Hundreds dead in Israel and Gaza, thousands injured after Hamas launches rockets, Israel declares war

abcnews.go.com Hundreds dead in Israel and Gaza, thousands injured after Hamas launches rockets, Israel declares war

Rockets have been fired from Gaza "across southern and central Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the infiltration of Hamas militants."

Over 100 Israelis have died and more than 900 were injured after rockets were fired from Gaza by Hamas militants, Israeli officials said Saturday.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 198 were killed in Gaza and at least 1,610 were injured Saturday in retaliatory attacks from Israel.

"We are at war. We will win," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

The Israeli Defense Forces earlier declared "a state of alert for war," according to a statement issued by the IDF.

"Over the past hour, the Hamas terrorist organization launched massive barrages of rockets from Gaza into Israel, and its terrorist operatives have infiltrated into Israel in a number of different locations in the south," the IDF said early Saturday.

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They are a victim of bullying when they've been under decades of illegal occupation. Hamas is an awful organization, but it was only formed as a result of ongoing brutal oppression. When you keep punching someone in the face, sooner or later they'll start punching back, and sometimes they'll fight dirty. That doesn't make them good, but the bully is still the one who kicked things off in the first place and the one who should be first and foremost held responsible for the situation they created.
Hamas individual victims get my full sympathy; they're victims of both Hamas and Israel. Israel as a state does not - without their brutal oppression, extensive war crimes, and apartheid regime, there wouldn't be any Hamas in the first place.
- What if the bully went up to someone and said "I'm going to fucking kill you" and then tried to kill them using all means possible all because the bully and the other person exist in the same area? Only Palestine and Hamas before now were the ones saying the Jews deserved death AND acted upon it multiple times. I had sympathy for their plight until they indiscriminately killed people who had zero interaction with their problems. I'm sure those thai workers and rave tourists, massacred, raped, killed and kidnapped has a lot to do with the fucking situation between Israel and Hamas/Palestine. Israel isn't clean, but in 1 day and 1 act became the cleaner of the 2 in non Arab public perception.
  
  What if the bully went up to someone and said "I'm going to fucking kill you" and then tried to kill them using all means possible all because the bully and the other person exist in the same area?
  This sentence alone shows your complete and utter lack of understanding of the situation and the history that has led to it.
  Jewish population in 1917 was 8%, but 1936 that was 28%. In 1948, during the Nakba, it jumped from 32% to 82%. Palestinians were the indigenous people of Palestine until the Zionist movement INTENTIONALLY AND SYSTEMATICALLY took over, killed, burnt down, and destroyed not only men women and children, but every facet of Palestinian culture they could.
  They shut Palestine out of negotiations and diplomatic channels, and ran straight-up propaganda campaigns in America to convince numbskulls like you who believe the slant they hear on Fox news about how Hamas are just terrorists.
  Hamas actually attempted to be a legitimate government that played by the rules, as did the PLO. They were backstabbed, lied to, led on, and ignored by US, UN, Israel, Britain, etc.
  I had sympathy for their plight until they indiscriminately killed people who had zero interaction with their problems
  You can have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people while condemning actions taken by militants. Nuance is possible here.
  
  And yet the Palestinian population grows each year.
  
  Wow it's almost as if Palestinians want to return to their fucking homes that they were forced out of, Jesus what a shocker, zomg
  
  Nice "whatabout", but the bully here is the party that engaged in an illegal occupation, the crime of apartheid, and extensive war crimes (annexation through settlement of occupied territory) in the first place. That you try to redefine away the fact that Israel created this situation in the first place borders on apartheid-apologism. It's exactly the same tactic used by supporters of South African apartheid to dismiss the situation in South Africa whenever the ANC carried out a violent operation, and it was apologism for oppression then, and it is apologism for oppression now.
  
  Nah fam, if you want to play that game Arabs invaded Jewish communities that had settled there during the muslim conquests, that's over 2,000 years of illegal occupation. If you're fine with that, you should be fine with Israel taking back their land at the "edge of a sword".
  Also it's funny to hear you say killing innocent people not involved with the conflict is "apartheid apology"
  
  Only one party is currently illegally occupying land they have legal claim to and engaging in the crime of apartheid. Only one party is engaged in fighting against an illegal occupier. That you choose to argue in favour of the apartheid regime engaged in an illegal occupation says enough.
  
  Do they have a legal claim to it? If they stole the land it shouldn't matter how long ago it was right? That's the Palestinian logic I'm seeing.
  
  Who? Israel? No, they do not have a legal claim to the occupied areas, or they wouldn't be occupied. Both irrespective of the occupation, the crime of Apartheid is a crime against humanity under the Rome statute.
  The Israeli Supreme Court has ever since 1967 consistently accepted the Israeli government's own contention that the territories are occupied, and not part of Israel proper, because if they were part of Israel, then Palestinians affected by Israeli oppression would have far stronger legal claims.
  So if you want to argue that the occupied territories belong to Israel, you're arguing against the position of both Israel the state and the Israeli Supreme Court.
  See "The law of belligerent occupation in the Supreme Court of Israel", David Kretzmer, Professor Emeritus of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published in the International Review of the Red Cross, 2012
  
  I'm simply applying the logic the Palestinians apply. There were ruins of a 2000 year old Jewish temple and a 1500 year old mosque in the region. Guess which one is older. I'd also feel more empathy for the apartheid conditions if Palestinians would stop electing a political group who's stated goals are the deaths of every Jewish person. And as I said it's comical you keep saying I support apartheid policies by simply stating killing, raping, torturing, kidnapping, and forcing innocent people to be used as human shields is fucking wrong and deplorable no matter what side does it. If Ukraine starts liquidating Russian cities and raping, torturing, kidnapping, and using innocent's as human shields I'd say the same fucking thing to them and pull my support. If this is how Palestine wants to do things I shed no tears as they are destroyed. "By any means" works both ways.
  
  I’m simply applying the logic the Palestinians apply.
  This might be relevant if it was a Palestinian state imposing apartheid on Israel. If so, they would be equally worthy of condemnation irrespective of who had which historical claim to what land.
  But they are not, so bringing it up is yet another attempt at victim-blaming.
  Had Israel stopped at a point of doing the bare minimum to secure its legally recognized borders, or indeed the borders they themselves recognize, and attempted to avoid oppressing innocent civilians for decades, there'd likely still be conflicts, but then Israel would have something of a moral leg to stand on. They have not. They do not. As it is, they are occupiers, as recognized by their own government and their own courts.
  I’d also feel more empathy for the apartheid conditions if Palestinians would stop electing a political group who’s stated goals are the deaths of every Jewish person.
  Hamas didn't even exist until a couple of decades into the oppression. It was formed as a result of the failure of PLO to get Israel to the table, so this is blaming the victims again for responding to decades of Israeli unwillingness to end their oppression.
  Also, notice how in contrast to your repeated talk of the Palestinians as a unified group while assigning blame, not once have I tried to blame the Israeli people as a whole for Israel's actions, despite the fact that a majority of them have elected governments in every single election for the entire existence of their state that have continued a policy of illegal occupations and apartheid?
  I stand by that. Just like the Palestinian people as a whole can not be judged for the actions of Hamas, neither can the Israeli people as a whole be judged for the actions of the Israeli state.
  Are you going to do the same, or are you going continue to assign collective blame to people including the millions on either side who have no power whatsoever to influence the actions of any of the belligerent parties and/or who oppose them? Including the millions in the West Bank who are largely cut off from even being able to intervene in what goes on in Gaza due to Israeli apartheid policies beyond the control of Palestinians in the West Bank.
  And as I said it’s comical you keep saying I support apartheid policies by simply stating killing innocent people is fucking wrong and deplorable no matter what side does it.
  When you criticise only specific and limited outcomes of the oppression rather than the oppression itself, then, yes, it's natural to presume you're fine with the oppression. Notice how even here you only express opposition to the killing of innocents, and not against the imposition of apartheid or the illegal occupation that created the conditions for it over multiple generations.
  If Ukraine starts liquidating Russian cities and raping, torturing, kidnapping, and using innocent’s as human shields I’d say the same fucking thing to them and pull my support. If this is how Palestine wants to do things I shed no tears as they are destroyed.
  If your support for opposition to oppression is contingent on the oppressed doing no wrong, then you're really just looking for any excuse to side with the oppressors.
  My support for the Ukranian people, as for the Palestinian people is unconditional. That does not mean I support every action made on their behalf. I do not. That does not mean there aren't actions I find deplorable. It does not mean I don't sympathise with innocent victims.
  It does mean that in an asymmetric fight the oppressor is the only side that has the choice of ending the oppression, and until they do they have no moral standing to complain when some of their victims lash out in desperation - the oppressor is ultimately always the culpable party for every consequence of their oppression.
  Anything else is to create an incentive for oppressors to be extra brutal in order to provoke an extreme response, knowing that if they do, they'll have people like you ready to dismiss the plight of the entire oppressed population because some of them were pushed into a level of desperation where they've gone too far.
  
  You can write total novels of nonsense we don't even need AI.
  Your revisionist history is laughable, I suggest you learn about the actual history of the region and what you're claiming being complete and utter nonsense. Beyond the fact Israelis have holy sites predating Palestinians, beyond the fact Palestine has lost multiple wars over the area, beyond the fact they agreed to a 2 state solution in the 90s then reneged and attacked Israel, beyond the fact they elect a genocidal government that will only bring themselves ruin, beyond all that to your last point, you are correct. When you cut toddlers throats and rape Innocents who have NO SLIGHTS AGAINST YOU, film it for fun plus have genocide as your prime governmental policy I give 0 shits about your plight regardless of what pushed you there. You deserve to get pushed around by the people you have a desire to wipe off the face of this Earth. To quote the bible, "live by the sword, die by the sword."
  
  Your blood and soil arguments are entirely irrelevant to the point that Israel itself does not make the extremist claims you're making. You keep recycling this despite its total lack of relevance to the argument. And in doing so you're aligning yourself with a tiny minority of the most far-right extremist fascist-adjacent Israeli parties.
  beyond the fact they agreed to a 2 state solution in the 90s then reneged and attacked Israel
  Again you're collectively blaming a population, the majority of which were not born when the Oslo accords were signed (look it up; 65% of the Palestinian population is below 25 years old, and the Oslo accords were signed 30 years ago) for actions a far higher proportion had no influence over.
  beyond the fact they elect a genocidal government that will only bring themselves ruin
  I'm assuming you don't get the irony in writing this when it can be equally applied to Israel.
  Of the two sides, only one has a government actively engaged in what covers a substantial portion o stage 8 of Stantons ten stages of genocide.
  When you cut toddlers throats and rape Innocents who have NO SLIGHTS AGAINST YOU, film it for fun plus have genocide as your prime governmental policy I give 0 shits about your plight regardless of what pushed you there. You deserve to get pushed around by the people you have a desire to wipe off the face of this Earth. To quote the bible, “live by the sword, die by the sword.”
  This boils down to "it's ok to murder innocents and oppress people and want to get rid of people because the other side murdered innocents and wants to get rid of you". Unless you're an utter hypocrite, you'd apply that to both sides. Yet this "logic" is meaningless if applied to both sides. By your own logic, Israelis deserve to get pushed around because some of them have murdered innocents and because some of them wants Israel to annex all the land (to be clear, despite your argument in favour of collective punishment: they don't; just like Palestinians don't deserve to be collectively punished for the actions of a few either). But if that is the case, you have no moral basis for your uproar over Hamas' actions - by your own logic you shouldn't give 0 shits about it.
  Yet you clearly do. So clearly you're not applying that logic to both sides.
  You're conveniently only applying it to the Palestinian population, whom you've elsewhere also implied collectively are untrustworthy and likely to try to take over any state who might invite them in.
  Again, note how quick you are to be ok with collective suffering for Palestine for the actions of some, while you're up in arms about the suffering of a portion of Israelis for the actions of some.
  Can you see how this deeply hypocritical and one-sided demonisation of Palestinians as a people, whom you have elsewhere implied are collectively untrustworthy and a risk of trying to take over, comes across as racist?
  Because I certainly do.
  I have no interest in continuing to indulge you in your ongoing demonisation of a population of five million people of whom the vast majority has done no wrong other than been born in what is effectively an open air prison where you, to quote you think they "deserve to get pushed around" despite the majority of them never having voted in any violently oppressive government (and that holds for the majority of Israelis too, though sadly not for the majority of the electorate - but just as I don't hold all Palestinians responsible for the actions of some, neither to dI hold all Israelis responsible for the actions of some; have a think about that).
  And so I'll shortly be blocking you, so I don't have to deal with any more attempts at justifying oppression of innocents because of the crimes of some.
  
  Ah so you're a fuckin Zionist, GOT IT. I knew I smelled fascist.
  
  That "game" of which you speak is an appeal to privilege in its most obscene form: claiming an ancestral myth that allows you to impact extreme violence against other humans whose only crime is being born into the wrong bloodline.
  It's 2023 CE out here but some cultures are pretending it's 2023 BCE

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