Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
While I firmly believe - and have repeatedly stated - that the ‘who’s to blame for what’ question is impossibly complex to answer given the causal link from one event to another, stretching back more than 150 years …
I absolutely reject your continued attempts to draw actual or moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas’ actions over the past fortnight. Sure there’s room to debate what degree of military response is warranted on Israel’s part, but that’s because they’re operating a uniformed army with a chain of command and a plan of action that quite obviously shows awareness of international legal obligations as well as intense political pressure from allies. Their response is considered and calibrated. Argue they got the balance wrong by all means, but suggestions that their actions amount to the equivalent of Hamas are profoundly un-serious.
Hamas, to the extent it had a plan, entered Israel with the intention of behaving in as barbaric a way as possible, to the greatest extent possible. Beheading, torture, rape, execution of parents in front of children; execution of children in front of parents.
The behaviour of Israel in Gaza this week *is*not*the*same* as the behaviour of Hamas in Israel last week. The fact that those killed in Gaza might not see it that way is, tragically, besides the point. There is simply no comparison between no-holds-barred barbarism and calculated military action.
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It’s this bit that actually makes it worse.
A nation state with all the resources it has to secure it’s borders and target Hamas and other terror groups chooses to displace over a million people, levelling huge swathes of Gaza, taking some of the poorest people in the world and destroying what little they have. Considered and calculated.
And, from the somewhat perverse viewpoints of some, Palestinians should be grateful for this work towards being “demographically neutralised”.
How people in Gaza feel - and how they are treated - is absolutely the point.