hypochondriac

Where's the evidence they have explicitly targeted civilians? Unlike Hamas whose stated aim was to target them.

And if going in and getting the terrorists leads to lots of civilian casualties as it undoubtedly will? You'll have the same people upset and saying Israel have murdered people. Hamas insist on hiding in civilian populations because they don't give a fuck about the Palestinian civilians. If they wanted to reduce civilian casualties they could do so but choose not to because they believe it to be good for them when average Palestinians die. At least you recognise that it's not possible for them to look for a peaceful solution following these atrocities unlike some people who effectively want them to do nothing or very little in response to such barbarism.

So what would your response have been then?

That's exactly why world war two is relevant to this discussion (no idea why the fact it was a world war makes it somehow irrelevant.) Arguably force against Hamas is even more justified than against the Nazis given that when the war started they hadn't committed any atrocities against the UK directly. Civilian casualties are unfortunately inevitable and there's plenty of evidence that many in Hamas welcome them because it makes them look more sympathetic. IMO Israel give more of a shit about Palestinians than Hamas do. If Hamas cared they wouldn't be setting up bases in hospitals, using civilians as human shields and forcing civilians to stay in place after evacuation orders.

What would your response to the terrorist attacks have been?

So did the allies murder German children or not? It's their neighbouring population. Plenty of examples of a neighbour attacking the country next to them and causing civilian casualties.

It was disgusting how the allies murdered all those German kids in 1942.

Terrifying. Even if you knew none of the absolutely shocking details of these atrocities, the fact you've got the likes of little Owen Jones, Narinder Kaur, Adil Ray, India Willoughby and Corbyn himself obviously downplaying the actions of Hamas and supporting these disgraceful scenes in London and elsewhere shows you who your bedfellows are if you're on the side of Jihad.

Interesting isn't it. I wonder if there were cast iron proof that it was the Israelis how irrelevant it would be in those circumstances to some people? I think we all know the answer.

Precisely. It's not hard to understand.

Almost indescribably awful. These savages need to have their barbarism revisited on themselves ten fold. Medieval religions need to stay in the dark ages where they belong.

I didn't want us to sell all our players which we didn't end up doing I hope the end. I would have been OK with selling Che had we brought in a adequate replacement.

You do wonder why we signed this guy. I can't see him making any real contributions until December if then. If we had signed someone who wasn't injured then they could have contributed right away. We could have just signed Stewart in January if we wanted him.

Someone should make these. They would be wildly popular.

I agree I don't like a lot of the rhetoric coming from the Israeli government. All I'm saying is I understand some of their reaction given the pressure they are under and the consequences from misreporting.

Given the stakes involved, I could see why Israel would be particularly sensitive to misreporting. Particularly given that the BBC are supposed to have a reputation for decent journalism and are influential on the world stage for that reason. Such a misattribution can have grave consequences.

I'm not knocking this and it sounds like a good evening, but ultimately this is all bollocks if we keep losing more than winning. This approach will ultimately be dictated by results and if we get spanked too many times the it doesn't matter how much Martin says we aren't changing.

I am of the firm view that you are utterly blind to the realities of the situation and are weirdly trying to conflate the two sides when they are entirely separate with differing motivations. It doesn't make Israel perfect or even particularly good but it is absolutely clear who is the antagonist in this scenario and who has more people on their side of the divide who would gleefully take the opportunity to torture and remove the other side from existence if given the opportunity and use their holy book as some sort of justification. I'm on the side of Israel having a right to exist and having the right to prevent those who would torture old women and kidnap children from doing so. I'm perfectly aware there was a history prior to this month, it doesn't change what has happened and that Hamas knew what the response was going to be. Like you said, best you leave it there.

I don't necessarily agree with this particular incident- I don't know the context and the article only presents one side- but my point is why any response (disproportionate or not) exists. You could say that the IDF have acted aggressively or with disproportionate forcebwhich I am sure they have at times, yet this atmosphere and reaction would not exist if they weren't surrounded on all sides by countries who want to kill them and by Hamas in particular on their doorstep. Like I said, if the attitude of Hamas was one of peace then the response woukd be entirely different. Not so if the situation was reversed. You know that's true.

If that's the case then it would help if you avoided unnecessary inflammatory language like blinkered and naive then.

The truth is you will never be able to eliminate the ideology because it is so ingrained in these people. It's like ISIS you will never be able to fully eliminate it but you will be able to cripple it to an extent that it loses its capacity to harm you in such a manner in the short to medium term. Ideally I'd like peace but that would have to mean that Hamas completely sheds its desire to murder Jews and recognises Israeli's right to exist and that isn't going to happen.

Again, if Hamas had not threatened and then carried out multiple deadly attacks against Israel and it's citizens then there would not be any response- deadly or otherwise. It's only because of ongoing killings and murdering (some of which are mentioned in that very article) that the response from Israel exists - whether you agree with it or not. If Hamas suddenly decided to preach peace and called for open borders etc, you wouldn't have Israeli's parachuting into Gaza and torturing innocents jn the name of their imaginary God. That isn't the case the other way round and that's the stark difference you refuse to accept.

Still trying to conflate the two. You're the blinkered one and what's sad is you don't even realise it and think it's everyone else.

What part of the Hamas response has made anything better? What collective effort or discussion is going to remove Hamas from their present stance of wanting to kill the Jews and remove them from Israel? Like Lighthouse said, the same argument was put forward about ISIS (in fact I believe it was soggy who advanced it on here) and it was proven to be absolute nonsense. What destroyed them was significant amounts of force.

The motivations are entirely different. The only one with a bizarre perception or wilful ignorance is yourself with your odd assertion that they are in some way the same.