Or, after getting their jollies torturing and raping their hostages, they killed them, videoing the final fun, and are saving the videos to broadcast later for maximum effect. After all, why waste maintenance on the enemy once they’re no longer useful?
I wish I didn’t find that likely, but people who’d burn babies are fully capable of that.
Israel is bombing Egyptian facilities? I doubt that.
They have now formally told civilians to leave the northeastern part of Gaza, so allowing them passage at least to the other half of Gaza is required by law.
Israel does not expect the evacuation of Gaza to take 24 hours, claims of a deadline are misleading:
*the translation reads ISIS but what he said was Daesh, which is a derogatory term for ISIS used by ISIS’s Arab-speaking enemies. So he is using a name which other Arabs use to highlight ISIS’s brutality and applying it to Hamas.
It’s essentially just people running away. It would be hard for a functioning state that cared about its people to pull this off, even given several days, and Hamas isn’t a functioning state that cares about its people. Israel is just checking a box: “We warned them.”
I would imagine most people can get out of the way, but sadly some won’t be able to, and for their sake, I am praying for their safety.
Militarily speaking, of course, this also gives Hamas a chance to run away. Hamas doesn’t really want to fight a pitched, conventional battle with one of the mightiest armies in the world. Why would they? They may ask some cannon fodder to remain behind and inflict casualties and make this process messy, but the Hamas leadership sure as hell is not sticking around to get killed.
A high-level representative for Hamas was unable to fluidly articulate what they hoped to gain from this, in a discussion with the Economist (link below), in Qatar. Many Palestinians have suffered significantly; fewer than half support Hamas but can not openly criticize it. It is difficult to say how this will improve things for them. Israel must show restraint but are justified in defending themselves.
The UN is there, and hopefully assisting with the evacuation efforts (which according to the IDF spokesperson quoted above they understand will take a few days and are planning for that).
Hamas’ senior leadership isn’t anywhere near Gaza anyways. They’re in Qatar.
“Unwilling” would perhaps be closer to the truth. Sending different messages to different audiences is part of their approach.
There is only so much anyone can do, even if the IDF gives them time, and Hamas wants innocent people to die and will ensure they do.
Agreed. This is why Hamas must be destroyed.
"As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead.
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”"
Well, that’s handy for Hamas to justify whatever their next attacks are on Israel.
He also said, at the very same press conference:
Coverage of this war has been chock full of out of context or mistranslated statements used to build a narrative about Israel’s intended actions that simply does not match reality. I don’t even think that’s intentional. Everyone just rushes to grab a soundbite and turn it into an entire article.
[rhetorical] Right. And what has Israel done to enable such action. Did they give guns to the Palestinians? Because that’s what Hamas has, and they have had those guns pointed at the heads of ordinary Palestinians. [/rhetorical]
I am sure there has been support among the populace for Hamas, and not everyone is innocent, but that statement reeks of collective punishment. I mean, others here are mentioning half of the Gaza populace is under the age of 19 - are these kids guilty of conspiring with Hamas? Israel has a right to defend itself and destroy Hamas, for killing children, but can they avoid killing children themselves? It seems like they are going thru with the whole “push them into the sea” thing.
This is what I am talking about. Yeah, if you build a whole article around that one soundbite, that’s what it sounds like. If you listen to his whole speech, though, he makes many, many statements that show that no, that’s not what Israel is going to do.
In terms of the laws of war, civilians are civilians. They cannot be deliberately targeted.
Are Gaza civilians responsible for what’s happening? Yes, to some extent they are - just as Americans were responsible for the crimes the USA committed in Vietnam. Just as my grandmother was responsible for the fire bombing of German cities by RCAF bombers. So on and so forth; you can always say civilians are complicit. The purpose of the Geneva Conventions, which say you can’t target civilians, is not to assign or remove “blame” from people as to who caused a war. That’s not at ALL the point. The point is to minimize the horrors of war, to restrict its effects and exclude people hors de combat - the wounded, POWs, the shipwrecked, and civilians, specifically, so that we keep the suffering to a minimum.
How about we try going back in history to a point where nobody that actually lives there gets any say in government and make it the personal possession of the Spanish Crown and Felipe VI as the current holder of the title of the King of Jerusalem?
Well, if you’re trying to get everybody in the Middle East into agreement about something, I expect that would do it.
The discussion on this board is a whole lot better than the little I’ve let myself see on social media, which is a cesspool of vitriol and insults.
Please excuse my ignorance on this topic, but what kind of Hamas did they vote for? Were the voters lied to or were they coerced in some negative way? Did they know that the Hamas they were voting for were capable of the things that just happened?
Truly, I don’t know much of anything about this wretched situation, but I do know people who regretted their vote for Nixon, ya know?
I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation a few days back. Given the ages of people in Gaza, and the outcome of the 2006 (?) vote, it was probably 5-10% of people in Gaza who voted for Hamas.
Last week, it was something like 58% of Gazans who supported Hamas. Even if every one of those 58% supported mass murder of Israelis, that leaves 42% that don’t. And I’m assuming those polls are excluding children, who make up about half of Gaza residents.
I think back when Hamas assumed management of Gaza they were filling a void left by Israel. Basically, residents needed someone to keep the lights on, look after other infrastructure, and just keep the place running. I doubt back then the average Gazan was voting for the bloodthirsty mob we see today. But, once a group is in control, it’s hard for them to be dislodged, by inertia or whatever.
That was Fatah, the guys that Hamas strung up from balconies when they took over. If there was a vacuum in Gaza it was created by Hamas.