Israel was taken by surprise by the most ambitious operation Hamas has ever launched from Gaza.
The scale of what's been happening is unprecedented. Hamas breached the wire that separates Gaza from Israel in multiple places in the most serious cross-border attack Israel has faced in more than a generation.
It came a day after the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 that started a major Middle East war. The significance of the date will not have been lost on the Hamas leadership.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is at war and will exact a heavy price from its enemies.
Videos and photos of dead Israelis, civilians as well as soldiers, are all over social media.
You keep talking about rhetoric. Now do reality. Who is being exterminated?
Hint it's not the Jews this time.
Theyre both exterminating each other, and the one with the most power is doing better at it. If Palestine suddenly had more power, they would be doing better at it. HAMAS has as much chance of establishing a peaceful secular democracy as ISIS
No they're not that's the point. Palestine cannot destroy Israel. You act like both sides have the ability to wipe each other out.
Palestine can't destroy Israel, but there are quite a few like minded governments surrounding the country that have attempted that before.
Even specific to this invasion, hamas is suspected to be receiving considerable backing from another country to destabilize Israel or any other myriad reasons. This conflict isn't happening in an isolated bubble with just two sides.
and Israel has had a few years to create a more stable solution.
I would suggest continuing to support illegal settlements in Palestinian land is not conducive.
That's too bad
People forget only one side has access to nuclear weapons on top of a very modern military arsenal.
And? If I blow up somebody's house and family with a $1,000,000 missile while they blow up mine with $150 worth of explosives, does that make one side more right?
No, both side are cooking in hatred. The bigger question isn't "who has the better ability to kill the other side" but rather "who has the better ability to break the cycle, and what can they do towards such means"
The thing is, they were objectively Palestinian homes that were getting blown up and literally stolen right out from under them. It's not "trading blows," it's "this is our land now because God said so, and we have the most high tech weapons on the planet (thanks US) to enforce it.
And apparently they immediately "forgot" what they vowed never to.
To suggest the cost of the armament isn't going to be in any way proportionate to it's capacity for destruction is silly.
They're absolutely not "both exterminating each other". Please do yourself a favor and find some (accurate) death count numbers for every single clash between Israel and Palestine, AT THE VERY LEAST since they began building settlements on Palestinian land.
Every single time, it is the opposite of proportional response. They kill 100x-1000x more. They are slaughtering several orders of magnitude more (and we'll just see it again in the coming days/weeks). The majority of Israelis that have died in these conflicts are IDF. They are soldiers.
On the other hand, Israel TARGETS civilians (including people clearly marked as civilian medics and the press) and fucking children in their "response".
Palestinians could never actually put up an even, proportional battle (for example, Ukraine and Russia seems at least relatively proportionate). What's happening in Israel isn't a battle or a war, it's genocide.
Has your country been attacked / been in any wars?
I assure you no one is trying to do 'proportional' damage. Thats not how anything works. Someone attacks you, you try to crush them.
All the same I wish the US would stop subsidizing Israel because they suck too. They might not do so well against Palestine then.
How do you not see Isreal as having been on a decades-long attack? Seriously, how does that happen?
Really good propaganda
Same for Israel
Same for Israel … establishing a peaceful secular democracy? I agree. And I wish the US would stop subsidizing their madness, but our religious fundamentalists (who have too much power) think they need their religious fundamentalists to be located in Israel for 'god' to return to earth.
Religion is a blight on the planet.