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Why are virtually all politicians in power supporting the annihilation of Gaza?

I thought they were supporting the annihilation of Hamas.

They are supporting what is happening and what is happening is the annihilation of Gaza. There is a limit to what can be called collateral damage especially when the objective has been stated to flatten a primarily residential territory.

In Gaza there has been 28,500 residential units destroyed and 183,000 damaged, over 3,000 children and 2,000 women killed, it is not the military that is being targeted.

This is yet another land grab in Palestine, how come Palestine isn't allowed to defend itself?

Hardly any mention is made of the 1200 Palestinians being held hostage by Israel from before the current events.

I fail to see the difference between Palestine and Ukraine, both have a history of land repeatedly being taken away from them, it has been non-stop in Palestine for many years, the West Bank has been broken up and dominated, its now Gaza's turn.

If Israel wasn't continually stealing/occupying more and more Palestinian land, would Hamas exist in Palestine?

Israel has the right to defend herself and Hamas would exist because their only aim is to rid the Jews from that area.
Hamas have chosen the battleground, should Israel not retaliate because Hamas hide behind the civilian population, it doesn't seem to bother Hamas hitting civilian areas with all they have.
It seems to me supporters of Palestine have no problem with Israel being attacked and yet when the favour is returned there's outcry. I have no dog in the fight but you don't need much sense to know what Israel's response was going to be if attacked at the scale it was.

Far from it, Israel have carried out far more raids than Hamas but there is hardly a whisper about that. There used to be frequent reports when Israel did a land grab and forcibly evicted Palestinians from their homes, the land garbs didn't stop, they just stopped getting reported (look at the map of the West Bank above). The media and senior politicians are making out that everything was calm and peaceful until October, completely losing the history of the thousands of Israeli raids every year and the evictions, arrests, abductions, poverty and deaths in Palestine and of course the Hamas rockets. Not forgetting Israel is one of the major military powers in the world and Palestine is at the opposite end of the table.

The October raid by Hamas is similar to the attack by by Israel a few years ago when 1200 Palestinians died.

Palestine and Hamas have no navy, no airforce and no armoured vehicles, Israel has a capability similar to the UK but it has more military personnel, far more land based equipment than us and maybe more technologically advanced as well.

It is Palestine that is being attacked, not Hamas.

Hamas got involved in Gaza in 2006/7, AFTER Israel blockaded Gaza creating huge economic hardship to the Palestinians in Gaza for the last 16 years . You can't blockade a territory and expect no retaliation. Note, I am talking about the blockade, not the barrier, they are not the same thing, a blockade is a siege.

Israel count both Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel and do not acknowledge any state of Palestine. Hence Israel claims the split between Arabs and Jews is roughly 50/50, in reality Israel (1967 border) is almost entirely Jewish and Palestine is about 25-30% Jewish. Israel is one of the most racist countries in the world, they even enshrined laws in 2018 specifically giving Jewish supremacy - “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it” - not forgetting that Israel counts the whole of Palestine as Israel.

Since 2017, Israel has been funding Hamas (again), undermining attempts by the Palestinian Authority to limit Hamas's finances. The Palestinian Authority stopped funding Hamas yet Israel immediately replaced those regular payments. The Palestinian Authority were pushed out of Gaza by the Israeli blockade in 2005.

My last post on the subject other than I will eat humble pie if anything I have stated is substantially incorrect.

My overall opinion is that I'm somewhat confused, the history is hugely complicated, I only know a few small snapshots triggered from various sources during my lifetime. Hamas is similar to the Taliban. Both sides are in the position of having to choose between a white flag or shooting from the hip, sometimes strategies are chosen not because of the best possible outcome but because of the most certain outcome in an effort to mitigate the possibility of losing a gamble. It is up to the rest of the world to sanction both countries/states to the hilt and put pressure on them both. The USA will have to intervene soon, a middle east escalation would be a massive threat to the dollar, losing the biggest weapon the USA has in its arsenal, money.

Confused you should be because the most brilliant historians of the region have divided opinions. Dealing with the here and now what on earth were Hamas thinking they could achieve against a powerful war machine Israel have. With the inbred hatred between the two participants, it's just going to be, same old, same old for the very foreseeable future, perhaps forever.

Who struck the first blow. If somebody strikes me I would swiftly strike back,

In my opinion Israel 'started it' with its treatment of its Arab citizens as second class citizens, and its continued land grabbing.

It is no surprise this caused a series of revolts, and as they have got worse Israel has foolishly attempted to repress it with disproportionate violence which has caused even more violent revolts. The current one is the culmination of this and judging by their even more extreme overreaction the next one will be even worse. Eventually it will go nuclear and then its game over for Israel and Gaza.

The idea of destroying Hamas is both impossible and futile. Even if every Hamas member were to suddenly disappear, it would immediately be replaced by a similar and probably even more desperate organisation with the same aims.

I don't know how Israel can stop this. I'd say give full citizens rights to the non-Jewish citizens by law, and enforce it, but it's probably gone far beyond that now. Mindless retribution seems to be the order of the day, and I do not believe the UK should support that.

Well, the death figures continue to rise, we have no kowledge of how many children ad babies are crushed under the rubble, where tanks roll arcoss, crunching their tiny bones. How many cried for their mummy's and got no answer, how many lay for days in shock and pain.

I am furious, with USA/UK and now they are beginning to roll back a bit, after UK initially abstained from a humanitarian pause, USA voted against, both due to the wording of the King of Jordans script not being , in their opinions , suitable ,because it didn't include mention of the Hamas attack !!

Netanyahu has a lot to answer for, he and his Zionist Government, and we all know where the ideology of Zionism began.

Even Netanyahu in one of his speeches on this quoted the bible in Hebrew. Referring to gods command on the Amalaekites , who were inhabitants and tribes of the ancient land of Palestine, 3000 yrs ago and before the Israelites arrived into Canaan . History is very important to Zionists, and so it should be to us also.

What Netanyahu quoted just a few weeks ago and in Hebrew, so many may not have known what he said : I think the modern day term is Genocide !

1 Samuel 15:1-9

" Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”


This is where the trouble began last century, within the Palestinian Christian communities , if anyone is interested enough to follow the process of expulsion after 1947. Palestine was the first Christian territory .
DIsgraceful, and the process continnues. Don;t bother with the first couple of minutes as it will not appeal, but the story of tragedy begins straight after.

A few more straight facts.

The UN has consistently issued more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. Most of the resolutions were about the treatment of Palestinians by Israel.

Total since 2015:- Israel=140, Rest-of-World=68

In 2022:- Israel=15, Rest-of World=13 (of which 6 were against Russia)



As far as deaths and injuries go (this should update with time, if not refresh your browser)....

Over 23,000 Palestinian deaths now, mostly women and children - utterly shocking. You're right gran - it's genocide and South Africa are completely right to take it to The Hague. Absolutely appalling loss of life - by an extreme right-wing government whose leader is desperate to get re-elected, after very low poll ratings before the Hamas attacks.

In Gaza more than half of all residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

The other half will follow if Hamas don't lay down their arms and remove themselves from the field of conflict. If Israel pull back now the whole cycle of Hamas rockets and attacks upon civilians will start again.

The cycle has started, it can't be stopped. Even if Israel flatten the whole of Gaza there will be decades of terrorist attacks against Israel, Hamas is not based in Gaza. This will give Israel the excuse to attack other Arab nations escalating the impact of the expansion of Israel.

Have you noticed that the US funds anything and everything that results in the deaths of Arabs? This is not the way to achieve peace.

They fund anything that's in their interest, no different to China, Russia, Iran and many others.