…
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250 slaughtered at a music festival, people butchered in their homes , thousands injured and over a hundred taken hostage. Yet the BBC steers away from describing Hamas as terrorists backed by Iran. I suspect that the current Israeli regime will launch a ground attack, it is inevitable.
Even amongst the mess that is the middle east this terrorist attack is nothing but vile.
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Yes it’s awful. But the other side is hardly blameless. If you slap someone in the face often enough in the end they’ll get pissed off about it.
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Separate issues. Hamas would do this even if they had their own state. They’re another form of ISIS.
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I don’t think that you can separate them like that. The analogy is poking the hornets’ nest - you get stung, sure, but that doesn’t mean that hornets aren’t evil bastards, and indeed that you’re a cunt for poking them.
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You’re right, they’re not an organisation you’d want running any state.
But if the people weren’t so desperate as a result of a concerted stratgegy of deprivation, intimidation and provocation perhaps they wouldn’t have been voted in?
Not a great analogy. Hornets are pretty simple beings just behaving in the way that they’ve evolved to behave. The concepts of good and evil don’t really apply to them.
Humans, on the other hand, are supposed to be able to reason their way through problems, to work out the consequences of their actions and to take responsibility for them. There have been occasions in the past when the Israelis could have worked much more constructively with the Palestinians. They chose not to and, to a small extent at least, that explains the situation they now find themselves in.
The mess in the middle east is complex though, and intractable, and if there were any way forward which was simple and morally acceptable (wiping Gaza off the map is the former but not the latter) then we’d have found it by now.
Hamas probably wouldn’t exist or would just be a small nutjob group if it wasn’t for Gaza, the stealing of land and the persecution of civilans by the Israeli govt.
I’ve never been able to understand how Israel can treat the Palestinians the way they do when they experienced some of the worst genocide and abuse the world has ever seen. Even given their treatment the murder of kids at a music festival, mothers and babies and pensioners by Hamas is not excusable at any level.
Israel should have been THE international voice for the protection of the persecuted and for eradicating racial and religious hatred.
Unfortunately this is a subject where discussion never ends well.
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Yeah but religion seems to stop this kind of thing
The timing on the 50 year aniversay of the YK war was not coincidental. I can easily see an Israeli strike on Irans nuclear facilities in say 6 months or so.
In this case religion really is woven inextricably through the roots of the problem, and there are fundamentalists on both sides whose behaviour makes things much worse. BBC news just reported that Hamas are hailing their shooters as ‘martyrs’. In the R4 programme that followed (worth a listen, actually) there’s a guy puffing his book, written from the Israeli point of view, who simply refused to allow that there is a distinction between anti-Semitism and opposition to the political behaviour of Israel. Actions are justified on the basis of ‘God’s on my side’ and criticism is dismissed on the basis of ‘you just hate me because of who I am’.
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Yes, that’s my point, religion stops them from thinking or feeling like human beings.
Jews in this country are already paying a price for events that are literally nothing to do with them.
I’d like to think that the ignorant anti-semites who perpetrated this attack on a Jewish business are unaware that the vast majority of British Jewry loathe Netanyahu and everything his far-right coalition government is doing but maybe not. Maybe it’s just an excuse to stir up hate against British Jews.
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I would change to read: Hamas probably wouldn’t exist or would just be a small nutjob group if it wasn’t for the existence of Jews.
In any case, that was not a great ‘yes, but…’ post although I agree about the treatment of Palestinians.
Another proxy war?
Who might want the West distracted?
I’ve no idea what the truth is but this took some brains and funding behind the scenes…
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Don’t go editing quotes to change what I said, doing it for comical purposes is fine but not on a subject like this.
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Wasn’t intending to be funny. I have added a clarification though. Can take it out the quote box if you want.
you’ve missed what I said
For clarity I think editing quotes in other threads is fine for comedy purposes but not on this subject or thread. I try to be very careful about the way I say things on this subject and you are changing that.
Ok updated.
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Well worth a listen imo. Interesting, nuanced discussion.