Israel’s own military data states that 83% of Palestinians killed were civilians

@BrandNewMan
1) The attack on October 7th claimed 695 civilian lives out of 1139 total casualties, so 61%.
2) The civilians on both sides are innocent.
3) The deaths of 695 innocents is no excuse to take 62,000 more innocent lives, and counting.

Nice try though. Not very original, but good what-about-ism that some others may fall for, just like you did.

@BrandNewMan
Except you:

Twice even.

Meanwhile, Israel still hasn't shown any proof of Hamas hiding under the schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and food banks that are targeted, or even tried taking out Hamas members without shooting through civilians.

@NerdyPotato It's almost like "fighting Hamas" is just the goal Israel states for Western benefit, and their real goal is the razing of Gaza so it will be uninhabitable for Palestinians.

It's also absurd to "both sides" this conflict when one side is basically a people held hostage in a tiny state completely blockaded by Israel and the other is a nation whose military is funded by the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, unconditionally providing them with weaponry . This is not a conflict with two equal sides, and it's extreme denial to insist that it is.

@HiFiRaver exactly. Nobody says that Hamas hasn't done anything, but it's very clear that one side is way, way worse than the other and who deserves our help. Hint: it's not Israel.

@HiFiRaver You might look at some history before you were born. And consider what freedom you, as a homosexual, would have in a Hamas-run country

@BlueVeins Did I defend Israel?

@ArtieKat No, you didn't really say anything substantive. Just vague whining.

@ArtieKat Did I defend Hamas? I stand with the Palestinian people. And I don’t think I would fare much better under a far-right Israeli government. If you knew the history, you’d know that history didn’t start on October 7, 2023.

Palestinian land has been occupied and shrunken significantly over the decades. Hamas didn’t form in a vacuum and 10/7 didn’t happen in one either.

@BlueVeins Just because I don't agree with your narrow view of the conflict, does not mean I'm whining. I'm open to adult debate - perhaps you should come back in 10 years time when you've left student politics behind you.

@ArtieKat Okay, if you're open to debate, why don't you address the direct question I gave you?

@HiFiRaver I've been in Gaza City - in the late Spring of 1973.

@ArtieKat Congrats I guess?

@ArtieKat Just more attempts at gaslighting people into believing that opposing a genocide is somehow confused, childish, and immoral. The “adults in the room” are unquestioned Zionists. Your attempts to frame support for Palestinians as something wrong have failed.

@BlueVeins You know as well as I do that if Hamas released the remaining live hostages and decommissioned their weapons as the IRA did in Ireland in the late 1990s/early 2000s that would be the end of the suffering of the residents of the Gaza Strip

@HiFiRaver I'm not taking sides in this - the religious extremists of both Islam and Judaism are the ones to blame. Until Hamas and their backers in Iran give up the mantra of "from the river to the sea" there can never be peace in the region

@ArtieKat Fair enough, but I am taking sides and I don’t have a problem doing so in this case, especially when one side has lost more, one side is starving, and one side is fighting against the worlds superpowers. I’m okay taking that side.

@HiFiRaver Let me ask you one simple question: why did Egypt not want to resume responsibility for the Gaza Strip?

@ArtieKat First of all, no. The West Bank doesn't have any hostages and the IDF still forces the Palestinians there off their land, restricts their movement of freedom even in the pathetic little spongiform territory the Israelis carve out for them, and subject them to regular military checkpoints. Gaza, too, before the hostages was subjected to bombardments of civilians, blockades of fuel and construction materials -- even food, at times. Gazans have had to put up with killer robots on their border for years and years before this recent clusterfuck.

Hamas is racist and is counterproductive, but no, the idea that they could fix things just by returning the hostages is complete horseshit.

Second of all, you avoided the question.

@BlueVeins Same question to you that I just put to the other fella: why did Egypt not want to resume responsibility for the Gaza Strip?

@ArtieKat Yeah, I'll happily get to that right after you answer my question.

@BlueVeins I'm going to play my age card: you think you know it all and you think you know the answers to everything - and no other point of view is worthy of consideration. Life - as I hope you discover - is far more complicated than you seem to be able to imagine.

Have a nice life