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This is happening now to Ukraine and the way the respond is the correct way to respond, it's not blowing up schools, or music festivals or raping young women and parading their dead bodies around town on the bonnets of cars so people can spit on them.
The fact that people put all the blame on Israel for the situation is why this war will continue for a long time.
Source, decadent of people who's land was stolen first by Nazi's then by Soviets.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakam
Israel is blamed in part because they hold all the power. If you read what the original Zionists wrote in private letters you would know it was their intent all along to take over all the land.
Do note that this does not mean it can't or shouldn't be a state. Somalia is self-sovereign even if it's kind of bad at doing that.
Since we're cherry-picking, let me continue the sequence for you...
...propped up by Israel to be elected by the people of Gaza. [0]
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
The heritage of both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people is steeped in literally thousands of years of history in that land. While one group, the Jews, were often displaced from it, it does not diminish the ties the Palestinian people have to that land. A land they cultivated and farmed for, again, thousands of years. Well before formal borders of any nation today were recognized.
We can nitpick on specific words and phrases, but the broader point still stands. These are human beings who are used for political aims, whose suffering is a means to an end, and it's all happening at the hands of people who do not respect human life. Whether you want to play partisan and choose the label of "Hamas" or "Israel" is up to you, but both are guilty nonetheless. It just so happens that one of those two parties has more resources at their disposal than the other to inflict profound misery and annihilation.
People will argue with me and say Hamas is some type of resistance movement against oppressors so they should "fight on", expel or Jews or whatever and that October 7 was fine, but Hamas don't even wear a uniform so the IDF has no idea who they even are, for all they know there actually is Hamas in those camps. This is already a violation of the Geneva convention:
The Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law dictate that combatants must distinguish themselves from civilians during armed conflict
The entire situation there is just a tragedy for the actual innocents wrapped up in it and it's a shame bigger men cannot seem to find their balls and do the right thing.
I don't see how this war is going to end by providing Hamas with more aid but it looks like they've set it up so the world needs to give them aid so their own children don't die.
I don’t love either party’s behavior here, but there’s no need to mislead like this.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/world/middleeast/israel-h...
I still maintain that Netanyahu would gladly sacrifice hostages to keep the war hot. And that NYT article is a fascinating artifact in highlighting Israeli feelings of anguish while Palestinians are killed en masse.
If people hadn't started accusing Israel (and Biden, somehow) of genocide basically on October 8, perhaps there'd be less debate right now. It's really frustrating to both feel that Israel can do no right (the pager attack, while obviously viscerally terrifying, had objectively incredible combatant/innocent ratios compared to literally any other way of prosecuting war, and it's the height of hypocrisy for people claiming that Israel should simply special forces snipe every Hamas fighter individually to criticize it) and at the same time fully agree that Netanyahu and the settlers are shithead monster assholes and that civilian casualties are now inexcusable, beyond a reasonable doubt.
People started accusing Israel, and its American sponsors, of genocide long before October 8; that Israel is engaged in s campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people has been the dominant position in pro-Palestinian activist circles for decades.
People started paying attention more after October 7, 2023, but that's not when the accusations began.
So did the genocide itself, which has always been constrained by what Israel thinks they can get away with based on political conditions (mainly in the US, whose active military support, financial aid, and UNSC veto they want to maintain) and the available pretext’s they can hid atrocities behind.
There is a relationship.
Do you understand? I'm not, and at no point have I been, discussing or debating facts on the ground in Gaza. I'm making an effort to assume good faith. I am telling you about the experience of people that are "gettable" for your movement, people that largely agree that what's happening is abhorrent, but that are feeling alienated by the dogmatism, and you're telling me why dogmatism is correct. Iinot talking about what's correct, I'm talking about what's successfully persuasive.
No, Israel & the US wanted a continuation via a modified version of phase 1 ceasefire rather than proceed to phase 2: securing exchange of Israeli captives but with the temporary cessation of military activities i.e., allowing them to resume.
Phase 2 as originally outlined & agreed would have been a commitment to a permanent cessation of military and hostile activities, withdrawal, and exchange of the remaining surviving Israeli & number of Palestinian captives[2]:
Announce restoration of a sustainable calm (cessation of military operations and hostilities permanently) and its commencement prior to the exchange of hostages and prisoners between the two sides – all remaining Israeli hostages who are living men (civilians and soldiers) in exchange for a number of prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza strip.
Moreover, Israel was supposed to send negotiators for implementation of phase 2 no later than the 16th day of phase 1(February 3rd) per the phase 1 agreement. Instead, Netanyahu met up with Trump, formulated their own agreement without any other mediators, and they delayed sending in negotiators until 2 days(February 27th) before phase 1 of the ceasefire was set to end with a "take it or else" approach.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/24/middleeast/gaza-israel-de... [2] https://archive.is/c82OT
Top ministers in Israel have been very clear that population-level suffering and ideally expulsion is their goal. Meanwhile, West Bank violence has skyrocketed. And Hamas leadership is mostly dead already, anyways.
The religious leadership in the area needs to surrender and tell their people to surrender the idea that Jews are horrible people who deserve to be killed and all views to support similar ideas on the other side need to do the same.
Otherwise any aid provided to Gaza etc is just a temporary bandaid to the issue.
Trigger warning:
Hours later that day, a video emerged showing Louk's body,[28][29][b][c] partially clothed, with a significant head injury and blood-matted hair, being paraded in the streets of Gaza City by Hamas militants in the back of a pickup truck; they were exclaiming "Allahu Akbar" and were joined in the cheers by the people in the crowd surrounding the vehicle, some of whom spat on the body.[33][23][34][35] The video went viral,[2][36][37] becoming one of the first viral videos of the Gaza war.[36] It was released in a wave of videos of Hamas members parading hostages and bodies.[38][39][40] Photographs were also taken and circulated online.[29]