[wat0n]

Israel is just doing the modern version of what we did to Native Americans. Controlling where they live. Making their living conditions hostile. Outright killing them and trapping in increasingly smaller boxes to take their land.

It’s and evil and cruel and stupid and I hate my country for supporting it.

You can only fire rockets at a bakery or a school or a hospital and say, “Our opponent was using hundreds of women and children as human shields” so many times before it becomes apparent that the reduction of Palestinian lives is your real goal.

Also Palestine isn’t a state. They don’t have military targets. Israel will never allow the Palestinians to have military bases or legitimate targets for their violence.

Oh yes, now we see the typical leftist projection of what they would love to do to Israelis and Jews worldwide.

In reality though every time a Palestinian armed group uses a mosque or a school or a bakery or a hospital as a rocket launching pad it is turning that into a military target.

A Palestinian state is pure idiocy. Gaza should go back to Egypt and the West Bank minus East Jerusalem and its western edge should go back to Jordan. Neither Egypt nor Jordan should be given any choice is this matter. A Palestinian state makes no economic sense what so ever. It has no cultural reason to exist. The only thing that binds Gaza and the West Bank together is a hatred of Jews and Israel and a hunger to regain all the lands taken by the Jews.

I'm deeply proud to have been one of the earliest supporters of regime change in Iraq. My thinking was quite straightforward, the Arab Shia majority needed to be ruled by an Arab Shia government. Ideally the Sunni kurds would be ruled by a Sunni Kurd government as well. I had no illusions about SCIRI or DAWA, always likely to be the biggest winners of any free elections in Iraq,

Similarly the Sunni Arabs of Palestine need to be ruled by a Sunni Arab government. Questions of democracy, free speech, civil liberties etc are secondary to this.

?

A Palestinian state would be ruled by Sunni Arabs. I'm not sure about what else do you think the Palestinian state would be, even under their current Constitution Shar'ia is a "principal source of legislation" and its official religion is Islam. That won't change regardless of whether Hamas or Fatah rule.

[Pants-of-dog]

So, the argument is that Hamas has used 70% of all homes and schools, 100% of hospitals, 100% of the food production infrastructure, and most of the businesses as military buildings.

This is ridiculously implausible.

[wat0n]

Why is it implausible?

It is exactly what their strategy is, not unlike what ISIS did in Mosul.

[Pants-of-dog]

It assumes that Hamas is able to be beaten by bombing their buildings, while also showing that Hamas cannot be defeated by bombing its buildings, since they always seem to escape at the last minute and apparently rush off to infest another building.

And it also assumes that Hamas has these incredible movers who can move all their materiel secretly, while under fire, and have done so thousands of times since the start of the war, but cannot even warn the women and children that are in the same building.

[wat0n]

Yes, that's what Hamas' tunnels were built for. And yes their routes do go under private homes, schools, hospitals, highways, etc.

[Pants-of-dog]

And we are once again back to the justification that the mere presence of tunnels makes a place a justified target, despite the fact that Zionists have refuted this exact claim in this thread, since this means that the IDF knowingly send civilians into justified target zones.

These arguments seem to always circle back to the same contradictions.

[wat0n]

And we're again having to mention that the IDF has gone by phases, precisely to let civilians evacuate among other reasons.

There is no contradiction here, nobody suggested all of Hamas' infrastructure could be discovered, let alone destroyed, in a single day.

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes, the phases were the argument that led to us showing how the IDF moved civilians into safe zones where there are tunnels, thus disproving the argument that the presence of tunnels is a valid justification .

So by the arguments put forth by Zionists in this thread, it is incorrect to argue that the IDF was justified in destroying the majority of all the buildings required to live a normal life simply because of the presence of tunnels.

[wat0n]

Except that the evacuations do not disprove anything, except the genocide accusation itself.

Since the IDF is proceeding in stages, civilians are consequently moved to different areas within Gaza as it advances. There's nothing magical about that.

@Pants-of-dog seems to be desperate to justify mass murderers and get them off the hook.

[Pants-of-dog]

So we are back to the contradictory premises that Hamas can be destroyed by bombing the buildings it occupies, and that Hamas can not be destroyed by bombing the buildings it occupies, and the simultaneous assumption that they have sthe world’s most fantastic invisible bulletproof movers.

[wat0n]

No, there's nothing contradictory about what I said.

Particularly not about the tunnels.

It seems @Pants-of-dog is kind of desperate here.

[Pants-of-dog]

Then the contradictions previously mentioned should be addressed so that it can be clearly shown that no such contradictions exist.

[wat0n]

They already were.

Israel is proceeding in stages, just like in any other deployment.

[Pants-of-dog]

This gambit of ignoring an argument for a while and then later claiming it has already been addressed is just a way to ignore the argument.

Let us start with a basic question:

Can Hamas be destroyed by bombing its buildings? Yes or no?

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog define "destroying Hamas".

Israel's goal seems to make it impossible for Hamas to keep attacking it and to govern Gaza. This does not require killing each and every member.

[SpecialOlympian]

Listen, we have to bomb the hospitals. Which are legitimate military targets, despite a Palestinian state or military being inconceivable.

That bakery was no angel.

[Pants-of-dog]

If we cannot even intelligently say that bombing buildings will destroy Hamas, then it is impossible to argue that bombing buildings is an effective way to destroy Hamas, the stated goal of the Israeli government.

If it is impossible to support this claim, then the whole reason why the IDF is bombing then becomes questionable.

Why is the IDF killing tens of thousands of civilians if not to destroy Hamas?

[wat0n]

If we cannot even intelligently say that bombing buildings will destroy Hamas, then it is impossible to argue that bombing buildings is an effective way to destroy Hamas, the stated goal of the Israeli government.

If it is impossible to support this claim, then the whole reason why the IDF is bombing then becomes questionable.

Why is the IDF killing tens of thousands of civilians if not to destroy Hamas?

To topple Hamas from power, no different from what was done to topple ISIS from power in Mosul. Leftist whiners like @SpecialOlympian will cry about it but even the US did the same, under Obama, to achieve this.

And why is it necessary to go to these lengths? Because Hamas, like ISIS, decided to use civilians and their infrastructure as shields.

[Pants-of-dog]

So bombing Hamas’s buildings is a viable method of removing Hamas from power? Yes?

[SpecialOlympian]

I love it in movies when the bad guy takes a child hostage and the hero just shoots them through the child’s skull. That’s why Israel is the hero. The bad guys force them to murder children by bombing schools.

We all cheer when the good guy kills children, because he has to. That’s what heroes do: they murder children.