[wat0n]

And there is no argument Hamas uses shielding as part of its strategy, which is why it refuses to fortify itself outside Gaza's cities. This in turn leads to the outcome we're seeing, as it happened in Mosul.

[Rich]

This is even truer when Hamas doesn't just use Gazan cities as defensive positions but also uses them to carry out offensive actions like launching rockets into Israeli cities. I'm curious about what Israel is supposed to do in this situation, just let Hamas launch rockets against Israel's civilian population indefinitely?

Of course while the current framework exists Israel is going to respond. And however hard Israel tries, Palestinians and their supporters will never accept Israel's response as legitimate, as acceptable. But by the same token however hard the Palestinian resistance tried, Israel and its supporters would never accept Palestinian attacks as legitimate or acceptable. Yes we should restrain how we fight wars and deal with insurgents, what we should stop is this ridiculous idea that war can be fought by either side according to some commonly agreed objective standard. Its just ridiculous.

Given the situation that has now been going on for 57 years its inevitable that there will be violent resistance. But that resistance is no match for Israel militarily. Trying to fight conventionally is absurd. The huge military imbalance means that the Palestinian resistance must use what ever means it can to hurt Israel. It can't hurt it militarily, at least on the offensive, so it has to maximise the suffering of Israelis when ever it gets a chance.

Yes the ideal way for the Palestinians to improve their situation would be to eshue violence and engage in Ghandian resistance. If the Palestinians were strictly non violent they could probably change their situation dramatically in a few years. But that will never happen because it only needs a minority, a small minority to engage in violence to derail this.

[wat0n]

Of course while the current framework exists Israel is going to respond. And however hard Israel tries, Palestinians and their supporters will never accept Israel's response as legitimate, as acceptable. But by the same token however hard the Palestinian resistance tried, Israel and its supporters would never accept Palestinian attacks as legitimate or acceptable. Yes we should restrain how we fight wars and deal with insurgents, what we should stop is this ridiculous idea that war can be fought by either side according to some commonly agreed objective standard. Its just ridiculous.

Given the situation that has now been going on for 57 years its inevitable that there will be violent resistance. But that resistance is no match for Israel militarily. Trying to fight conventionally is absurd. The huge military imbalance means that the Palestinian resistance must use what ever means it can to hurt Israel. It can't hurt it militarily, at least on the offensive, so it has to maximise the suffering of Israelis when ever it gets a chance.

Yes the ideal way for the Palestinians to improve their situation would be to eshue violence and engage in Ghandian resistance. If the Palestinians were strictly non violent they could probably change their situation dramatically in a few years. But that will never happen because it only needs a minority, a small minority to engage in violence to derail this.

Correct, and that is itself a problem because - after all - if a peace agreement was reached what would stop this small minority from engaging in violence again and derailing the process?

And if such minority decides to fight within Palestinian cities, without the civilians being able to do anything about it, what can anyone expect to see?

[Pants-of-dog]

Since the explanation as to why Hamas fights like it does has been given and it is not shielding, we can safely say that the people arguing for shielding are ignoring facts and arguments.

The shielding meme is a myth used by Zionists to justify attacking civilians. The IDF just bombed a house, killing a child. https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/149030

No doubt, the claim will be “shielding” without any evidence.

[QatzelOk]

It seems to me that both @Pants-of-dog and @wat0n alike have been going back and forth making authority fallacies ...

Deutschmania, thank you so much for describing the strategy that has driven those two posters to spam up mutliple threads with "you said, I said."

I notice how boring and repetitive it is, but you have put your finger on what is driving them to post - what is it that convinces them that their "conversation" is worthwhile: they are trying to establish authority in the information that they receive.

"The study is legit." - "the study is illegitimate" - over and over and over.

...facts are what actually matters here...

Then perhaps you should turn on your ad hom filter?

[wat0n]

Oh but you did, @QatzelOk

Since the explanation as to why Hamas fights like it does has been given and it is not shielding, we can safely say that the people arguing for shielding are ignoring facts and arguments.

The shielding meme is a myth used by Zionists to justify attacking civilians. The IDF just bombed a house, killing a child. https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/149030

No doubt, the claim will be “shielding” without any evidence.

I am still waiting for your own explanation as to why Hamas fights within Palestinian cities, actually.

Then you will have to explain why the explanation is not shielding, and then we can apply it to this example.

[Pants-of-dog]

Again, there is no argument that the IDF bombed water infra, schools, hospitals, aid workers, families, et cetera, deliberately and systematically.

The justification for this is that Hamas attacked from all these places. This is unsupported and is based on the myth of shielding.

Unless it can be shown thatbthe previous explanation given by @SpecialOlympian is incorrect, then there is no reason to answer the question.

The idea that Hamas can build military bases and use conventional military weapons and materiel is unrealistic and based on ideas that are verifiably incorrect.

So anyone who is asking that question must be making that assumption. I will not, since it is incorrect.

And since this also explains why they must necessarily fight from civilian locations (i.e. all of Palestine is a civilian location, by Israeli law), it shows why this shielding meme is a myth.

[wat0n]

Nonsense, @Pants-of-dog

Hamas is certainly a military force, it's organized as such, and it also certainly operates within cities to use them as fortifications hoping this will hamper Israeli military action. Hamas has also managed to build its own tunnel network, which happens to be a form of fortification.

The justification, too, is that Hamas operates within cities and it doesn't just mean attacking from them (even though it does). It includes storing weapons, quartering its men and all other actions that give it a military advantage.

So since you are aware that Hamas uses Palestinian civilian infrastructure for shielding, why is it surprising that the war has been as destructive just as it was in Mosul where ISIS did the same?

[Pants-of-dog]

Hamas is not the military force of a sovereign state. This can be logically deduced by the fact they are not allowed to have military bases.

Consequently, if believing in “shielding” requires the additional belief that Hamas can magically build military bases, then we can safely say that the belief is incorrect.

[wat0n]

A military force does not cease to be such because it is not part of a sovereign state. If that is your explanation, it is easily the dumbest and most easily disproved one.

I will note that mercenaries like those of Wagner are also military forces even though they're a private companies and not states.

[Pants-of-dog]

Then please explain why Hamas does not build military bases.

[wat0n]

It does build military bases.

Embedded within cities, but they serve for the purpose. They may for example use part of a hospital as a torture center, itself a military use, and which indicates the hospital was used as a military base.

[Deutschmania]

Since the explanation as to why Hamas fights like it does has been given and it is not shielding, we can safely say that the people arguing for shielding are ignoring facts and arguments.

The shielding meme is a myth used by Zionists to justify attacking civilians. The IDF just bombed a house, killing a child. https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/149030

No doubt, the claim will be “shielding” without any evidence.

All throughout the military engagement in Gaza the IDF has been killing children . Some of which , though certainly not all , were the offspring of insurgents . I expect that this will be the excuse that will be given for such indiscriminate bombing of the surrounding population , that it was harboring terrorists . But the question then remains where if anywhere is a safe zone , within the Gaza Strip ? It seems to me that Israel is at the very least engaging in total war , if not outright ethnic cleansing of the area .

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-children-killed-israeli-air-strikes-names-and-faces

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/28/middleeast/israeli-attacks-kill-19-gaza-intl-latam/index.html


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/palestinian-children-death-trauma-israel-bombing-hamas-rcna122113

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/4/people-killed-in-israeli-strikes-on-two-schools-in-gaza

[Pants-of-dog]

Name a base that Hamas has that it is supposed to fight from as per the question.

Thanks.

[wat0n]

Hamas used the Al Shifa hospital as a base and indeed there was fighting for its control both inside and outside it.

[Deutschmania]

White House calls on Israel to investigate after American activist shot dead during West Bank protest
The White House is calling on Israel to investigate after a Turkish-American woman was fatally shot Friday during a protest against an Israeli settler outpost in the West Bank.

Palestinian and Turkish officials accused Israeli troops of fatally shooting the woman, identified by the State Department as 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.

A resident of Seattle, Eygi was in the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement, a group of activists that has for many years turned out to support Palestinian demonstrations against Israeli settlement expansion. The American activist Rachel Corrie who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer during a protest in Gaza in 2003 was also part the group.

“We are urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said about Eygi. “We have no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens.”

The Israeli military said its soldiers had fired toward a male “main instigator” who was throwing stones at the troops, and that it was looking into what had happened to Eygi.

“The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review,” the military said.

The rally Friday took place in the village of Beita targeting the Israeli presence on lands claimed by Palestinian residents. Israeli settlers took over a nearby hilltop in 2021 and established the outpost of Evyatar without permission from the Israeli government. The Israeli cabinet legalized the outpost last month, turning it into a recognized settlement.

Doctors at the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus where Eygi died said her head was split by a bullet, according to local media reports.

The governor of Nablus, Ghassan Daghlas, called on the United States to intervene and cast the death Eygi as an example of Israeli crimes.

“We appeal to President Biden to stop all support to the occupying state because the occupying state is working hard to bomb hospitals and kill children and kill foreigners, including American nationals,” he told reporters.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, took to X to attack Israel after Eygi’s death. “I condemn Israel’s barbaric intervention against a civilian protest against the occupation in the West Bank, and I pray for God’s mercy on our citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who lost her life in the attack,” he wrote.

In a separate incident on Friday, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl was shot to death in her home in the village of Qaryut, also near Nablus. The human rights group Yesh Atid said the shooting took place after extremist Jewish settlers attacked the village; Palestinian officials said the Israeli army had fired the fatal shot.

More than 600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since Oct. 7, some belonging to militant groups and others civilians, according to the United Nations. That’s a sharp rise from what was already the bloodiest year on record before Oct. 7.

Israel says it has arrested more than 5,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, including more than 2,000 that it says are affiliated with Hamas there. Jewish Telegraphic Agency

.... Global response
The governor of Nablus, Ghassan Daghlas, decried Eygi’s death during a visit to Rafidia hospital.

“We say to the international community, this woman held American citizenship,” he told journalists. “But the bullets did not differentiate between a Palestinian, a child, an old man, or a woman, and between one nationality and another.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was working to “gather the facts” of Eygi’s killing and offered condolences to her family – but did not suggest any immediate policy changes related to her death.

Even when there have been determinations that Israeli forces were responsible for the killings of Americans in the West Bank – like Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh – the US has not altered its policies and has continued to provide significant military support to those forces.

National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said earlier the US was “deeply disturbed” by Eygi’s killing. “We have reached out to the Government of Israel to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident,” he added.

US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew confirmed that Eygi, who was born in Turkey, was the victim and said the embassy was “urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death.”

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry condemned Eygi’s death, saying it held the Israeli government responsible and confirming she was also a Turkish citizen. “We will follow up on bringing those who killed our citizens to justice,” spokesperson Oncu Keceli said.... https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/middleeast/american-activist-killed-west-bank-intl/index.html

[Deutschmania]

The Israel Defense Forces said that indirect and unintentional gunfire from its troops likely killed Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, and expressed regret over her death.

Eygi, 26, was killed in the West Bank on Friday during a protest in the Palestinian village of Beita against the nearby Israeli settlement outpost of Evyatar, which is on lands the Palestinian residents claim as their own. A resident of Seattle, she was protesting with the International Solidarity Movement, a group that has long demonstrated in Palestinian areas against Israel.

Dozens of mourners gathered at a funeral procession for Eygi at Rafidia Hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday afternoon, where she was taken after she was shot.

The White House called for an investigation into her death, and the IDF said on Friday that its troops had fired at another protester who was throwing stones at its soldiers. The IDF said in a statement Tuesday following an initial inquiry into Eygi’s death that that gunfire is most likely what killed her. The statement said it requested to perform an autopsy. “The inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot,” the statement said. “The incident took place during a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tires and hurled rocks toward security forces at the Beita Junction.”

The statement added, “The IDF expresses its deepest regret over the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.”

In a statement released on Saturday, Eygi’s family described her as a “fiercely passionate human rights activist” who protested “in solidarity with Palestinian civilians who continue to endure ongoing repression and violence.” The family called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of her death.

“We welcome the White House’s statement of condolences, but given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” the statement said. “We call on President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of State Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties.”

More than 600 Palestinians have been killed and thousands arrested in Israeli military operations against suspected terrorists in the West Bank since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza nearly a year ago, a time during which dozens of Israelis have been killed in terror attacks in the West Bank and Israel, including three who were shot at a border crossing into Jordan on Sunday. Jewish Telegraphic Agency

[Pants-of-dog]

I was originally asked why Hamas does not fight from bases.

Now I am being told that hospitals are bases and that Hamas does fight from them.

In that case, the question is based on wrong information and can be ignored.

[wat0n]

Actually you were asked why doesn't Hamas fight from outside Palestinian cities.

It seems @Pants-of-dog has some serious reading comprehension problems.

[Pants-of-dog]

The question was why Hamas does not fight from fortified locations,

Now, the IDF just bombed a designated safe zone again, killing dozens.

This would be a good time to show evidence of a Hamas base there.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/middleea ... index.html