Tomous wrote:It's a complicated issue and has been ever since the beginning but anyone parroting "Israel has a right to defend itself" at the moment is basically saying "Israel can do whatever the strawberry float they want because they are beyond criticism"
It is such a complicated issue, which goes back so far it gets difficult to put the current situation into context. I will say Israel are committing disgusting ethnic cleansing with forced evictions and constantly expanding their settlements. They also commit actions which I feel any other state would be accused of terrorist acts. That is before we get into rights of Palestinians living in Israel. Israel have undoubtedly committed war crimes.
That said, the Palestinians also resort to terror attacks and the rocket attacks on Israel are equally disgusting and shocking.
My only caveat is that the Israeli responsive strikes do generally seem to be accurately targeting rocket launch sites in Palestinian territory, Palestinian strikes seem largely indescriminate. But I have to be very careful here as a lot of the reports on the news are generally pro-Israeli so I'd question the accuracy. The Al Jazeera building I believe has been used for rocket attacks in the past, although I'm not sure if that is the case this time.
Israel did at least give time before levelling that building for people to evacuate, but that's kind of akin to an IRA phone call before they bombed a shopping centre or something (another conflict I'm wary about judging based on moral issues on both sides). Then you have to question why bother levelling the building when the rockets will just get moved to another site. Probably a better, safer tactic to leave the site alone as presumably it will assist the iron dome to know where the attacks are coming from.
Generally I think the iron dome is a marvel of technology and is saving lives on the Israeli side so I see that as a moral good. However, it also has a moral bad in that it emboldens Israel to treat Palestinians like shite with the knowledge they have a degree of protection.
It's a horrendous state of affairs and I don't believe it will be resolved in my life time. I'm a bit miffed at why Biden seems silent on the issue, past Dem presidents have taken a real lead on the issue to try and stop aggression on both sides. Maybe the work is going on behind the scenes.
Edit: Yep I agree with Moggy that the current "war" is largely due to Israeli actions and the disgusting rhetoric. I say war in quotes as I'm not sure it's the right way to describe it.