The numbers were reported by Hamas. The UN merely used those numbers.

Tell me why we should put blind faith into anything published by Hamas?

Because the IDF reported those numbers, and if the IDF reports those numbers, that means you were right?

You mean we should believe the numbers when the IDF is reporting them?

Then she had an anchor baby. Then her parents became citizens through chain migration.

All things that Trump supporters absolutely hate and want to punish harshly: they’re hollering about shooting people at the border, they’re in favor of family separation, they want to round up people and deport them - except when it’s Trump’s own family.

For Trump supporters, “law and order” always means “rules for thee and not for me.”

Since you seem to know a lot about Tesla: when people pay those $12,000 for the “Full Self-Driving package,” does Tesla tell them they can’t use it when it gets cold outside?

I’ll tell you exactly how I’d feel about that, I’d feel that you shouldn’t kill innocent people from the countries that the terrorists hail from in response, because I’m not a shitty human being.

“I think this shouldn’t be done” is a non-answer.

You have avoided the main topic to try and make a point that is still unrelated to the topic at hand. We are not talking about helping Palestinians. I don’t know how you still don’t get it. You’re intentionally ignoring it and it is really starting to piss me off.

You’re the one who has made exactly zero suggestions about how to stop Hamas.

Have you lost even one single word about Hamas mass murdering civilians? Have you lost one single word about Hamas torturing people, beheading people, burning people alive?

No?

Why not?

Is that just acceptable to you? Are you just a shitty human being?

Or is that, to you, just something terrorists do, so we should ask, collectively, just shrug it off?

If you genuinely think this, you’re insane.

So your tangible answers are:

• Doing a better job at controlling their borders.
• Partner with the dozens of countries you are allied with.

That’s your answer of how a nation should respond to a terrorist attack that killed 1,400 civilians, where the attached committed the most inhumane, vile atrocities?

Put yourself in the Israeli civilians’ shoes, say 1,400 of your fellow citizen - men, women, children, babies - have just been murdered by a terrorist organization that rules an adjacent territory in the most gruesome way: decapitated, shot, bludgeoned, burned to death. How would you feel about that?

And how would you feel about it if then somebody told you "well, why don’t you just control the borders a little bit better and partner with your allies?’

You are asking a question that is totally unrelated to the topic.

Because you wrote a post that was totally unrelated to my question, and totally unrelated to the entire conversation before it.

The entire premise of the conversation was that Hamas might not even exist today if Israel had only chosen to help the Palestinians.

If your entire reply to that topic can be summed up as “well, too late for that,” then I agree with you.

I fail to see the point in trying to help them if you are actively blowing them up to stop a terrorist organization, you should do that before you do anything else, it’s literally a prerequisite.

How do you feel that Israel should have reacted to the 10/7 attacks?

You wrote a lot of things, but I still don’t see an answer to the question there.

Is that because you don’t have an answer?

See, that’s the problem, though: you’re already presuming that people who don’t simply go along cheering facile, generic solutions like “why don’t the Israelis just help the Palestinians” - as if things were that easy and as if that thought just had never occurred to a single person in the past 70 years of murderous conflict - must be insincere.

So for the record: no, I’m being sincere. Bombing innocent civilians in Gaza is very obviously objectionable, and indiscriminate bombing is a war crime.

At the same time, I can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization which just committed the largest terrorist attack in the history of Israel, committing unspeakable atrocities and murdering hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Israel.

So with that premise established: what would be some realistic ways for Israel to help Palestinians in a way that would make Hamas go away and end that particular threat for Israel. Because that’s the proposition: that the terrorist threat from Hamas could be ended if Israel only helped the Palestinians instead of bombing them, correct?

Yeah, some of the MAGAt Nazis have already announced that they will keep laying down a wreath every year on the new statue that is being cast, no matter what.

It would be hilarious if they held their solemn loser ceremony around a giant dildo every year!

So you’re assuming that asking for a qualified answer about what should be done to “help the Palestinians” is the equivalent of “cheering on the Nazis?”

if Israel would put in the effort to help Palestinians

That’s sounds good.

What would that look like?

As a reference: from 2014 to 2020, the UN spent $4.5 billion in Gaza. NGOs have poured in hundreds of millions, have opened schools, have financed hospitals, have distributed aid. USAID has spent billions of dollars, the European Union spent hundreds of millions of Euros just to put in reliable water infrastructure. Just recently, Israel agreed to open the borders to Gaza so a number of Palestinians could work in Israel and live in Gaza.

But Hamas has been intercepting foreign aid, has seized donated supplies, has interfered with aid workers, has used schools and hospitals financed by the UN and NGOs as terrorist headquarters, as weapons caches, as launching sites for missiles, as prisons and torture sites to hold, torture and murder opponents.

So what, specifically, would you suggest?

Hamas might not exist, but unless you can travel back in time, that doesn’t answer the question what to do about Hamas today.

Hamas is a terror organization, they’ve been in power in the Gaza strip for the last 17 years, they terrorize the Palestinian population in Gaza, and they desperately need the conflict to stay alive so they don’t lose relevance.

As things are today, treating the Palestinians well, giving them aid, food, water and the promise of a brighter future is a direct threat to Hamas. That’s absolutely not to say that those things shouldn’t be done - it’s just to say that these things pose a direct threat to Hamas’s position of power in Gaza. That’s why Hamas reroutes international help and keeps it from reaching the Palestinian population, why they stage terrorist attacks against Israel, why they torture and murder “collaborators,” why they place their infrastructure in schools and mosques and hospitals, why they use Palestinians as human shields.

So lacking the option of traveling back in time and preventing the creation of Hamas, what should be done in a world where Hamas exists, has been in power for many years, and has no intention of ever ceasing its terrorism?

I know you’re citing the United Nations as an authority, and providing a link is definitely welcome, but the site you’re linking literally says

The number of people killed in Gaza has reached 5,087 according to latest reports from de facto authorities there

thereby acknowledging that even the UN is merely repeating the numbers that Hamas is giving them.

Could we maybe agree that blindly accepting whatever Hamas is saying as truth is not the best policy?

That’s just an ellipsis to avoid repeating the subject, even if just by using a pronoun, in a headline. It’s completely fine as far as grammar goes, but since we’re not living in the age of the telegraph any more, it arguably wouldn’t hurt if journalists ditched that antiquated format and made headlines more readable.

By Yemen against Israel? I would think so.

Not because national anthems are political, that’s one of the dunbest things that’s been said in this thread

Many national anthems are fairly radical political manifestos.

Just because they’ve been put to some music and we’ve gotten used to them doesn’t make them any less radical.

It’s funny to think that statements like “arise, children of the fatherland, against the bloody flag of tyranny” or “O Lord our God arise, scatter our enemies and make them fall!” or “Let’s unite, we’re ready to die! For centuries we’ve been stamped on and laughed at because we’re not one people” should be completely okay and everybody should stand and listen in awe, but “black lives matter” would be too radical and too political for the same setting.

It’s not that you’re not saying it often enough, it’s that you’re stopping halfway through what’s being proposed here.

You’re seeing it as a one-sided, negative thing for the Palestinian side that the atrocities of Hamas are being “singled out” - but you’re completely ignoring the fact that they’re being “singled out” in order to be hidden from children.

This means that children would never learn - at least not on their own, via social media - of these atrocities committed by Hamas. That would appear like a net positive for the Palestinian side.

You’re getting caught up in the “singling out” part while ignoring the “in order to hide it from children” part.

That’s an argument, sure.

It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, at least if presented as an argument criticizing Israel.

“We want kids to see all the atrocities committed by our side, but none of the atrocities committed by our enemies” would at the very least be an unconventional approach to war time propaganda.

You know what I’m getting at?