Did you know that the Gazan bomb disposal teams are some of the most skilled in the world? The reason for this is so they can disarm and disassemble unexploded Israeli bombs so that the explosives can be repurposed and fired back. So a surprisingly large portion of the explosives that Hamas used were supplied by Israel via their long-term sporadic bombing of Gaza and anything resembling major infrastructure.
Allow me to address a question the pro-Russian guy keeps dodging; Wagner is no longer participating in the Ukraine war. I don’t know the full details but after their mutiny, they were sent back to Africa and other foreign countries far from Russia and have been working to shore up Russian-friendly dictatorships and regimes. But they have been kept well away from Ukraine and Russia ever since. Part of what they’ve been doing is selling and advertising their services as consultants and support to keep people in power. This helps Russia build influence which is something it desperately needs right now. Wagner being in Venezuela would not be strange. It would mean the guy who is yelling about the CIA trying to overthrow him has accepted Russian help. In fact considering how active Wagner has been in involving themselves anywhere where they can get a foothold it’d be weird if Wagner weren’t in Venezuela.
It is counterintuitive but it does make sense. You see the initial plan the Nazis used to try to get rid of the Jews was to expel them from Germany. They had no problem if the Jews all grouped together and settled their own country so long as it was somewhere else. Far away from them. (And when they didn’t leave they made conditions horrible for them). That’s why antisemites love Zionism; it’s a way to get rid of the Jewish population in their country without dirtying their hands with ethnic cleansing. Which is how we get to conspiracy nutjobs who rant about Jewish space lasers setting forest fires in the US for some reason, turning around and enthusiastically supporting Israel and defence aid for Israel.
The US and international pressure. So optics basically. Kind of like how they made ‘efforts’ at peace and a two-state solution over the past decades just to show they were trying. Those deals involved things like all the Isreali settlers remaining in Palestine, continuing to live under Isreali laws despite living in Palestine and for the IDF to be the defense and security forces for both countries. Or things like all the arable land going to Isreal and Palestine getting cut up into multiple enclaves.
Isreal has been obstructing aid from crossing the border for the longest time. The US even started airdropping stuff in because the Isreal was disrupting aid convoys from crossing into Palestine. They even had to start building a pier because Isreal wasn’t letting in any aid. After a lot of international pressure Isreal relented and stopped deliberately screwing up the aid convoys. Except the moment that happened settlers suddenly started knowing when and where every aid convoy was crossing into Palestine and started attacking them.
No, no it doesn’t. Suicide is a sin but Christianity absolutely glorifies self-sacrifice for the religion. I mean you’ve heard of martyrs right? It became a core tenant of the religion in the early roman days that dying for the faith gets you straight into heaven. Glorifying dying for the faith is a massive part of Christianity too. In Islam committing suicide is a sin unless you’re self-sacrificing yourself for the faith and dying for the faith also gets you straight into heaven. Just like in Christianity. They’re both Abrahamic faiths and have a lot of the same roots.
So yeah what the fuck are you talking about? They are no more self-sacrificing than anyone else. They’re just fucking people. They’re all just people. Why can’t we just treat them like people?
50% of the population of Gaza was under 18 based on Israeli numbers for Gaza prior to October. This means 50% of the population wasn’t even alive when that vote happened since it happened 18 years ago! Fun fact about that vote; Hamas represented themselves as significantly more moderate in the run-up to the election only to drop that the moment they got elected and murder all their political opposition. They have since continued to murder outspoken political dissidents and quash any efforts for new elections.
A twenty-year-old election that was run on lies tells us nothing about the feelings of the people of Gaza in the current day. It doesn’t tell us how much they support Hamas now and it certainly tells us nothing about how much they value their lives.
Though your twisted rationlisation tells me a lot about how you value their lives.
It’s a shame their definition of Hamas includes all Palestinians.
Ah, the good ole genocide apologist. One missile attack that may or may not be attributable to Hamas invalidates all other evidence of IDF wrongdoing. Look that missile attack could have been Hamas but after the media firestorm died down something funny happened; the IDF realised they could get away with airstriking hospitals. Ever since all Gazan hospitals were beset with airstrikes and raids. Some raids even involved IDF soldiers dressed as medical personnel arriving in medical vehicles. (They only found two militants in that raid btw, both were wounded and being treated) But IDF hitting hospitals was old news and muddied waters, most of the news wasn’t interested in it anymore. “Ah but it was Hamas doing that” cries the apologists never explaining why Hamas suddenly is able to use jets or why they aren’t using the constant barrage of munitions directed at hospitals and residential areas to attack Israel instead.
After a while, there was that IDF airstrike on an aid convoy. The spacing of the hits meant it was clearly targeted and hamas doesn’t have anywhere near the capability and never has. The IDF blamed a few scapegoats said how it was a terrible mistake. But after the media firestorm died down something funny happened the IDF realised they could get away with air striking aid convoys. There’s been at least 8 more convoys hit from airstrikes and countless direct attacks from Israeli settlers (who are armed and equipped by the Israeli government) on aid convoys since.
Then there’s the mass graves. Multiple mass graves have been found outside hospitals that had been occupied by the IDF after the IDF withdrew. The occupants of these mass graves tended to be in restraints, tended to be women, old folk or had some serious wound. Some have been identified as doctors who worked in the hospitals, others were found wearing hospital gowns with IV tubes still in their arms. Many had signs of recent torture. Some appear to have been buried alive. These hospitals were operating (even under fire) right up until the IDF seized the building.
But it’s all a Hamas smokescreen isn’t it? It couldn’t be that the hatred the Israeli government has repeatedly expressed towards Palestine and it’s people is real could it? It couldn’t be that the side you picked to support, the one that frequently refers to Palestines as animals, are willing to commit atrocities? It couldn’t be since the other side is Hamas a genuinely vile organisation that murders their political opposition, steals aid and launches attacks aimed at murdering civilians. Your side must be the good guys. Since your side is the good guys all the stuff about them doing horrible things must be fake. Right?
I do not support Hamas, I am very tired of having to make that clear. I am very much not on their side. I despise them. They launched the October attack because Iran and Israel had started showing signs of thawing relations and they wanted to nip that in the bud (which worked). They wanted the retaliation they expected. They wanted Israel to make the Palestinians suffer more. It boosts their support when that happens. It’s been the same grotesque song and dance for decades. I would love to see Hamas rounded up and tried for their many crimes. They benefit too much from the conflict for there to be peace with them in charge. But the same could be said for the current Israeli government which have helped prop up Hamas because Hamas reduces Palestine’s international legitimacy, makes a two state solution (which they are very much against) basically impossible and provides a convenient bogeyman to keep them in power. All the while it’s the Palestinian civilians who suffer and die.
So if your home was invaded in a war that became an unrelenting meat grinder you’d advocate surrender and submission? You’d happily allow things to degenerate into a decades-long insurgency? You’d happily endure the heavy-handed crackdowns the invading government enforced on anyone and everyone who held even the slightest shred of sympathy for the insurgents? You’d accept that the bloody and brutal insurgency was better than the full-scale war despite the constant uncertainty? No, you wouldn’t, would you? You’d advocate surrender and submission again. You’d tell the insurgents to lay down arms because people were dying, you’d tell them that enduring the invader’s harsh rule was better than the suffering inflicted in the fight. You’d tell them to give up.
I do not understand how you do not see the stance you take as the insult it is. I do not understand why you think people should stand down as their freedom is stripped away from them. Putin has made it clear, in a great many speeches, that they resent and reject the idea of Ukranian identity. Yet you tell the Ukranians to surrender and hold no ire to the Russians who levelled so many Ukrainian cities with artillery.
I should really proofread my comments before I post them but then again you don’t strike me as worth the effort. I am well aware eastern Ukraine speaks Russian and has for a long time, I was talking exclusively about the rebels coming from nowhere.
Oh the Russian speaking population that sprang up in rebellion from nowhere in pretty much a single day with a clear and organised command structure from day one, with matching gear, uniforms and weapons and a bizarrely poor understanding of the local geography despite supposedly being locals. You know they attacked a movie theatre because they thought it was a local government center? Those rebels? The ones the locals didn’t recognise? The ones whose casualty numbers had a weird correlation with Russian servicemen dying from unexplained causes? Those rebels?
Now I normally don’t call ‘Russian bot/troll’ too often but Russian propaganda about this is so poor I have a hard time coming to any other conclusion.
It makes them upset that there are any caualties
I’m not merely sceptical I know this is bunk. Not because they’re claiming they accidentally stumbled onto something akin to cold fusion, or the incredible claim that they’ve found a new fundamental force that everyone else completely missed. No I know it’s bunk because they’re already talking to the press about and releasing statements with their claims before the paper is ready.
Every credible organisation if they stumbled on something like this would lock things down. They wouldn’t make any statements until they have double, triple or quadruple-checked everything. Making a massive claim that can make world news but quickly gets debunked is poison to a group’s credibility. So every group that cares about their credibility would only officially confirm anything once every single i is dotted and every t is crossed.
The fact that they’re already talking to the press means they don’t have the real evidence to prove their extraordinary claims and they know it. This is a scam and the whole “We don’t know what causes it” is simply a tactic to make it harder to debunk while they fish for gullible investors to sink money into their scheme.
Project sundial was a cold war American project to build a bomb so big it wouldn’t matter where it was detonated It was a true doomsday weapon