Gaza death toll rises as Israel hits a disability shelter

[exploited]

There is nothing new to start. I'm not sure why people are having such a hard time understanding the realities of the situation. So I'll bold it... maybe the typography matters: What Hamas does and does not do is completely irrelevant. Hamas could disarm, remove all the rockets, and engage in nothing but peaceful civil resistance. Or it could secure some biological weapons and detonate them in Tel Aviv. The end result is the exact same.

In fifty years, Palestinians will no longer live in the West Bank, or Jerusalem. The population of Gaza will double, and the standard of living - already terrible - will get even worse. They will be constantly subject to collective reprisals, which will cause extremism and hostility. Even if Palestinians are 95% on board with peaceful resistance, that 5% will be more than enough to get Israel involved - as has been demonstrated again and again, Israel has no conception of proportionality. The really evil factions in Israeli society have been playing on this for years. In many ways, they are as bad or worse than Hamas when it comes to sacrificing lives for PR reasons.

The point is, Hamas is a symptom. When you live in a society that has zero hope at all of having anything like a normal future - even a "normal future" within the context of the Middle East - you will see these sort of violent actors appear. It is entirely natural and predictable. It is what happens when you treat human beings like this. The same symptom is currently destroying Israeli society; what was once a fairly liberal, modern democracy, is now starting to look pretty sinister. Even protesting these wars is apt to get you a severe beating. It has all the signs of an evolved country reverting back to primativism and barbarism as an expression of fear, the same process one sees in Palestine, with the biggest difference being that Hamas is recognized as a terror group (whereas Likud is not), and Israel uses fancy technology, whereas the Palestinians are shooting ancient rockets and barely hitting anything.

What is interesting is that all the men who are making the decisions that matter here have a long history of terrorism. They know and understand it. They perpetuated it against Palestinians for decades. It's how Ehud Barak can stand in front of a camera and say that if he were a Palestinian, he'd join a terror group - and in the same sentence, talk about how their methods are abominable.

[Kane]

You just said that whatever Hamas does is irrelevant...

So you're basically living in la la land.

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[Lobster]

Hamas is merely a symptom of the larger muslim world anyways. Israel doesn't fear the "damage" it can cause. Israel fears the fact that every majority muslim country's population overwhelmingly favours the position that their country should be eradicated. It's like the 6 day war never happened or something. You want to excuse Hamas's paranoia and barbarism as a "symptom", but it's pretty easy to do the same for Israel's.

[exploited]

[Duchifas]

[Winchester]

[Lobster]

So one side is more moral than the other because it is weaker? What do you think will happen if/when Israel ever becomes weaker and more isolated than any of the countries surrounding it? That's rhetorical btw.
It's clear both sides want to ethnically cleanse the other. Israel is practically a racial based militarist theocracy, despite all the "it's a liberal democracy" excuses. It may be a "symptom" of recent history, but I wouldn't exactly say their fears are based on "delusions". Same goes for the palestinians. Their fears are very realistic.

[exploited]

[Kane]