Hamas’s Qassam Brigades has threatened to execute Israeli captives if Israel continues to bombard and kill civilians in Gaza.
“Any targeting of innocent civilians without warning will be met regretfully by executing one of the captives in our custody, and we will be forced to broadcast this execution,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades.
“We regret this decision but we hold the Zionist enemy and their leadership the responsibility for this,” he said.
There are no good guys in that conflict.
Only bad guys and victims.
Hamas being terrorists doesn’t make it OK for Israel to be committed to genocide any more than Israel’s existence as an ethnofascist apartheid state makes in OK for Hamas to be bombing proms.
Both organizations are making it impossible for Palestinians to live peacefully.
If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine. It is their historical sensitivity to genocide and limitations placed on them by international law and foreign pressures that imposes on them very different standards of behavior in this war. If they operated by the same set of rules that Hamas does, this conflict would have been over long ago.
Israel does not perform atrocities like this. This wasn’t collateral damage, this wasn’t an attack on a valid military target, it was intentionally kidnapping, raping, and murdering civilians. This sort of behavior makes it very hard for me to swallow the, “both sides are equally bad,” narrative. I had a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian situation before, it is quickly evaporating.
I’m not denying that some of this is factual reporting, but that particular source can be very biased with respect to Israel.
Source
Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide, but I’ll save that criticism until it actually plays out. In general, Israel is an apartied state. Hamas is a bunch of murderous terrorists committing war crimes, doing far more harm to their supposed cause than good. This attack will result in far more of their people suffering. But they count on that, hate within the Palestine community in Gaza is what gives them political power, so the civilians Isreal is currently killing will just continue to fuel the cycle of violence.
Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn’t make Israel “good”. If you compare Nazi Germany to apartied South Africa, the former is going to win the evil country contest everytime. But that doesn’t make apartied South Africa good. If it wasn’t for the Book of Revelations, America (it’s government and it’s people) would care as much about this conflict as it does about various civil wars and genocides happening all over the world, which is to say not at all (unless oil or other natural resources are imperilled).
My understanding is the border crossing with Egypt is still open, so Palestine can still have access to all of that.
You make a good point about no one having clean hands in this conflict, but one party here seems willing to commit atrocities that the other is not. One party is historically willing to compromise and negotiate for a viable solution and the other has not, and in fact has it in their charter that they will not negotiate or compromise.
What we need to end this amicably is a solution that neither party is happy with, one they are equally dissatisfied with, because that is a hallmark of compromise. If one or both parties are unwilling to compromise, the erosion of Palestinian lands and power will continue as it has, and such atrocious acts may serve to hasten it.
The border crossing to Egypt is usually only for people when it’s open. As I understand it, all goods have to use a different crossing passing into Israel first and then Gaza.
why all the innocent palestinians arent rushing for the border to get out is beyond me. you know what’s coming. being dead and saying ‘i told you the bastards would kill me’ sounds great up until the point you are dead.
Hoping Israel doesnt unleash possibly the most intense campaign of this generation is a fools dream really and unless you are a combatant, you’d get the hell out ASAP. Hamas is going to be blown to limbs and those that survive the bombings and full scale assaults are going to wind up Munich’d after all this is over. They cant do what they did and not expect utter retribution
Hate to point out the irony, especially in this context… but at the rate things are going, in another 5 years there probably won’t be a Palestine.
“Israel are the good guys because the international community has stopped them from completing the genocide at a quick pace”
God I really hope a ethno state claims your own land as theirs, puts you in an open air prison as it gradually steals pieces of it for its owns settlers year after year, denies you food and medicines. Shoots women, children, medics and reporters in your community.
Snark aside, I do completely agree, and there’s a lot that I would criticize Israel for. That list does not, however, include mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of random civilians.
It does include apartheid, genocide, belief in racial superiority and murdering journalists though. We can’t equate what one side has done with the other as one side has generally held all the power while one side has been persistently oppressed. Also, it’s pretty hard to say whether mass murder, rape and kidnapping civilians is as bad as, worse than, or better than genocide.
The Israeli government regularly commits atrocities and crimes against humanity. Hamas regularly commits atrocities and crimes against humanity. There are no good guys here, just bad guys in charge being funded and goaded by other bad guys and innocent civilians being needlessly murdered.
Rape and kidnapping maybe not but did you just say that Israel hasn’t been murdering Palestinians? Or are you saying they’ve never murdered more than 200 at once
You know as well as I do that the IDF does not go around Palestinian villages slaughtering everyone they see.
Israel’s hands are not remotely perfectly clean, and there have absolutely been actions that are reprehensible, but the operations of the IDF and Hamas are not remotely equivalent, as you’re perfectly aware.
Yes I’m aware it’s different but I’m wondering why you phrased it like there hasn’t been violence against (non-hamas) Palestinian citizens by Israel.
Because the scale and level of intention to harm civilians are completely incomparable. Israel is generally not trying to murder every Palestinian citizen it finds. Meanwhile, that is Hamas’ explicit reason for existing, as literally stated in their founding charter.
Israel has done a lot of shit, and I don’t deny that. But it hasn’t acted the way Hamas does.
Why would you want to rephrase “mass murder of civilians” (as in go shoot up a couple hundred teenagers at a music festival, with some rape mixed in) to “violence against citizens” ?
Because that’s their only talking point
Remember when terrorists attacked the USA, UK, France and Spain?
And then we decided to commit war crimes and deprive civilians of water, electricity and food, while destroying their houses?
Oh wait, we didn’t.
We actually tried to win hearts and minds while targeting just the terrorists.
Didn’t work out, but we didn’t become vicious war criminals against poor innocent civilians who just happened to be ethnically related to the terrorists.
Israel is not deserving of support by the civilized world.
People have forgotten that denying people basic necessities in the hopes that they die out is also genocide.
lmao what hearts and minds do you expect to win out of a population who has religious beef with you? A population who would gladly wipe you out if they could?
Nah, Israel needs to be able to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the name of peace, so that Palestinians can find their peace elsewhere.
Okay I get what you’re trying to say but Americans absolutely caused massive amounts of wanton destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Um, Iraq and Afghanistan? We absolutely DESTROYED ALL of Iraq’s infrastructure in like a week and then GW flew out to an aircraft carrier with a banner that said “Mission Accomplished”.
Then we spend the next 20 years kicking in doors and killing civilians cause reasons.
Then we bail and leave all the dudes that helped us out behind so they can pay the price for helping the enemy…good times…
Totally agree but just like the drug commercial in the '80s…“I learned it from watching you!”
Lol the US and Canada murdered 95% of the natives, including 100% of those who resisted plus their families, took their land and put the rest into remote reservations
Israel’s shit but not as shit
Wait what? Didn’t Obama drone like a wedding and the doctors without borders?
You serious? If you’re from the US: Have you by any chance heard of Guantanamo Bay? Abu Ghraib?