How many targets have Israel hit in last 6/7 days? 500? 1000?

Only the Israeli people can stop this, about time they stand up to be heard.

lol marty,

So the answer is to give Hamas better rockets or to just to remove the Iron Dome? Or should I just stay in the balcony and not go the bomb shelter, so we can get a higher death toll?

Are you that dumb?

No the answer is a proportionate response, ie kill their commander and a few civilians, not blitz all of Gaza killing 10 members of one family.

When you going to ask your gov to stop Yuv? Rather than backing up atrocities?

Proportionate to what? The number of death? Is that the count? Half my country is under constant attack. This is truly mind blowing to me that anyone would consider an airstrike a non-proportionate response to constant missile bombing.

I can and am very critical of my government. I do not and will not vote for the Likud or Netanyahu. I think talks to Abu Mazen should have been resumed years ago.
I think there's a lot of blame on the Israeli government for the strength of the Hamas and the non existence presence of Fatah and Abu Mazen in Gaza.

That being said, discussing anything with the Hamas is a lost cause. What do you think we can do with the Gaza rocket attacks today? Or do you just dismiss them with a clever internet meme?

You can target Hamas exclusively for the rockets attacks, this isn't rocket science. You have one the most capable militaries on the planet and one the most feared secret services in mossad, there really should be no excuse for targeting or even hitting civilians definitely not in the wide spread manner that happens at the minute.


No smart memes sorry.

--

Don't think nobody cares for your situation, your post mentioning the busses and Goaters about his office show how close to home this is for some of you.

Stay safe

Are you serious? Have you ever been in combat? Do you have any idea how dense Gaza is? You do realize that they are not firing missiles from an agreed upon territory.

We have one of the most capable militaries on the planet. That means that the death toll would have been millions if Israel army wished so. Give Hamas improved rockets and the death toll here would be millions.

There is no possible way to completely avoid civilians casualties in urban warfare. If you think there is, you are simply uninformed. This isn't WWII. We're not bombing to kill civilians. If we were, they'd be dead. It's that simple. When you are aiming at moving targets inside ridic dense areas, you will miss and civilians will die.

Use your head man, don't go into auto-reply mode. I can be critical and against some of my government actions, without using nonsense sentences like 'there no excuse for hitting civilians'. I really wish I could see what you think the war or Gaza look like. Should be amusing.

I appreciate the concern. I live in Tel Aviv, which was 'only' fired at since Thursday. My friends merely 15 miles to the south has lived this reality for many years. I only now joined them in learning where the closest bomb shelter is.

I've got a small idea what a war versus a not very massive armed group looks like, it doesn't look anything like how Israel handles there **** tho.

I propose the same question i raised before. Still not sure what the answer is - but can you find me a military operation/in-land war/guerrilla warfare in an urban area that did not involve civilian casualties?

Everybody else does it, we're ok.

Everybody else does it, it's inevitable.

No one can fly as well, that's not an 'excuse' for not flying. It's simply impossible.
Another example of auto-replies instead of taking a moment to think about it.

Seriously, people, use your head for just a moment.

This is the 2nd time I received this response ITT and it's not a good sign for you.

There are reasons civilians die in wars. Sometimes it's intentional (most wars), sometimes it's inevitable. I'm sure you all can agree that if Israel wanted to kill civilians, it would be a pretty easy task for its army.

If no one in history of mankind managed to go through war without having civilian casualties, do you really think an answer of 'But mom..' makes you sound clever? Reality is a bitch. War sucks. People die. It's a really really terrible reality to live in, but it is reality. It's terrible for me in Tel Aviv, it's worse for my friends 15-30 miles to the south and it's god awful for the Gazans.

The solution will have to be a peace process. I don't doubt that. While that is not possible, all your magic make-believe scenarios are simply juvenile.

Yuv's posts ITT are good, imo. The conflict is being massively oversimplified by some. There's a lot to criticise about Israel. I think it's simply mental that they keep building settlements in occupied territory. But painting them as the bad guys here is missing the mark. Let's not forget that Hamas are the elected leaders of the Palestinian Territories and they are firing rockets into Israeli cities. I invite you to imagine the response of the US if Cuba were to fire rockets into Miami. Cuba would be wiped from the face of the planet.

The thing about left-wing people is that they have a tendency to over-identify with powerlessness and victimhood. Just because the Palestinian territories are oppressed (and they are) doesn't automatically make them always in the right.

It seems so obvious that removing capacity to kill is pointless if you do so by increasing motivation.

Subcribed

FWIW, I do agree with this as a general principle and consider that one of the biggest faults of the Israeli governments from 1967 to 1992 (and post 1996, but at that point it has a lot more to do with Palestinians than Israelis).

Sadly, at this point I fear that we're pass the point where this is a consideration the Israeli government can take in Gaza.

Settlements, continued hostility, those might be connected.

You provide a narrative of relentless Palestinian attacks. They describe relentless Israeli aggression. You reconcile this by eliminating half the discussion and saying it's all them. There's some settlers who don't make things better, but it's all the Arabs.

But that just isn't so. There's a PA that took a huge gamble on peace, and is now twisting in the wind. Israel needs to stop making things worse.

[I'm def posting too much here. Slow day so far in Tel Aviv so far]

No, they are not. Unless you consider the entire country of Israel a settlement. That is a valid argument, fwiw, I will just have to fight against it.

The idea of a Palestinian country within the pre-67 borders is a good one and I hope it happens. It's not an entitlement. It's not even as bad as the US occupation of Mexico territories, or the UK occupation of Scotland. These territories were won in war from Jordan (West Bank / East Jerusalem), Egypt (Gaza, Sinai) and Syria (Golan Heights).

I do fully agree that they should be used for a Palestinian state when that idea could exist.

Again, if you do not see both sides, you are doing a bad job of understanding the dispute. The constant suicide bombing by the Hamas in the 90s could and should have been stopped by Arafat and the Fatah. They were not. Anyone who will go to a conspiracy theory that Israel wanted that to happen (in Rabin days) is simply crazy.

Those attacks had nothing to do with settlements. Hamas has never considered a different between my house in Tel Aviv to settlements in Hebron (which is home to the worst scum-of-the-earth settlers. Trust me, I hate them more than you'll ever will. But there are 500 of them and 250,000 Palestinians).

Can anyone recommend a non-biased book on the history of modern day Israel? I feel it would help me form better opinions on debates such as this.

It is you who fails to see both sides. You write that Palestinian statehood within the 67 borders is not an "entitlement" and that Israel won territories through warfare. You go on to write that Palestinian violence has nothing to do with the settlements.

Hello the UN partitioned the country and gave the Palestinians the right to a state (incidentally the Israeli official at the UN initially agreed to the 56% borders). Hello the illegal colonisation of the West Bank is making the two state solution impossible and that is the main grievance of the Palestinians. Try to walk a mile in the shoes of a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank. To the outside world they are equal human beings with equal rights to you in Tel Aviv. At the moment they are trying to get recognition of their rights to a state as per UN resolution 242. Your government is doing everything possible to prevent this and they will probably succeed as they can rely on the American veto.

Ahahahaha.

There's no such thing as an unbiased guide. When I was first getting to grips with the conflict I read "The Palestine-Israeli Conflict: A Beginner's Guide" by Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Dawoud El-Alami. It has the story of the creation of Israel from an Israeli perspective and then from a Palestinian perspective. Pretty good introduction.

My takeaway from it is that the creation of Israel was immoral. Unfortunately that doesn't help in what to do now, I mean the colonization of Australia was immoral but I would not stand for Aborigines taking my house over. I think it was Hitchens who defined terrorism as "demanding the impossible and demanding it at gunpoint" and if you look at who is demanding the impossible in the conflict these days, it's mostly Hamas. That said if Israel would stop building more settlements, I would have a lot more sympathy for them.

It's not really clear that statehood would change anything considering that the elected government of the Palestinian Territories is Hamas, an organisation that fires rockets into Israel and has in its charter the withdrawal of Israel from Jerusalem as a goal.

I'm saying that what the Palis want and do is affected by what Israel and others do and hence isn't exogenous. That should be taken into account when trying to make progress in this conflict, even if you believe that they shouldn't do X if Israel does Y because it's immoral. because they are going to regardless of whether you think it's wrong (and this goes for Israel as well), if you care about outcomes, you best take that into account.

No, people like to focus on assigning responsibility. Similar but not quite the same thing. I'm talking about cause and effect and how people interested in resolving the conflict shouldn't let the blame game get in the way of understanding the situation. Like, if you strongly believe Hamas/IDF are acting morally reprehensible when they do something, you might mistakenly believe that what they're doing is totally exogenous and not causally affected by what the other side does. That's a good recipe for coming up with "solutions" to this conflict that have no chance of working.

It would mean that the Palestinian people would no longer remain stateless. The charter has never been relevant in practical terms. Hamas accepted that the Palestinians would never get all of Palestine (as promised by the British in the White Paper 1939) many decades ago. The unity government (which includes Hamas) have asked for recognition on the basis of the 67 borders. As for "rockets" let's get something straight. Israel is the aggressor in this conflict. It colonises the West Bank by force in defiance of international law and deals with any Palestinian resistance very harshly.

The Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan. They went to war. They lost.

The West Bank was conquered from Jordan. Not a Palestinian state. Gaza was conquered from Egypt.

I do hope my government fight any one-sided agreement. I hope my government goes back to the negotiations tables and reach a mutual agreement. I hope all settlements are abandoned not because they are 'illegal', but because I want peace. The Palestinians don't hold any rights to those areas anymore than I do. I don't feel entitled to this specific piece of land. I'm not a religious person and I don't care that 2000 years ago there was a temple here. Nor would it matter in 200 years.

We won a war. We hold this country. This is the same for any other country in the world. I want peace, I want them to have a country. The UN is a 70 year old organization, it's not some undeniable truth. Wherever you live in the world, you would be doing so illegally if that is the claim you're going for.

How am I failing to see both sides, when you still hold ground based on absolutely no evidence, that the Palestinians would simply embrace peace if given the rights to 1967 territories?
It's a completely arbitrary point in time to stop at. Why not go back to 1947 plan?

The question is of practicality. There's no entitlement. Only, hopefully, eventually, a mutual agreement that will lead to a Palestinian state and peaceful borders for Israel. Won't be anytime soon, sadly.