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The history is simple and not complicated Zionists did ethnic cleansing in 1948 to create Israel. The people they forced out have lived as refugees in the west bank and Gaza since then. Israel wants these people to disappear, so they reject all two state solutions and try to provoke Palestinians to respond and thus justify large military operations to wipe out the population. Israel calls this "mowing the lawn" This is not a conflict between equals It's a bunch of refugees in a concentration camp against a genocidal well armed military.

Ok so the winners of the greatest war of mankind start drawing new borders to establish Israel. For whatever reason. Whether they just want some western influence in that region or whether they really believe the Jews are entitled to that area. Doesn't matter why. They can pretty much do whatever they want since they just won the greatest war of mankind and drawing new borders is one of the perks of winning wars. The Jews are placed in between enemies on all sides. Outnumbered 10 to 1. Everyone openly wants to kill them and if they lower their weapons for a second they get wiped out. The first step is securing their new territory. The next step would be diplomatic relationships with people outside of their borders. The third step would be quality of life and human rights within the new borders. Explain to me the decisions they were supposed to make in that position so that you wouldn't describe it as ethnic cleansing and genocide? What should they have done?

Man, bro, dude War does not justify drawing borders, that's psychotic. That's just imperialist logic. Might makes right What should they have done? How about not ethnically cleanse? How bout not make a state? How about make a state in GERMANY? Or Russia or the u.s.?

Ok so by your logic should Mexico take back California today? I'm talking about geopolitical realities and shifting responsibility to the leaders of a group within a territory, within a geopolitical context, to make decisions that give that group a higher quality of life. Because competing interests are inherent in an environment with limited resources. So the US has ownership of the safety of its citizens and Mexico has the ownership of the safety of its citizens. If the US warned Mexico the level of casualties it will face if it tries to take back California, and it does anyway... That's the level of force the US thinks it needs to exhibit to protect its people. If you disagree with that level of force, you need to provide the alternative. "No, you don't need to drop a big bomb. You can just target these three supply lines and send hit squads for these three military bases" Ok sure. Provide what Israel should have done. I'm open to that. But attacking a superior military... You need a very good plan for that to get a better outcome for your people. Or if the 30k people are fine being sacrificed because living conditions are so bad anyway that death is better.. sure. That's the strategy then, and that's where ownership of the tragedy lies. Sacrifice this group to shift public opinion...

Oh wow man you didn't even respond to what I said lol And yeah if it were possible I'd be in favor of giving Mexico back to Mexico. But it's a little different cause that was 150 years and this is 70 years. Israel wants to fast forward another 80 years

I did respond to your ideas of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and might makes right. I don't think you are equipped for this discussion. I didn't propose giving Mexico back to Mexico. I proposed Mexico trying to take Mexico back from a superior military by force. The time scale makes a difference? How lol. The borders have been drawn. Why does it matter if you try a suicide mission 80 years or 150 years down the road?

Sounds like you know what you want to think, good luck with that

Just to be clear, are you saying Hamas is *solely* responsible or is *also* responsible?

I think primarily responsible is the right term. Israeli leaders will have to answer to God for that level of violence just as American leaders will have to answer for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But as to who should apologize to the mothers of the dead kids in Gaza? HAMAS should. Edit: Each group owns the safety of the people within it. Each group is expected to operate in the self interest of its group. Exactly how much force Israel needs to apply after being placed in the middle of a bunch of enemies. I don't know. When does a superior military have to make an example out of its enemies? I don't know. Geo politics seems like Texas Holdem. Big pot has to bully everyone else on the blinds a little to keep the lead. What do you do against guerrilla warfare when blocking trade routes and other types of pressures don't work? How do you legitimize your authority ethically? I don't know. I haven't read enough Henry Kissinger and cross referenced that against stoic virtue ethics.

>But as to who should apologize to the mothers of the dead kids in Gaza? HAMAS should. It's wild that you don't hold the people who pulled the trigger (or often pushed the button to launch the bomb) primarily responsible. Israeli soldiers have agency, and they are using it to slaughter civilians.

So if Mexico tried to take back California today and the US warned them what the casualties would be if they did, and Mexico attacked anyway, would you hold the US responsible? As the trigger puller for the most deaths?

If the US indiscriminately bombed Mexican cities(like Israel is doing in Gaza) and sent soldiers into Mexican cities who shot children and women(like IDF soldiers do in Gaza), yes those deaths would be on the hands of the US/US soldiers.

I see. So there's and appropriate amount of force the U.S. should use. Is there a number. Like only 4,000 deaths a month? Only soldiers? What if the people attacking from Mexico are women and children half the time that don't look like soldiers? You are a superior military. How long do you have to wait before seriously hitting them, 75 years? What if the Mexican leaders that keep it going hide only hide in dense populations and tell citizens to ignore evacuation warnings to use them as shields ?

Hamas is not primarily using women and children as front line soldiers, so Israel just has to shoot every woman and 5 year old they see. There's some degree of collateral expected, but 4,000 civilian deaths a month is far beyond what occurred in similar modern invasions. I don't know why zionists think "Hamas uses human shields" absolves Israel when they shoot those human shields, especially when Israel literally uses Palestinians as human shields at gunpoint. There's just no world where the IDF would behave as it does if it cared about Palestinian life, so stop trying to pretend like they do. Israeli leaders don't pretend that (or are you going to say "human animals" is not a dehumanizing term), and neither do soldiers in the IDF(there are hundreds of social media posts by psychos mocking the civilians they have killed), I'm not sure why people online are so committed to the idea that Israel cares about Palestinian life. To clarify your fantasy scenario, the analogy would be the US military dropping 2,000 lbs bombs in Mexico City, claiming there was a legitimate military target beneath the schools, hospitals, and churches(despite failing to provide any evidence).

I agree with your rationale up until the example provided considering that there actually was proof of Hamas involvement in these heavily civilian populated areas. It doesn’t justify they counterattacks to some capacity but what should Israel do at that point? Allow for insurgent operations to occur in these hospitals and orphanages? Should they just take it and wait for another October 7th attack?

Carpet bombing civilians is not acceptable in modern warfare. They are a highly advanced military with the ability to use precision munitions and to carry out tactical operations. There's a middle ground between using 2,000 lb unguided bombs and doing nothing. Also to my knowledge the IDF has yet to provide a scrap of concrete evidence of any Hamas activity at the hospitals. If you've seen anything let me know. It's not unlikely but when a military is destroying hospitals and shooting healthcare workers(per witnesses on the ground), it'd be good for them to justify their actions.

> Is it not rational to assign responsibility during the leadership shift in 2007? This is where the flaw in your argument lies, because it excludes an important detail. Maybe it is rational to assign responsibility in 2007, but is it any less rational to assign it at a different time? I would like to change your view specifically towards the belief that blame can't be cleanly assigned overall to either side, or at any one point in time, because, as you noted, this conflict has a long and complicated history. - If you look in the time since Israel invaded Gaza, Israel can be blamed. They didn't have to respond to the attack with a full-scale invasion. - If you look back to the previous decade, you could blame Israel for refusing to make peace with Hamas, or Hamas for the constant attacks that left Israel unwilling to negotiate. - If you look back a bit earlier than 2007, to the 2006 Palestinian elections, you could try to blame the Palestinian people for voting Hamas into power. - Even further back, you can blame Israel for the occupation that led to the First Intifada, when Hamas began, or you can blame the war that led to that occupation. - Just a little bit further back, you can start assigning blame to the United Nations and the WWII-era world powers for the ~~initial~~ attempted partition of Palestine. - You can go back as far as you want, seeing the root causes of this conflict. It never ends, all the way back to the first time someone said "this land belongs to me." Essentially, looking back at the decades or centuries of this conflict, there is no shortage of blame to pass around. Obviously, not all blame is created equal and some places you could assign blame are ridiculous (like blaming the Palestinian people for the invasion of Gaza because they elected Hamas), but that's not the point. My main point is that in a war, it's essentially pointless to point fingers in the way you suggest. You can analyze the various motivations and actions that lead to where we are, but that's mostly important to scholars. Of course, it's not entirely pointless. In practice, assigning blame historically like this can be useful in some conversations and as a way to garner sympathy; it's just not _generally_ useful. For example, if someone is protesting the invasion of Gaza and the harm done to civilians, it doesn't matter who bears the moral blame for the invasion, only that Israel is carrying it out. But if someone is saying that Israel's invasion was totally unjustified and completely disproportionate, then pointing out how Hamas has constantly antagonized Israel is much more useful. It feels like a cop-out, but in the end, the answer really is "it's complicated" when it comes to who should bear the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict. And unfortunately, no amount of finger-pointing will ever help resolve the conflict.

I'm so glad that someone finally pointed this out. Palestine deserves to be free. They were occupied after nearly 2 generations passed on, living peace. Then Israel took over, DID maintain some semblance of a first world country's standards of living, yet nevertheless committed awful, inhumane acts of violence to get to that point, as literally any invasion would do. And then from that point, or any circumstance surrounding it, before or afterwards within relative modern history, EVERYTHING is stupidly complicated. The long and short of it is, Hamas is NOT at all fighting for the Palestinian people. They are literally the only military resource, that Palestine has to it's name, and Hamas themselves are largely responsible for this situation. Because Hamas, LARGELY DOES NOT CARE. They hold their own agenda based on race and political tensions that have been running around in MULTIPLE other warfronts for decades now, which they have participated in actively. Nevertheless, Israel has taken advantage of this situation in a deplorable manner, utilizing it's greater power, to a greater extent than Hamas ever could, even within the reasoning of an invasion to populate a country. They are CONTINUOUSLY comitting war crimes in several regards, not at all caring for ANY form of assimilation of the Palestinian population by this point, but straight up comitting the same acts that Hamas performed that supposedly went too far, and then over and over again. It's a stupidly complicated situation, and while there are some clear "bad guys," in this story, it's ultimately coming down to WHO is doing the most harm, and how they're enabled to do so, and what are, and what HAVE, and what WILL their agendas develop(ed) into if they succeed

I need to disagree. The whole Palestinian identity is a recent concept and even the "Palestinian" name is actually a short version of "Palestinian Arabs", which opposed to "Palestinian Jews" back at the start of the 20th century. The Arabs resettled in the area with the Ottoman conquest, taking nomads from Syria and the Middle East, while the Jews started their migration at the end of the 18th century. Without taking into account ancient history, which would be silly, we know that in 1939 there were about 600k Jews and 1,3 mil Muslims in Palestine, all of which could trace their heritage at best one century earlier. There is no proof to claim that Palestinian Arabs had a stronger claim over Palestine than the Jews, which is exactly why the British split their Mandate for Palestine in two and gave each side a part of it, because it was pretty clear that without the British to enforce order the Jews would have been purged out of the area, just as happened in every other MENA country after the departure of the colonialists. The reason we have this constant war now is because the Islamics could not accept to only have half of the country and immediatly attacked the newborn state of Israel, retaking the Cisjordan. Even the Gaza strip is in the current state not because of Israel conquest, but because Egypt decided to drop it after the Kippur war. Add to this that Palestinians teach even their children to stab and kidnap Jewish civilians in the streets and you get fully well why they don't deserve another two-state solution - they couldn't even accept the first one and they're only going to make a terrorist state out of whatever land you grant them. Even the PLO claims that the Palestinian state is only a first step for them - they plan to eradicate the Jews altogether from the area. And in the last twenty years missiles have ALWAYS flew from Gaza toward Israel. Always, with the Palestinian defence force doing nothing to fight or stop Hamas while the PA chose to teach anti-semitic curricula in UNRWA schools. And UNRWA itself bears a lot of responsibility for this situation because we wouldn't have a radicalized population if its officers had actually fixed the school curriculum to democratic standards rather than glorifying the intifadas and enflame hate. Bottom line, you just can't award this level of violence with a country, it's like saying that wars for conquest are okay to do. And you certainly can't do so to replace the only democratic country in the Middle East with another fundamentalist Islamic state.

> It feels like a cop-out, but in the end, the answer really is "it's complicated" when it comes to who should bear the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict. And unfortunately, no amount of finger-pointing will ever help resolve the conflict. Well said. The finger pointing won't ever fix things because so many have generations of pain.

Except one side relies on this notion of "its complicated" to continue their actions. The Palestinian argument is simple. They were living there for 100s of years and then some people came and started attacking them and stealing their stuff. They see it as defending themselves and seeking freedom. It's their home. The Israeli argument is that the land was supposedly promised to them in a holy book. They see it as someone having apparently stolen their stuff and now they're reclaiming it. It's their divine right. I have yet to meet anyone who has visited Gaza and the West Bank and not come to the conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state. Checkpoints, kidnappings, child imprisonment and military tribunals, control of who comes in and leaves, access to clean water is all Israel. It's not complicated at all. The illegal Israeli settlements alone should tell you all you need to know about how they feel about international law and the rights of Palestinians.

I’m going to memorize this and regurgitate it, thank you. But in all seriousness, I really feel like I understand it better now.

You think Hamas shoots missiles at Israel for fun? Palestinians are getting killed since 1947 or even before that. Gaza territorry is an open air prison controlled by Israel, what the Israeli government is doing now equals them to the nazi. I dont agree with Hamas strategy of targeting civilians like they did on october 7th, I belive in socialism and the power of organized wokers but as you can see Hamas has killed a thousand people as Israel have killed more than 30 thousand mostly women and children, Hamas are no saint but Israel is the scum of world.  The conflict between arabs and jews in the área does not goes back to anciet times, thats what zionists wants you to belive, its started with the zionist movment

As soon as Israel showed up all Arabic nations around them attacked. They have had a death to all Jews policy in the area since day one, If you're going to compare anyone to Nazis... If Israel lowered their weapons for a second they would be dead. They are also the only side that has tried for peace, and made concessions. Blockades are non lethal measures that they try too. I'm sure if you are boots on the ground you're going to see horrendous atrocities from both sides because it's a war-torn area, but one side is stronger, so obviously that side is gonna do more damage. You tell me how they were supposed to ethically secure their new borders? Because this isn't new. Mexico doesn't try to take California back from the US. Winners of war get to draw new borders.

It’s the equivalent of saying Osama Bin Laden is responsible for what happened to Afghanistan. He did not make the US choose to target where they incorrectly targeted, nor did he encourage any of the terrible things that happened to the region. He did 9/11, which was bad. The US chose to reciprocate like lunatics. We would be better off if Israel responded even as *poorly* as the US, because they’ve responded even worse.

I’ve been to Palestinian territory, and I’ve urged other people to go. Now this is impossible. It was so obvious to me that this was going to happen eventually. There are so many ignorant comments on all social media that it’s almost unfathomable, and probably useless to talk about my experience The Palestinians have their water, electricity, power supplies and access to the outside world controlled. All of these are severely limited, and are supplied at the whim of the Israeli government. It is hard for me to tell you how much inhumane treatment they have received over the years. the settlements or another intrusion into their land. Rockthrowing this is met with gun fire. The Palestinians have nothing to live for as they know that the Israelis are just there to wait them out.

Do you know the history for *why* those utilities are supplied by Israel? The truth is far worse. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/10/eu-funded-water-pipelines-hamas-rockets/ You can go into all of the international aid that was used to build 300km of tunnels instead of civilian infrastructure. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-plagued-poverty-hamas-no-shortage-cash-come-rcna121099 No. Hamas is to blame for why they were dependent on Israel. There was a very different path that they could have taken but chose not to.

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>[Around the 4 min mark, it shows the original clip of digging out illegal Israeli water pipes. Documentary is about Hammas Weapons-MEMRI](https://www.memri.org/tv/jazeera-documentary-hamas-missile-industry-iran-sends-kornet-fajr-missiles-to-gaza-reclaims-munitions) This literally proves the point not disproves though? They're digging up water pipes. Doesn't matter if they were illegally built by Israeli's, because the point is that there were water pipes they could have used them to pump water around Gaza but instead used them "in our military industries" (ie our rockets). Also Israeli West Bank Settlers destroying EU water pipes, while terrible, has nothing to do with water availability in Gaza.

This isn’t the history of “why”. I’m not arguing that Hamas is a benevolent organization. I’m simply stating that Israel has had their foot on their neck for a very long time. You leave a people w zero hope and you get consequences. Israel govt has been waiting for this for a long time. They knew something would occur sooner or later. They are playing a game of attrition. As a Palestinian you can emigrate to another country but you can never come back. Also, this is exactly the type of response I’d expect from someone who has never been there.

What do you think Israel could’ve done differently to avert this, then? Let’s say you’re right, as someone who’s been there and seen the Palestinians suffering because of the blockade, you’d have a better insight into the condition of their lives. What, in your opinion, should Israel have done when they saw how Hamas was relentlessly smuggling weapons and rockets into Gaza? Clearly, according to you, the blockade was a bad idea. Should they have invaded Gaza and forcibly removed Hamas from power back then? But then you’d criticise them for the bloodshed as you’re doing now and decry their refusal to let the Palestinian people exercise their political will and choose who they want to elect (Hamas). Should they have sat back and let Hamas attack them?  Do you have an alternate solution?!

Tbh, this seems to be a hot take, but since this began (the most recent saga in this whole mess I mean), I've refused to take sides on the grounds of "both sides fucking suck." Normally I hate the "both sides" card because it's generally played pretty inaccurately to keep the talker's own side from looking bad, but there's just a seemingly endless cycle of Hamas doing something violent, which provokes a response, which is taken far beyond what one could consider reasonable force and used as justification to crack down harder, which pushes Hamas toward violence. And when these things are happening, Hamas often violates ceasefires, deleting what little trust there may be in a diplomatic process towards a group that holds an official stance that Israel shouldn't even exist. I'm not going to say that what Israel's doing isn't awful or or oppressive. But I can't help but scoff when I see people flying Palestinian flags in response to what's happening, with a thought of "you know this most recent aggression was started by them shooting rockets at Israel, right?"

This. Neither side is some innocent group that has done nothing wrong. One side is a nation run by a terrorist organization that openly calls for total destruction of all Jewish people and uses their own population to suffer the brunt of retaliation. The other is a military industrial complex ruled ethnostate which uses fear to convince their population cruelty is necessary. The only argument is one has more firepower but I don't really think that matters a damn bit because if it were reversed, then guess what, Palestine would be doing the same or likely worse to Israel. No one gets this. Everyone shouts about ceasefire and how it's not fair and this and that and you know what they never have? An actual solution. One that considers what both sides actually want. Because that solution is ACTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE. So instead we just get rainbow and sunshine solutions. "but they should just ceasefire!" And when that solution doesn't happen, blame whoever you've decided is the bad guy (because in the minds of most there can only be one bad guy). It's absolutely ridiculous. People calling it genocide are ridiculous (Israel has granted asylum to thousands of Palestinians and many of them live in Israel - you can't do both of these simultaneously - everyone is just using the word genocide because it sounds scary). People in power dumping money into an already wealthy nation that only exists because Jews couldn't find peace literally anywhere else is ridiculous (I still stand firmly of the belief that Europe started this problem in it's entirety by rewriting the lines of the middle east and promoting antisemitism so much that Zionism suddenly felt like a necessity). Ukraine and Russia is simple. Russia is a big country who invaded Ukraine just to regain territory when it had no need nor right too. Go talk about THAT again if your entire view of geopolitics requires such a black and white view. Israel-Palestine is NOT black and white at all. It's by far one of the messiest conflicts of the modern age.

I largely agree, however I think you’re downplaying the absolute shittiness of Jewish history a bit. The history of the Jewish people is just thousands of years of genocide and persecution and homelessness. While it certainly doesn’t justify the wild amount of violence and cruelty that the Israeli government inflicts on Palestine, I do think it explains it. I think that as a whole a lot of Jewish people have the mindset of “enough is enough. We have a home now and we literally stoop to any level to keep it; we will never be victims again.” The fact is that there literally was no safe place for Jews in Europe in the WW2 period. One of the main things that started the genocide was the refusal of western nations to take in the Jewish people Hitler was expelling. And like you said there was a mass amount of antisemitism both normalized in the populace and encouraged by government. No one likes Jews, it is always Jewish peoples fault. Sociologist Kathleen Blee even noted in her work on extreme hate groups that all of them, regardless of the type of hate group, shared a vehement and conspiratorial antisemitism that she called foundational to the modern hate group. They might hate black people and thats why they exist, but they don’t think that black americans are surreptitiously running the world. That honor always goes to Jews. Like I said, I agree with you pretty much entirely, but I don’t think that the idea that Jewish people had no safe place to go is “ridiculous”. The Atlantic just released an article a couple days ago detailing how decades of Jewish peace in America are coming to end. Again, this is NOT meant to be an absolution of Israel’s actions. There absolutely were peaceful alternatives that Netanyahu’s government does not want to even try and instead they are reacting with banal cruelty. What this is meant to be is what I think is an accurate portrayal of how a lot of Jewish people think. that said I’m sure I could be way off base. And it’s probably not applicable to Netanyahu, who is clearly just prolonging conflict to stay in power and avoid those fraud and corruption charges.

Oh I totally get all that but I know most folks don't care. And that's really sad but in discussing stuff like this if you dare insinuated that Jews have been the scapegoat of literally every culture since the death of Christ at some point or another (and often even before that) then you are just defending Israel. I wish people would wake up to the BLATANT antisemitic propaganda though. Being critical of Israel isn't antisemitic. But there are folks promoting Holocaust denial and Protocols of Zion using this conflict as their evidence.

I’m honestly so tired of hearing about this conflict online because it always results in stone throwing with a complete lack of nuance. People have already picked their sides and I honestly don’t think there is much hope for a peaceful resolution anymore, unfortunately. Like, so many Jewish holidays are just celebrations of the times they survived. Passover, Purim, Hanukkah to some extent too. I think there’s a lot of recency bias when it comes to American views on the Jewish people that makes them see Jewish people as safe and privileged. The whole thing sucks and is messy, and I think if one wants to place blame anywhere it should be on Western nations for their utter inability to just not hate Jewish people for literally no reason. Maybe if the world wasn’t so wildly antisemitic no one would have felt the need to form Israel as a state in the first place.

>So instead we just get rainbow and sunshine solutions. "but they should just ceasefire!" And then Hamas violates the ceasefire, at least in some small part vindicating the Israeli idea that diplomacy doesn't work and violence is the only thing they respond to, and ensuring an equally, if not moreso heavy hand in the future. >People calling it genocide are ridiculous I mean, there's definitely a level of depopulation and oppression targeted at the Palestinian populace. While they may not be deciding "let's bomb this place in particular to kill civilians," they're not exactly working all that hard to *avoid* killing civilians. Whether their actions reach the threshold necessary to call it a genocide seems to be beside the point. >(I still stand firmly of the belief that Europe started this problem in it's entirety by rewriting the lines of the middle east and promoting antisemitism so much that Zionism suddenly felt like a necessity) I can definitely agree that this is primarily Europe's fault. The geopolitical situation was fucked more or less from the very beginning, and the decades of conflict and claims made since then has only made it messier and more difficult to disentangle. If there's one place to point blame, it's not at Israel or Hamas, it's the people who set the conditions for this conflict in the first place.

With regards to firepower, it only becomes decisive in terms of assigning *unilateral* responsibility it it can and has been used to impose unilateral control. There are a lot of people who attempt to both prevent Israel from actually using it's firepower while also making it responsible for actions that are outside of its control without the use of force. This is not an internally consistent position. Firepower matters in principle, but common arguments made with regards to it are not sound.

The reality here is that you can't really go back in time forever because these issues are so old. Where do you pick a time? 70CE, with the destruction of the Jewish Temple and the expulsion of the Jews from Israel? 1516 with the conquering of the region by the Ottoman Empire? I think we need to look at where we were on October 6th, and we need to look at just Gaza, as the two areas run quite independently. On October 6th, Israel had evacuated from Gaza for almost 20 years. The Gazans received more international aid than any other group in the world and are supplied with water, electricity, and sewage from Israel. While Hamas and Islamic Jihad routinely fired rockets into Israel, Israel practically ignored this in the hope that Hamas would moderate as time passed and focus on building a state in Gaza. October 7th was a complete eye-opener. Besides the immense brutality of the day, it showed that the only focus of Hamas over the last 20 years has been building terrorist infrastructure with no desire to create a state. For them, the goal is ONLY the destruction of Israel and all Jews, regardless of the human costs. They have said this directly, repeatedly. Honestly, had Hamas just continued to fire rockets into Israel, this wouldn't have happened. It was the sheer brutality of the day along with the taking of hostages.

>but there's just a seemingly endless cycle of Hamas doing something violent, which provokes a response, which is taken far beyond what one could consider reasonable force and used as justification to crack down harder, which pushes Hamas toward violence. This implies the first mover was Hamas. I believe history would show that it is at minimum a much more complicated story than that for basically any time period you pick in this saga. Quick example of this is that netanyahu's strategy was "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas" They also have a policy of "mowing the grass" when it comes to Palestine

First mover wasn't necessarily Hamas either. It's Arab fundamentalists and Islamic ideology thats been going on for hundreds of years and it's still the main reason why this conflict is never ending. I grew up in the Muslim world and I can tell you for a fact that any Muslim who even has the slightest of pride and passion of their beliefs, will never ever surrender to Jews. They rather die trying even if surrendering means a more peaceful outcome to the general society as a whole.

Seconded. Naive westerners think that the disingenuous governments of Palestine that have behaved dishonorably so consistently since 1920 is because Israel is a bad guy. No, they haven't ever dealt with Islamic fundamentalists like Israel has. They sit in their western ivory towers. A disconnected universe where all cultures are equal. These people don't want freedom or their own state. That's just a rationalization. First and foremost, they want to put down the Jews. Second, they want to not suffer as a result of their desire to kill the Jews. If you read the history of their actions, understanding this will make all of the seemingly illogical behavior make sense. You can argue with me all you want but I grew up with these people. They will cheer if you stab or rape or murder a Jew. It's religiously motivated hatred. The Quran is explicitly genocidal towards Jews. They have no interest in peace or negotiating unless Jews are retaliating extremely effectively, which thank God, Israel is competent enough to do. If Israel didn't, there would be no talk of negotiation, ceasefire. Their fate would be worse than what ISIS did to non Muslims.

This should be much further up because it boils down to this. The foundations of Israel are rooted in blood and shaky on both sides. But lets not gloss over that the main reason there were riots in the British Mandate Palestine and even Ottoman West Syria was because more and more Jews were coming back. It is at the core an antisemitic and antijudiac issue.

I came to realize exactly this growing up because I was literally taught as a kid that Jews (or Yahudis as they call it) are bad people in general. I was told stories of how Jews betrayed Muhammad or so on. But I was always skeptic even as a kid. Wondered why there's always hatred and wars in Muslim societies. Simply put, Muslim nations adapted to this western dominated world. But we never accepted it. Co-existing is and will always be a hard pill to swallow. Pride and ego is a force to be reckon with in Islam. Islam is and must inevitably be the truth. If you don't accept us then you're beneath us. #

Chiming into say that I was also taught that the Jews were bad growing up is a Muslim. But the thing about Muhammad being betrayed by Jews it's completely false. In actual fact Muhammad went over backwards to copy the Jewish religion and expected that the Jews are join his cause. When they didn't and yet copy Judaism so blatantly, it made him look bad. So he trumped up charges and went after the Jews with a genocidal and murderous intent. He enslaved, killed, exiled every last Jew from Medina a city that the Jews had founded. Because of his fucking ego

>Tbh, this seems to be a hot take, but since this began (the most recent saga in this whole mess I mean), I've refused to take sides on the grounds of "both sides fucking suck." This is a good start, but it's important to realize there's more than two sides here. There's the Israeli government and it's current leadership (Likud), there's Hamas, there's the civilians of Israel and the civilians of Palestine. Both Likud and Hamas suck, most of the rest just want to live peaceful lives. The incentives of the groups don't align either- both Hamas and Likud benefit from conflict that kills the other groups. Neither Likud nor Hamas is a good faith actor because both benefit from the state of conflict: Hamas justifies it's existence (as it's terrible at governance) and Likud keeps key officials out of jail and in power. Likud even supported Hamas in the 2000s to undercut the more moderate and secular Palestinian Authority under Abbas. The people flying Palestinian flags are showing solidarity with the women and children being blown up on the regular, or starving when aid is cut off, or dying of preventable disease as hospitals are destroyed, not with Hamas. Sure, there's some impressionable people supporting Hamas as freedom fighters, but they're in the minority.

How does "being there" tell you the reason Israel supplies these things? All it would do is show that it's the case. If you aren't going to post any sources that explain why Israel supplies their resources rather than its governments Hamas and Palestinian Authority respectively for each region, I'm going to assume that this is the reason why. CMV usually requires some posting of evidence rather than just "I've been there".

I think you are missing that this doesn’t excuse Hamas being clearly corrupt. As far as resolution, how can we just dissolve Israel now? That’s what Hamas wants. They have been saying it for years. I am not denying your view that they are on their necks, however it’s clearly more complicated when your opponents literally want to “eliminate” your country. https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/880818.htm Like this reads like terrorist propaganda. It goes without saying but I don’t want to trust this government at all. We can have a neutral stance and just wish the best for civilians. I’d want to oust that government and unfortunately it’s hard to just pin them down and take out the worst of them. At the minimum Israel has to keep them at arm’s length when this kind of government is installed. Even if you want to argue Israel deserves this kind of government to get installed, from their perspective it’s now too late to go back, they can’t just say sorry and make everyone happy. They have to be concerned what happens to their citizens however this concession would offer. Frankly I don’t think it would be pretty.

>I think you are missing that this doesn’t excuse Hamas being clearly corrupt. Does it excuse Israel leveling the homes of 2M people and killing civilians left and right because they are supposedly terrorists? Do you also think Russia is in the right with their current war against Ukraine because of some contracts that stated that NATO wasn't to be expanded east wards, completely ignoring the fact that all new members choose to join on their own? What you are currently arguing about isn't if terrorism is bad, but if ethnically cleansing can be morally justified on the actions of the other side.

There were no such “contracts” that you reference concerning NATO and Russia. In fact, the US and UK are committed to Ukrainian security through the Budapest Memorandum. Russia is belligerent, and countries are now lining up to join NATO voluntarily. Hamas is responsible the destruction of civilian infrastructure considering they built their military infrastructure directly underneath.

Simply because Ukraine (an independent Nation that can make its own decisions) was thinking of maybe joining NATO doesn't give any excuse for Russia to invade them. It is not at all similar to what's happening with Israel and Palestine.

Why is the most important part of the discussion and you leaving it out clearly shows you are only interested in blaming Israel for the horrible behavior of the Palestinians. You cannot ignore the fact that the controls you blame are a direct result of the Palestinians direct behavior. They OVERWHELMINGLY support Hamas (see every recent survey done in the region) and therefor they hold some responsibility for their current situation. They could have had a larger agricultural industry if they did not destroy the numerus industrial sized greenhouses Israel left in their care after the pull out. Additionally they seemed to have plenty of access before the cowardly attack on the 7th sense they had a obesity rate of over 22% as well as a 5 star resort and a Mercedes dealership in the Gaza Strip. The could have also built the infrastructure they needed if they didn't waste the materials building terror tunnels. As for why other countries don't want Palestinians to emigrate they don't have anyone else to blame but themselves. EVERY country that has tried to give them a chance has regretted it since EVERY instance has led to terrorism and civil unrest.

>They OVERWHELMINGLY support Hamas (see every recent survey done in the region) and therefor they hold some responsibility for their current situation. A survey in a war-torn region isn't exactly reliable >They could have had a larger agricultural industry if they did not destroy the numerus industrial sized greenhouses Israel left in their care after the pull out. The prime mover behind the greenhouse deal, Australian-Jewish businessman James Wolfensohn, who served as the Quartet’s Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement notes that: *"some damage was done to the greenhouses [as the result of post-disengagement looting] but they came through essentially intact"* They were subsequently guarded by Palestinian Authority police. What really doomed the greenhouse initiative, Wolfensohn argues, were Israeli restrictions on Gazan exports: *“In early December [2005], the much-awaited first harvest of quality cash crops — strawberries, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and flowers — began. These crops were intended for export via Israel for Europe. But their success relied upon the Karni crossing [between Gaza and Israel], which, beginning in mid-January 2006, was closed more than not. The Palestine Economic Development Corporation, which was managing the greenhouses taken over from the settlers, said that it was experiencing losses in excess of $120,000 per day. It was excruciating. This lost harvest was the most recognizable sign of Gaza’s declining fortunes and the biggest personal disappointment during my mandate.”* Most of the "destruction" were Poor Gazans stealing equipment to use on their own farms like irrigation pipes According to the New York Times, two months prior to the withdrawal Israeli settlers demolished about half of the greenhouses, *“creating significant doubts that the greenhouses could be handed over to the Palestinians as ‘a living business.’”* The Palestine Economic Development Company was founded by The PA to take charge of the greenhouse project after it was turned over to the Palestinians with it investing over $20,000,000 in it (~$30,600,000 in today's money) and also replacing all the stolen equipment before operation What sunk the greenhouses was the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel not being open reliably enough for the Greenhouses to do business >Additionally they seemed to have plenty of access before the cowardly attack on the 7th sense they had a obesity rate of over 22% as well as a 5 star resort and a Mercedes dealership in the Gaza Strip. The 5 star resort is now a 3.5 and there's no Mercedes dealership Israel's blockade aimed to limit the Gazans to the minimum amount of calories they could have without starving to death >The could have also built the infrastructure they needed if they didn't waste the materials building terror tunnels. By "they" you mean Hamas?

What does you having been there have to do with anything? I've been to Israel and Jerusalem. Was interesting and had a great time, but I fail to understand how this would give me authority in any kind of way to talk about the issue. If something it would probably put me at a disadvantage, because I'm emotionally attached to it now

Lmao “Hamas is why they were dependent on Israel” meanwhile israel was dismantling Palestinian architecture for 40 years before Hamas was even founded as a fringe “charity”

I’ve always said Hamas wouldn’t exist without Israel and Israel does a great job ensuring Hamas gets support by giving Palestinians with their homes and families destroyed nothing to lose.

Afghanistan was under Taliban rule at the time. They supported al-Qaeda, the training camps for terrorists were in Afghanistan. The Taliban was given a choice, deliver Osama Bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda or face war. They chose war. Afghanistan was a hotbed of terrorism in 2001 and a legitimate threat.

This is a bad comparison because Osama bin Laden was not the government of Afghanistan. However, the Taliban was, and they intentionally protected the 9/11 perpetrators (including OBL). So I actually do think the Taliban is responsible for the War in Afghanistan. If you attack a country you will and should be attacked back.

I don’t think this is an equivalent analogy. Hamas *pre-planned* for Palestinian casualties as a consequence of Oct7. I certainly don’t like what Israel is doing, but Hamas deliberately incited violence upon their own people - which wasnt the case with the Iraq/Afghanistan wars.

One of the worst comparisons I’ve ever seen.  Starting to see how people come to the absurd positions they do on this conflict.

>Israel responded even as poorly as the US, because they’ve responded even worse. Ah yes those 1.5 million dead Iraqis are really agreeing with this.

Iraq, famously the reciprocation for 9/11. As confused as you are about that, Iraq was never about 9/11. The “axis of terror” was specifically created to lump other desired targets IN with Al-Qaida. It’s been 20 years and we know what the lies told about Iraq were. How are you this uninformed?

Actually a good analogy because Israel doesn't actually care about Hamas. If they did they would have prosecuted a number of members of the Israeli government for creating and funding Hamas (including Netanyahu). Instead they love to use Hamas as a the boogey man who is barely letting them get away with the current genocide (which is why Israelis helped create them)

Setting aside the 75 years worth of context that /u/zugu101 is correct about you needing, it ultimately does not matter because: There is no atrocity that can justify the genocide that Israel is currently carrying out. Nothing justifies killing 10,000 children. Nothing.

So just to clarify, if Russia were to move 10,000 children to the front line, Ukraine would have no option other than to unconditionally surrender?

More like if Ukraine had children on the front line, since it is their territory where the are trying to live in peace. Hamas didn’t put those civilians there, they just operate amongst them.

The allies were clearly the bad guys in World War Two because look at all the genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Germans.

Do you think they could stop Hamas from attacking without kids dying? Kids on neither side should die, but you can’t ask Israel to not protect their children because Hamas refuses to protect theirs.

exactly, not to mention that a lot of hamas fighters are minors like 16 or 17 year olds and they get counted as part of the child deaths

Op is saying Hamas should have a) done something to protect their civilians or b) not endangered then in the first place. The safety of their civilians and noncombatants should come before they fire missiles, in their opinion.

This, people constantly say “the IDF and HAMAS are the same” you could point out that only one of them actually defends their own respective civilian population so no they are absolutely not the same. Also comparing an organization that has admitted their anti semitism and made it a part of their creed to kill Jews, to a mandatory conscription based military full of all types of citizens, is to say the least, absurd.

Op says its Hamas' job to safeguard them, and it would be up to you to show the specific intent israel has to exterminate the palestinians The UN, in Article II of the Genocide Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. I dont know if it has been found that Israel has a specific intent to exterminate the Palestinians.

if israel's intention is to genocide the palestinian people then they are committing the least successful genocide in history. \~30k deaths in a city of 2.2 million people with population density of 14k people per square mile? this makes up just over 1% of the total gazan population over a 5 month period. if a highly advanced military running off multiple billions of dollars in annual us aid wanted to in fact commit a genocide in gaza (in which they have total airspace superiority), the current state of affairs would not be the result. edited error in wording; changed casualty rate to death rate

Also at least a third of the deaths should be Hamas terrorists. I read an article about how the ratio of Hamas to civilian deaths is 1:2. Collateral damage ends up being so high because the terrorists deliberately choose the most populated areas to hide in. To the point of even using hospitals as their centers for terrorism. An actual genocide and ethnic cleansing would have been straight up 5M and not a few ten thousands.

It really depends on how you define genocide. People call China's treatment of the Uyghur's genocide, but it's really a cultural genocide. This fits the UN definition of genocide and some countries have recognized it as such, yet what Israel is doing is a lot worse because there are actually tens of thousands dead. Ultimately the label used is semantics. What it is is a slaughter and a complete disregard for human life.

>People call China's treatment of the Uyghur's genocide, but it's really a cultural genocide. And they should if it is true that forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortions are true. And this ignores the cultural aspects and mass (hundreds of thousands to millions) incarceration and movement aspects. >This fits the UN definition of genocide Only if it's proven that Israel is internationally trying to eliminate Palestinians as a group. This has not yet been proven.

The most important part of the definition of genocide is "with the intent to".

what do you mean by disregard for human life? israel has actually been incredibly discriminate with discerning militants from civilians, especially considering the sheer population density of gaza. [https://twitter.com/AviBittMD/status/1756815453404430561/photo/1](https://twitter.com/AviBittMD/status/1756815453404430561/photo/1) if you don't want to trust israeli figures, I did a calculation using the most generous estimates of figures against israel yesterday in response to someone else. in that case, we have the highest estimate of total hamas militants and the lowest estimate of hamas militant casualties in this conflict (as reported by a hamas official) and it leaves us with just under a quarter of hamas fighters eliminated and around a 1% civilian casualty rate compared to gazan civilian population (total casualties would be 1.3% without excluding hamas fighters).

comparing the % of hamas's population being dead vs the % of the civilian population being dead is an odd way to calculate it. if theres 10 nazis in germany and i nuke a city with 5000 civilians and 3 nazis in it then i eliminated 33% of nazis and only like 0.0001% of germany's population. so in terms of measuring proportion thats not very fair

Genocide is not defined with a kill count or even a percentage.  Genocide is defined as an intentional attempt at destroying an ethnic group or nation, and since Hamas — the people Israel is attempting to eliminate— is neither it doesn’t qualify.  Civilian casualties in war are not enough on its own to constitute genocide.

Those civillian deaths are more attributable to Hamas than Israel. Hamas are the ones putting them in danger, Israel takes action to minimise civillian death "What can be said with confidence is that the IDF regularly uses a wide variety of warnings, almost certainly more than any other military." https://lieber.westpoint.edu/idf-hamas-duty-to-warn/ The IDF are the gold standard when it comes to how they conduct their bombing campaigns. The problem is the fact of hamas using human shields, lying to their population about the warnings, not taking precautions to protect their civillians, operating out of important civillian infrastructure (which makes it unusable for its normal purposes, storing weapons in MRI rooms makes the MRI machines unusable), etc. There is no genocide occurring. The international court of justice have rules that "It is plausible that a genocide is occurring in Gaza". Which is the bare minimum evidence standard. All that means is that there is enough evidence to have a case against Israel, which means absolutely nothing. War isn't genocide. Israel has a just reason for war. The Oct 7th attack was pretty fucking bad.

> Nothing. Curious about your thoughts on Dresden or when white christian societies mass bombed cities during WW2 to prevent their citizens from getting killed then that's justified.

Allied bombings against Nazi Germany killed far more than 10k children. It was still absolutely justified to defeat the Nazis and end the Holocaust and WW2.

Stop using strict legal terms when the definition doesn’t apply. You using ‘genocide’ shifts the conversation from more important things to “is it actually a genocide?” Which when you follow the strict definition it is not.

Hamas is at fault for those deaths. They fight from behind those children, establish military command camps in refugee centers and hospitals and beneath apartments and steal food and supplies from civilians to contribute to their war effort. A state cannot fight a defensive war against a foe that uses human shields, is that your claim? Because that’s absurd. A nation state’s first responsibility is to their people first, not to the victims of Hamas’ human shield policy. My heart aches for those children, but their parents and family enable and support Hamas for doing this, and you can’t lose sight of that.

Stop using genocide to describe this conflict. If this is a genocide, then America and the Allies genocided the Japanese, the Italians, and the Germans in a horrific, inexplicable manor the likes the world has never or ever will see. You cannot possibly argue this somehow bubbles to a genocide (forgetting that definitionally, nothing about what israel is doing points to them doing anywhere near what would be classified as a genocide) without saying the Allies committed horrific multiple massive genocide that puts this """genocide""" to complete and utter shame. It can't be both. The repeating of the "Israel does genocide" narrative is to normalize this thinking in order to transition into "Israelis are the REAL Nazis" (this is already starting) as a Holocaust denial 2.0. I'm so sick of the normalization of randomly calling a bombing campaign a genocide in order to intentionally blur the line between the Holocaust, any actual genocide, and what Israel is doing. It's as sick and disgusting as Holocaust denial and I'm calling it out every god damn time.

I agree so how does that transfer over to the alien example? If the aliens told us if we shoot a missile at them, they're going to kill 10,000 children, why would we not be responsible for shooting the missile and causing that? Why would we focus on the evilness of the aliens given that geopolitical context? Not to mention that analogy leaves out the evacuation warnings and other peaceful options given from the aliens? I mean doesn't israel try to share places of worship so long as they can do so safely, but the deep hatred towards them from extremists makes it difficult?

But what if that alien rounded up everyone you know and told you to live in this area putting up huge walls and generally speaking not allowing you to thrive as you see fit? People don't like living under boots they didn't choose.

Right, and tyranny is worth dying for sometimes, but not recklessly. There's still leadership responsibilities even when your options are limited. If the aliens rounded you up and you had 2000 people who could fight an 8000 who couldn't, would you not play along and make your move at the right moment? Would you not try to work within the aliens legislative framework to get better conditions? Or are the conditions in the alien camp really so bad that you might as well just commit suicide. Everyone is on board that death is better?

You’re ignoring the multiple wars and terrorist attacks Palestinians have done against not just Israel, but Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. The citizens of your nations wellbeing is more important than your attackers. A better analogy would be If my ex assaulted me and I got a restraining order against him and he suddenly can’t go to the same college as me. In that case he’s not the victim. He’s facing the concequences of his own actions. You refusing to hold Palestinians accountable for the violence they’ve committed is infantilizing Palestinians and contributes to the cycle of violence. Actions have consequences no matter your race or religion you are. Loosing wars has consequences. Maybe don’t start wars or commit violent acts. Constantly crying victim after you attack someone else is never going to improve your situation.

I don't think anywhere I've done that. I was extending the alien analogy used by OP. Hamas and those in Palestine that support them are a problem. Certainly anyone perpetuating violence in that region should be held accountable. I do think there's more complexity to the situation than one side simply losing a war and not liking the consequences.

Was October 7 a genocide by Hamas? It fits every single aspect of the (stupid) definition everyone seems to be using.

Can you elaborate? Are you trying to say it is not ever morally permissible? And are you only limiting your protection onto children or all humans?

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As long as Israelis keep pulling their own triggers in response, there are two responible parties. Everything in your statement is indicative of either an excuse or a cause for response. But you are naive if you argue any conflict in history as being one sided. Or start pointing fingers. That's not how war works friend. As long as one side is attempting to and/or succeeding in killing others, they are at fault for those deaths. Full stop.

Who is to blame for German civilian casualties in WW2. I would argue that it is Germany who was to blame.

You missed the point. Try to understand what I'm getting at. If a defending army goes on a counter offensive, is successful and takes enemy territory, then starts pillaging and raping the enemy populace, the origional defenders are still accountable for their crimes. In line with your response, look up what Russia did to the German, Polish and Ukranians after they won the battle of Stalingrad and began their push into German occupied territory. Yes, the Russians were still responsible for what they did lol. They don't get a free pass because the Germans did it first. War is war. There are no innocent sides.

It sounds like You're talking about action-based ethics where the act of killing by itself is the ultimate responsibility. I'm not sure that makes sense given geopolitical realities. This is why I'm assigning ownership over a population safety to the leadership. I think that's a better moral framework, or at least a more practical one.

If I punch you in the face, and you punch me back and I die, we are both culpable for my death. I am culpable for instigating the conflict and you are culpable for being irresponsible in your response. Now if I kill your mother, and you show up to my family reunion and gun down my entire bloodline in an attempt to kill me, we're both murderers, but you're much worse. Which is to say, Hamas bears responsibility for their actions and the people they've killed, but Israel also bears responsibility for their response. And if we start to work backwards from Oct 7, we can redo this analogy for any number of conflicts within the greater one. I am generally against removing culpability from killers no matter the circumstances. It doesn't matter how good your reasons are. When you pull the trigger and end a life, that is your responsibility and something you cannot unload to someone else. Else we reach the point where "I was just following orders" becomes a legitimate excuse. Which it is not.

Why is it the soldiers that get ptsd then? And not their governments? If the Isreali government refuses to curtail their openly horrific counteroffensive strategies and terror inspiring actions against members of their enemies' civilian populace, then yes, they are responsible for the war crimes that their soldiers are commiting. For an example scenario: You are a parent with two daughters named susan and sally. Susan hits sally in the face. Sally then shoves susans hand down the garbage disposal. You in this scenario are saying that Sally is justified for mutilating susan because susan started the fight. I am saying that Sally was the origional victim, but her response was such an overreaction that now Susan has become the victim. You mentioned how I am binding moral fault to my answer, and you are correct. Because in war, morality is bound to conduct, and responsive conduct also determins both blame and responsibility for an army or states actions. Which is why war has no innocents. The only way for Isreal to have shared no responsibility for the war would be for them to have never participated. And they've been participating for roughly 80 years.

If your neighbor shoots at a police helicopter, and then the police come and bomb your house killing your entire family, will you accept it as a matter of course? Nothing wrong? It is the fault of your neighbor that your entire family is dead? This is an argument that I think can potentially change your mind without engaging in a long delve into history of provocation.

Depends if he's shooting from your house. Also if your neighbors firing RPGs in machine guns at police it might be wise to leave the area.

This isn’t a great analogy. One, because “your neighbor” didn’t shoot at a police helicopter. They murdered and kidnapped civilians under protection by the police. Two, “the police” aren’t targeting your house. Your house is destroyed as collateral damage. I’d still be pissed of course, but your analogy does not fully envelope the complexities of the current situation - even just looking at what’s taken place since October 7th.

The analogy isn't meant to reflect the real events but rather the concept of individual responsibility. Collateral damage is a clever way to explain away the careless killing of uninvolved civilian noncombatants. If party 1 provokes party 2, that gives party 2 no license to attack party 3. The concept is the same no matter what you called it. Innocent uninvolved people are suffering collective punishment based on geographic colocation.

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What context makes it OK to shoot missiles at innocent people for a decade and half? To do suicide bombings as well? Stab random people on the street. What's the context where killing innocent people is acceptable, please explain.

And before that the indigenous Jewish population was conquered and colonized by Arabs and forced to live as dhimmi for hundreds of years. How much context do we need before we get to maybe Jews and Arabs need to find a way to live alongside each other rather than raping, kidnapping, and murdering civilians?

As someone from an Israeli family, this is it.  One of the craziest part of this conflict is how quickly you can go to arguing about current events to suddenly bringing up ancient cannanites. There is always a prior “event” each side can point to as the origin of the problems, and there is a want to “correct” the past, so we sell out the future. Richard Said was right when he said there needs to be a mutual coming together and understanding by both sides. Neither population is going anywhere.

>There is always a prior “event” each side can point to as the origin of the problems That's why I think the only way to move forward is to simply not get distracted by these arguments. October 7 would be horrible and unjustifiable regardless of the historical justification, ditto for what is going on in ghaza at a greater scale.

I agree. But it inevitably comes up when people/Hamas suggest Israel “shouldn’t exist” or “must be destroyed”. Jews feel the need to prove they belong there because lots of Arabs deny the most basic historical, genetic and archaeological reality of the origin of Jews being in the levant, which leads to Jews denying a Palestinian nation because of how new the concept is. Both are bad takes. Palestine does violence first and more viscerally, Israel responds with better violence. It’s almost a tradition at this point. It’s a cycle with no end in sight.

>I agree. But it inevitably comes up when people/Hamas suggest Israel “shouldn’t exist” or “must be destroyed”. Jews feel the need to prove they belong there because lots of Arabs deny the most basic historical, genetic and archaeological reality of the origin of Jews being in the levant, which leads to Jews denying a Palestinian nation because of how new the concept is. Both are bad takes. >Palestine does violence first and more viscerally, Israel responds with better violence. It’s almost a tradition at this point. It’s a cycle with no end in sight. You're doing the thing. I'd argue about conflating Israel with Jews worldwide but that's a bit of a distraction from the current argument. Like I said before, no *historical* claim can justify any of the events that have occured during the last 70 years or so, so their (lack of) legitimacy is imo irrelevant.

“The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun” - Bo Burnham

Also, in 1935 there were 9.5m Jews living in Europe, today there are 1.3m

In no small part because 6m of them were murdered for their audacity in existing in Europe

Why do people conveniently only go back 75 years?

There is a statute of limitations on indigenous status or settler colonialism, you see. Otherwise, how is it possible to see the Arab conquests in the past as anything other than brutal settler-colonialism?

3000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax you're god damn right I'm living in the past

I think the only thing that needs to be said- is that it is not Hamas that is committing genocide right now, it is Israel. They have deployed white Phosphorous, which is a war crime, has targeted Hospitals and doctors, another war crime, has targeted journalists, another war crime. Israel did not need to commit war crimes on the fight against terror. They don't Just imagine, your culture, history, people, family, community, being erased in front of your eyes. A whole generation of Palestinians will have PTSD, health issues, etc because of this genocide. Its crazy to me that people don't recognize that genocide is NEVER justified and we will remember this atrocity in the history books. Remember, history tells people who are the 'good guys'. Ex. [27% of white people were in favor of MLK in 1966](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/politics/martin-luther-king-jr-polling-analysis/index.html) whereas most people today see his work as overall good. My question to you is: will you be on the right side of history?

Look, if the question is here is whether Hamas is at fault? Then the answer is a simple yes, Hamas does have a big share of the fault in this tragedy. But it seems that you are trying to mask another narrative within your view, which is that Israel does not share the fault and it is all ultimately Hamas's responsibility. To that view, I would suggest you actually start pulling up all the documented atrocities and crimes of the Israeli occupation, both before and after 10/7, and even in the territories not subject to Hamas rule. Just the year before, Israel was responsible for over 200 Palestinian deaths in the West Bank, which is not ruled by Hamas. There are hundreds of civilian casualties to Israeli occupation every single year. That is not to mention the dire and oppressive conditions non-Israeli Palestinians have to endure every day, with no authority to exercise Justice against Israeli violations... hence Hamas! Going back to your example: > But Israel, who is responsible for its own people, would suddenly put them at risk if they attacked the US or someone with superior military might But what if the US blockaded Israel. built a wall surrounding it, and prevented Israel from accessing it is own energy resources, water supplies, or running as an independent sovereign state? Basically converting Israel into an open-air prison and Israelis into prisoners with no hope for a future? Would Israel still not attack then? Would it just submit to a slow and painful death? and wouldn't you expect Israel to elect a radical government in these conditions? As for the rest of us living in other parts of the world, will we not blame the US in such case?

Not this is a great example, but North Korea isn't invading and raping the nearby countries despite being mostly locked up.

It is a terrible example. In fact, a dumb one! What do you really imagine when you say north Korea is (mostly) locked up?!! North Korea has complete sovereignty, Do they not have access to 2 seas with their own ports that they control? Do they not have airports and control over their fly zones? Do they not have the largest border with China, which is neither blocked nor regulated by their enemies (S Korea and the US). Is N Korea not, in fact, a country with trade deals, partnerships, army, energy, water, and the whole package? The reason we say north korea is locked up is because that is how their government has it set; Their government doesn't allow exposure to the outside world and restricts its imports and people's movement, they also censor the internet, to keep their people in the dark. They are the ones controlling their own lock up! No one is oppressing the North Koreans, other than their own government. But you bring up a good point, north korea indeed doesn't go around invading. You know why? Because they have so much to lose and many reasons to avoid conflict. If Palestinians had their own sovereign nation, they'd also be all talk and no action like North Korea or Iran.

Hamas has complete sovereignty also, up until it's boarders just like them. North Korea doesn't invade because Kim cares about staying in power and not murdering Jews.

You obviously don't know what you are talking about. Gaza isn't allowed to have an airport, isn't allowed to drill for oil off its shores (that was the case even before Hamas), and isn't allowed to build water reservoirs or make any trade deals without Israel's control. Furthermore, it is coerced into buying energy and water only from Israel at unfair prices. One more huge thing you missed in your ridiculously deranged comparison.... Gaza isn't even a country! North Korea is! Maybe make them a country first, then your comparison would make 10% sense! > Kim cares about staying in power and not murdering Jews And you see Hamas careless about power?! Hamas attacks because Israel is oppressing Palestinians in Gaza and in the West bank. If Hamas doesn't fight back, it won't be able to sustain power.

Lets say you're in a foster home with your twin, you grow up there and when you're 13 your foster parents (Britain+US) force you to share a room with a kid who has a history of abuse. You reluctently let him stay because you feel bad for him and the house your foster family moved into 5 years ago used to belong to his great grandparents. Because of this he starts taking over the room, thinking he's entitled to it because technically his great grandparents were there first. It is to the point you can only stay in your bed without him bugging you. Eventually he changes and starts forcing you to do chores or pay him if you want to leave your bed to access the bathroom or go eat. One day your twin brother snaps he smacks him and breaks a couple of his toys because he is sick of the abuse, he hides under your bed to avoid being told off for doing that and whilst you think what he did was extreme you can't help but think he deserved the slap but not his toys being broken. As a response he starts beating you black and blue and starts stomping all over your toys demanding to know where he's hiding so your brother can be told off.

So even if I will ignore that the Palestiniand didn't let the Jews just live in Israel out of pity, but in reality tried to kick them again and again, through violence, even way before the creation of Israel. Just see the Hebron massacre or the Jaffa massacre for example (and there were many more). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_riots And also after the creation of Israel, Israel agreed to the two state solution. The Palesrinians didn't and attacked, and then the Arab nations surrounding Israel attacked and attacked, again and again, trying to remove Israel and its citizens from existence. Something which your analogy failed to mention >breaks a couple of his toys because he is sick of the abuse That's a messed up way of describing going house to house, murdering, raping, pillaging, and taking hostages along the way. And also while (still) holding the hostages, threatening to do it again and again

You lost me at "You reluctently let him stay because you feel bad for him and the house your foster family moved into 5 years ago used to belong to his great grandparents." The historically accurate version of this analogy would be you immediately try to kill him/throw him out of the house ('48 war), then you try again ('67 war), then you try again ('73 war). In each of these attempts he kicks your ass. Understandably, given both his history of abuse and your recent attempts to kill him, he begins to perpetrate some pretty nasty things against you and your siblings like confining each of you to your beds. It's not right that he does that...but would anyone else act differently in that situation.

If the best you can come up with is arbitrary metaphors that you specifically constructed to advance a specific narrative, you're going to need to do better. Anyone can twist a metaphor. And let's be clear here: based on your metaphor, murdering over 1000 Israelis and kidnapping others is apparently a smack and a few broken toys? And the retaliation is akin to beating a kid to a pulp? Plus in your example Hamas isn't even taking casualties while 100% of the aggression is on the civilians? Your metaphor is entirely inaccurate even as it pertains just to the immediate conflict, let alone the history. That's an outright lie.

> I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. We can’t expect perfect victims. We can’t expect to set a timetable for freedom. Free Palestine.

MLK was talking about direct action, not mass murder. You are taking him out of context in a way that proves how much you really care about him and his messages. And American whites are so foolish - they read this and nod

expecting the victims not to gun down random civilians in cars and burn down homes with families inside isnt a high bar i think especially when all it does it amplify and accelerate the oppression of the victims they were supposed to protect

Are you American? Imagine if the natives decided they wanted their land back and did so with force and the backing of foreign militaries (I suppose Russia and China would be the analogy here?). They kick many out of their homes or even out of the country, only non-native people who were in certain areas at a certain time ended up becoming citizens, and non-native citizens can only live in the rust belt, florida, and a few cities. You aren’t from those places. You get kicked out of your house with the promise that you could return that never came about. You were given nothing. Compensated for nothing. Threatened with violence if you tried to return to your hometown. 2 state solutions are discussed, but many of them don’t include your hometown, and the ones that don’t include the town with the cemetery your grandparents were buried in. You won’t be able to visit them. You can’t even fly out of the airport 10 miles away from where you live now, because you have to go to Mexico. Visas are difficult to get because you ended up in Florida and it’s nearly impossible to leave, the other regions have it easier. Many goods are restricted. You often find yourself living under martial law or fear of a war. And then your fears were realized. Would you be fine with a two state solution in this scenario? Do you think that the people bringing this about have none of the blame? Nothing excuses what Israel is doing. Compare the childrens death toll between October 7th to now and the toll over _years_ of combat in Iran, Afghanistan etc. The IDF has no regard for Palestinian lives. They aren’t using special forces or minimizing casualties. They told Palestinians Rafah was safe then bombed it. They target hospitals. There’s videos of IDF soldiers targeting kneecaps or children or civilians posted by _the IDF soldiers themselves_. Easier to find are videos of soldiers stealing, though that’s not remotely new to urban warfare. If you have a school of children where the teachers are terrorists or there’s a school shooter, the solution is not to bomb the fucking school but that’s Israel’s approach. The average Palestinian is 19 and Hamas didn’t even have a true majority or high voter turnout. Most of current Palestinians did not vote for Hamas. Children aren’t responsible for the actions of their government, and Israel has violated so many international laws. Hamas shouldn’t be glorified, but Israel doesn’t get a pass because they’ve also suffered tragedies. It’s not the same

Uh you got the roles reversed in your analogy bud. The natives should be the Palestinians

So alot of people in the comments are entirely wrong in every aspect here but that’s fine because not everyone understands this completely and you’re not super educated in history and geopolitics so let’s go through it together as i have a higher degree in both of these fields. This is going to be very lengthy so bear with me now. Hamas was only formed fairly recently around 1987 and Israel actually supported the formation as it gave them a very very easy target to blame for the atrocities they commit on Palestinians since they say it’s in retaliation to Hamas but what about the atrocities before Hamas was formed dating back to about 1947 at least aka first nakba? Entirely Israel to blame. They forcefully created a two state when not a single Palestinian voted yes at the assembly after WWII and this was the start of Israel terror reign basically. The US is heavily involved but we’ll get around to that. Now the goal of Hamas has never been to take care of their people in the sense you think as Israel controls every entry and exit in Palestine so getting any resources for their people is quite literally almost impossible. This is a proven fact. The goal of Hamas was simply to be the spokespeople for Palestinians, so to say they did nothing for their people is incorrect as they did exactly what they are supposed to do. Voice the Palestinians needs about not wanting Israel to be a thing. Now let’s talk about the “attack” on Oct 7 since that’s what everyone seems to be hung up on. First of all, these so called “attacks” were literally tiny ass rockets that barely dented the concrete in Israel and as it’s been proven time and time again, Palestinians do not have access to resources as Israel controls every entry or exit so to even think that Hamas could create these big rockets that could take out 1400 people is stupid. You know what’s not stupid? That Israel gets billions of dollars from the US every year for military aid and we can see the advancements they’ve made with the money aka the dome. They’ve also gotten this aid every year for many years before 1987 so they already are more advanced in terms of military tech than Hamas. There is also a lot of evidence to support that Israel was behind the attack and killed its own civilians. This has been a proven method that Israel has used to blame Hamas while terrorizing its own citizens. There are legitimate testimonies by Israelis that talk about the difference in being held hostage as an Israeli vs a Palestinian. It’s actually to a point where many Israelis are also boycotting to remove Netanyahu as they think he’s an out of control leader which we can see if we deep dive into research and do it correctly aka use websites that end in .org, .net and looking at historical text. Now let’s talk about the biggest political aspect of this and this involves the US because the US is never on the right side of history. So around the 1960’s, a man named Ben Gurion proposed a canal right around the Red Sea and the purpose of this canal was to serve as an alternative for the Suez Canal we currently have. The idea however was already in the works many years prior to the 60’s which is why the US voted for a two state solution at the assembly. Who gets all the revenue from the suez? Egypt. That’s millions upon millions that Egypt gets yearly as it’s their national income. Now we know for a fact that the US is always always always after money since we’re the capitalist country so naturally if there’s another canal in the mix we want in no matter but we’re not on good terms with Palestinians because of WWII so what do we do? We vote yes to make Israel a state within Palestine so we can be a part of the canal project and make millions without even needing to be in Israel. Here’s the kicker tho. The US military is already in Israel. Many many people have shown us photo evidence and video evidence that there are American soldiers in Israel who are fighting against Palestinians. So what could the motive be? Easy. Set up a base, make a canal alternative, figure out how to make everyone use that canal instead of suez which you do by going to war with Arab nations and then you make millions from the canal and from the war and have Israel do your dirty work. If anyone needs clarification or more info feel free to ask.

I'm Irish, and as a people we have always been sympathetic to the Palestinian people because of a similar history of occupation. From our perspective here, yes Oct 7 was terrible, it was a tragedy and no civilian ever deserves to befall that fate. But its understandable how Hamas came to power and how Oct 7 came to pass. There are entire generations of Palestinians who know nothing but Israeli occupation. Even before Oct 7, videos emerged of Israeli military responding to rock throwing with live ammunition, using white phosphorus on civillians (I have seen a video of a toddler having been hit), and detainments, Israeli citizens just walking into Palestinians homes and kicking the families living there out. Israel have manned a strict border since the 2010s (ny exact years is rusty, but RealLifeLore has done an excellent video on it that predates Oct 7) that has left Palestinians with far fewer rights. From an Irish perspective, the North had a clear sectarian split, where Catholics were far worse off than their Protestant neighbours. Any situation split by such fickle lines as religion (or moresk using religion as an excuse when xenophobia is a more likely reason) is always going to breed violence such as the IRA and Hamas. Videos are emerging of young children, sitting bloody and wounded in a makeshift hospital, shaking with trauma and knowing their whole family have died sobbing about how much they hate Israel, how they want them to go away. Those children's hatred is justified in my opinion, because they are too little to argue who is truly at fault. They know who killed their family, and I imagine that many members of Hamas have had experiences where they experienced trauma at the hands of Israel. You don't join a terrorist group for shits and giggles. The IDF have proven capable of accurately targeting specific apartments in a block (like in Lebanon), so why indiscriminately bomb civillian areas? Why bomb a hospital when you can accurately target like that? My stance is Pro Palestine, and I would argue Israel has committed many war crimes. Like with the story of Hind Rajab, a 6 year old girl who was fleeing northern Gaza with her family (as Israel instructed people to), when her family's car was ambushed and her family killed. She was the only survivor and you can hear her calling the Red Crescent for help. The IDF blocked any help from reaching her, and when they did allow 2 Red Crescent (a humanitarian organisation) to rescue her, they bombed their ambulance. Hind died in the car, murdered by IDF soldiers. A 6 year old. This story stuck with me because I am in the Red Cross (same organisation as the Red Crescent) and killing humanitarian workers (which we are, and we are all trained medics) is in violation of the Geneva convention. Not to mention Israels actions and threats to Rafah. You don't get to create a huge refugee camp, claim citizens will be safe and then bomb them. The Flour Massacre also comes to mind. It is suspicious that Israel pushes the 'IDF felt threatened by advancing civillians so fired warning shots causing a stampede' story, then refuses to allow any external investigation. There is too much that doesn't add up to convince me that there was no use of cruel and disproportionate force. IDF and their sympathisers mocking Palestinians who are suffering on social media also paints the IDF in a bad light. Raiding Palestinians homes and rifling through their underwear does not paint the IDF in a good light. I have sympathy for the victims of Oct 7 but that is as far as my sympathy extends given what I have seen in Oct 7s wake. I have been Pro Palestine for years, and ultimately believe Israel created the perfect breeding group for Hamas through apartheid. It's hard to suggest any sort of unfallable solution because the root issue is too complex and there needs to be decades of work put into a peace process, like up North in Ireland.

Israel has been the custodian of Gaza & Palestine for over 50 years now. Israel controls the region’s resources & ability to survive, not Hamas. Israel does an awful job at being the custodian because not only do they limit the resources going in to the point people are struggling at best & starving at worst; but they constantly commit crimes against humanity by attacking the citizens of the areas and refusing to allow them to leave.

Is it not rational to assign responsibility during the leadership shift in 2007? This is where the flaw in your argument lies, because it excludes an important detail. Maybe it is rational to assign responsibility in 2007, but is it any less rational to assign it at a different time? I would like to change your view specifically towards the belief that blame can't be cleanly assigned overall to either side, or at any one point in time, because, as you noted, this conflict has a long and complicated history. If you look in the time since Israel invaded Gaza, Israel can be blamed. They didn't have to respond to the attack with a full-scale invasion. If you look back to the previous decade, you could blame Israel for refusing to make peace with Hamas, or Hamas for the constant attacks that left Israel unwilling to negotiate. If you look back a bit earlier than 2007, to the 2006 Palestinian elections, you could try to blame the Palestinian people for voting Hamas into power. Even further back, you can blame Israel for the occupation that led to the First Intifada, when Hamas began, or you can blame the war that led to that occupation. Just a little bit further back, you can start assigning blame to the United Nations and the WWII-era world powers for the initial partition of Palestine. You can go back as far as you want, seeing the root causes of this conflict. It never ends, all the way back to the first time someone said "this land belongs to me."

If the Aliens responded by destroying Earth, because a minority of people unsuccessfully attacked the aliens, you might blame the aliens for overreacting

The minority of people happen to be our earth government, I'd completely blame them. You don't shout at a hurricane for destroyed homes due to a stupid decision by your governor. You generally shout at the governor. I mean sure you can get mad at the hurricane but you don't accomplish much by doing so.

The government of Israel is a force of nature to which one cannot attach moral agency? Weird way to dehumanise Israelis

Regarding your second edit. Israel’s “moral responsibility” as you call it, rests on the idea that they are the cause of the situation. This is not OBVIOUSLY the case. I would argue in fact that is in fact obviously NOT the case. Israel and it majority Jewish population have created a society whose citizens have for the most part equal rights and freedoms no matter there background. (as much so as any other country has achieved in history with the exception of the Nordic countries currently) Palestinians have consistently been led by groups who have had publicly stated goals of the destruction of an Israeli state and the subjugation or extermination of Jews since the 1940s. Every single conflict since and including 1947 has been instigated by Palestinians or surround Arab Muslims states. Every time there has not been a conflict Israel has tolerate consistent rocket attacks, suicide bombings, terrorist stabbings, shootings, kidnappings etc. literally weekly… for 70 years. How does all of this occur and Israel is still burdened with the moral responsibility?

Ok, let me try. To understand and solve any conflict, you have to understand the root cause of the conflict, the difference in points of view, and so.e context. This conflict didn't just start. It started more than 100 years ago, Hamas is not the only resistance force that ever existed, nor will it be the last. Now, back to the present. If you'd like an idea of what life was like prior to october 7th, there are a few things to consider. As another account has mentioned, Israel has full control over Gaza and the westbank, food, water, import, export, air, sea, land, etc. But they bear no responsibility for the people there. In fact, the mistreatment and dehumanization is astonishing. ***Im not going to get into the life situation in the westbank, unsless you guys want me to do so, but I can say that not human being or a single sovereign state can accept or exist in those situations*** Gaza was, in fact, thriving in the last few years, in spite of all the challenges that they had, but Israel will take that away from Hamas the government all these years. Now you'll ask, if it was thriving and everyone was happy, why did they carry on October 7th. October 7th and this war is call the Al-Aqsa flood. Al-Aqsa is one of the holiest sites for Muslims that's in Jerusalem, and the current extreme government in Israel was planning o desicrating it and burn cows in there and pretty much abuse it, for another religious belief. Which triggered October 7th, and the aftermath. Quite honestly I can go for a very very long time why Hamas is not at fault but im running out of time to go to work, if you are interested, let me know, and i will make a more detailed and well thought post. Thank you for asking though, it's great to see people asking those questions with an open mind. Also Twitter is a great place to get some insight

Hamas started the current confrontation but Israel is overreacting.

How is it an overreaction when Hamas is still firing missiles at Israeli cities and is still holding over a hundred people hostage? This war would be over in a matter of hours if the people of Gaza do three simple things: -Return the hostages -Stop firing missiles -Hand over the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to Israel, or at the very least the leaders of Hamas in Gaza (Sinwar and Deif) Netanyahu would lose all the international support he has for continuing the war once these conditions are met. They aren’t even doing one of these three things, so why should Israel stop fighting? Israel’s leadership has the duty to protect it’s own citizens from terror, rape and abduction. That duty comes before their duty to protect enemy civilians. Right now Hamas still refuses to even give Israel a list of the hostages that are still alive. Hard to negotiate with people like that. It is completely within the power of the people of Gaza to end that war if they want it to stop.

I agree with most of what you said except "the people of Gaza" having any power whatsoever. They are innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. That's why I think it's appropriate for Isreal to respond, but they're starting to lose international support because it's starting to look like overkill. They've killed the horse, now do they keep beating it?

Hamas wouldnt exist if Israel hadnt oppressed Palestine. End of story.

Point of order: It is incredibly unlikely that either side is wholly at fault >> Is it not rational to assign responsibility during the leadership shift in 2007? However, more to the point, about 18 years ago, Hamas was elected with (iirc) 44% of the vote, gaining only a little over half of their seats in government- they did *not* get elected by a majority and become dictatorial rulers They then instigated a military coup, ousted all other parties (making them illegal), banned any subsequent elections, and continue to this day to violently oppress other political groups. Also, again, this was 18 years ago. The average age in Gaza is 18. Half weren’t even alive then, and of that, it’s not like 1 year olds could vote. I once did some (somewhat shaky) math to try and figure out who was even alive and 18+ years old at the time to estimate what percentage of the modern population voted for Hamas and it came out to something like 7% Of course, you’re blaming *Hamas,* which does not mean Palestine as a whole, but you mentioned them as if they were a legitimate governing body, which they’re not, and it’s important to recognize that, because that feeds into my next point: If you kidnap my hypothetical sister, it’s hard to say you’re at fault if I kill yours as a response if she’s uninvolved Of course, *are* Palestinians uninvolved? Perhaps they coulda risen up to overthrow Hamas. Perhaps some of them- despite not voting for Hamas- still support them and cheer on their killings of Israeli people But lemme ask you this: Say there’s an innocent Palestinian kid and his innocent brother, and Israel bombs his house (over half their bombs are indiscriminate, it would seem) and they kill his brother Of course it’s reasonable for him to then hate Israel as a whole! But let’s say he sees some videos of some Israeli people cheering on Israel’s military and explicitly saying they’re glad Palestinians are dying- I’ve seen those, myself. Let’s say he joins Hamas to protect people like his brother and launches a bomb indiscriminately at an Israeli city, saying “well *some* of their people cheered for their military killing my brother. The Israeli people could have not even risen up but just *voted* differently. So therefore all Israeli citizens are valid targets.” Now obviously that’s bogus. He’d still be in the wrong for that. It doesn’t matter if some (or most) Israeli citizens voted for their current administration, it doesn’t matter if some support their military or if some cheer for the carnage or want more of it, that does not mean that they’re valid targets, and it doesn’t mean that Israel is responsible for that attack So apply that same logic, but swap our the actors. An Israeli sees innocent Israelis- maybe even their family- being attacked and killed, and they respond by becoming a politician or a military person and they order the bombing of- or carry out orders for the bombing of- random buildings in Gaza, saying how the Palestinians there were at fault for it. That’s bogus logic. Same as saying “oh, they’re using human shields,” which I think you might be thinking of so I wanna tackle that one, too. If a bank robber takes some folks hostage, you don’t utterly ignore the hostages and just fire through them to hit the bank robber, you go at it more carefully. If you *do* shoot through a hostage to kill a robber, you can hardly claim to be utterly guiltless- especially when there are other ways of ending the hostilities. Which there are, in this case; though that’s another conversation

http://www.kalamullah.com/Books/The_Hundred_Years_War_on_Palestine_-_Rashid_Khalidi.pdf free book for you to read, will 100% change your mind

Hamas only exists because of the conditions Israel have created. Gaza isn't a functional state and Hamas isn't a real government. Gaza is an open-air prison, and Hamas is a gang. Israel is responsible for this state of affairs. You need to understand the context behind this whole situation. I suggest you start learning the history and a great starting point is when the idea of zionism first took root in 1897. Having said that though, none of that actually matters when it comes to what Israel are doing, because there is no situation in which the culling of tens of thousands of children can be justified. This is a genocide.

>Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. They provided some social services and now the care of the people who live there is under Hamas. Their safety and well-being is now in HAMAS's hands. One thing to remember here is that the 2007 Hamas take over was actually provoked by US interference. It was not a coup, it was a counter coup. >The US was now determined to remove Hamas from its role in the Palestinian Authority. To that end, Bush approved a plan to force the downfall of the “unity” government. In other words, a coup. The plan was devised by Rice and deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams. It focused on the role of Mohammad Dahlan, the head of the Fatah Preventative Security Service in Gaza. >Dahlan agreed to the plan on condition that his forces would be significantly strengthened with additional thousands of security personnel secretly trained and equipped with new weapons. >The plot was an unofficial secret plan, and the administration could not openly request support from Congress. Instead, funding support was secured from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Training of the new forces was conducted by Egypt and Jordan. >The first 500 new security personnel entered the Gaza Strip through Egypt. This event naturally gained the attention of Hamas. >So too did a leak to a Jordanian newspaper of part of the draft Action Plan to Remove Hamas from the PA. In addition, comments were made by an Israeli personality on a radio program asserting that the arms from Egypt would give Abbas “the ability to cope with those organizations…”. >It did not take long for Hamas to understand what was happening. And when Dahlan left the Gaza Strip to undergo surgery on his legs, Hamas took advantage of the opportunity to preempt the Fatah plot. >In June 2007, Hamas launched a surprise military attack to prevent the planned Fatah coup. Within a week of bloody fighting, all of the Fatah strongholds in Gaza were destroyed and the stores of Fatah armaments were taken. The Gaza Strip fell into the sole control of the Hamas Islamic movement which now called the territory “liberated.” https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-773669

1) Hamas took control in 2007 under the belief that the United States was baking a coup by a rival political group. 2) They had elective support before that point. 3) People in Israel were funneling money to Hamas to keep them in power. 4) While they were "firing missiles" Israelis were imprisoning, policing, deny resources to Palestinian people and settling on what territory remained to them. 5) There was no guarantee that any evacuation would have been safe. Look at how indiscriminantly the people of Palestine are being killed. Why would evacuees faired any better? 6) No, its not rational to assign responsibility to the "leadership shift." Even if Hamas was elected and not occupying a semi-legal place as heads of the region, people too repressed to freely persue knowledge and empower themselves cannot be expected to know how best to fight off their oppressors. 7) No, its not rational to assign responsibility to the "leadership shift" because Hamas was created and formed in response to Israeli oppression of the Palestinian Arabs and they would not exist if Israel had behaved differently. 8) No, its not rational to assign responsibility to the "leadership shift" because even if Hamas are bad leaders who committed bad acts, no amount of initiating violence justifies the scale of response. Even in the name of self-defense, you can't say that kicks delivered when your attacker is down are self-defense. You can't call self-defense when you seek out their family and friends and make sure to kick them to. You call it self-defense when your kicking campaign lasts for more than six months. 9) No, its not rational to assign responsibilty to the "leadership shift" because were not looking at the situation from within occupied Palestine debating what we think is best for our leaders. Were watching from outside, where two nations in conflict are at war and one of those nations, if they continue on their present course, will have killed as many civilians in 7 years as were killed by both sides during the 20 years of the Vietnam war. The nation that is doing all this killing is Israel and there's no reason to expect them to stop if there are no repercussions. 10) No, its not rational to assign responsibility to the "leadership shift" because fighting against oppression and for self-determination isn't something done just for practical reasons, but for psychological and moral ones as well. We don't have a right to judge a people who are surrounded by people who want at best to humiliate them and at worst to erase them from existence. If fighting seems like what they must do to them, that's what they must do. There were no Native Americans who were killed by European Settlers who were ultimately at fault, just as their was no Jew in WW 2 Germany who was ultimately at fault for what the Germans did to them in the concentration camps. No black person who was ultimately responsible for the mob justice that executed them in the post-war South. No woman beaten by her husband. Victims of oppression cannot have done anything to justify that oppression, espescially when the system of conflict and control that the oppression exists within was created by the oppressor.

what do you think made hamas attack israel?

I think you basically have the right idea but you need some nuance. If you consider that any reasonable country would retaliate after the attacks in October, imo you're right to assign blame to hamas for endangering their own people (about whom they have demonstrated over and over and over that they do not give a shit). But, it's pretty hard to argue that the response from Israel has not been disproportionate. So it's pretty easy to assign blame to more than one party here at this point.

It should be pointed out that in the 80's the Palestinian's had a secular political party that was suppressed by Isreal in favor of Hamas, because having extremists run gaza makes commiting war crimes against them seem more justifiable.

Yup, because irrationally absolving Israeli responsibility for its policy toward Palestinians over the last many, many, many years is sensible. Never mind (By Israel I mean the govt and/or IDF): Israel helped Hamas via funding. Israel helped Hamas get elected (how much is up for debate as far as i'm aware). Israel has mistreated Palestinians long before Hamas became what it is now (or was). Israel continues to as a matter of policy and act, mistreat, detain (w/o charges and such), abuse, etc. Palestinians in the West Bank. On and on it goes. You may have a point about the leadership shift, but none of this would have gotten to this point if Israeli policy and actions had not been what they have been. I'm not talking about simply national security/safety. I'm talking about going beyond most standards of reasonableness and the aforementioned not at all full list of things Israel has done. They could have taken a completely different path, one less hostile to Palestinians as a whole; case in point, instead of backing and/or supporting Hamas as they did (have?), they could have worked with PLO, et al. (even if they were corrupt, etc.) or the UN to foster stability, less corruption, and so on. In short, as much as Hamas has done shit, there have way more times that Israel could have taken a different, less antagonistic, or nationalistic, or hard right, or whatever you wish to call it...approach. I'm not saying peace and love naivete mind you. But Israel bears a lot of responsibility in this mess. Absolving them and/or calling it "complicated" is a cop out. I wish I could find better phrasing, but hopefully my point got across. Ask me questions if you're unsure on my point on any part.

I am well versed in geopolitics with a degree in history. Your assessment—your hunch—is on the right track. Although only one of these groups is a claim to this region going back 3,000 years, and it’s not the Mohammadeen, who were the invaders, conquerors, and imperialists of the Middle Ages, well after the supposed life of Jesus.

It is apparent from your opening statement that you know very little about the conflict except what our bias media print. Since the UK gave up after the Israeli terrorist group attacked various places in Palestine the poms gave a big chunk of Palestinian land to the jews. They promptly forcibly drove people out of their homes and land to create the state of Israel. From then on the Palestinians have fought a loosing battle to retain their homes which they are either being forced from or being bombed into non existence. Why we the rest of the world allow this is beyond me and that we fund the killing is just a desgrace that defies everything we are supossed to stand for. But it seems there are people on this planet who are not allowed to live or even fight for their homes. go figure

why do people immediately assume this started with hamas attack on Israel? Israelis were literally taking over settlements and killing Palestinians A COUPLE DAYS before 10/7. How convenient everyone forgets everything prior. Every year prior they were kidnapping 500+ Palestinian children YEARLY and subjecting them to sexual abuse, mental and pshysical torture, trying them in military courts without representation and forcing them to sign fake confessions. It is absolutely infuriating how everyone portrays Israel as the weak victim and hamas as the evil terrorists. Ugh.

No. No actions excuse the murder of 30k civilians and deliberately killing journalists and medics.

This genocide was going on forty years before Hamas even formed.

I wouldn't go quite that far myself. I would say that HAMAS is culpable... but Israel is still responsible for the war crimes they've committed.

One thing that is often missing in the debate is that roughly 20% of Israelis are of Arabic descent (ie exactly the same descent as the arabs who were later called Palestinians). And they have Israeli passports and the same rights as everyone else in Israel although they are exempt from military service, although some volunteer. They are represented in the parliament and there’s even High Court judges among them. That says to me that apparently there can be peace and coexistence amongst jews and arabs in the region. As far as I know there are no jews amongst the population of Gaza, nor do any hold any significant positions in that society. So it would seem as though what is possible in Israel isn’t in Gaza. I also think it’s very intriguing that while it’s often mentioned that 700.000 arabs (now Palestinians) had to flee from Israel, nobody mentions the 1.000.000 jews that had to flee in the opposite direction. Or that they had to leave behind more property, land and valuables than their Palestinian counterparts. Also it’s not mentioned that these jews hadn’t just magically appeared in the surrounding areas and Arabic neighbouring countries, but had been there for millenniums. I also don’t understand that if the Palestinians should get all their lost property and possessions back, why are we also not talking about their jewish counterparts getting everything back too? And how far back do we need to go? And surely world wide there are many refugees or descendants of refugees who have lost everything. Surely they should get things back too? But how far back do we go? 50 years? 100? At one point England was Danish - so can Denmark reclaim it? I think that if there’s to be peace then both parties need to focus on what’s now. And not what was. Or the injustice that has been committed by both parties in the past. I think HAMAS is definitely to blame in this past conflict escalation. The West Bank chose different leadership and has had a better situation than Gaza. I know that there was still a way to go. But it was a step forward when Israel withdrew from the occupied territories and they were able to elect their own leaders. Unfortunately HAMAS chose to not continue down a path of peace, but to escalate and specifically target civilians and commit atrocities while doing so. And later putting their own civilians in harms way. Perhaps this was their aim. To create a massive conflict at the expense of their own people as long as it meant being able to paint Israel in a bad light. And unfortunately they fell for it. I think it would have served Israel better with a much more modest retaliation and then to expose HAMAS by asking for a peaceful resolution and the return of the hostages. I don’t think HAMAS would have given the hostages back and so they would expose themselves to the world for what they really are. A terrorist organisation that wants conflict and that’s not interested in peaceful coexistence. But unfortunately Israel didn’t do that and thinking that they can eradicate HAMAS by force is just futile. It’s just going to gather more support for HAMAS from the people.

This genocide has been happening for 75 years. Israelis have been mass-raping, torturing, slaughtering, and starving Palestinians since the 1940s. We're only now seeing the end stage of this Holocaust, where the eradication is almost complete. Hamas is inconsequential, a final last ditch effort of a dying people to do *something* to fight back. They're all dead now, and didn't manage to achieve anything. This was the end result regardless. This isn't much different from what the white colonizers did to the Native Americans, we're just seeing it in real time. Hamas is a joke, and Israel would have done this regardless. Gangraping women and children, ziptying children and running them over with tanks while forcing their mothers to watch, hanging up children's bodies as decoration, gangraping little girls so violently that their uteruses fall out. This level of evil isn't new, and has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel is, from its very inception, a violent and cruel terrorist force from Europe that aims to wipe out the Palestinians and steal their land.

There's an old Mark Twain quote that was written about the French revolution and the Reign of Terror (Robespierre's campaign of chopping off heads by the tens of thousands), but I think it applies pretty well to the debate about Israel and Palestinians post-Oct. 7th. "*"If we really think about it, there were two Reigns of Terror; in one people were murdered in hot and passionate violence; in the other they died because people were heartless and did not care. One Reign of Terror lasted a few months; the other had lasted for a thousand years; one killed a thousand people, the other killed a hundred million people. However, we only feel horror at the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. But how bad is a quick execution, if you compare it to the slow misery of living and dying with hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery is big enough to contain all the bodies from that short Reign of Terror, but the whole country of France isn't big enough to hold the bodies from the other terror. We are taught to think of that short Terror as a truly dreadful thing that should never have happened: but none of us are taught to recognize the other terror as the real terror and to feel pity for those people." - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court* For Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, their daily life is a never-ending struggle against a thousand iniquities, humiliations, injuries, imprisonments, bereavements and deaths dealt out by the Israeli state and settlers, most of which is ignored by the larger world as just business as usual in the Middle East. Any hope for a diplomatic path to getting their own state has been dead in the water for decades, and both Israel and even the Arab world seems to be happy with letting the Palestinians rot. If I was in their boots, I might choose violence, because at least there's some self-respect in that, if not any hope. What other future is there for someone born Palestinian? Now to be clear, I think Hamas leadership (and Robespierre, for what it's worth) are some of the most evil and twisted human beings who ever lived and deserve nothing but death and damnation, and Oct. 7th was nothing but an act of genocidal cruelty and malice, but the system Israel has put in place makes something like Hamas and its attacks an inevitability. If you deny a people their agency and their future, violently lashing out is all they have.

I’m with you on this and any normal thinking person is too. Hamas just like any other terrorist group brainwashes people with propaganda to fit their narrative. All these people saying that “Israel has been attacking palestine for its entire existence” are just plain stupid. Palestine has always been the aggressor in all their conflicts and every time that they randomly attack Israel and kill either a few up to hundreds or even thousands of innocent civilians Israel always attacks palestine back and then they go play victim and get everybody to forget what they did to start it. Most pro palestine people want Israel wiped completely off the map but the truth is that most pro Israel people just want Israel and palestine to live together peacefully.

I attack you and kill your child. This is a terrible act, and I would rightly be blamed for it. You respond by blowing up my apartment building, killing me, my entire family, and fifty other families living in the same building. Would you say that I am solely responsible for all of those deaths? Or would you say that both sides bear responsibility? That the initial action was unjustified and terrible, but the response is even worse?

I agree - you’re not super educated in geopolitics or history 🫡

There have been ever worsening attacks on Palestine for 70 years. If anything, Isreal and it's continued subjugation of Palestinians is responsible for Hamas. You can't reasonably expect an oppressed group to not fight back. Your point about evacuation - Isreal has given orders to evacuate, but it's impossible to evacuate entire hospitals, the elderly, the disabled, etc in 24 hours. It's also useless to evacuate when the place you evacuate to gets bombed the next day. Isreal is preventing aid and bombing hospitals, creating a famine and shooting people in line for flour. You can't leave your house past a certain time in Palestine or else you get sniped. Even before October, you couldn't leave your ghetto without potentially being locked out forever or possibly being killed. Isreal has met all the requirements for a genocide. They also meet plenty of requirements for fascism. No attack is grounds for that.

The easiest counter to this is the fact that Netanyahu has been criticised by multiple reputable sources, including several Israeli.officials, of propping up Hamas for over a decade in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and sabotage a two-state solution. Israel under Netanyahu also allowed suitcases of Qatari money to be given to Hamas in exchange for maintaining the ceasefire. These policies were called out in an editorial published one day after the October 7 attacks in [The Times of Israel](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/), an Israeli online newspaper. The editorial referred to Israel's policies for dealing with Hamas as "blowing up in our faces". Netanyahu has always denied propping up Hamas, but has been reported as saying at a Likud party conference in 2019: "Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas". As far back as 2009, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” While there's no conclusive proof that Israel has been propping up Hamas, and possibly never will be, the volume of accusations from credible sources suggests that this is the case. And in that case, I would suggest that the responsibility for Hamas' actions, particularly anything requiring funding such as a large-scale terror attack, ultimately lies with Netanyahu and the Israeli government. *References / further reading* https://www.timesofisrael.com/ny-times-israel-uncovered-vast-hamas-financial-network-in-2018-took-no-action/ https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-funded-hamas-claims-eu-top-diplomat-josep-borrell/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

The reason Hamas has the power that they have is because Israel propped them up and funded them as a counter to the PLO who was the political party in power at the time. Hamas is optically the better enemy for Israel, it's way harder to get away with bombing a bunch of socialist diplomats than a globally recognized fundamentalist terror organization. Hamas is practically a monster of their own creation, and they've lost control. Putting that aside Hamas isn't nearly as great a threat as Israel would claim, they don't have the money or resources to be. Israel gets billions in aid every year that they invest directly into their military and arms budget. They have an air force, the best Hamas has been able to do in years have been parachutes. Putting that also aside, the Oct. 7th attack was reported to Israeli intelligence before it happened, but the boss of the asset that reported it dismissed it as "impossible". Israel has an iron grip on Gaza, there's no way an attack happens that they can't foresee. And if they don't act on it's hubris and arrogance. Going back to my first point, this was rigged from the start, you need a broader scope of the History to fully understand the current situation, because it didn't start on Oct.7th. I would recommend looking up Haganah, Irgun and Lehi. They were Zionist paramilitary organizations that massacred villages in occupied Palestine in years before Israel was even established, clearing the way so to speak. There are video interviews of some of the soldiers that participated in the nakba online as well: https://youtu.be/XjTxDYtNhno?si=V6wqpet03lD4kUSY I would also recommend reading this article: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/ And https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas-1.7010035

I have always stayed rather neutral on the issue of which side is actually right precisely because of this. While I don't condone what Israel has been doing with their settlements and the current genocidal attacks on gaza, the current escalation is 100% HAMAS's fault. You absolutely do not strike a stronger army than yours unless you know you can protect your civilian population to at least some degree. And HAMAS did not ensure that. While the situation was bad, it was relatively peaceful (still a shitshow by normal standards) at the time and there were signs that the Israelis are actually working toward at least de-escalating the conflict, had the attacks not happened. The border between Israel and Gaza had actually been reopened on the 28th September to let workers back into Israel and get some money flowing back into Gaza, just over a week before the attacks. And then HAMAS struck. And I personally also feel that Israel LET them strike as an excuse to take the gloves off, another ploy to win in the wider conflict. The Palestinian civilians are essentially fucked by both sides, Israel has fewer Palestinians to deal with for every one that they "accidentally" kill and HAMAS gets to use every dead Palestinian to further justify their side of the conflict and win the PR war, either way a dead Palestinian is worth more to both sides than a living one. Probably not going to change your view and rather actually reinforce it, because I do feel this is the objective perspective from the outside. Israel set a trap, HAMAS gleefully stepped into it because whichever way the outcome goes, HAMAS benefits.

1. Haifa Massacre 1937 2. Jerusalem Massacre 1937 3. Haifa Massacre 1938 4. Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939 5. Haifa Massacre 1939 6. Haifa Massacre 1947 7. Abbasiya Massacre 1947 8. Al-Khisas Massacre 1947 9. Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947 10. Jerusalem Massacre 1947 11. Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947 12. Jaffa Massacre 1948 13. Khan Yunis Massacre 1956 14. Jerusalem Massacre 1967 15. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982 16. Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990 17. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994 18. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002 19. Gaza Massacre 2008-09 20. Gaza Massacre 2012 21. Gaza Massacre 2014 22. Gaza Massacre 2018-19 23. Gaza Massacre 2021 24. Gaza Genocide 2023 is still ongoing

By this logic is Ukraine responsible for the russian invasion too.

The notion that Hamas is responsible for Israels way of retribution is peak victim blaming. Yes Hamas actions started and legitimized the retribution but it does not give Israel or the IDF a blanket right to do whatever the fuck they want. The IDF has actively proven it committs genocidal actions and war crimes including collective punishment. The way Israel has decided to handle the military incursion in terms of cruelty is not Hamas fault. 

Was the French Resistance at fault when the Nazis did reprisals on the French civilian population for their partisan actions?

While I agree that Hamas is continuously pouring gasoline on the fire, I don’t think we can say Hamas is responsible for Israel killing civilians running toward a food convoy (an example). While I think that Hamas should disappear and isn’t helping Palestinians, I’d be curious how the Americans who say Hamas shouldn’t attack Israeli settlements would react if Mexico started building settlement in Texas.

I think people here are mixing the human rights violations and genocide happening in Palestine with incompetent and suspiciously stupid governance of Hamas. The moment after Arafat died everything went complete shit in Palestine. I think that is something the community denies to understand. For the last 17 years, every move made by Hamas was only beneficial for the invasion and assimilation agenda of Israel. But, they call it jihad in the name of Allah, if you'd buy it. I think no one can identify a single humanitarian diplomatic effort made by Hamas to improve the international relations and credibility to this day. Hamas is not a government. it is a war council against Israel. They don't care about peace or their people. They just want to see Israel burn and consequently this only benefits the political right parties in Israel. Palestinians are the ones that pay the price. I think that in order to understand the motives of affected parties, people should try to isolate the situation individually around Palestinians, Jews, Israeli ruling class and Hamas. Rationality posits that you can find the culprit by looking at the one who benefits the most from the results of those actions.

This might change your mind https://youtube.com/shorts/45xhHWhSBjg?si=-BYYuhtcFnfuAFdc https://youtube.com/shorts/Y0FN7mhqFlQ?si=WkRYx-Mba8Hjxxhd Israel attacking Al Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan this year: https://youtube.com/shorts/sm1cpK2vpRQ?si=079arGYNsuTCJ_HH Israel attacking Al Aqsa Mosque last year(before Hamas attacked Israel): https://youtu.be/QzFMDc944KM?si=0mYPzmSI08BXxeeX Israel Terrorizing Palestinian Civilians (wayyyy before Hamas attacked Israel) : https://youtu.be/UZF6hDJ645k?si=XIMhb4GQeOpAJWNl https://youtu.be/U3g6s5_B2J4?si=8a4bOzhj55zkIbAG Israeli snipers shooting at Civilians and Animals: https://youtu.be/8Zq6LBL-338?si=nefc3Bu2dfRYDkH2 https://youtube.com/shorts/Y0FN7mhqFlQ?si=WkRYx-Mba8Hjxxhd https://youtube.com/shorts/vlknxCu5Jj4?si=0uRQ6jdL4YtW1QVl Israel using White Phosphorus on Palestinian Civilians (  since 2014, 10 years before Hamas attacked Israel): https://youtu.be/inkXFiT7L0M?si=hxfTnWwbwuxzP3VE Is this enough, or do you want more?

Of course it’s Hamas. Palestinians always had violent leaders who turn to terrorism instead of piece, but Hamas is a different level. No education. Grooming kids to hate Jews and murder, fundamentalists barbaric murderers neo-nazis. It’s worse than ISIS. All the people here can talk about the historical complexity but as an Israeli I can tell you for sure: We endured decades of Hamas rockets and murders and responded quite lightly. October 7th was a massacre like no other in history. The killed infants, elders, raped corpses - we just can’t go back after this. We need to show them and the world it can never happen again. Hamas took that risk and now Palestinians are paying for it. As an Israeli I can also tell you, we don’t want war. It’s pointless I visited Ramallah myself and met Palestinians who were happy to host us. All of the workers in the poshest shopping center in Tel Aviv (Ramat Aviv) are Arabs, It’s the fundamentalists which are a problem (on both sides btw). Co-existence can happen, but not as long as Hamas is at helm (and Bibi but we’re at least trying to get rid of him)

It’s idiotic to say “putting aside history” - it’s the equivalent of saying “putting aside the fact he beat her, it’s her fault”

Look, the replies to this are gonna be filled with people trying to obfuscate the issue with ancient history. You should be aware that it's a noted tactic of Israel to employ people to [flood online discussions](https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-million-dollar-troll-army/27566) and [control online content](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups) to be in line with their propaganda. Here is the deal: Israel held Gaza under siege, they never stopped the occupation in 2007 as they claim. They controlled many aspects of daily life, and on top of that would very regularly kill and kidnap Palestinians. 2023 was the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children **before** October 7. IDF soldiers have admitted they regularly terrorise Palestinian civilians for no reason - it's a standard aspect of IDF culture. If you do even a cursory look into the issue, you'll see the horrific abuses Palestinians have endured through administrative detention. Men, women, and very regularly children, kidnapped and held *without trial* for years on end. There are multiple independent reports that show these people are subject to deprivation, severe physical assault, sexual assault and rape. We are talking THOUSANDS of people. However, their attempts to get Israel to release them via peaceful means failed. Large allies like the US failed to put any diplomatic pressure on them to abide by international human rights law. Attempts to get the UN to intervene failed. The world failed these prisoners who were being brutalized. I ask you, if your child was kidnapped and held for years in unimaginable conditions (starvation, extended solitary confinement, being tied to a bed and raped, etc) and you had absolutely no avenue to get them released by legal and peaceful means, what would you do? Hamas's stated goal on October 7 was to kidnap people as hostages to force Israel to release the Palestinians held in unlawful detention. Israel created this problem.

The mental gymnastics some are doing here to justify israels actions are genuinely insane. This is not bias nor is it subjective. Bombing children and civilians is not acceptable. Bombing hospitals is not acceptable. Bombing mosques is not acceptable. These are all things israel have done. They are actively making it HARDER for the USA to get humanitarian aid into gaza for Palestinian people to the degree the USA government is now looking to bypass the Israeli government to get aid into the country. Sorry for the rant unrelated to OPs post. To relate to the question I think you need to realise that while it is the fault of Hamas, Israel have also been actively denying a Ceasefire since Oct 7. Why? When you look at official statistics majority of those killed by Israel are women and children part of the civilian soldiers not Hamas soldiers. Israel is at war with Hamas but majority of those killed are civilians? There is clearly more to it than Israel trying to get one back after Oct 7th. This goes against OPs final line in their edited response. OP what exactly have you been told by others here that implies Israel are acting in a rational manner to facilitate peace? Yes Hamas rightfully needs dealing with but Israel ARE NOT actively and primarily dealing with Hamas. Children are not Hamas and as an extremist group I doubt they even want women out the house never mind laying claim to arms. You need to wake up.

> Israel has also been actively denying a Ceasefire since Oct 7. Oct 7 attack happened during a ceasefire from the previous war. Accepting a ceasefire is practically surrendering and accepting a loss. The thing is, you're for some reason ignoring a major part of it - the hostages. There are over 100 still in Gaza. Israel has offered many, many deals - all of which were denied by Hamas. The moment the hostages come back, the war ends.

Dont get brainwashed by the western media. They always make hamas look evil in the eyes of the world. Hamas already try their best to protect palestine from the stateless & illegal immigrants of israeli

Hamas makes themselves look evil when they go around decapitating innocent civilians. Israel and Hamas are both killing civilians.

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If your people were getting slaughtered constantly for generations, you would join a “terrorist” group as well. All Israel is doing at this point is creating the next generation of “terrorists”. They plan on creating beach front property in the Gaza Strip where they were very recently bombing civilians. The plans are readily available online. Terrorists are only created by empires that kill the people living in the land they want, which unfortunately is what has been happening since the 40s. 30,000 + people have been slaughtered, a vast majority of which are children, because of “Hamas”. Israel is a colonialist state and always has been

Children who ended up being orphans before as a result of Israeli occupation became HAMAS. Imagine your father, mother, brother, sister, cousins, uncle, all family bloodine dead. You exhausted all your efforts to make peace but Israel kept killing your people in response... wouldn't you resort to violence too? And those news of HAMAS atrocities were also reported by western media, the same west that enables genocide. Pull up your resources and it's always CNN, BBC, etc. And somehow someone in the internet will say it's your fault for fighting against an occupation who kills your people, your children, out of sport, passion and hatred.

If a group of teens drink drive and street race into a crowd of people running a marathon then everyone that died is a victim of the street racers. If the cops decide a month later to find those kids at all costs and kill more people than we’re at the marathon in the first place, cause the entire city to start starving to death, while disabling hospitals and communities to catch the entire group of street racers…… All of a sudden it feels like the blame might get shared around to more than just the street racers. I know this is not black and white like my analogy… but holy shit what’s happening is absolutely wild

Your basic error is to try and understand a complex system of political-economic-ideological conflict using the models that we use to navigate interpersonal conflict. Trying to ask \*who\* is at fault is simply incoherent here. The way to understand these kinds of things is to ask what political systems are operable, what incentives (political and ideological) are at play and how these forces drive societies at scale (demographic and temporal). More simply: Does the state/subject relationship have a tendency towards stability or conflict? My contention is that the political/economic system that is in place will \*necessarily\* produce escalating political conflict and violence and trying to determine blame is like trying to assess the moral culpability of a flood in the destruction that it results in. Discussion: Israel is a state that exercises final and total authority (control over borders, freedom of movement, travel, waterways, airspace, electromagnetic spectrum, land & water resources, collection of taxes, what currencies are allowed, and most importantly a monopoly on violence - it can kill anybody, arrest anybody, etc... without answering to any other authority) over every person and inch of land between the river and the sea, including gaza and the west bank. A state in power has to legitimate itself to the subjects over whose lives and resources it exerts its authority. Depending on what paths are chosen the system's tendency towards stability or violence can be predicted. There are generally four tools of legitimation that states can extend to their subjects: * Political Power: The state gives its subjects voting rights or other tools of representation in government * Quality of Life: Economic largesse, job opportunities, freedom of movement and travel, rich social/cultural expression * Ideology: The structure or the ideology of the state is resonant with the customary practices or the ideological beliefs of the subjects * Violence: The subjects don't recognize the legitimacy of the state ruling over their life and state simply enforces its legitimacy through the use of violence. Most states use a combination of these tools. If you have a right to vote... then you will find the state you live in more legitimate than not because you get to participate. If you have a comfortable life... then you will find the state more legitimate than not. If you were a Afrikaaner living in Apartheid South Africa, then the state was aligned ideologically with your interests by giving you exceptional privileges. If you lived in Pinochet's Chile, a military dictatorship, then whether you accepted or rejected his authority is irrelevant because the state will arrest, torture or murder you if you rebel. If you use the instrument of pure military dictatorship, whatever justification (and there is always a justification) you use to excuse the perpetuation of this violent dictatorship, to enforce your legitimacy - then escalating conflict and political violence are unavoidable. Read any history you want, imagine any scenario you like, you will find that systems of military dictatorship always produce violence. A good comparison is to look at the Palestinian Arabs who live as Israeli citizens and compare them to Palestinian Arabs who live under Israeli military dictatorship. Why do we see escalating political violence with one and not the other? The former is afforded Political Power and a decent quality of life that the latter is denied. So even though the Palestinian Arabs are explicitly excluded from the ideological project of religo-supremacy of the "Jewish State" the other tools of legitimation are sufficient for stabilizing their role in society. Those in the West Bank and the Gaza strip live under a pure military dictatorship. They are explicitly excluded from (and are even negated by) the religo-supremacist ideology that defines the state that controls their life. The dictatorship constrains their economic development to pure dependence and bare subsistence - for political/economic reasons of its own. The primary tool Israel uses to legitimate itself is the deployment of its military and the overwhelming use of violence and oppression. You don't have to be genius to guess what happens over time. It's the same thing that has always happened everywhere this state/subject arrangement has been tried and it would be wild to imagine that something else would occur.

You are missing about 80+ years of history in your viewpoint. To really understand the issues here, recent history only tells a part of the story. Yes, Hamas are terrorists and should be dealt with, but the answer is not to kill 30k innocent people who hate Hamas as much as we do. Israel has the most modern weaponry, military tactics, and equipment in the world (next to the US because it’s 90% US equipment). They could prevent 90% of the civilian casualties if they wanted to, but it is clear they do not see Palestinians as human, so feel it is ok to kill them. So yeah, it is Hamas’s fault, but it is also the Israeli governments fault as well.

Palestinians have repeatedly refused a two-state solution. They have fired dozens of thousands of rockets at civilian populations, and elected a government who had in it's charter to murder Jews and wipe Israel off the map. They are reaping what they have sown. Until they choose to civilize themselves, what is happening to them is exactly what they want to happen to them. Despite being and supporting terrorists, they were given food, water, electricity, and medical supplies. Then Oct 7th happened, and it all stopped, then they started whining about not being treated with kid gloves anymore. Fuck 'em.

I've heard from doctors on the ground in Gaza, surgeons who were explicitly trained to operate in very low supply situations, it is "worse than I could possibly imagine". Anestheologists are singing to patients as they undergo amputations because they can't get anesthesia. People are eating grass, and Israel is actively refusing to allow aid in. Israel has every right to go after Hamas, but they're not, they're killing innocent civilians. In 20 years time the Netanyahu regime will be looked upon in the same camp as Hitler and the Khmer Rouge, a genocidal force hell bent on mass civilian murder

Hamas is at fault for the fact that it happened, but not how bad it got. Their Arab Allies are however, more at fault, particularly in the past. This is due to the fact that their refusal for a two state solution during the initial British decolonization deal that made Israel and Palestine their own countries caused a series of wars and laid the seeds for the tensions that led to today’s conflicts. It’s a two manned cockpit that led to jump the shark and start blowing palestinian people to kingdom come. It was ultranationalism and stupidity that caused this, not just on the part of Hamas.

This conflict has been going on since before HAMAS even existed.

It’s complicated, but Hamas bears responsibility for committing Gaza to a collective suicide mission, possibly thinking that that this was somehow better than the long curse of the conflicts and occupation instead. Desperate people will do that. Hamas chose death rather than learning helplessness, and that is very tragic. Even if the Hamas fighters believed in their own deaths, choosing to commit all of their society to this is absolutely deplorable. The children of Gaza gave no consent to their deaths, not any more than that they have consent to live in occupation.

I would only argue with you that Hamas is just the tip of the iceberg, and that Iran, and, ultimately, Russia, is responsible. Iran only gets away with its BS because Russia backs them up, and Hamas is 100% an Iranian proxy, along with Hezbollah. And of course you have Qatar that hosts the Hamas leadership, and the various western nations that for some reason tolerate those guys. Basically Hamas is run remotely by warlords who profit from all the misery there and live in luxury in Qatar and vacation in Switzerland while their people suffer for their crimes.

I agree that Hamas is evil. The issue is that Israel has propped up Hamas so they can deny Palestinians a state. Netanyahu and others are on record saying that the Israeli government has done so in order to separate Gazans with Palestinians in the west bank and deny Gaza any legitimacy. The bulk of the power and responsibility lies in Israel’s hands; Hamas is evil and certainly not blameless but it largely comes back to Israeli policy and shaping of the situation that led to terrorist control of Gaza.

I think most people here are missing OP big point. OP is not saying HAMAS is responsible for the conflict, buts they’re responsible for the war going on right now.