Hamas has spent years stockpiling desperately needed fuel, food and medicine, as well as ammo and weapons, in the miles of tunnels it has carved out under Gaza.
Hamas has spent years stockpiling desperately needed fuel, food and medicine, as well as ammo and weapons, in the miles of tunnels it has carved out under Gaza.
I’m not any more pro-Hamas than anyone else, but cmon man. Do you really feel as if your individual actions have been able to substantively alter the direction of your own country, in your lifetime?
Palestinians are living in an authoritarian regime. Most are probably brainwashed from near birth. Those that aren’t, or that resist it, aren’t given many avenues for change. In our delightful western democracies we may be given the right to peaceful protest - what do you think happens to people who protest Hamas, in Gaza? because I’m betting it’s not a winning strategy for a long, rewarding existence.
the lucky Palestinians get out, but from what I understand, there are basically no avenues by which they can do so. Does that justify murdering them en masse?
I’m with you on this, I feel bad for what I suspect is a majority of Gazans who fear Hamas too much to speak up against them. That’s the biggest issue with OP’s argument.
But Israel isn’t targeting them. Israel is doing everything it can to warn them of the exact buildings it’s targeting, and Hamas is doing everything it can to keep them in the warzones and in the buildings, because it wants them to die, it wants them to be “martyrs” Its leaders have made this clear in many interviews. They talk about how they have six kids in the hopes that three of them die.
War is hell. Nobody is taking this lightly. There will be civilian casualties. That’s a terrible thing. Allowing Hamas to continue its control and its rampage is worse.
Allowing them to continue to oppress Palestinians, target Israeli civilians, fire rockets (more rockets have landed in Gaza than in Israel!)… They dig up water pipes to turn into rockets. They steal fuel from power plants that could be used to power hospitals and desalination plants. They set up their bases and fire rockets from schools, hospitals, mosques, and residences. They are demanding war. Their founding charter entirely rejects any kind of peace at all. It’s not an accident.
Maybe if they didn’t bomb the designated ‘safe’ areas, people would believe them. Like that one man said: why go to the South and die there when I can die in my own house? Action/ reaction.
Sure, the very Israeli military who targetted and killed journalists in Lebanon and bombed and killed the wife and children of an Al Jazeera journalist whilst he was live on air from Gaza (and who even before this used a sniper to execute a journalist) are trying to avoid civilian casualties, something which we know because they tell us that, and we all know how murderers of journalists and their families are the most honest people around…