Hamas Attacks Israel: 70 Israelis, 198 Palestinians Dead

[Dill]

(10-08-2023, 07:05 PM)basballguy Wrote: Fairly certain Israel, no matter how much people disagree with them, has never slaughtered a bunch of people at a music festival....which is mostly young adults
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/music-festival-revelers-israeli-desert-became-victims-hamas-militants-rcna119394
It's like trying to find reason in Hitler's actions...there is none.  

WWII is a good baseline when it comes to understanding ethnic conflict. SSF has already referenced it once.

Once fascism had been defeated, lot of people did stop to ask why it had happened, and how to prevent it from happening again.

The goal was to prevent another world war. That meant rooting out fascism in Axis countries for sure.

But it also meant looking at what happened after WWI, how treatment of Germany created conditions under which
angry young men could form mass death cults based on ideologies rooted in ethnic them/us distinctions--as well as
some soul-searching among the victorious Allies.

That was, to a degree, trying "to find reason in Hitler's actions." To prevent another Hitler.

I would not be surprised if some, at the time, thought such efforts were "apologizing" for Hitler, 

but if so, they lost the argument. That's likely why we've had no WW since then. 

But increasingly people worldwide are forgetting lessons learned.

[Dill]

(10-08-2023, 10:15 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You'll please forgive me for feeding the flames, but I had a similar thought.  It would not shock me at all if this attack was known, or at least suspected, and absorbing the initial blow was deemed acceptable due to the leeway for response it would supply.  I would add, for others, that this in no way excuses the attacks.  But quite simply, if you're looking to crush Hamas and sway global sentiment heavily in your favor than this attack could not be more prefect.  It also heavily discredits any pro-Palestinian movements in other countries.  This could be a case of Hamas and Iran playing themselves.

Two questions: 

What do you think could be the end goal of Hamas? 

what do you think they have NOT counted on. 

[Dill]

(10-08-2023, 09:26 PM)basballguy Wrote: I mean it's things like that which create negative perceptions.  Someone makes the conscious effort to update a title which depicts Israel as being more aggressive but when it's clear that's not the case, you no longer have time to update the title?  It's petty.  

As the "someone" in question I can explain the title.  

I posted the first numbers as part of the initial report because they were on the news: Fox as well as the MSM.

Just as it never occurred to me my news sources were attempting to "make Israel the aggressor" by reporting facts as they came in,

so it never occurred to me that anyone in this forum would assume my reporting the reporting indicated "conscious effort" to do that.

If my intent were to make Israel "more aggressive," then titling the thread "Hamas Attacks Israel" was a poor start.

I updated them the figures once. Then stopped, given they were changing so rapidly.  
   

[Dill]

(10-08-2023, 02:50 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Hamas is not in it to stop attacking Israel, not interested in Peace at all, even if you give them everything they want, they'd just want more and find another round of excuses to attack Israel. In order for any peace over there, People and terrorist organizations that behave like this need to be completely destroyed.

I agree that Hamas does not want peace, though the majority of Palestinians do. 
And Hamas undermines or kills other Palestinians who want peace.

What they want is the end of the state of Israel. 

But just killing off Hamas won't produce peace, so long as Gaza remains a giant open air prison. 

If every member of Hamas dropped dead right now, within a generation there would be another organization, 
possibly also Islamist, with the same goal.

This would be easier to understand if you imagined how two million Americans might respond to imprisonment
for three generations in an area of 140 square miles. Think of how they respond to mask mandates now.

The right wing in Israel does not want any solution to this problem which entails Palestinian autonomy and a homeland.
And certainly no "right of return." They have a realistic fear that Palestinians would try to take back the land Israel took from them. 

Israel was able to integrate a remainder of the Arab population remaining on Israeli land after the 1948 war, 
but they didn't want to do that with the refugee populations in Gaza and the West Bank, in part because of the ethnic
imbalance that would create and in part because their real property had already been given to Israelis. 

So just as there are Palestinians who don't want peace, there are Israelis who don't want peace.
E.g., when Rabin signed the Oslo accords with Arafat and the PLO, it was an Israeli who assassinated him.
When Sharon and Netanyahu followed him as PM, they were hostile to the Accords and began increasing settlements
on the West Bank and generally refusing implementation. The view that examining this history is "excusing" Hamas
only insures that Hamas, or some facscimile thereof, will continue into the future. 

[Belsnickel]

(10-09-2023, 07:15 AM)Dill Wrote: I agree that Hamas does not want peace, though the majority of Palestinians do. 
And Hamas undermines or kills other Palestinians who want peace.

What they want is the end of the state of Israel. 

But just killing off Hamas won't produce peace, so long as Gaza remains a giant open air prison. 

If every member of Hamas dropped dead right now, within a generation there would be another organization, 
possibly also Islamist, with the same goal.

This would be easier to understand if you imagined how two million Americans might respond to imprisonment
for three generations in an area of 140 square miles. Think of how they respond to mask mandates now.

The right wing in Israel does not want any solution to this problem which entails Palestinian autonomy and a homeland.
And certainly no "right of return." They have a realistic fear that Palestinians would try to take back the land Israel took from them. 

Israel was able to integrate a remainder of the Arab population remaining on Israeli land after the 1948 war, 
but they didn't want to do that with the refugee populations in Gaza and the West Bank, in part because of the ethnic
imbalance that would create and in part because their real property had already been given to Israelis. 

So just as there are Palestinians who don't want peace, there are Israelis who don't want peace.
E.g., when Rabin signed the Oslo accords with Rabin, it was an Israeli who assassinated him.
When Sharon and Netanyahu followed him as PM, they were hostile to the Accords and began increasing settlements
on the West Bank and generally refusing implementation. The view that examining this history is "excusing" Hamas
only insures that Hamas, or some facscimile thereof, will continue into the future. 

This post is a very valid position that I fear will be lost on many people when discussed in the context of this latest situation. I often think about discussions surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a similar way as I do gun control discussions. The topic gets a lot of focus during major incidents and in the immediate aftermath, but then the attention dies away for the vast majority until the next flare up. The problem is that in those times of heightened emotion the issues get the most attention with the least amount of logic and nuanced evaluation, but no one is paying attention when those sorts of discussions take place. Trying to apply this sort of analysis to these situations during the times of heightened emotion comes off as defending those in the wrong and as a result people sour on these positions during the less emotional times. At the same time, though, people need those sorts of takes during these times because it can prevent actions that could have dire consequences.

[Dill]

(10-08-2023, 11:10 PM)pally Wrote: to further add to that conspiracy idea...an attack on Israel certainly would take the pressure off of Netanyahu's internal domestic problems.  Can't worry about what he is doing to their Justice Department when there is a war to fight.

It's true that the attack takes pressure of N's domestic problems--for now, but it has at least as much potential to exacerbate them, once the dust settles.

On Morning Joe right now, there is an NYT reporter in Israel * (also apparently an Israeli citizen) complaining about the sluggish response of the IDF, and what she calls a "total silence" from the government about the failed defense. Apparently there were supposed to be military units protecting the concert which was attacked, but they were a day late mustering. That enhances the conspiracy theory, I suppose. But I think complacency is a better explanation. And when the families of the slain start questioning the government, no one in Israel will call it blaming the IDF instead of Hamas. It will be seen as a call for accountability from N's. government.

On the other channel, Fox is calling this attack Israel's 9/11. It's about as likely that N and the IDF stepped back a bit to increase the damage for PR purposes as it is likely that Bush and Cheney allowed jets to crash into the Twin Towers so they'd have a pretext for invading Iraq. 

So, next to impossible for the same reasons, e.g. hundreds of people would have to be in on it, and they'd all be ok with killing their own innocents for an uncertain result, etc.

Conspiracy theories arise, in part, from a general inability to incorporate social/structural forces into explanation of such events, reducing causes to a few individual actors and their evil motivations, then selecting known facts to that to produce a hidden pattern.

*There is also the leader of a Jewish American organization who opines that the current paralysis of the House hurts the US ability to respond on Israel's side. 

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(10-09-2023, 07:31 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: This post is a very valid position that I fear will be lost on many people when discussed in the context of this latest situation. I often think about discussions surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a similar way as I do gun control discussions. The topic gets a lot of focus during major incidents and in the immediate aftermath, but then the attention dies away for the vast majority until the next flare up. The problem is that in those times of heightened emotion the issues get the most attention with the least amount of logic and nuanced evaluation, but no one is paying attention when those sorts of discussions take place. Trying to apply this sort of analysis to these situations during the times of heightened emotion comes off as defending those in the wrong and as a result people sour on these positions during the less emotional times. At the same time, though, people need those sorts of takes during these times because it can prevent actions that could have dire consequences.

He'd get a lot more traction if he didn't have a long track record of blaming Israel unfairly for events such as the Six Days War.  As argued in the other thread, there is a lot to criticize Israel for, but when it is accompanied by attempts to shift the lions share of the blame for these conflicts on to them it becomes tainted.  Israel did not create itself, and since its creation it has been the target of hostile neighbors, essentially all of its neighbors.  Said neighbors have tried to utterly destroy the nation several times in the past, they were the clear aggressors.

Israel reacted to these constant, and severe threats, they didn't create them.  Their actions have not always been ideal, but if we're going to try and turn a lens of understanding on why Hamas does what it does then Israel at the very least deserves the same consideration.  At the same time, no one should be attempting to equate the actions of a terrorist organization funded by a nation that routinely proclaims its desire is "Death to Israel", to the IDF.  To do so puts them on equal terms as actors, which they most certainly are not.  Hamas deliberately targets civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian and is quite comfortable with the wholesale slaughter of innocents.  We don't even need to get into the other unspeakable acts they've committed in the past few days.  Dill is so cognizant of this difference that he flat out refuses to respond to posts asking him to explain what El Quds day protests are about, you'll notice he did so again in this very thread.

So while he raises some legitimate points he does so in a manner that marginalizes the atrocities of Hamas, and their motivations.  They are not just looking for a Palestinian homeland, they want to destroy Israel, in the exact same way as the nation who bankrolls them, the Islamic "Republic" of Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the entire world.  If you want to have an honest conversation of the roots of this present conflict, as Dill claims to want, then its proponent cannot be a poster with a long history of anti-Israeli posts who ignores the real motivations of the Islamic extremists who are, once again, the aggressors in a war with Israel.  I'm sure he'll find a way to blame the Yom Kippur war on Israel too.

[Arturo Bandini]

(10-09-2023, 06:08 AM)Dill Wrote: Two questions: 

What do you think could be the end goal of Hamas? 

what do you think they have NOT counted on. 

Hamas are palestinian ultra conservatives fighting against israelis ultra conservatives. 

Hate versus hate. 

And they had barbaric to it ... 

[Fan_in_Kettering]

(10-07-2023, 04:43 PM)StoneTheCrow Wrote: I don’t think the $6 billion for Iran has been brought up in here yet. I’m assuming that’s what they’re referring to.

Yes, thank you. That money sent to Iran funded the attack on Israel. The US is guilty of funding a proxy war.

[StoneTheCrow]

The White House has called a lid before noon.

We do not expect to see or hear from President Biden for the rest of the day.

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) October 9, 2023

Edit, update:

One hour after Biden called a lid, Hamas is threatening to execute prisoners on live TV

They reportedly have multiple American hostages pic.twitter.com/EzHEmOLcmx

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) October 9, 2023

Someone needs to hold a mirror under the old man’s nose.

[HarleyDog]

(10-09-2023, 01:35 PM)StoneTheCrow Wrote:

The White House has called a lid before noon.

We do not expect to see or hear from President Biden for the rest of the day.

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) October 9, 2023

Edit, update:

One hour after Biden called a lid, Hamas is threatening to execute prisoners on live TV

They reportedly have multiple American hostages pic.twitter.com/EzHEmOLcmx

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) October 9, 2023

Someone needs to hold a mirror under the old man’s nose.

He's just not taking this thing seriously.

[Belsnickel]

(10-09-2023, 01:33 PM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: Yes, thank you. That money sent to Iran funded the attack on Israel. The US is guilty of funding a proxy war.

This is just false on several fronts.

[Millhouse]

(10-09-2023, 02:38 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: He's just not taking this thing seriously.

He's probably in the situation room for rest of day. I don't know what we could really do, even if they execute American hostages. I know what we should do since we are quite experienced in dealing with Jihadist terrorists, but would be quite a lot of collateral damage unfortunately.

[Luvnit2]

(10-09-2023, 06:31 AM)Dill Wrote: As the "someone" in question I can explain the title.  

I posted the first numbers as part of the initial report because they were on the news: Fox as well as the MSM.

Just as it never occurred to me my news sources were attempting to "make Israel the aggressor" by reporting facts as they came in,

so it never occurred to me that anyone in this forum would assume my reporting the reporting indicated "conscious effort" to do that.

If my intent were to make Israel "more aggressive," then titling the thread "Hamas Attacks Israel" was a poor start.

I updated them the figures once. Then stopped, given they were changing so rapidly.  
   

You know you can update your OP and change the title. it is now reported over 800 people were killed. That is not close to your OP death numbers.

[Luvnit2]

(10-09-2023, 01:33 PM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: Yes, thank you.  That money sent to Iran funded the attack on Israel.  The US is guilty of funding a proxy war.

It is yet to be proven they are using money from Iran, but it does appear Iran is involved and maybe the orchestrator of this atrocity. Killing innocent women, men and children, raping women, putting children in cages they took hostage.

The thing we do know is Biden's energy policy of not being energy independent played a huge roll in Iran's ability to fill the oil production void. Biden lifted sanctions against Iran. Iran's windfall from oil is far greater than the 6 billion from Biden releasing the money back to Iran.

So, lots to sort out including how could US and Israel Intelligence fail to know this was a threat.

This was a flat out terrorist attack and anyone trying to place blame on Israel is anti - Semitic. We were reminded the danger that lurks in Iran and the middle East and we need strong leadership to control it.

My fear is we know our borders are open and we know terrorists have entered our country. Sadly, we have no way to track them or know their future plans. We do know Iran's stance has not changed, "Death to America".

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/irans-parliament-chants-death-to-israel-after-bloody-hamas-invasion/ar-AA1hQufe

It's a fight for survival for Israelis. It always has been.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(10-09-2023, 06:08 AM)Dill Wrote: Two questions: 

What do you think could be the end goal of Hamas? 

what do you think they have NOT counted on. 

Kill every Israeli in the Middle East.


Other nations stepping in and helping Israel with boots on the ground to take him out.

[Dill]

(10-09-2023, 10:35 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: He'd get a lot more traction if he didn't have a long track record of blaming Israel unfairly for events such as the Six Days War.  As argued in the other thread, there is a lot to criticize Israel for, but when it is accompanied by attempts to shift the lions share of the blame for these conflicts on to them it becomes tainted.  Israel did not create itself, and since its creation it has been the target of hostile neighbors, essentially all of its neighbors.  Said neighbors have tried to utterly destroy the nation several times in the past, they were the clear aggressors.

Israel reacted to these constant, and severe threats, they didn't create them.  Their actions have not always been ideal, but if we're going to try and turn a lens of understanding on why Hamas does what it does then Israel at the very least deserves the same consideration.  At the same time, no one should be attempting to equate the actions of a terrorist organization funded by a nation that routinely proclaims its desire is "Death to Israel", to the IDF.  To do so puts them on equal terms as actors, which they most certainly are not.  Hamas deliberately targets civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian and is quite comfortable with the wholesale slaughter of innocents.  We don't even need to get into the other unspeakable acts they've committed in the past few days.  Dill is so cognizant of this difference that he flat out refuses to respond to posts asking him to explain what El Quds day protests are about, you'll notice he did so again in this very thread.

So while he raises some legitimate points he does so in a manner that marginalizes the atrocities of Hamas, and their motivations.  They are not just looking for a Palestinian homeland, they want to destroy Israel, in the exact same way as the nation who bankrolls them, the Islamic "Republic" of Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the entire world.  If you want to have an honest conversation of the roots of this present conflict, as Dill claims to want, then its proponent cannot be a poster with a long history of anti-Israeli posts who ignores the real motivations of the Islamic extremists who are, once again, the aggressors in a war with Israel.  I'm sure he'll find a way to blame the Yom Kippur war on Israel too.

My discussions on Israel have always been predicated on the current state of historical research.

Yours have not.

You just claimed that Israel only reacts to constant severe threats, but does not create them. But that claim cannot be supported by the historical record that we currently have. One only gets there by imposing an ideological principle on the representation of history, in which the outcome of is always determined in advance and reached by exclusion. My "long track record" of exposing/correcting such exclusions is what you call "blaming Israel unfairly." You don't separate analysis from moral judgment. Hence any information contradicting your principle is "excusing."

E.g., if I repeat that, at this moment, that most professional historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict--including Likud members like Michael Oren--represent the Six-Day War as arising from multiple causes and misreading on both sides, you count that as an "anti-Israeli post" because it does not follow the above-stated principle. If I advance excluded information, you call it "omission" if I don't immediately exonerate Israel with an Al Quds day whattabout. In essence, the only option you leave for "discussion" is to agree with you in advance that the conflict is never complicated and Israel is never the aggressor, regardless of the facts.

The state of Israel created itself in a war which seized the land and took the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees. 75 years later, many of those still alive and their descendants are penned in Gaza and the West Bank under a brutal occupation, and in numerous refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. That is why Israel is the "target of hostile neighbors."

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and many Israelis themselves agree that Israel does target civilians, including children; that includes multiple incidents of using children as human shields. And they have done so since long before Hamas was formed. They violate International Humanitarian Law with collective punishment, arbitrary arrest and confiscation (theft) of personal property, against which Palestinians have no recourse. Wikipedia even has a list of Israeli massacres of Palestinian civilians (though it excludes Sabra and Shatila, which happened under Israeli control). You make exclusion of all this info a condition of any "honest" discussion.

From the perspective of most countries in the world, this occupation is a massive injustice, and the root cause of violence in the region. That injustice in turn is the source of what you call "vitriol" against Israel, like Al Quds day. The American press has done a poor job of reporting about this situation, often restricted to or simply accepting Israeli/IDF versions of what is happening on the ground when Israel attacks civilians or accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields. As Bels noted, Americans hear about ME violence in disconnected cycles. When there is breathing space in which the US could use its power to, e.g., establish a two-state solution, interest lags. If a US president ratchets up the heat by endorsing the annexation of Golan, that never "excuses" a violent response.

I missed your "Al Quds" call out on this thread; which post was it? It's a mystery to me why you think that so important. My posts seem to be about actual violations of humanitarian law on the ground, yours about the "vitriol."

[Dill]

(10-09-2023, 05:13 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: You know you can update your OP and change the title. it is now reported over 800 people were killed. That is not close to your OP death numbers.

If I update the numbers, someone may again accuse me of making Israel look bad.

So I think I'll just leave them for now.

[Matt_Crimson]

Alright, well I just saw videos of Hamas fighters mutilating dead bodies of Israelis, stabbing them, shooting them and their families in their living rooms,  riding around with the dead body of an Israeli woman whose legs are literally bent the wrong way cause they're broken, one Israeli man getting beheaded with a shovel.......

Complete annihilation seems like the only option at this point. I'd be surprised if Israel did anything less.
When Israel called them ISIS, they weren't kidding.