Major attack on Israel by Hamas

[temporal1]

i appreciate the way Rudy R explains distinctions between HAMAS and Palestinians.
It’s not at all unusual for those with evil intent to attempt to use any means available to execute evil.

Ben Shapiro / “Rudy Rochman: From the Front Lines” / 8min

Description:
Join me as I have a conversation with Rudy Rochman, an Israeli Defense Force paratrooper who has been fighting on the front lines in the midst of this conflict.

Rudy shares in detail what's truly going on in the Middle East right now.

None of this is about Anabaptists or COs. Or Christians.

appleman:
.. As an aside I think we would all do well to spend sometime over the next day or two asking God to protect the manyinnocent lives that are so vulnerable right now. That includes those being held hostage, many women and children and probably even some very young Hamas boys who have been indoctrinated at such a young age they are still barely accountable.

It is all so tragic.

[MaxPC]

A million Palestinians stream south in Gaza as Israel urges mass evacuation

AP 14.10.23
Israel renewed calls on social media and in leaflets dropped from the air for some 1 million Gaza residents to move south, while Hamas terrorists, known to use their own people as human shields, urged people to stay in their homes.

Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions crowded a main road heading away from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the Hamas controlled territory. Egyptian officials said the southern Rafah crossing would open later Saturday for the first time in days to allow foreigners out.

Israel said Palestinians could travel along two main routes without being harmed from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time.

The Israeli military said its troops conducted temporary raids into Gaza to battle the terrorists and hunted for traces of some 150 people, including men, women and children, who were abducted during Hamas’ bloody assault on southern Israel early last Saturday morning.

The Hamas attack killed more than 1,300 Israelis, most of them unarmed civilians, and roughly 1,500 Hamas terrorists were killed during the fighting, the Israeli government said.

[temporal1]

10 hours ago: ???

NBC / Hamas officials willing to release all civilian hostages if bombing stops / -5min

Description:
Hamas said it is open to releasing civilian hostages if Israel stops bombing Gaza.
NBC News’ Richard Engel details what else Hamas senior officials are asking for.

Found in Comments:

@bluethunder90 WROTE:
4 hours ago
That conversation was not had with the Israeli government because the message was not directed at the Israelis, but to Western governments so they will put pressure on the Israeli governemnt to cease-fire. Hamas knew exactly what it was doing in making that statement to the Western press.

???

@muirislandjim453 WROTE:
8 hours ago
Imagine believing a single word Hamas says

???

[MaxPC]

Two terrorists appear to have admitted responsibility for a misfired rocket that exploded over a Gaza hospital packed with civilians receiving treatment and seeking shelter, leaving at least 471 people dead.

Terrorists have admitted responsibility to a misfired rocket that exploded over the top of a crowded Gaza hospital filled with civilians, according to the Israeli military.

Terror group Hamas claimed 471 people were killed on Tuesday night when an explosion rocked the Al Ahli Arab Hospital near the enclave's city centre.

Israel and Hamas almost immediately started to blame one another, with the Israeli Defence Forces hours later claiming they had evidence it was not their soldiers and would promptly release audio and footage from the moments after the blast.The Israeli military on Wednesday released a one-minute-long conversation reportedly between two terrorists talking about the misfire.

"I'm telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this falling and so that's why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad," the first terrorist said, according to a translation from the Israeli Defence Forces.

The second sounded confused about what he heard, asking: "It's from us?"

"It looks like it!" his counterpart responded.

"They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel. But God bless, it couldn't have found another place to explode?"

The first terrorist claimed the missile was launched from a cemetery located behind the hospital, which "misfired and fell on them".

[MaxPC]

Interesting.
Terror expert explains inside the mind of Hamas 'death cult' killers amid their 'murder orgy' against Israelis

[Jazman]

There's a difference between a "Gazan" and a "full-on supporter of Hamas", and I think that's an important distinction, just like there are many Americans who don't endorse everything the U.S. government, military, or Republican or Democratic parties do.

You seem to keep moving the goalposts and I don't understand why. Some Gazans don't support Hamas and some do. It's really that simple. People that support bad people are themselves bad people and complicit in the actions of the bad actors. If you support an organization that uses barbaric tactics and genocide you have blood on your hands.

I think I will be done arguing this point because I for the life of me see can't understand your weddedness to the idea of letting supporters of evil off the hook.

Gaza has no access to its own coastline or freedom of navigation in the sea. Israel blockades it and controls everything that goes in and out.
Likewise, Gaza's airspace is blockaded. Gaza has no freedom to conduct any aviation and the Israelis bombed the daylights out of their airport, which used to be the only regularly used airport in Palestinian controlled territory.
In such a blockaided, sieged environment, an organisation like Hamas thrives.

I'm not entirely clear on your position. In a previous post you seemed to suggest that Israel should in fact be using a wall, control of airspace and aid (all things they've been doing for years) in order to pacify the population and turn them against Hamas.

Now you're saying that doing those things is what causes Hamas to thrive?

Gaza alone annually receives billions in aid from dozens of countries, including Israel. Much of that aid seems to be siphoned off by Hamas and redirected to military purposes. In a sense Israel is giving Hamas the gun that it turns around and uses on Israel.

How would giving more aid dismantle Hamas?

Yes, things like Iron Dome are a good thing.

Well that's the thing of it. Iron Dome was built to mitigate and neutralize the novel threat of rocket launches into Israel, and it worked very well for a very long time. It still does. Hamas though, seeing how well it worked, evolved their tactics to find new ways of killing Jews. Israel could go back to the drawing board and find novel ways to ward off these new types of attacks but it seems, Hamas being Hamas, they will simply find new ways around those mitigation strategies.

I don't see how that's a tenable situation for Israel. Nor do I see how it's reasonable to expect that Israel subject itself to a certain number of deaths and kidnappings every year as it's price to pay for simply existing.

I don't think any of us think what Hamas is doing is right. They should stop what they are doing. The question is, is it okay to justify doing the same thing back?

This seems uncharacteristically naive of you, Josh. If Hamas stopped what they were doing they would cease to be Hamas. Their entire raison d'etre is the murdering of Jews and the annihilation of Israel. They have no reason, no rationale and no incentive to stop. They are funded and encouraged and trained by Iran. They teach their children through cartoons, school curriculum and "summer camps" that it's good to kill Jews, to give their lives for the destruction of Israel and how to fire weapons and kidnap Israelis.

Hamas will not be going away on its own any time soon.

I think the "decapitation of babies" thing is largely emotive (there is, as of yet, still no evidence this actually happened). If we want to have a grown-up discussion about this, it starts with not giving into violent rhetoric that is then used to justify why killing Gazan children and babies is okay.

Fair enough, the reports I saw from CBS, FOX, the Jerusalem Post and a local outlet here in Honduras all stated the claim as though it were confirmed. I was under that impression as a result.

It seems indisputable though that Hamas used tactics like: rape, kidnapping, the targeting of civilians, massacring families in their homes, shooting babies, beheading soldiers, and burning people. Tactics that are barbaric, meant to demoralize and notably not used by Israel.

So my question still stands:

How do you suggest Israel deal with an organization bent on their destruction

A place for the Israelis to start might be reforming their own government... (but I don't think just limited to that, but according to these survivors, is a place they want to start)

[Josh]

A place for the Israelis to start might be reforming their own government... (but I don't think just limited to that, but according to these survivors, is a place they want to start)

There have been nonstop protests for the last year about such reforms, but the reality is that only hard-right coalition governments can form now when 30% of the electorate are ultra-orthodox who caucus with hard-right parties. It only takes Likud winning 20% of the vote to form a coalition government, and it pushes Likud into choosing hard right instead of more centrist policies.

Yet the other 70% of the electorate can’t work to diminish ultra orthodox influence because they are the group having a birth rate to compete with Arab Israelis, who overwhelmingly vote for pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian parties. Centrists in Israel are really left with nowhere to go right now. Leftists/liberals have “ancestral” control of the Supreme Court which is why there is such a fierce political battle raging about Netanyahu’s attempts to change that.

Of course, this Hamas invasion has been one of the best things to happen to Netanyahu’s political career. Centrists would be right to blame both Hamas and the incident of desecrating the al-Aqsa mosque for this turn of events. Those two actions really have changed Netanyahu’s political future from about 0% to one I’d put at 70% right now.

[mike]

Israel appears to be stepping up its ground offensive in Gaza. Communications are down.

[mike]

[Bootstrap]

They are saying that killing over 7,000 people, including 2,665 children, is not a major operation?

I thought that killing 1,400 Jews was a major operation. Killing 7,000 Palestinians is not? Is this a war against Hamas or a war against Gaza?

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/27 ... oll-israel

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza has released a list of 6,747 people it said had been killed in Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Palestinian territory in retaliation for the Hamas-led raid on Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel.

The list includes the name, age, gender and ID number of each person killed, including those of 2,665 children. The ministry said it did not name an additional 281 people who had been killed because their bodies could not be identified, bringing the total to 7,028.