Calls are growing for the UN Security Council to be reformed after the US became the only member to use its veto power to block a Gaza ceasefire resolution, a move welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The UN chief says he will keep pushing for peace.

  • Linechecker@monero.town
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    1 year ago

    Things just dont make sense. Hamas, a very weak power, sneak attacks Israel, a relatively strong power, then hides amongst the civilian population with military targets scattered throughout neighborhoods and municipalities.

    Is Hamas surprised by the mass civilian casualties or are you (the reader) the one who is surprised? Is Hamas actually weaponizing their civilians by showing the world how many are dying and being an agent of change in the UN?

    Is Hamas considering these civilian deaths as martyrs? Because martyrdom is not the same as innocent death.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You’re god damn right I’m surprised.

      If terrorists hid in your family’s basement and then your family home and all those in it, plus their whole neighborhood, was wiped off the face of the earth, you’d sing a real different tune then.

      Try to imagine Palestinians as real people, instead of faceless terrorists who “sealed their fate” when they “supported the wrong side” (basically just by existing).

    • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Picture a bank hostage situation. Police officer comes in with a fully loaded gun. A bank teller is being held at gunpoint by the robber. Never once in the history of ever has the police officer shot the bank teller.

      That’s what Israel is doing.

      • eric@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s more like the cops throw a grenade at the robber and teller, and when they kill the teller, the officers try to imply the teller’s complicity because they allowed the robbers to control the bank to begin with.

        And then when the robbers rationalize the bank teller’s death as martyrdom for their cause, should we really feel bad for the teller?

      • MxM111@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        No police in the world would say “ok, go free, and keep the hostages”. And by the way, a murderer would be better analogy than bank robber.
        Also, hostages did die in real world hostage situations too, while police was targeting those hostage takers.

      • Linechecker@monero.town
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for clarifying for me. Didn’t realize it was such a simple scenario like a bank robbery.

        • Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          You clearly can’t grasp the real complicated scenario so he gave you a simplified version to make it easier to understand.

          Anyone with even an ounce of empathy understands why Israel bombing children is always unacceptable. Nobody should need to explain it to you really

          • Linechecker@monero.town
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            1 year ago

            So, which is less acceptable:

            Hamas, a military threat to Israel who hides behind children.

            Or

            Israel, a country with a military who is responding to military threats in a way a military would.

            BTW, my original post is asking questions, but you Lemmy Users just keep making it seem I’m pro Israel just for asking.

            • kurwa@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              But is Israels actions appropriate? Indiscriminate bombing across all of Gaza? Collective punishment? If they really wanted to A) save hostages and B) take out those responsible, they could do a surgical strike with special forces. Raining hellfire upon innocent people just because their might be hamas there is absolutely disgusting.

                • kurwa@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Israel commiting genocide is awful. Hamas is just a response to that.

                • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  As you laid out your question, probably (cynically), hamas. The world has been happy to tolerate some incredibly awful governments - especially if you start looking at African dictators.

                  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    If you look at Nelson Mandela and the ANC in South Africa you’ll find they did the same thing as Hamas to get rid of the Apartheid.

                    When asking nicely didn’t work they started asking less nicely.

            • Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              Both are unacceptable but clearly Israel is more so. In a hostage situation, you don’t bomb the neighborhood. I’d also like to point out that nobody is really defending Hamas, which is more acceptable is missing the point entirely.

              Israel has serious military advantage, they can basically force a cease fire at any time. They aren’t under threat and tbh, probably let the events that started all this happen for causus belli.

              The article talks about a mostly symbolic UN vote that was vetoed by the US at the request of Israel. They don’t want a ceasefire, they don’t want their hostages back, they don’t want a solution.

              They just want to keep bombing.

              • Linechecker@monero.town
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                1 year ago

                I’ll agree israel is worse in hindsight, but Hamas kicked this off with this sneak attack that has led to this situation, so I’d say that is worse. Hamas was so successful in causing an Israeli intelligence disaster, which I feel like caused their military to lash out. All militaries do is destroy, they are not nation builders. Surgical special force operations can take a long time to plan and wouldn’t work since there were so many hostages and they kept moving them around.

                • Shyfer@ttrpg.network
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                  1 year ago

                  What about the decades before this where Israel had been killing people, imprisoning without charges, and forcing them off their land? When that’s added for context, Israel is the one who kicked this off.

                • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  All militaries do is destroy

                  This is a fundamental misunderstanding of violence generally. The purpose of destructive capability is deterrence, and hence the protection of things. This is really crucial to get in order to understand anything about violence at all.

                  This is why a mother cat bares her fangs when she’s cornered. She’s not attempting to destroy, but rather to prove that she can destroy, in order to deter an attack.

                  Weapons, by existing and being visible, send signals that make violence less likely to occur.

                  When weapons are being used actively to destroy, it’s because their initial purpose failed.

                • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Stop trying to wash Bibi’s ass and depose him already. You are going to get Israel destroyed if you don’t.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Why are you acting like Hamas and Israel are the only parties in the conflict? That makes no more sense than talking about a war between Palestine and Likud.

      Pretending Hamas is the same as Palestinians is anti-Palestenian, which to any person with a moral compass is just as bad as antisemitism, the same as being hateful towards any ethnic group.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s black and white thinking, just like the whole mindset of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Hamas and the Israeli regime are enemies. The people of Palestine and the Israeli regime are enemies, therefore Hamas and the people of Palestine must be friends. Also people opposing the actions of Israel must thus be friends with Hamas.

        I’m just not sure how much of it is in bad faith because they support the evil actions (possibly even including the evil actions of Hamas that they believe gives justification for the evil actions of Israel), or because they are just stupid and don’t understand that people fit into more than two categories.

        • Linechecker@monero.town
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          1 year ago

          It’s interesting how just asking critical questions of Hamas entails that I support Israel’s response.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “just asking questions” is the excuse for assholes to be assholes. It’s never “just asking questions” it is always “asking misleading questions to evoke an emotional reaction out of someone”.

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              It’s never “just asking questions”

              Do you have any evidence of this claim? Because that doesn’t make any sense to me. People do, indeed, ask questions to clarify things. It’s a crucial part of communication and thinking.

              Labeling all questions as attempts to troll sounds like the sort of knee jerk reaction of a person who doesn’t want their beliefs questioned. And someone who doesn’t want their beliefs questioned probably hasn’t developed them very thoroughly.

              You should be asking yourself questions all the time. When I said it’s a crucial part of communication and thinking I mean that if you don’t ask questions about things, then you don’t communicate or think. And that’s very bad.

              • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I see you Likechecker. I know you’re not just here to be an ass. Just wanted you to know this hate isn’t universal.

              • Maalus@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Boo hoo. With your “just asking questions” you try to absolve yourself of the type of questions you are asking. And if someone calls you out on it, you run away because you know what kind of questions you are asking.

    • febra@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      iS hAmAs SuRpRiSeD!?

      Who cares what Hamas even thinks for fucks sake. Innocents are dying. If you’re all so “civilised” then maybe you should realize that indiscriminately killing innocents isn’t right, no matter who does it.

        • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social
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          1 year ago

          Stop Israel oppression of Palestine so Hamas doesn’t have a cause to recruit people behind? They’re already not supported by the majority of people in Gaza, but if someone is left an orphan because Israel bombed their block, of course they’ll be easier to recruit to Hamas.

            • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social
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              1 year ago

              They have a cure already. They have giant walls, the iron dome missile defense system, hundreds of drones patrolling Gaza, supposedly a state of the art intelligence apparatus, mass mandatory recruitment (well… Except for the orthodox Jews), large towers, fences, etc. There’s a reason this is unprecedented. They just had their resources positioned to take over West Bank settlements instead, and ignored warnings from multiple sources about an imminent attack. Their leadership fucked up. And are continuing to fuck up by positioning the rest of the world against their genocide.

              The thing is more genocide won’t fix the cancer. The US figured that out in Vietnam, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. It just makes the survivors want to kill you more. That doesn’t fix the cancer like you think it does. It was fine for the US to fuck up those other places because we can just leave and we often make a bunch of money during the conflict, but Israel can’t. They need to learn to coexist, take lessons from places like South Africa, or the UK and IRA. It was actually negotiating that stopped the attacks in those places. They tried the killing everyone thing for awhile but it doesn’t work.

              Personally, I think the cure is teaming up with a local alternative secular group, like the PLO, and empowering them without undermining their authority and support by doing things like the shit they do in the West Bank, or preventing travel between the two sectors from, or controlling their water, power, food supply, etc, or giving up on negotiations because Hamas does an unrelated terrorism. It’s like negotiating with MLK, Jr so you don’t have to negotiate with Malcolm X. Hamas has negative popularity but no one has the resources to stop them, and no random civilians are going to bother trying to while Israel controls more aspects of their daily life in a more obviously negative way (electricity, water quality, incoming supplies, travel, work visas, drone buzzing, etc.). And to demand you do before helping them even though you have all the power in the relationship is like the cops telling a mom and pop shop to try fighting the mafia first before they do something about the mafia extorting them.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          My solution would be to remove the blockade on Gaza. Let the people there exercise their human right to be armed.

          Then they can either overthrow Hamas, or join them.

          The only problem with my plan is the time lag between the Gazan population being armed, and when to hold them responsible for their government. As they exist now, Hamas exists without their consent. There’s no internal check against that “government”.

    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      You left out the part where Israel, of their own accord, goes in and kills these civilians to retaliate against what you’ve stated as a “very weak power.”

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Hamas wants dead civilians. That’s how resistance/terrorism movements work (your choice of descriptor, it’s the exact same thing).

      IRA, Tamil Tigers, Viet Cong, etc. They all benefit from civilians on “their” side dying, that’s just the game they are choosing to play. Acting like you’re pwning somebody by pointing out an obvious fact won’t get you far.

      And for the record, fuck Hamas.

    • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Hamas might be, but the millions of non-terrorist Palestinian’s lives are worth more than to end as collateral damage.

    • kaffiene@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hamas is evil. Wanting to get rid of them is understandable. Commuting mass civilian death to remove them is still a war crime.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What’s ironic is that I thought you were talking about Hamas, wanting to get rid of Israeli authorities. It just highlights how similar the two are. The IDF and Hamas both have no qualms about killing innocent people to further their agenda.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          The difference between the IDF and Hamas is that the IDF serves a civilian population that is heavily armed and almost 100% veterans.

          Hamas forcibly rules a civilian population that is unarmed.

          Given Israel actively prevents the people of Gaza from being armed (as is their human right) they are completely wrong to hold Gazans responsible for Hamas, given the Gazans have no power to consent to or reject Hamas’s rule.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I don’t disagree at all. I see Palestinians as a completely separate entity. I also see Israeli civilians as a separate entity from the IDF, however. Netanyahu isn’t universally supported. No civilian in this situation is culpable.

    • PixellatedDave@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      For decades we had the IRA and we didn’t level Northern Ireland. The IRA were a terrorist organisation and repeatedly bombed civilians in UK.

        • PixellatedDave@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          True but they were still hidden and helped by the local population. Point is though that the vastly superior British army didn’t level NI.

      • serratur@lemmy.wtf
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        1 year ago

        The IRA didn’t target civilians though, they targeted the military or they tried doing economic damage.

        • PixellatedDave@lemmy.world
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          Nah they killed plenty but I was trying to draw attention to the fact that the British army were vastly superior but didn’t level NI.

          WIKI has a list of the bombings.

      • Linechecker@monero.town
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        1 year ago

        Point taken. However Hamas isn’t just a terrorist organization, they are the elected political party of Gaza. They are the government. So not really apples to apples.

          • Linechecker@monero.town
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            1 year ago

            Answering that question is a whole rabbit hole I will not go down. Just wanted to point out that comparing Hamas with any other terrorist organization is imo not really possible.

            • SCB@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Comparing them to the Taliban or Hezbollagh is pretty possible.

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What’s surprising to me is that Hamas was able to succeed in the attack in the first place.

      Also that people are actually starting to think for themselves and find nuance in a situation that is filled to the brim of it.

    • Dadifer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You are being downvoted, but Hamas said exactly this on international TV.

      • febra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        People are downvoting because it’s a dumb ass take. Not because of what hamas said or not.

        Killing civillians en mass is not right. You’re no better than hamas if you do that, no matter how “civilised” you claim to be.

        • Dadifer@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          …except that was literally Hamas’ goal. I didn’t say it wasn’t stupid.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hamas isn’t surprised by the casualties, because the casualties are a desired goal for Hamas. They shot civilians who tried to flee south at the start of the war. They tell civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings that have been “knocked.”

      Mass death is their goal, because they know it will do shit like manipulate the UN into protecting them.