets. We have been shown the footage. That severe damage was done to a hospital where many were taking shelter, as a result of a huge explosion cannot be denied by any reasonable person, just because the facts are inconvenient. That is after all how holocaust deniers think.

What this explosion does not prove of course is who caused it and why, and whether or not it was by accident or design. The default assumption by many is that it was the result of an Israeli air strike, though Israel have denied this. But they have denied attacks on hospitals before which it later became clear they were guilty of. But if they did do this, we still wouldnt know without an admission whether it was by accident or a deliberate act. Careless targetting is probably more likely than deliberate malice, but we cannot know for sure.

Israel has stated that the explosion was likely the result of a rocket firing failure by Islamic Jihad, though it is difficult to know how they would know this. But if this is the cause, it would have taken more than a single rocket. They are not exactly cruise missiles after all. But it is conceivable that a mini-arsenal of a number of rockets exploding could cause such damage. Whether such a thing would have been an accident or a deliberate act to blame on Israel is unknowable, but these extremist fanatics are certainly capable of the latter. They are not known to value the lives of their own people overmuch after all

Personally, I believe a carelessly aimed Israeli airstrike hitting the wrong target is most likely, but thats just an opinion of mine. Because right now the evidence is inconclusive either way, so I guess we can all reach our own conclusions about the balance of probabilities.

[srb7677]

What Hamas did was utterly indefensible, and the scum responsible need insofar as it is possible to be killed or captured. No state can allow an organisation like this to exist just across its borders.

But let us not forget that in the usual tit for tat killings, the atrocious Israeli death count already appears to be surpassed by Gazan civilian deaths.

Didn't that Gandhi guy once say that an eye for an eye just makes everyone blind? Wisdom such as that has long been in short supply in the Middle East.

But stepping back for a moment from all the death and fury and anger, the Palestinian Arabs have a great deal to feel aggrieved about and have done for decades, with settlers stealing their land building illegal settlements defended by the IDF, the Palestinians denied their civil rights and a state of their own, many of them suffering decades of military occupation.

This is inevitably going to breed a huge sense of justified grievance and anger, and creates the ideal petri dish for organisations like Hamas to grow and sustain themselves in. Peace can only come in one of two ways. Either a unified state with full and equal rights for Arabs as well as Israelis. Or two separate sovereign states. Israel will never concede the former through fear of so many Arabs outvoting them. And any prospect of the latter is being undermined constantly by settler land grabs and total opposition by right wing elements inside Israel itself, who insist the entire West Bank - which they call Samaria and Judea - is or ought to be an integral part of Israel because the bible says so. Yet never a thought of granting full rights to the Palestinians already living there. They are simply regarded as an encumbrance that should just go away someplace else.

The last time a leader of Israel sought genuine peace with the Palestinians based on the idea of a two state solution, a right wing Israeli assassinated him for it. Whilst hostile extremist elements amongst the Palestinians constantly sought to undermine progress towards peace by continuing to attack Israel. When the last Israeli leader to seriously seek peace was assassinated for doing so, the Israeli people voted for a right wing government which quickly collapsed the Oslo peace accords.

We now have in the Middle East a self perpetuating and self reinforcing problem guaranteeing much hostility and bloodshed, with Israeli hostility and land thefts constantly strengthening Palestinian extremists, whilst the attacks of the latter constantly push Israel ever further to the right and away from peace.

It seems unlikely to me now that any genuine initiative for peace can emerge or survive within either Israel or the Palestinians, and even if it does the other side is unlikely to cooperate. Peace can only really be brought about now by pressure from outside, but there is little sign of that either.

The atrocities of Hamas in their latest deadly attack, and all the Gazan civilian dead since then, have just driven both sides into positions of ever greater intransigence and hatred towards one another.

Israel needs to stop the land thefts and withdraw all its settlers from the West Bank, in return for an international guarantee of its borders. But it also needs to deal with the threat of Hamas as well. Both sides need to create a sound basis for a working peace whilst dealing with extremists on their own sides. Yet the will to do any of this seems lacking on both sides right now, both fuelled by rage at what the other has done or is doing to them.

[Barry]

Like anyone else not in Gaza, I watch TV: BBC news & Al Jazeera.

Oh dear, that's where you are going wrong. Have the BBC apologised yet? Have the BBC called Hamas terrorists yet?

I don't think you should even attempt to put words in my mouth. I have never accepted what Hamas did was in any way acceptable. 

I didn't put any words in your mouth. I said you believed Hamas.

However, Israel's claim that it is defending itself, having killed or maimed thousands of innocent civilians, is a rather hollow claim. Who is defending the Palestinians from the indiscriminate, murderous attacks on the people of Gaza.

If you are referring to the current conflict, I don't believe thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and maimed, however the Gazan ministry of health make figures up all the time - they are, of course, Hamas.

Oh, to try and call me an antisemite is rather perplexing. Where have I given support to the killing of Jews?

Please point out where I have called anyone an antisemite. This is a silly strawman argument

You shouldn't make assumptions

Oh, the irony. Any evidence of a flattened hospital or 500 deaths? Or just a crater in a car park with some damaged motors? 

[morayloon]

What a deluded position to take.

There would have to be evidence of war crimes first, Moray.

You are regurgitating the press release of Hamas. You prefer to believe the output of this terrorist scum? They are proscribed for a reason. It's dangerous putting out their nonsense, you help to foment hatred against Israelis. Have you caught up that it was an own goal by Islamic Jihad?

Hamas committed murders in what they did. There's no however. They should and will pay.

Deluded maybe but some compromise is going to have to be made. They all talk of a 2 state solution. Some serious consideration of this must be given. If the Israelis wouldn't accept the 48 deal, what about the pre 1967 borders? My thoughts don't matter in the Grand scheme of things but there has to be some serious dialogue (aided by some Independent states but excluding the USA which has shown it will do nothing to offend, or act against, the Israel)

There have been numerous war crimes - targeting civilians, targeting schools, targeting hospitals, cutting off water, food & electricity and so on.
Isn't it funny how quickly the West were to charge Putin with war crimes but have stayed silent in the face of the genocide being perpetrated by the Israelis.

You accuse me of believing all that Hamas says but then you tell me that, because the Israelis are attempting to cover their tracks by blaming Islamic Jihad, I should accept their version of what happened. You just couldn't make it up!

[morayloon]

How do you have any idea what is going on in Gaza?
Oh, I know, you just believe what Hamas put out. You believe the scum that murdered 1400 people last week, because they were Jews.
Hamas are a bunch of terrorist liars. Don't listen to them.

Like anyone else not in Gaza, I watch TV: BBC news & Al Jazeera. 
I don't think you should even attempt to put words in my mouth. I have never accepted what Hamas did was in any way acceptable. However, Israel's claim that it is defending itself, having killed or maimed thousands of innocent civilians, is a rather hollow claim. Who is defending the Palestinians from the indiscriminate, murderous attacks on the people of Gaza. 
Oh, to try and call me an antisemite is rather perplexing. Where have I given support to the killing of Jews? 
You shouldn't make assumptions

[morayloon]

Israel have denied they shot at the hospital, and it's not beyond reasonable doubt that Hamas did it, they are known for using their own people as shields and the like.

Claim & counterclaim. However the Israelis have shelled hospitals and schools before. As for a Palestinian rocket, I have yet to hear any evidence pointing to their rockets being capable of causing such destruction to the hospital. Think about it,  Hamas is firing rockets into Israel but when have we heard of any damage done?  

[Barry]

Sorry but the Palestinians have suffered for decades. Israel has made land grabs, over that time, with their country massively increasing in area to the detriment of the Palestinians. They are now set to chase the Palestinians out of Gaza.
It remains to be seen if 'Hamas has shot their own cause in the foot'.
I see the Israelis are trying to blame Islamic Jihad for the missile strike on the Baptist hospital
I watched, with incredulity, an interview with a high ranking IDF military officer who denied that there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and that the IDF only targets Hamas positions. That is so palpably untrue. We have all seen the results, of their inhumanity, on news programmes.
If they believe that all their strikes are on Hamas positions, then they must be equating all Palestinians with Hamas. It is the only answer to why they have indiscriminately killed and maimed thousands.

How do you have any idea what is going on in Gaza?
Oh, I know, you just believe what Hamas put out. You believe the scum that murdered 1400 people last week, because they were Jews.
Hamas are a bunch of terrorist liars. Don't listen to them.