THe blood of the dead Palestinians is on the hands of HAMAS not Israel. God protects Israel and its population from Hamas Missiles and diverts missles that Iorn Dome misses. It is disgraceful that you use the dead as a scoring system.
Explain why Hamas fire mortars and rockets next to the schools. Explain why Hamas use UN buildings to store missles. Explain why Hamas builds underground factories and storage facilities underneath UN buildings, hospitals and schools.
Explain why no one has dared to report about Hamas missles mis-firing and hitting its own population, explain why every explosion in Gaza is automatically the fault of Israel.
Hamas loves dead Civilians as people like youself get all outraged and angry against Israel, when the real evil scum are Hamas.
Let me say that I wholly condemn Hamas killing Israelis, I think violence is a silly way to look for solutions. I also recognize the dehumanization of Palestinians for furthering Israeli propaganda. The Israelis say Palestinians are willing to use their own children as bartering tools against the Israelis, which is ridiculous. Civilian Palestinians are people like you and me, human beings, not monsters that are willing to sacrifice their own kids. Why do you think they bring their kids to UN safe zones to begin with? To protect them. What stops NATO deploying troops around these safe zones, stopping Hamas from using them to fire rockets from? Just as America promoted 'liberation and protection' of the Afghanis from the Taliban as part of the Afghan invasion, why do they not do similarly in Palestine? You know, during WW2, the Americans used to say the Japanese ate their own kids. Dehumanization has been a military propaganda tool for decades, centuries even, and Israel and some American media outlets seem to portray such things without making much distinction between Palestine civilians and Hamas. Why the double standard between say Afghanistan, and Palestine?
I recognize Hamas fire rockets towards Israel from near civilian standpoints; it's a desperate tactic. And sometimes they miss, not unlike the Mujahideen against the Russians, but if I imagine myself in that position, I would do such a thing not so much to endanger civilian lives as to try to save my own. Does it excuse the use of heavily overpowered ordinance against them, though? There's no need to drop a rocket capable of levelling several buildings when the target is a rocket launcher a few feet in diameter. It's certainly a problem that Hamas fire from civilian locations, but it's a bigger problem that Israel, with their F16's and precision targeting systems, highly trained infantry and special forces, don't seem to give a damn about levelling civilian buildings to the ground rather than use their training to limit civilian casualties. It's not the Hamas members who directly drop those missiles from F16's, so we can't hold them totally responsible. Certainly they aggravate circumstances, but what causes those deaths directly? Missiles from fighter jets, or the geographic position of the Hamas militants?
I also recognize some things more fundamental to the origin of this conflict; that is the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory; the embargo of trade; the rationing of Palestinian water by Israel; the fact that 90% of Palestine's water supply is contaminated with sewage; the extremely dense population of Palestine compared to Israel and the very relevant fact that there were
no militants in or around the school that got bombed on Sunday.
Israelis, by Palestinian standards, live cushy lives. They have a low population density, safety, clean water, security for the most part, military protection, lots of land in relation to their population size, a decent economy, various powerful world allies, 1st world education, opportunity, relative freedom of movement, food supplies, constant electricity, warmth, low mortality from conflict in contrast to Palestine etcetera etcetera.
Palestinians have a very high population density, high mortality from conflict, little freedom of movement, little clean water, intermittent electricity, fragile security, no real military protection, no genuine land ownership, a crumbled economy, allies who can do little to help their cause, shortages of food, unsafe schools and live in a very oppressed position.
So desperation comes from desperate situations and it's important that we, as onlookers, can view this conflict through not only the eyes of the Israelis, but also through the eyes of the Palestinian people.
What you're saying, about firing from civilian areas, could be said about any conflict such as this one. The forces with less means resort to more desperate measures. It's true that wherever there is conflict in a place with a very high population density, civilians are more at risk and to me, Israel could do far more to limit civilian casualties, considering their military might and the advanced equipment they have at their disposal.
It perhaps seems as though I am condemning Israel without pointing my fingers at Hamas, but that's not the case. I recognize Hamas as an organization willing to kill, I get that. What I'm saying is not meant to be a statement of my support for Hamas, but a statement of my willingness to look at both sides of the conflict through the eyes of civilians.
If you were a Palestinian civilian, living in conditions that Palestinians live in, how would you feel?
That's what I'm trying to get across.
I would feel greatly disadvantaged, a victim of injustice, knowing that Israel's occupation of Palestine territory since the 1960's is internationally illegal, knowing that Israel with all their military prowess are so willing to kill civilians. I would feel aggrieved at being trapped in what is effectively a walled-off section of land, a kill-box, facing daily struggle, food shortage, unclean water supplies, worrying constantly about whether my children will come home from school.
Of course, Israelis in the occupied territory also face these worries and I can also empathize with them. They are also scared, however as a matter of fact there are considerably less Israeli civilian deaths than Palestinian ones, by a factor of over 500. That's not me using a scoring system, it's me trying to get across the unfairness in condemning Palestinians as a whole, tarring them with the Hamas brush, supporting Israel without question when Palestinians are suffering so many more civilian casualties as a result of Israeli air strikes. I don't want to tally points and ask for even-stevens, I only want to get people to ask 'is my perspective fair?' 'Am I being unduly harsh towards Palestinian civilians?'
The message of many on this thread is 'Hamas are the responsible party', 'Hamas are to blame', 'Palestine deserve it', but can we honestly say that if Israel wanted to take out small targets they couldn't use more subtle means of doing so? Can we honestly say that Israel can rightly justify using this heavy ordinance and causing mass overkill, then escape all blame for doing so?
I don't want people to take sides at all, and that's not what I intend to do here. I'm not asking everyone to switch sides, I'm asking people to look at this from an empathetic standpoint, taking in mind the grievances and injustices on both sides of the fence. To stop laying blame at the feet of civilians, lumping Palestinian innocents in with Hamas, and to ask questions of Israel who are by far the more dominant entity in this conflict. Because in my eyes, power such as Israel's should be handled with great responsibility.
Certainly, Israel must protect its citizens, but there are far more peaceable means of doing so.
Israel have an extraordinarily low population density, almost five times less that of the UK. So, there is no reason why Israel cannot begin evacuating Israeli citizens out of Israeli occupied 'hot-zones' near the Gaza strip. There is no reason Israel can't counter-attack against Hamas rocket strikes by more precisely and proportionately targeting those rocket launchers, by operating special forces units to retrieve or neutralize specific Hamas targets.
What I am saying is that the extraordinary number of Palestinian civilian deaths is unnecessary, and it inflames this conflict, more and more every day.
What I genuinely would like to see is people on this thread trying to see this with a view to minimizing civilian casualties and with understanding that this conflict can't be solved by conflict itself. It's far from an ideal situation, certainly, but it is undoubtedly made more ugly when such relentless means seem to justify the ends for so many people.
I mean, Israel
are occupying Palestinian land and forcing Palestinians to live like slum-dwellers and I don't think any of us would respond well to that. That's not justification for Hamas, they could have approached this politically, but it is an indictment of Israeli policy.