Reply To: Bombing hospitals

[Siderite]

I could say the same to you on this. Case in point being BBC, and especially Channel 4, who did so much to damage their own reputation by blindly believing what a Hamas government minister told them. All those moral warriors outraged about Al-Ahli fell rather silent when it looked like it was a PIJ missile.

As for it being retribution, of course it’s in response to October 7, but the idea that it’s aimed at killing civilians as a motive I find spurious, at present (I will get to this later). I don’t see why the IDF would call for civilians to leave if it was about that. International law makes it clear that military targets in civilian areas is not illegal, so any targeting of such is not beyond limits. Whether they should is debatable, but I don’t see how it’s any different to when US led forces did the same in Iraq and Syria against ISIS. That also involved urban warfare and civilian casualties. Yet there was far less uproar.

Meanwhile, Hamas have repeatedly said they would repeat October 7 until all Jews are removed from Israel and that they would annihilate all Jews, so I still don’t know what a ceasefire would mean. Would it mean allowing Hamas to just keep carrying out pogroms and Israel accepting its citizens are collateral damage? It’s just not workable. If a death cult had called for death to Brits, carried out a massacre, and said they’d do it continuously, the UK would react and did so against ISIS. Yet when Israel do it, it’s somehow worse.

As for Israel, people can say I am biased, but I just recognise its right to exist and defend itself. If that makes me biased, so be it. I am no fan of the regime, who are despicable and fascist inclined. You only have to look at the arming of settlers in the West Bank and recent comments about nuking Gaza to demonstrate that (hence my at present comment). Netanyahu removed the offender, but if the extremists in the coalition get in power I would expect to see less calls for civilians to leave and outright targeting of civilians deliberately. This isn’t me praising Netanyahu for removing the offender either. He is a populist moron who shunned centrists through dislike to work with the clowns and has done much damage of his own to Israel’s democracy through his own corruption. He was so dedicated to his culture war against Israeli liberals that he neglected his country’s safety, which was supposed to be his selling point. The West Bank settlers are appalling and wrong. However, many countries have such instances of wrongdoing and it doesn’t make their existence wrong or deny them the right to defend themselves against an attack. The Israeli liberals who oppose Netanyahu and his gang of corrupt crooks also tend to support Israel in this conflict, because they know what Hamas means. I will also say that I wished aid would get in faster, but Egypt is also to blame for that.

As for digging out social media interpretations, I don’t need to dig far. Speakers at the ‘peace marches’ openly call for the destruction of Israel and supporting the ‘resistance’ on Oct 7. People chant songs which Jews see as calling for their deaths*, say they support Hamas and wang on about gloablising the intifada. They’re not necessarily everyone on the march (I am sure many go through a desire for peace), but they represent a significant number who just get ignored and cause much of the division. I would say that is bias from the pro-Palestinian side and none of this will be solved until it is rectified.

"We saw what the resistance can do when they take the fight & their self determination in their own hands. This has been the biggest blow to Zionism that we've seen in our lifetimes…you know what the so called labour progressives think about it? they condemned it as terrorism!" pic.twitter.com/Rb3eFe2WmQ

— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) November 4, 2023

*It’s funny how all lives matter is rightfully shunned as downplaying racism against black people, but we must have nuance when it comes to “from the river to the sea.”