# Discussion thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel thread, October 2023 **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** israel-hamas-war\ **Created:** [October 9, 2023, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317 "2023-10-09T15:10:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 131
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2735 "2023-12-19T18:03:22Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > The response of Germany to the Warsaw uprising was to murder 15000 Jews. That is an unacceptable atrocity. What is the difference. The difference is that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto did not shoot rockets at German civilians, invade German homes, shoot up Germans peacefully attending a music festival, behead German babies, rape German women, and take yet additional German civilians back to Warsaw as hostages. Nor were they in the way of stopping Germans from apprehending anyone who had done so. And that’s notwithstanding the wide gulf of difference between both the origins and conditions of the Warsaw ghetto vs. Gaza. > [@Crane](#): > > You ignore the ongoing systematic murder of Palestinians in Israel. I cannot ignore what does not exist. > [@Crane](#): > > Any whine relating Oct 7 to defending Israel is pure propaganda. Anyone who can’t see the difference between Israel’s treatment of Gaza before 10/7 and after, or who can see it and think that it has nothing to do with the attack of 10/7 is being intentionally obtuse. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2736 "2023-12-19T18:07:22Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > .01% of Gaza has been killed, 20,000/2,000,000 I believe that’s closer to 1% and it ain’t over yet. ---
**Author:** ![tofor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tofor/32/13727_2.png) [@tofor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tofor)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2737 "2023-12-19T18:24:04Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > Director of Kamal Edwan hospital admits it was used as a military facility: More detail and video here: > **[Hamas uses hospitals for terror purposes, Gaza hospital director admits](https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-778679)** > > The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital Kahlot said he joined Hamas in 2010 at the equivalent rank of a brigadier general. I must admit I’m a bit skeptical of what a captive tells his interrogators, especially since IDF has huge motivation to convince him to say these things, but if he is who he says he is, and the translation is accurate, then what he says has some weight. ---
**Author:** ![Oswald\_Bastable](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oswald_bastable/32/214_2.png) [@Oswald\_Bastable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oswald_Bastable)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2738 "2023-12-19T18:41:55Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > .01% of Gaza has been killed, 20,000/2,000,000 Yeah, you forgot to x100 to get a percentage. 1%. That seems pretty high to me. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2739 "2023-12-19T18:44:57Z")
Some of the testimonies from the released Israeli hostages highlight how Hamas has been using hospitals for non-medical purposes: Doron and her two daughters aged 4 and 2, were abducted to Gaza on Oct 7. During the abduction and firefight with Israeli forces, Doron’s mother was killed and she was shot in the back. They were initially held in a Palestinian apartment and guarded by the family who lived there. Doron’s gunshot wound was treated on the family couch without anesthesia, not in a medical facility. After 16 days of captivity in the home, Doron and her daughters were moved to a local hospital with 7 other Israeli captives. Not for treatment, but as a prison. Hamas kept them there to keep the hostages away from the Israeli army as international calls increased to prevent Israel from going into the hospitals. The 10 of them were kept locked in a 130-square-foot (12-square-meter) room with a sink but no mattresses for 33 days util their release in the hostage deal. > **[In Hamas captivity, an Israeli mother found the strength to survive in her 2...](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hostages-hamas-gaza-e43def41c75a1da378e59d7f126b351c)** > > An Israeli mother who was held in Hamas captivity for 49 days has described in an interview the trials of caring for two young children as a hostage. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2740 "2023-12-19T18:48:19Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > The difference is that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto did not shoot rockets at German civilians, invade German homes, shoot up Germans peacefully attending a music festival, behead German babies, rape German women, and take yet additional German civilians back to Warsaw as hostages. Nor were they in the way of stopping Germans from apprehending anyone who had done so. In an alternate history where the Germans forced the Jews into ghettos and surrounded them and kept them living in poor conditions for decades, and the Jews started throwing rockets at the Germans, and one day some Jews escaped the ghetto and massacred German civilians at a music festival and beheaded German babies, how would your attitude be towards how the Germans respond to that horrific attack on their civilians? ---
**Author:** ![WreckingCrew](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wreckingcrew/32/4080_2.png) [@WreckingCrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WreckingCrew)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2741 "2023-12-19T19:23:21Z")
We can’t allow anti-semantics in this discussion. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2742 "2023-12-19T21:24:18Z")
I just wanted to check in to say thank you to @Banquet_Bear and @Broomstick (and others) for their posts. I go to bed thinking about Gaza, I wake up in the morning thinking about Gaza. It is depressing. How can this happen? What is wrong with human nature? But I don’t have the energy anymore to debate about it. It is so sick that Israelis, whose ancestors suffered in the Holocaust, are committing the same sin against the Palestinians. When will people learn to respect each other and live in peace? ---
**Author:** ![P91noX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@P91noX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P91noX)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2743 "2023-12-19T21:28:38Z")
You’re not going to be able to extend the analogy sufficiently to cover the Israel-Palestine conflict with any degree of fidelity. The Germans didn’t have a constitution that ensured full legal rights for Jews (I acknowledge that in practice the state of Israel often fails to live up to the ideal, but the ideal is there). The Germans elected a party that openly called for the annihilation of the Jewish people, not a (hypothetical at the time) Jewish state. The Jews in Warsaw hadn’t been offered a significant portion of German or Polish territory on which to form their own independent government by the UN, and rejected that offer. The Polish Jews hadn’t elected a government with an explicitly germanophobic/germanocidal agenda. The Polish Jews didn’t (to my knowledge) teach incendiary rhetoric or incentivize martyrdom in their children’s curricula. Prior to the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto, the territory hadn’t been administered by a Jewish-majority empire that only tolerated Christian or German citizens in a diminished dhimmi status. It’s not a useful comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2744 "2023-12-19T22:31:03Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > I anticipate an ‘accidental’ bombing of one or more refugee camps. …the IDF haven’t _stopped_ bombing the refugee camps. I spoke about the strike at Jabalia that killed 90 a few days ago. Another one today that reportedly killed 100. Here’s video footage of the aftermath of a strike on Al Salam Charitable Society building at Jabalia. A Twitter link: > I couldn’t find it on the AJ website at the moment, sorry. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2745 "2023-12-19T22:50:14Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > In an alternate history where the Germans forced the Jews into ghettos and surrounded them and kept them living in poor conditions for decades, and the Jews started throwing rockets at the Germans, and one day some Jews escaped the ghetto and massacred German civilians at a music festival and beheaded German babies, how would your attitude be towards how the Germans respond to that horrific attack on their civilians? I’m not even going to address this, your attempt at parallelism is not only wildly off-base, but also the suggestion that (given the parallel) the attack of 10/7 was “some escaped and did it” as opposed to a long and carefully planned attack by the ruling regime is provably false. The bottom line is that Hamas did an absolutely horrible thing which they would do again if their status quo position in Gaza is not upended, and Jews in the Warsaw ghetto did nothing even remotely comparable. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2746 "2023-12-19T22:54:29Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > He is an Israeli official. Ted Cruz is an American official, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is the official policy of the US government. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2747 "2023-12-19T22:56:04Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Hamas did an absolutely horrible thing which they would do again if their status quo position in Gaza is not upended Without speculating on potential future Hamas actions, does the public in Israel really not expect another war within 5–10 years? If not, why not? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2748 "2023-12-19T23:08:31Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Without speculating on potential future Hamas actions, does the public in Israel really not expect another war within 5–10 years? If not, why not? For the same reason Germany didn’t start another war after WW-II. They were defeated. It was an unconditional surrender. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2749 "2023-12-19T23:33:38Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > Director of Kamal Edwan hospital admits it was used as a military facility: …we really haven’t talked much in this thread about the routine use of humiliation, beatings and torture by the Israeli forces in this thread. So now is a good place to start. From an Amnesty Report dated the 3rd of November this year: > [@](#): > > Since 7 October, Israeli forces have detained more than 2,200 Palestinian men and women, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club. According to Israeli human rights organization HaMoked between 1 October and 1 November, the total number of Palestinians held in administrative detention, without charge or trial, rose from 1,319 to 2,070. > > … > > Amnesty International has for decades [documented](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/mde150402008en.pdf) [widespread](https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/) torture by Israeli authorities in places of detention across the West Bank. However, over the past four weeks, videos and images have been shared widely online showing gruesome scenes of Israeli soldiers beating and humiliating Palestinians while detaining them blind-folded, stripped, with their hands tied, in a particularly chilling public display of torture and humiliation of Palestinian detainees. > > … > > “One of the Israeli officers who came, approached me and kicked me on my left side, then jumped on my head with his two legs pushing my face further into the dirt and then continued kicking me as I was head down, into the dirt, with my hands tied behind my back. He then got a knife and tore all of my clothes off except for my underwear and used part of my torn clothes to blindfold me. The beating to the rest of my body did not stop, at one point he started jumping on my back – three or four times – while yelling ‘die, die you trash’ … in the end before this finally stopped, another officer urinated on my face and body while also yelling at us ‘to die’.” > **[Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of...](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/)** > > Israeli authorities have dramatically increased their use of administrative detention, a form of arbitrary detention, of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank; extended emergency measures that facilitate inhuman and degrading treatment... If you doubt that Israeli forces are capable of this sort of brutality, here’s a video from a few days ago of them beating a journalist in the street, kicking him multiple times in the head, in full view of cameras. > Non Twitter link that doesn’t include the video: > **[Israeli Forces Brutally Assault Palestinian Journalist in Jerusalem](https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israeli-forces-brutally-assault-palestinian-journalist-in-jerusalem/)** > > Israeli occupation forces violently attacked photojournalist Mustafa Al-Kharouf in Wadi Al-Joz, resulting in head injuries.  From AJ: > [@](#): > > The 14-year-old and his father were among hundreds of Palestinians rounded up on December 5 by Israeli forces in the Shujayea area, east of Gaza City, who endured five days of torture and degradation before they were released – without any explanation. > > … > > “They made us empty out our bags on the floor and blocked us from picking up our money or our wives’ gold,” Nader recalls. “What little food we had, they also threw away. They took our money, IDs and phones.” > > The soldiers divided the household: women and young children in one room and the men and teenage boys in another. Then they told Nader, Mahmoud, his brother-in-law and another male relative to strip, then pushed them outside. > > … > > The truck stopped, and once again, the men and women were separated. The men and teenage boys were taken to a warehouse where they sat on a bare floor covered in scattered grains of rice. There they were beaten, interrogated and verbally abused. There was no sleep, and the grains of rice cut their skin as they sat there, undressed. > > … > > “When they spoke to us in Hebrew and we wouldn’t understand, they’d beat us up,” he continues. > > “They hit me in the back where my kidneys are and my legs. They took my family, and I don’t know where they are,” he says, his voice breaking. > > Before they were forced inside the warehouse, Israeli female soldiers came and spat on the men, Mohammed recalls. > > In the warehouse, it was common for groups of five soldiers to suddenly enter and beat one person while the others were forced to listen to his screams of pain. If any of the men and teenagers nodded off from exhaustion, the soldiers poured cold water on them. > **[‘Like we were lesser humans’: Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture](https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/12/like-we-were-lesser-humans-gaza-boys-men-recall-israeli-arrests-torture)** > > Rounded up by Israeli forces in Gaza City, Palestinians describe being stripped, blindfolded, numbered and tortured These are not isolated stories. Almost every single Palestinian that has been released from custody, both after and before October the 7th, share the same stories. Former IDF soldiers admit they have taken part in this. This practice has been well-documented by multiple international humanitarian agencies. Here is Palestinian director Lexi Alexander (who directed the only good Punisher movie) talking about her father: > [@Lexi Alexander](#): > > My father has scars on his legs from the electric shocks he received when imprisoned by Israelis in the 1960’s. Nothing started on October 7th, but October 7th might just be the beginning of the end > > > Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye Every Palestinian _has a story_. So when Israel have shut down 22 hospitals in Gaza, and have detained the directors and staff from almost all of them, and the families of those detained have not heard any word about where they have been taken or what their status is, I think we have to take the televised confession of just _one_ of those directors with a _grain of salt_. For a reminder of the events that went down at Kamal Adwan: The hospital was under siege for nine days. Israeli snipers took over surrounding buildings and shot at anyone passing by. The IDF bombed the hospitals maternity ward on the 11th December. It killed two women and their two babies, amputating a third women’s legs. The next day we have the footage that I posted up-thread that shows clear evidence that the people surrendering from the hospital was staged. And here are the weapons that this alleged “Hamas base” were storing: From the official COGAT Twitter account: > [@](#): > > WATCH: Hamas hid weapons in incubators in the NICU, incubators that were supposed to be used to treat premature babies. > > These weapons were found following the confession of hospital workers. > > The Kamal Adwan hospital was used by Hamas as a command center. > For those that can’t access the video: it shows an IDF soldier using a tool to dismantle the bottom of a baby incubator, pulling out a bag, opening the bag up, and discovering weapons. Note the complete lack of concern that there might have been booby traps. Note how similar it was to a video taken a few weeks ago of IDF soldiers finding rifles hidden in teddy bears. > Again: note the _complete_ lack of concern for booby traps. From the Relief Web Report: > [@](#): > > Before they left the medical facility this morning, Israeli bulldozers buried Palestinian civilians alive in the hospital courtyard, according to testimonies the Geneva-based organisation received from media and medical crews on the ground. At least one of the bodies could be seen amid the sand piles, witnesses said, confirming that the victim was injured before being buried and killed. > > According to Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli army bulldozers drove into the hospital this morning and totally destroyed its southern section, leaving behind massive destruction following several days of non-stop attacks and siege. > > … > > The Israeli forces have stormed the hospital several times since then, turning its roofs and buildings into military barracks as well as imposing a complete siege on those trapped inside and depriving them of food and water. > > … > > Israeli forces later evacuated the majority of those trapped in the hospital, including 65 injured individuals, 12 children in intensive care, six premature babies, 2,500 displaced people, and 100 medical personnel, in groups. Nearly 10 metres away from the hospital, they forced the males to remove all of their clothing, except for their boxers. They held the victims outdoors for six hours before arresting about 50 to 60 of them; the rest were released and told to head to shelter centres at schools. About 50 patients, along with their families and five doctors and nurses, were kept in one of the hospital’s departments without food, water, or electricity. > > … > > During the raid, Israeli forces destroyed the hospital’s external gates, part of its administration building, and its pharmacy; burned the medicine store before demolishing it; destroyed the water well, the electricity generator, and the oxygen station; created a large hole in the hospital courtyard; and exhumed about 26 bodies of dead people who, unable to be buried in cemeteries due to the ongoing Israeli attacks, had been previously buried in the yard. Israeli bulldozers removed the bodies in a humiliating manner, stated Euro-Med Monitor, in violation of the dead’s dignity. > > … > > Euro-Med Monitor received testimonies confirming that an elderly man was recently starved to death in the hospital, while another was killed after an Israeli military dog was let loose on him. Others, including two patients, in addition to children, have died in the intensive care unit after failing to receive the proper medical care. > [@](#): > > The rights organisation said that the atrocities committed by Israeli forces at Kamal Adwan Hospital are part of **the Israeli army’s repeated and systematic attacks on health facilities, crews, and ambulances, ongoing since 7 October, which aim to destroy the Gaza Strip’s health care system, constituting a war crime under the rules of international humanitarian law.** > **[Urgent int’l investigation needed to probe Israeli war crimes after...](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/urgent-intl-investigation-needed-probe-israeli-war-crimes-after-palestinian-civilians-buried-alive-gazas-kamal-adwan-hospital-enar)** > > News and Press Release in Arabic on occupied Palestinian territory about Health and Protection and Human Rights; published on 16 Dec 2023 by Euro-Med Monitor The last quote is the most important part of this story. I have documented in this thread the attacks on the Gazan healthcare system since the start of the war. We need to place this “confession” in context. It wasn’t made in isolation. The systematic targeting and destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza are _war crimes_. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2023, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2750 "2023-12-20T00:31:20Z")
For those interested the PBS series FRONTLINE has made an 85 minute video on the road to war in Gaza. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6-vzy4tYfaI/maxresdefault.jpg "Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza (full documentary) | FRONTLINE") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-vzy4tYfaI) ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2023, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2751 "2023-12-20T00:36:12Z")
Why, it’s almost as if a war were going on or something. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2023, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2752 "2023-12-20T01:11:50Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …we really haven’t talked much in this thread about the routine use of humiliation, beatings and torture by the Israeli forces in this thread. that had zero to do with what you quoted for response. You then followed it with a dumpster dump of information. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2023, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2753 "2023-12-20T01:16:13Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > For the same reason Germany didn’t start another war after WW-II. They were defeated. It was an unconditional surrender. Germans began two world wars, but they developed a national conscience. I believe enough Palestinians have been educated from birth to hate Jews that it will not happen in their case. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2023, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/2754 "2023-12-20T01:21:04Z")
> [@P91noX](#): > > You’re not going to be able to extend the analogy sufficiently to cover the Israel-Palestine conflict with any degree of fidelity. The Germans didn’t have a constitution that ensured full legal rights for Jews (I acknowledge that in practice the state of Israel often fails to live up to the ideal, but the ideal is there). The Germans elected a party that openly called for the annihilation of the Jewish people, not a (hypothetical at the time) Jewish state. The Jews in Warsaw hadn’t been offered a significant portion of German or Polish territory on which to form their own independent government by the UN, and rejected that offer. The Polish Jews hadn’t elected a government with an explicitly germanophobic/germanocidal agenda. The Polish Jews didn’t (to my knowledge) teach incendiary rhetoric or incentivize martyrdom in their children’s curricula. Prior to the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto, the territory hadn’t been administered by a Jewish-majority empire that only tolerated Christian or German citizens in a diminished dhimmi status. It’s not a useful comparison. Let me start by saying that, given the barbaric events of Oct 7, Israel’s reaction (invasion of Gaza) is justified. It needs to destroy Hamas if possible. What may not be justified is the lengths to which Israel will go to to defeat Hamas. In this or its parallel thread, one poster who strongly supports the IDFs actions said that nuclear bombs on Gaza are too much. So, even a strong supporter agrees that there are limits to what the IDF should do to achieve its goals. The question then becomes where are those limits, and different people have different answers to this. What I was trying to get at with my analogy is not that the situation today is totally analogous with what I wrote above, but that it would be informative to examine what our reaction would be if one group of people are making another group suffer for many years (irrespective of the particulars), and the suffering group reacts with a barbaric act. Are we OK with retaliation from the first group? Most people would be. Are we OK with “anything goes” retaliation? Most people would not be. Yes, it’s an imperfect analogy (especially if you think that the first group are not oppressors), but even if they are not oppressors, I still think people consider there to be bounds on the first group’s retaliation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317.md?page=130) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317.md?page=132)