"Is this what #Israel is? The tech outpost, the US ally, the beacon of democracy in the Middle East? A country that kills journalists [30] and writers in surgical strikes [31]. That forces doctors away from ICU babies, leaving them to die and rot in their incubators [32]. Whose snipers shoot children and grannies in the head [33]" – extraordinarily powerful and courageous essay by @paulbiggar . Read it and weep.
Europe’s last act of colonialism. They didn’t have rights to take away the land from the Palestinians in 1948 and they shouldn’t have rights to keep it now. The whole occupation is evil. Arabs and Jews should be equal in all ways.
@PChoate@paulbiggar we can't change the past, even though we share responsibility for it. We can change the future.
It's obvious that the longer the violence goes on, the harder the resolution will be to achieve.
It's obvious that there are only two solutions: the "everyone is equal in one secular state" solution, and the "two completely independent states on the pre-1967 borders" solution.
The ball is in Israel's court. They could choose peace now. Will they?
Not before Israel deposes their leader unfortunately. That would be very bloody and destabilizing.
I agree though. Hammas ripped open their festering wound that will never heal.
Hammas’ endgame is a horrible consequence of the position we and Israel put the Palestinians in. It must happen though. Palestine cannot and will not indefinitely stand. Possibly enter diaspora like the Jews did. Ironic.
@PChoate@paulbiggar within a decade, we in the west will look back on the current events in #Gaza with the same horror as we look back on the #Holocaust – with the significant distinction that this time we ARE the baddies. There is still time to stop this, to turn it round. But there isn't much time.
Palestine must continue. The consequences of its destruction are too horrible to contemplate.
The IDF are about to kill Palestine’s aquifer with seawater by flooding their tunnels with 40 cubic miles of water or something. It may be a moonscape in 10 years.
That’s another Holocaust war crime that the US has to somehow justify.
Hammas kicked them in the teeth. This is the retribution.
I’m sure it’s justified in the Bible somewhere. The Old Testament is very smitey.
“In 1980, Rabbi Israel Hess wrote an article that uses the story of Amalek to justify wiping out Palestinians. The title of the article is translated as “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” as well as “The Mitzvah of Genocide in the Torah”.”
@PChoate@paulbiggar it would be a good thing, but I cannot see it as likely.
The idiotic thing here is that Judaism and Islam are so closely related that it would be perfectly reasonable to see them as two branches of the same faith. But then, the people we call Palestinians are descended in part from those ethnic Jews who never left Judea, some of adopted just one or two more prophets after Christianity and Islam arrived.
This is false equivalence. Hamas massacred noncombatants. It beat and kidnapped and raped. It's still holding some as hostages, still beating and raping them.
Israel retaliated against Hamas but Hamas uses Gazans as human shields. Those noncombatant casualties are a side-effect of war, not the target of it.
@TruthSandwich@speaker_hat@paulbiggar Israel has not retaliated against Hamas. We know where Hamas high command is: it's in Qatar. Israel has taken no action against Qatar. Israel is retaliating against mainly civilian targets.
Some degree of "collateral damage" may be acceptable in war (although it shouldn't be), but this degree is not collateral damage. When precision weapons are hitting mainly civilian targets, it's because that's where they're being aimed.
Israel has retaliated against the part of Hamas it can reach without creating an international incident.
Israel is attacking militants (aka terrorists) and destroying military infrastructure, much of it underground. Hamas does not have distinct military bases. It's intermixed.
They are fairly apathetic about collateral damage, and that's absolutely wrong. But they're not targeting civilians, the way Hamas does.
There was deliberate targeting of civilian targets by both the UK and the US during WWII, for example the Dresden firestorm. We need to accept and acknowledge that those were war crimes.
@Peace_out_art@paulbiggar let us try our best not to hate. At least, not to hate people. "Hate the sin and not the sinner," as a famous #Palestinian once said.
@tomclearwood@Peace_out_art@paulbiggar I was brought up a Christian. I know that book backwards. That doesn't mean I'm a Christian now. I respect Jesus of Nazareth as a mostly-sound moral teacher, but as he himself said, "by their fruits shall ye know them".
@simon_brooke@Peace_out_art@paulbiggar I was treated very badly by "christians" when I was a wee boy, I know the value of faith alright!
I'm so glad to live in an essentially atheistic society now, a little cult-ridden to be sure, but essentially, atheistic. Doesn't stop me "believing" in #LoveOneAnother!
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