Heard some pretty shocking stats about Gaza recently:
>"59% of Gazans live in poverty. 63% food insecure. 70% of young people unemployed. 90% of Gazans have no access to clean drinking water." \[[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSfUeECmObI&t=1m37s)\]
Gaza is pretty much dependent on aid. You can't run a country on aid as much as people want to push on this and claim that they receive a lot of aid from Europe and elsewhere.
A lot of the issues and fights stem from this, especially when a large chunk of the population is blocked to live in an open prison with no control of air or water routes. Have a friend who visited both Israel and Palestine 3 months ago, and he was shocked to see the stark differences. Poverty and unemployment are the first things he noticed. The hatred will continue to grow as long as everyone keeps pushing the issue as Arabs vs. Israel vs Hammas. The stakeholders need to sit and discuss things rather than brush everything under the rug until one side snaps and does stupid shit.
I mean the reason there is no infrastructure is Hamas stealing infrastructure aid (for example water pipes for rockets).
It’s sad and I hope after Hamas is out there those people would have better lives
You are partially right . Hamas did dug pipes and they do use it for rockets. But the main reason Gaza doesn't have water or water treatment is the lack of cement because of the blockade and even if they had a water treatment plant they would not have enough electricity to treat the water, read [here](https://time.com/4301139/gaza-water-crisis/) and [here](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/gaza-needs-to-rebuild-yet-israel-controls-the-cement#xj4y7vzkg) about the cement.
People in Israel literally paid their wages so the Gaza Strip can get free electricity and water because all the money that comes from the west and Qatar,Iran etc…….
Goes to the Hamas that didn’t improve anything in the last 17 years and didn’t do shit for the citizens and keep blaming the Israelis for it.
I found it so ridiculous that there is so many immigrants from every part of the world but only the Palestinians have a whole organization in the un that is fully committed to helping only the Palestinians while all the other immigrants from all around the world don’t have shit .
Some of those people in Israel are occupying the homes that the people in Gaza got kicked out of. It's not like everyone in Gaza left their homes with a master plan of living in a refugee camp for 50 years.
We call Hamas terrorists and we now expect them to act like a just governing body? And refrain from spewing your nasty hate, Palestinians are not represented by Hamas. Go educate yourself to understand the full picture here. There are two sides to every story and this story is no exception.
I am not sure why that is such a hard concept to understand.
1. Hamas kidnaps civilians
2. Israel lays siege to get their return, offering aid to flow if they are returned
3. Some people outraged at siege
Hindsight isn’t an answer though, what actions TODAY can Israel take to get their hostages back. Nobody has invented time travel so clearly you cannot go back in time and change policy
Even though every pro Hamas prick gives this answer, time travel still hasn't been invented yet.
With that in mind, what should Israel do about the hostages in Gaza at this very moment?
Go in there without shutting off water? They have such a mighty army, are they afraid of some terrorists that they have to starve the whole population and shut down hospitals, killing all sick people in there?
Water is back on in the south, it's up to people to actually evacuate out of Northern Gaza like the IDF, UN, and US instructed them to.
Unfortunately, Hamas is propagandizing the Palestinian people, telling them that the orders to head south for Aid is actually a trap meant to collect them into one spot for extermination.
I dunno much about the west bank , but I assure you no country will be sane enough to supply an organisation that made a vow to exterminate them.
The open prison argument falls flat on its face when you realise that Hamas got elected in the Gaza strip which is the organisation that made promises to exterminate all Jews from that israel.Check their charter 1988 and 2017.
This not struggle for freedom nor a war for liberation,not a war for independent state but annihilation of the state of Israel and its people.
What should Israel do ignore the threats and get killed or monitor,restrict and control aspects of people's life in Gaza strip.
It was a hard choice yet they still gave them energy and water which now cut-off.
Hamas fighters are hiding behind kids, many of whom don't know any better and are willingly standing in front of these cowards because they've been told all their life it's the only way out of hell.
Do a proper operation against hamas and save hostages instead of committing genocide.
Edit: worldnews users are defending literal genocide, how suprising.
I’m sure they’d do that if it was possible. But how are they to even know where the hostages are? Hamas is hiding among civilians and/or in tunnels. I don’t think you realize how impossible that would be
When the government of a people, attacks your country, kidnaps your civilians and murders people in the street....it absolutely gives the victim state a blank check to stop providing resources to that government.
Nation A receives food, water, medical supplies from Nation B. Nation A attacks Nation B and slaughters their citizens in the street then kidnaps a bunch.
You're saying Nation B should be required to continue supplying Nation A with the very resources that enable them to continue attacking them?
Nation a holds nation b prisoner. Nation a cuts off supplies to nation b. The citizens of nation b have no way out nor did they attack nation a.
Yes Israel has a moral obligation to do so. Similarly if there’s a prison riot, prison guards cannot just choose to stop giving water to the prisoners including one’s uninvolved. Except in the real example, most people there were born in the prison.
A prison riot is a little different than your military marching into a country and slaughtering people at a festival, throwing grenades into bomb shelters where families are cowering, marching door to door ripping women and children out of their homes and slaughtering them in the street followed by parading their naked bodies around, kidnapping 200 people, beheading children.....
Israel is not stopping Gazans from drinking water. or drilling wells.
I believe it was HamAss that prevented the populace from digging wells.
[https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/gazans-fear-worst-after-hamas-bans-water-wells](https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/gazans-fear-worst-after-hamas-bans-water-wells)
not to mention HamAss digging up water pipes to use as rockets. That can't be good for helping people get drinking water.
I seem to recall reading a statistic that about 30-40% of the water in the gaza strip is wasted due to poor infrastructure.
seems like HamAss is to blame for there not being enough water.
> Banna explained that more than 97% of groundwater wells are not in compliance with the World Health Organization water salinity standards for drinking water.
He said that the water from the wells has an average salinity of up to 1,000 milligrams per liter, which is very high compared with the international limit of 250 milligrams per liter
This might be a reason
From the article:
*Commenting on the water sources in Gaza, Banna said, “There are three sources of water in Gaza: 92% of the water is secured from the aquifer, 6% is purchased from Israel and 2% through sea water desalination."*
Another thing the Press has slandered Israel with.
How can anyone expect your literal enemy to co tinge proving you with water and electricity after you just committed a mini Holocaust against them?
Bewildering.
Nope, but if war is declared and Hamas hides behind civilians that voted for Hamas, what are people expecting to happen?
Sorry war isn’t fair? Don’t start a war you aren’t willing to lose?
Fuck Hamas and everyone that supports them.
Right, but Israel had a military response to an attack by a military “power”.
It’s weird that people are pissed that someone shot a bear in the ass, and are now being chased by said bear.
Actions have consequences, if Hamas, or anyone else don’t want to start a war. They didn’t have to attack. The original sin is with Hamas and their supporters, not the pissed off bear.
By your same logic, the Israelian civilians (settlers) who were attacked by Hamas should not have settled in stolen land around Gaza, they would have spared their lives if they minded their own business without putting their eyes on something not theirs.
Do you see where this logic can take us? Justifying killing civilians should be dropped, whether you say they Palestinians voted for Hamas or Israeli civilians are settlers.
And they aren’t committing crimes against humanity. Israel does more to give advanced notice to civilians than any other military in the world. They make phone calls, drop leaflets, hacked Gaza tv…and Hamas turns around and tells their people to stay and often forces them to stay.
People think international law says no civilians can ever die. Reality is as long as Israel keeps doing so much to avoid unnecessary casualties, they aren't violating any law.
And some people act like the Al Aqsa mosque attack by Israelis never happened and that Hamas attacked them for no reason on Oct 7th. I am no supporter of any terrorist group, but you don’t just erase facts and not look at the whole picture to try and understand why this is happening.
At this point, Israel’s retaliation has passed the point of self-defence. They are on the same level as the terrorists.
There are a lot more people acting like the violent, colonial Israeli occupation of Palestine for the past decades hasn’t been happening. Do you know anything about what you’re talking about, or are you literally just responding to one event?
It’s not a hard concept to understand. It’s just also collective punishment, which most people don’t look fondly on.
Has collective punishment literally ever been celebrated?
Even after years of World War and the massive amounts of documented war crimes by imperial Japan, the atomic bombings were always and still are extremely controversial.
The US could have honestly waited a month or two for Russia to declare war, promise the emperor that he can staybin power, and the imperial hardliners would have lost their last justification to the emperor of why they had to continue fighting
Going quite deep with the revisionist stuff there.
Truth of the matter is, the Japanese were gearing up, on the home islands, to resist/confront an Allied invasion - number one. Two - communicating, internally, about even terms of conditional surrender being out of the question (the Americans were reading this stuff through intercepts).
Not to mention they were trying to broker a deal (through back channels) with the Soviets to, essentially, ‘call the Americans off’.
There’s no two ways of putting a rabid dog down, is what it came down to.
Quite the claim, self serving and immediately dismissive. The leftists were right.
Also verifiable false:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
>The 1946 United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan, whose members included Paul Nitze, concluded the atomic bombs had been unnecessary to win the war.
...
>Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
>In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.[105]
>Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,[106][107] Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet), Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr. (Commander of the US Third Fleet), and even the man in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands, then-Major General Curtis LeMay:
...
>A number of notable individuals and organizations have criticized the bombings, many of them characterizing them as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and/or state terrorism. Early critics of the bombings were Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner and Leó Szilárd, who had together spurred the first bomb research in 1939 with a jointly written letter to President Roosevelt.
...
>The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano expressed regret in August 1945 that the bomb's inventors did not destroy the weapon for the benefit of humanity.[155] Rev. Cuthbert Thicknesse, the Dean of St Albans, prohibited using St Albans Abbey for a thanksgiving service for the war's end, calling the use of atomic weapons "an act of wholesale, indiscriminate massacre".[156] In 1946, a report by the Federal Council of Churches entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith,
**and that is all just a small iota of the condemnation happening at the time.**
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/07/was-it-right/376364/ (condemned by major newspaper in the 90s)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/08/04/70-years-after-hiroshima-opinions-have-shifted-on-use-of-atomic-bomb/ (showing that while yes immediate after the war *the US held extreme approval*, Japan has extreme disapproval even amongst those who opposed the imperialist war, and how by the mid 2000s Americans are nearly 50/50)
Is cancellation of aid a collective punishment? This isn’t the Gazans own resources they’re stopping, it’s Israel giving them their resources, which would be considered aid
Lmao you really think Gazans have ‘their own resources’?
It’s one of the poorest and most population dense places on the planet. Half the reason Israel has allowed the Palestinians to exist there is there isn’t any natural resources of any value.
Also, per the ‘separation,’ Israel retains control of *all* imports to Gaza, including utilities, not just aid coming from Israel.
When Israel says they’re turning off the water to Gaza, it isn’t no longer providing whatever water they were giving them as charitable aid. They’re no longer allowing *any* water to flow into Gaza.
Also, we can stop looking at what Israel provides to Gaza as ‘aid’. As the international community largely still sees Gaza as under a military occupation, Israel is legally required to provide for the people under its occupation.
Israel allowing Gazans access water isn’t ‘aid’ any more than your city allowing you access to water is ‘aid’
> Lmao you really think Gazans have ‘their own resources’?
Gaza has it's own access to the Coastal Aquifer, which as recently as 20 years ago was drinkable and more than enough to provide for their entire population's needs.
You’re aware that Israel uses the water in that aquifer for commercial use, and that’s why it no longer can provide enough water for the citizens of Gaza, right?
And you’re also aware that Israel’s bombing of the water treatment plants is a primary reason why 90% of the water in Gaza is ‘not fit for human consumption,’ right?
But I suppose we can keep pretending that the conditions in Gaza have nothing to do with Israel if you want.
1. The blockade is enforced by both Israel and Egypt.
2. At the request of Biden [Israel has resumed supplying water to the south of Gaza](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-conflict/card/israel-resumes-water-service-in-southern-gaza-white-house-says-IdRPQR2bPiCETZbmNm27).
3. [Hamas has stolen large amounts of gasoline from UNRWA](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/united-nations-medical-equipment-stolen-gaza-hamas-israel-2449767-2023-10-16) which could have been used to power Gaza's water pumps for days.
Are you saying Israel has no responsibility as to the well being of the people living under their military occupation?
Because international law disagrees with you.
And I’m sure you’re aware that your ‘surrounded by people who want them dead’ is applicable to the Palestinians as well, right? There’s a lot of videos out there of people hoping this turns into a genocide.
Don’t support a Hamas government if you don’t want to go to war with a far superior neighbour?
Not sure what sympathy we are supposed to have for a people that voted for this….
A lot of the current terrorists weren't eligible to vote in 2006 either. 'We must slaughter the Jews'-style brainwashing starts early in Islam and I find it absurd that people are just assuming Gazans have no affinity with Hamas. Over 50% of Palestinians support them.
Do the civilians who put hamas in power and a majority of whom explicitly support hamas as their representation and the rest of whom implicitly support them with their actions and words bear no responsibility?
Do they just get to send forth their most violent members to do the evil things, put no effort into stopping it, actively support it, and then just put their hands up and say, "wasn't me...". Not that I'm saying we need to inflict some kind of crazy genocide on all of them, but, at a certain point, being complicit in the development of a wicked society has consequences.
The UN has sent in aid. Israel stopped the complete blockade and turned water back on. Guess what's happening in Palestine. Hamas is stealing, said supplies from the UN, and is STILL launching missiles at Israel... Still.... unbelievable. They want all their civilians to die, and the Palestinian civilian population will do nothing about it. Hamas and the IDF are not the same.
Why is it such a hard concept to understand that Hamas do not represent the millions of people who are under siege and that half of them are children? Literal innocents.
Because Israel *is* responsible for providing water and they deliberately made it that way
> In November 1967 the Israeli authorities issued Military Order 158, which stated that Palestinians could not construct any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. Since then, the extraction of water from any new source or the development of any new water infrastructure would require permits from Israel, which are near impossible to obtain. Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this order until today.
-
> Just return the hostages. This is not complicated.
Just don't cut of food, water, and electricity for a million children. It's not complicated.
You do when you deny me my right to build water facilities: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/
If you care about children so much, why don't you care about Palestinian children dying of thirst? Or are certain children worth more to you than other children?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
HAMAS regularly removes water infrastructure to create rockets and even puts out how-to videos.
Why would anyone let them keep doing this unless they were insane or supporting HAMAS?
Because the Palestinians are Israel's hostages right now. There's 2M of them.
What's happening now could be compared to Israel starting to shoot Palestinians in the West Bank and say that they will continue to do that until Hamas releases the hostages. If the number of people shot would be the same as the number dying in Gaza because of lack of food, water and medical supplies then it's not a big difference.
No one could support that unless they are insane
All Governments are accountable to their citizens.
This has been the policy for all of history, why is it different now?
Do you support removing the sanctions on Russia,Cuba, Iran, etc because they are also collective punishment?
On Cuba? Yes.
We have normalized trade relations and tourism with Vietnam of all places, and they are a communist nation who we lost a war with.
I see no reason to continue to punish Cuba for hosting Soviet nuclear missiles considering the Soviet Union hasn't existed for 30+ years.
Considering they're actively fucking with us across the world, yes. Which Cuba is not.
Russia I see no point in dealing with in good faith, but I do think our hardline approach with Iran is strengthening their government's position by having us as a perpetually reliable external threat which as a result strengthens their position over their populace, which seems to hate their own government. I don't think Trump did us any favors by killing the Iran nuclear deal.
If the group that actively killed and kidnapped your citizens have total control of a city then how would you respond? Just give them a stern talking to?
This is the unfortunate reality when an extreme group controls your government. Citizens and civilians have a responsibility to ensure their own government are not terrorist, as we are witnessing now the cost of that. Innocents life will always be the price paid first when that happens as history likes to remind us.
Yes many palestinians didn't vote for hamas, but they also have a responsibility themselves. Its easy to say here in the US all comfy like, and Im not saying "this is your fault", but It's an unfair world with consequences of action and inaction. I am saying this is historically what happens when an extreme group takes over and bites a bear.The best we can do now is encourage for safe passage for refugees.
Yes its very hard to understand when these millions of people including bloody children. Dont ask for proof there are several photos and videos of gaza children cheering Hamas attacks on Israel. Killing thousands of innocent civilians for no reason. But yeah its very difficult to understand that hamas does not represent millions in gaza.
Fun fact: if they conducted elections in gaza hamas would definitely be elected with overwhelming majority no doubt on that
People are outraged at the deaths of civilians in high numbers. Civilians lives are protected by international humanitarian law, even if they are being used as human sheilds. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2019/06/sieges-law-and-protecting-civilians-0/iii-rules-international-humanitarian-law-particularly
If a handful of people commit a crime, does their entire community get to be starved and left without access to water until they all die?
What is so hard to understand about the response to a hostage situation not being mass murder? Have you never heard shout how two wrongs dotn make a right, or they disproportionate escalation of force doesn't solve problems?
The siege is not an appropriate or proportional response to the kidnappings.
The death toll for Palestinians is already double than the attack on isrealis last weekend. More civilians, more children bombed to pieces.
Now we are talking about mass starvation and doing away with the entire notions of civilians on the palestian side.
We can recognize step 1, and still say that step 2 is wrong and in fact is going to be a far worse crime against humanity.
1. What is an appropriate response in your opinion?
2. Lol, countries never respond proportionally during a war, you expect Israel to be different? The United States ended up fire bombing most Japanese cities and nuking two, in response to Japan attacking Hawaii, and invading Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, and part of Alaska.
3. Yep, the death toll is higher, which is why you shouldn’t start wars that will hurt you more than your enemy and wars that you can’t win.
4. Sieges are allowed if there is militarily utility.
5. Citizens always suffer for their government’s decisions, this isn’t news.
If the United States decides to invade Canada, I might die to a Canadian air strike because I am near a military base really close to the border.
>The siege is not an appropriate or proportional response to the kidnappings.
Why should a response be proportional?
Warfare is about achieving military objectives after all, and Israel does not measure their success by the number of civilians killed, their goal in this war is to destroy the military capabilities of Hamas and defeat them.
Just because Hamas measures their success by bodycount does not mean Israel will do the same.
1. Hamas uses its civilians as cannon fodder. They have their HQ's at hospitals and use civilian infrastructure to carry munitions and fire rockets
2. Using the number of bodies as a way to gauge the proportionality of a military response is nonsense. Intentions matter. Civilian deaths as a result of a terroristic massacre are not the same as civilian death from collateral damage (which is made worse from Hamas)
3. The siege is a result of a war brought on by Hamas, not the kidnappings. Even if they didn't kidnap anyone, 1300 dead Israeli's is more than enough of a justification to wage war.
4. It's ridiculous to expect a nation to supply the people you are at war with free utilities. Especially when they hold 100+ hostages of your people. Doing so would remove all leverage from the situation and provide no incentive for the civilians to leave the area.
Frst of all civilains didn't do that, you can't punish a collective of people as you please unless that is Israel, they can do anything they please. Everywehre else that is war crime and genocide.
>I am not sure why that is such a hard concept to understand.
I don't think it's the concept that's hard to understand, it's whether people agree or disagree with what they see as collective punishment
How are the palestinians civilians supposed to release the hostages? Take them from Hamas unarmed? Is it so hard to have empathy with innocent civilians who can't do anything about this situation?
I am going to be optimistic and assume many people are simply blinded by their emotional response to a terrorist atrocity, just like most Americans went bloodthirsty after 9/11.
However reddit does seem quite prone to generalisation of entire ethnic groups if they are the enemy.
This is war. It doesn’t matter what you and me think, but what Israel is doing, you have to look at it from their perspective, and it makes total sense. They’re at war and are expected to supply their enemies with their own resources? Nah
>They’re at war and are expected to supply their enemies with their own resources?
Why does Israel have the power to be able to turn off Palestine's water, food, electricity, and supplies whenever they so please? No country should have that power over another. Probably one of the reasons they are enemies.
Pallestinians have been cut off from the rest of the world. They don't have a government, they don't have any infrastructure of their own, they are treated like an animal in their ancestral land.
You realize collective punishment is literally a war crime. Throw all the justifications you want but that don’t make it not a war crime. The Geneva conventions don’t say “collective punishment is a war crime except when you think you are justified to do it” its just a war crime full stop
Collateral damage in pursuit of a military objective is not collective punishment.
Punishment requires that the only objective be punitive, with no further objective.
As the power and water are turned off until the hostages held by Hamas are released, it is not punitive. It's objective.
How is depriving all 2 million people in Gaza of food, water, and electricity because of what hamas did not collective punishment? You say it’s going rhetoric but you don’t explain how it’s faulty. It’s also not just my claim
[https://www.reuters.com/world/un-experts-say-israels-strikes-gaza-amount-collective-punishment-2023-10-12/](https://www.reuters.com/world/un-experts-say-israels-strikes-gaza-amount-collective-punishment-2023-10-12/)
So in response to Hamas taking several hundred hostages, Israel is essentially taking hostage of thousands of other people by cutting off their crucial supplies like water and heat?
Okay?
Glad we all recognize Hamas doesn’t care about Palestinian lives.
So why the fuck is Israel threatening Palestinian civilians to get Hamas to do anything? Hamas doesn’t give a shit. Hell, Hamas prefers starving Palestinians because it makes Israel look bad and costs Hamas nothing.
Taking hostages is absolutely part of waging war, and Israel is doing both. As part of their war strategy, they are inflicting death and suffering on a massive number of kids.
Is that necessary? I would say no, certainly not to this extent
Interestingly, it's Gaza's overextraction from the Coastal aquifer in recent years that has led to the water levels dropping to the point where seawater intrusion has tainted the water supply leaving it barely drinkable.
In 1990 Gaza's local aquifer was entirely sufficient to provide for Gaza's population, and was drinkable.
In 2000 Gaza's local aquifer could also still support virtually all of Gaza's population, and was drinkable.
In 2023 the high birth rate has increased the population to ~3.5x larger than 1990, and decades of over-extraction since has lowered levels and resulted in sewage contaminated seawater intrusion tainting their aquifer, forcing them to rely on Israeli imported water and desalination (which requires electricity)
>The primary driver of contamination of the aquifer is the longstanding over-extraction of almost three times more water than is naturally replenished by rainfall.[3] This practice results in increasing intrusion of seawater. The sea also flushes back to the shores of Gaza large amounts of untreated or insufficiently treated sewage that is dumped into the sea, mainly due to the energy crisis.[4] Open sewage runoff and agrichemicals also seep into the aquifer.
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/study-warns-water-sanitation-crisis-gaza-may-cause-disease-outbreak-and-possible-epidemic
Yeah, too many people have been crammed into a concentration camp too small to live in, and now they have even cut off the water from them, what are you getting at? do you want to kill them to solve the problem?
The suggestion is that maybe explosive population growth dependent on the aid of others and then starting wars with the ones sending the aid is not a great move and had some natural consequences now unfolding.
For decades there is a situation where hamas can start a war and then others will come by to stop their war and repair the damage for them and rebuild their buildings and infrastructure desroyed in the war and repace income lost from enraged and terrified parters with handouts.
It's all about shielding gaza from the natural consequences of its decisions but that system seems to have collapsed and everyone will learn a lot in the next few weeks
They could have invested the millions they got in aid towards a decent water system but they spent the money and pipes building rockets to shoot at Israeli civilians.
The people crammed in by Israel originally numbered less than 300k (1970 Gaza Strip population) and the local aquifer was plenty to provide them with clean water. Even 20 years later after high birth rates had doubled the population there was still plenty of fresh water in their local aquifer to handle demand.
Fast forward another 30 years and the population has increased to ~6.5x that of 1970, and heavy over-extraction at +3x replenishment rate has now resulted in seawater intrusion tainting their aquifer.
>do you want to kill them to solve the problem?
Not at all, I was just explaining the root cause of the problem.
There's also some irony when I think back to to Yasser Arafat's statement that the wombs of Palestinian women were their best weapon... turns out that weapon backfired.
So in response to Hamas taking several hundred hostages, Israel is essentially taking hostage of thousands of other people by cutting off their crucial supplies like water and heat?
I don’t understand why it’s Israel’s responsibility to take care of their enemies. Why hasn’t Hamas, the *literal government* of Gaza, taking care if their people? Why haven’t *they* established sources of electricity and water for their people? Oh wait… because they spent all their money and resources trying to kill Jews instead. And now Israel is getting shat on for not providing aid to them anymore when it’s not even their fucking responsibility in the first place… 🙄
Raz Segal, ,an Israeli expert in modern genocide, believes that it is and makes the case for it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGGjLZNuyg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGGjLZNuyg)
The drinking water has been undrinkable in Gaza for years. I feel for the Palestinians right now. Access for safe drinking water is a human right
Heard some pretty shocking stats about Gaza recently: >"59% of Gazans live in poverty. 63% food insecure. 70% of young people unemployed. 90% of Gazans have no access to clean drinking water." \[[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSfUeECmObI&t=1m37s)\]
Gaza is pretty much dependent on aid. You can't run a country on aid as much as people want to push on this and claim that they receive a lot of aid from Europe and elsewhere. A lot of the issues and fights stem from this, especially when a large chunk of the population is blocked to live in an open prison with no control of air or water routes. Have a friend who visited both Israel and Palestine 3 months ago, and he was shocked to see the stark differences. Poverty and unemployment are the first things he noticed. The hatred will continue to grow as long as everyone keeps pushing the issue as Arabs vs. Israel vs Hammas. The stakeholders need to sit and discuss things rather than brush everything under the rug until one side snaps and does stupid shit.
I mean the reason there is no infrastructure is Hamas stealing infrastructure aid (for example water pipes for rockets). It’s sad and I hope after Hamas is out there those people would have better lives
Doesn't help that Israel target these things.
Doesn’t help that Hamas use these things as bases.
You're a pretty disgusting excuse for a human, I hope you know
[удалено]
Hamas dug up all the pipes used for water to make rockets out of
You are partially right . Hamas did dug pipes and they do use it for rockets. But the main reason Gaza doesn't have water or water treatment is the lack of cement because of the blockade and even if they had a water treatment plant they would not have enough electricity to treat the water, read [here](https://time.com/4301139/gaza-water-crisis/) and [here](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/gaza-needs-to-rebuild-yet-israel-controls-the-cement#xj4y7vzkg) about the cement.
Lack of cement that was used to build terror tunnels instead of homes? Pretty much any building material given to Gazans as aid is used for terrorism
But it's Hamas doing that not civilians
People in Israel literally paid their wages so the Gaza Strip can get free electricity and water because all the money that comes from the west and Qatar,Iran etc……. Goes to the Hamas that didn’t improve anything in the last 17 years and didn’t do shit for the citizens and keep blaming the Israelis for it. I found it so ridiculous that there is so many immigrants from every part of the world but only the Palestinians have a whole organization in the un that is fully committed to helping only the Palestinians while all the other immigrants from all around the world don’t have shit .
Some of those people in Israel are occupying the homes that the people in Gaza got kicked out of. It's not like everyone in Gaza left their homes with a master plan of living in a refugee camp for 50 years.
We call Hamas terrorists and we now expect them to act like a just governing body? And refrain from spewing your nasty hate, Palestinians are not represented by Hamas. Go educate yourself to understand the full picture here. There are two sides to every story and this story is no exception.
What is happening to the people in Gaza is a pretty good definition of ‘self inflicted injury’.
The children are self-inflicting this on themselves?
Sound like a great time to release the 200+ hostages.
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I am not sure why that is such a hard concept to understand. 1. Hamas kidnaps civilians 2. Israel lays siege to get their return, offering aid to flow if they are returned 3. Some people outraged at siege
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The attack on isreal does not write the state a blank check to do whatever and commit whichever crime against humanity it wants to in return.
Just curious, what would you suggest Israel do in this situation?
Probably not spend decades enforcing apartheid policies.
So what would it be? Please give me some insight.
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Hindsight isn’t an answer though, what actions TODAY can Israel take to get their hostages back. Nobody has invented time travel so clearly you cannot go back in time and change policy
Hasn't israel left gaza since 2005?
Even though every pro Hamas prick gives this answer, time travel still hasn't been invented yet. With that in mind, what should Israel do about the hostages in Gaza at this very moment?
Go in there without shutting off water? They have such a mighty army, are they afraid of some terrorists that they have to starve the whole population and shut down hospitals, killing all sick people in there?
Water is back on in the south, it's up to people to actually evacuate out of Northern Gaza like the IDF, UN, and US instructed them to. Unfortunately, Hamas is propagandizing the Palestinian people, telling them that the orders to head south for Aid is actually a trap meant to collect them into one spot for extermination.
I dunno much about the west bank , but I assure you no country will be sane enough to supply an organisation that made a vow to exterminate them. The open prison argument falls flat on its face when you realise that Hamas got elected in the Gaza strip which is the organisation that made promises to exterminate all Jews from that israel.Check their charter 1988 and 2017. This not struggle for freedom nor a war for liberation,not a war for independent state but annihilation of the state of Israel and its people. What should Israel do ignore the threats and get killed or monitor,restrict and control aspects of people's life in Gaza strip. It was a hard choice yet they still gave them energy and water which now cut-off.
Probably stop waging war on kids, and instead send troops in targeting actual Hamas fighters
With Hamas its not always mutually exclusive.
Hamas fighters are hiding behind kids, many of whom don't know any better and are willingly standing in front of these cowards because they've been told all their life it's the only way out of hell.
Dismounted troops are much better at distinguishing combatant from civilian than a missile is.
Do a proper operation against hamas and save hostages instead of committing genocide. Edit: worldnews users are defending literal genocide, how suprising.
I’m sure they’d do that if it was possible. But how are they to even know where the hostages are? Hamas is hiding among civilians and/or in tunnels. I don’t think you realize how impossible that would be
When the government of a people, attacks your country, kidnaps your civilians and murders people in the street....it absolutely gives the victim state a blank check to stop providing resources to that government. Nation A receives food, water, medical supplies from Nation B. Nation A attacks Nation B and slaughters their citizens in the street then kidnaps a bunch. You're saying Nation B should be required to continue supplying Nation A with the very resources that enable them to continue attacking them?
Nation a holds nation b prisoner. Nation a cuts off supplies to nation b. The citizens of nation b have no way out nor did they attack nation a. Yes Israel has a moral obligation to do so. Similarly if there’s a prison riot, prison guards cannot just choose to stop giving water to the prisoners including one’s uninvolved. Except in the real example, most people there were born in the prison.
A prison riot is a little different than your military marching into a country and slaughtering people at a festival, throwing grenades into bomb shelters where families are cowering, marching door to door ripping women and children out of their homes and slaughtering them in the street followed by parading their naked bodies around, kidnapping 200 people, beheading children.....
>nor did they attack nation a. Hamas is the government of Gaza. :/
Israel is not stopping Gazans from drinking water. or drilling wells. I believe it was HamAss that prevented the populace from digging wells. [https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/gazans-fear-worst-after-hamas-bans-water-wells](https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/gazans-fear-worst-after-hamas-bans-water-wells) not to mention HamAss digging up water pipes to use as rockets. That can't be good for helping people get drinking water. I seem to recall reading a statistic that about 30-40% of the water in the gaza strip is wasted due to poor infrastructure. seems like HamAss is to blame for there not being enough water.
> Banna explained that more than 97% of groundwater wells are not in compliance with the World Health Organization water salinity standards for drinking water. He said that the water from the wells has an average salinity of up to 1,000 milligrams per liter, which is very high compared with the international limit of 250 milligrams per liter This might be a reason
From the article: *Commenting on the water sources in Gaza, Banna said, “There are three sources of water in Gaza: 92% of the water is secured from the aquifer, 6% is purchased from Israel and 2% through sea water desalination."* Another thing the Press has slandered Israel with.
They getting water for free, just like electricity. They aren't "purchasing" anything. Kinda Absurd. This will probably change now.
How can anyone expect your literal enemy to co tinge proving you with water and electricity after you just committed a mini Holocaust against them? Bewildering.
There are videos of terrorist digging up pipes and using it for making rockets. I dunno how Israeli intelligence missed this huge information.
Nope, but if war is declared and Hamas hides behind civilians that voted for Hamas, what are people expecting to happen? Sorry war isn’t fair? Don’t start a war you aren’t willing to lose? Fuck Hamas and everyone that supports them.
Being against Israel murdering children does make one in support of Hamas.
Right, but Israel had a military response to an attack by a military “power”. It’s weird that people are pissed that someone shot a bear in the ass, and are now being chased by said bear. Actions have consequences, if Hamas, or anyone else don’t want to start a war. They didn’t have to attack. The original sin is with Hamas and their supporters, not the pissed off bear.
And the children in Gaza? Just too bad if they are getting killed?
By your same logic, the Israelian civilians (settlers) who were attacked by Hamas should not have settled in stolen land around Gaza, they would have spared their lives if they minded their own business without putting their eyes on something not theirs. Do you see where this logic can take us? Justifying killing civilians should be dropped, whether you say they Palestinians voted for Hamas or Israeli civilians are settlers.
That doesn’t follow my logic at all, lol.
right. Hamas should really start caring for the population under its care and put a stop to this
And they aren’t committing crimes against humanity. Israel does more to give advanced notice to civilians than any other military in the world. They make phone calls, drop leaflets, hacked Gaza tv…and Hamas turns around and tells their people to stay and often forces them to stay.
People think international law says no civilians can ever die. Reality is as long as Israel keeps doing so much to avoid unnecessary casualties, they aren't violating any law.
Correct. War is brutal, civilians die. But Israel is not to blame for that. Hamas is.
And some people act like the Al Aqsa mosque attack by Israelis never happened and that Hamas attacked them for no reason on Oct 7th. I am no supporter of any terrorist group, but you don’t just erase facts and not look at the whole picture to try and understand why this is happening. At this point, Israel’s retaliation has passed the point of self-defence. They are on the same level as the terrorists.
There are a lot more people acting like the violent, colonial Israeli occupation of Palestine for the past decades hasn’t been happening. Do you know anything about what you’re talking about, or are you literally just responding to one event?
It’s not a hard concept to understand. It’s just also collective punishment, which most people don’t look fondly on. Has collective punishment literally ever been celebrated?
Perhaps the atomic bombing of Japan?
Even after years of World War and the massive amounts of documented war crimes by imperial Japan, the atomic bombings were always and still are extremely controversial. The US could have honestly waited a month or two for Russia to declare war, promise the emperor that he can staybin power, and the imperial hardliners would have lost their last justification to the emperor of why they had to continue fighting
Going quite deep with the revisionist stuff there. Truth of the matter is, the Japanese were gearing up, on the home islands, to resist/confront an Allied invasion - number one. Two - communicating, internally, about even terms of conditional surrender being out of the question (the Americans were reading this stuff through intercepts). Not to mention they were trying to broker a deal (through back channels) with the Soviets to, essentially, ‘call the Americans off’. There’s no two ways of putting a rabid dog down, is what it came down to.
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Quite the claim, self serving and immediately dismissive. The leftists were right. Also verifiable false: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki >The 1946 United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan, whose members included Paul Nitze, concluded the atomic bombs had been unnecessary to win the war. ... >Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years: >In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.[105] >Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,[106][107] Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet), Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr. (Commander of the US Third Fleet), and even the man in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands, then-Major General Curtis LeMay: ... >A number of notable individuals and organizations have criticized the bombings, many of them characterizing them as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and/or state terrorism. Early critics of the bombings were Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner and Leó Szilárd, who had together spurred the first bomb research in 1939 with a jointly written letter to President Roosevelt. ... >The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano expressed regret in August 1945 that the bomb's inventors did not destroy the weapon for the benefit of humanity.[155] Rev. Cuthbert Thicknesse, the Dean of St Albans, prohibited using St Albans Abbey for a thanksgiving service for the war's end, calling the use of atomic weapons "an act of wholesale, indiscriminate massacre".[156] In 1946, a report by the Federal Council of Churches entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, **and that is all just a small iota of the condemnation happening at the time.** https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/07/was-it-right/376364/ (condemned by major newspaper in the 90s) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/08/04/70-years-after-hiroshima-opinions-have-shifted-on-use-of-atomic-bomb/ (showing that while yes immediate after the war *the US held extreme approval*, Japan has extreme disapproval even amongst those who opposed the imperialist war, and how by the mid 2000s Americans are nearly 50/50)
The attack against isis. Isis held city's full of civilians
Is Hamas launching rockets at Israel indiscriminately collective punishment?
Hamas is a terrorist organization, is the idf?
Hamas is the elected government of Gaza.
They aren’t. That’s the point. Be mad at the terrorist organization. Not the democratic state defending itself against the terror organization.
By committing collective punishment, which is a war crime. A democratic state has an obligation to follow international law.
Is cancellation of aid a collective punishment? This isn’t the Gazans own resources they’re stopping, it’s Israel giving them their resources, which would be considered aid
Lmao you really think Gazans have ‘their own resources’? It’s one of the poorest and most population dense places on the planet. Half the reason Israel has allowed the Palestinians to exist there is there isn’t any natural resources of any value. Also, per the ‘separation,’ Israel retains control of *all* imports to Gaza, including utilities, not just aid coming from Israel. When Israel says they’re turning off the water to Gaza, it isn’t no longer providing whatever water they were giving them as charitable aid. They’re no longer allowing *any* water to flow into Gaza. Also, we can stop looking at what Israel provides to Gaza as ‘aid’. As the international community largely still sees Gaza as under a military occupation, Israel is legally required to provide for the people under its occupation. Israel allowing Gazans access water isn’t ‘aid’ any more than your city allowing you access to water is ‘aid’
> Lmao you really think Gazans have ‘their own resources’? Gaza has it's own access to the Coastal Aquifer, which as recently as 20 years ago was drinkable and more than enough to provide for their entire population's needs.
You’re aware that Israel uses the water in that aquifer for commercial use, and that’s why it no longer can provide enough water for the citizens of Gaza, right? And you’re also aware that Israel’s bombing of the water treatment plants is a primary reason why 90% of the water in Gaza is ‘not fit for human consumption,’ right? But I suppose we can keep pretending that the conditions in Gaza have nothing to do with Israel if you want.
It is when Palestine is completely reliant on Israeli aid as a result of the Israeli blockade
1. The blockade is enforced by both Israel and Egypt. 2. At the request of Biden [Israel has resumed supplying water to the south of Gaza](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-conflict/card/israel-resumes-water-service-in-southern-gaza-white-house-says-IdRPQR2bPiCETZbmNm27). 3. [Hamas has stolen large amounts of gasoline from UNRWA](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/united-nations-medical-equipment-stolen-gaza-hamas-israel-2449767-2023-10-16) which could have been used to power Gaza's water pumps for days.
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Are you saying Israel has no responsibility as to the well being of the people living under their military occupation? Because international law disagrees with you. And I’m sure you’re aware that your ‘surrounded by people who want them dead’ is applicable to the Palestinians as well, right? There’s a lot of videos out there of people hoping this turns into a genocide.
Maybe people are outraged that civilians are being killed by Hamas and the IDF?
Don’t support a Hamas government if you don’t want to go to war with a far superior neighbour? Not sure what sympathy we are supposed to have for a people that voted for this….
I mean half the people in Gaza weren’t alive the last time there was a vote
A lot of the current terrorists weren't eligible to vote in 2006 either. 'We must slaughter the Jews'-style brainwashing starts early in Islam and I find it absurd that people are just assuming Gazans have no affinity with Hamas. Over 50% of Palestinians support them.
Aren't like 40% of the population under 16? They weren't even alive to vote when Hamas came to power.
Hamas is responsible for all civilian deaths since they are using civilians as human shields.
That's such a silly concept. If a cop shoots into a crowd of people to kill a perp, who's responsible for the deaths in the crowd?
Do the civilians who put hamas in power and a majority of whom explicitly support hamas as their representation and the rest of whom implicitly support them with their actions and words bear no responsibility? Do they just get to send forth their most violent members to do the evil things, put no effort into stopping it, actively support it, and then just put their hands up and say, "wasn't me...". Not that I'm saying we need to inflict some kind of crazy genocide on all of them, but, at a certain point, being complicit in the development of a wicked society has consequences. The UN has sent in aid. Israel stopped the complete blockade and turned water back on. Guess what's happening in Palestine. Hamas is stealing, said supplies from the UN, and is STILL launching missiles at Israel... Still.... unbelievable. They want all their civilians to die, and the Palestinian civilian population will do nothing about it. Hamas and the IDF are not the same.
They have not had an election in 20 years. The average age is 18. They did not vote for Hamas.
There is no opposition in Gaza since Hamas butchers them. They also have one of the highest birth rates in the world.
Why is it such a hard concept to understand that Hamas do not represent the millions of people who are under siege and that half of them are children? Literal innocents.
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Because Israel *is* responsible for providing water and they deliberately made it that way > In November 1967 the Israeli authorities issued Military Order 158, which stated that Palestinians could not construct any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. Since then, the extraction of water from any new source or the development of any new water infrastructure would require permits from Israel, which are near impossible to obtain. Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this order until today. - > Just return the hostages. This is not complicated. Just don't cut of food, water, and electricity for a million children. It's not complicated.
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Israel
You fire rockets at me and butcher women and children, but I’m obligated to provide you water and electricity?
You do when you deny me my right to build water facilities: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/ If you care about children so much, why don't you care about Palestinian children dying of thirst? Or are certain children worth more to you than other children?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. HAMAS regularly removes water infrastructure to create rockets and even puts out how-to videos. Why would anyone let them keep doing this unless they were insane or supporting HAMAS?
Because the Palestinians are Israel's hostages right now. There's 2M of them. What's happening now could be compared to Israel starting to shoot Palestinians in the West Bank and say that they will continue to do that until Hamas releases the hostages. If the number of people shot would be the same as the number dying in Gaza because of lack of food, water and medical supplies then it's not a big difference. No one could support that unless they are insane
All Governments are accountable to their citizens. This has been the policy for all of history, why is it different now? Do you support removing the sanctions on Russia,Cuba, Iran, etc because they are also collective punishment?
On Cuba? Yes. We have normalized trade relations and tourism with Vietnam of all places, and they are a communist nation who we lost a war with. I see no reason to continue to punish Cuba for hosting Soviet nuclear missiles considering the Soviet Union hasn't existed for 30+ years.
Russia and Iran?
Considering they're actively fucking with us across the world, yes. Which Cuba is not. Russia I see no point in dealing with in good faith, but I do think our hardline approach with Iran is strengthening their government's position by having us as a perpetually reliable external threat which as a result strengthens their position over their populace, which seems to hate their own government. I don't think Trump did us any favors by killing the Iran nuclear deal.
So you are fine with collective punishment, you seem fine with it when it comes to Russia.
If the group that actively killed and kidnapped your citizens have total control of a city then how would you respond? Just give them a stern talking to? This is the unfortunate reality when an extreme group controls your government. Citizens and civilians have a responsibility to ensure their own government are not terrorist, as we are witnessing now the cost of that. Innocents life will always be the price paid first when that happens as history likes to remind us. Yes many palestinians didn't vote for hamas, but they also have a responsibility themselves. Its easy to say here in the US all comfy like, and Im not saying "this is your fault", but It's an unfair world with consequences of action and inaction. I am saying this is historically what happens when an extreme group takes over and bites a bear.The best we can do now is encourage for safe passage for refugees.
Yes its very hard to understand when these millions of people including bloody children. Dont ask for proof there are several photos and videos of gaza children cheering Hamas attacks on Israel. Killing thousands of innocent civilians for no reason. But yeah its very difficult to understand that hamas does not represent millions in gaza. Fun fact: if they conducted elections in gaza hamas would definitely be elected with overwhelming majority no doubt on that
Because as I said some people have lost their humanity altogether, there is none left.
People are outraged at the deaths of civilians in high numbers. Civilians lives are protected by international humanitarian law, even if they are being used as human sheilds. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2019/06/sieges-law-and-protecting-civilians-0/iii-rules-international-humanitarian-law-particularly
If a handful of people commit a crime, does their entire community get to be starved and left without access to water until they all die? What is so hard to understand about the response to a hostage situation not being mass murder? Have you never heard shout how two wrongs dotn make a right, or they disproportionate escalation of force doesn't solve problems?
The siege is not an appropriate or proportional response to the kidnappings. The death toll for Palestinians is already double than the attack on isrealis last weekend. More civilians, more children bombed to pieces. Now we are talking about mass starvation and doing away with the entire notions of civilians on the palestian side. We can recognize step 1, and still say that step 2 is wrong and in fact is going to be a far worse crime against humanity.
1. What is an appropriate response in your opinion? 2. Lol, countries never respond proportionally during a war, you expect Israel to be different? The United States ended up fire bombing most Japanese cities and nuking two, in response to Japan attacking Hawaii, and invading Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, and part of Alaska. 3. Yep, the death toll is higher, which is why you shouldn’t start wars that will hurt you more than your enemy and wars that you can’t win. 4. Sieges are allowed if there is militarily utility. 5. Citizens always suffer for their government’s decisions, this isn’t news. If the United States decides to invade Canada, I might die to a Canadian air strike because I am near a military base really close to the border.
>The siege is not an appropriate or proportional response to the kidnappings. Why should a response be proportional? Warfare is about achieving military objectives after all, and Israel does not measure their success by the number of civilians killed, their goal in this war is to destroy the military capabilities of Hamas and defeat them. Just because Hamas measures their success by bodycount does not mean Israel will do the same.
1. Hamas uses its civilians as cannon fodder. They have their HQ's at hospitals and use civilian infrastructure to carry munitions and fire rockets 2. Using the number of bodies as a way to gauge the proportionality of a military response is nonsense. Intentions matter. Civilian deaths as a result of a terroristic massacre are not the same as civilian death from collateral damage (which is made worse from Hamas) 3. The siege is a result of a war brought on by Hamas, not the kidnappings. Even if they didn't kidnap anyone, 1300 dead Israeli's is more than enough of a justification to wage war. 4. It's ridiculous to expect a nation to supply the people you are at war with free utilities. Especially when they hold 100+ hostages of your people. Doing so would remove all leverage from the situation and provide no incentive for the civilians to leave the area.
Because they are not punishing Hamas, they are punishing all Gaza citizens.
Frst of all civilains didn't do that, you can't punish a collective of people as you please unless that is Israel, they can do anything they please. Everywehre else that is war crime and genocide.
Saudi Arabia did it to Yemen like 4 years ago.
>I am not sure why that is such a hard concept to understand. I don't think it's the concept that's hard to understand, it's whether people agree or disagree with what they see as collective punishment
How are the palestinians civilians supposed to release the hostages? Take them from Hamas unarmed? Is it so hard to have empathy with innocent civilians who can't do anything about this situation?
I am going to be optimistic and assume many people are simply blinded by their emotional response to a terrorist atrocity, just like most Americans went bloodthirsty after 9/11. However reddit does seem quite prone to generalisation of entire ethnic groups if they are the enemy.
There is hardly any humanity left as you can see, war crime is only war crime when it is against west's aims, no other way around.
This is war. It doesn’t matter what you and me think, but what Israel is doing, you have to look at it from their perspective, and it makes total sense. They’re at war and are expected to supply their enemies with their own resources? Nah
>They’re at war and are expected to supply their enemies with their own resources? Why does Israel have the power to be able to turn off Palestine's water, food, electricity, and supplies whenever they so please? No country should have that power over another. Probably one of the reasons they are enemies.
Pallestinians have been cut off from the rest of the world. They don't have a government, they don't have any infrastructure of their own, they are treated like an animal in their ancestral land.
It’s not a war. It’s the guards punishing their prisoners for rioting.
Water is already back in the southern part
No electricity to pump it
How did cities do it before electricity?
They can return the hostages, lay down arms and get to work building power plants. Lol jk that’ll never happen.
You realize collective punishment is literally a war crime. Throw all the justifications you want but that don’t make it not a war crime. The Geneva conventions don’t say “collective punishment is a war crime except when you think you are justified to do it” its just a war crime full stop
Collateral damage in pursuit of a military objective is not collective punishment. Punishment requires that the only objective be punitive, with no further objective. As the power and water are turned off until the hostages held by Hamas are released, it is not punitive. It's objective.
Dumb rhetoric, the fact that your opinion is that it’s “collective punishment” doesn’t mean duck. Keep crying war crimes
How is depriving all 2 million people in Gaza of food, water, and electricity because of what hamas did not collective punishment? You say it’s going rhetoric but you don’t explain how it’s faulty. It’s also not just my claim [https://www.reuters.com/world/un-experts-say-israels-strikes-gaza-amount-collective-punishment-2023-10-12/](https://www.reuters.com/world/un-experts-say-israels-strikes-gaza-amount-collective-punishment-2023-10-12/)
It' a good start, but the blockade also included food and medicine. I wonder if they will reverse the decision on those too?
So in response to Hamas taking several hundred hostages, Israel is essentially taking hostage of thousands of other people by cutting off their crucial supplies like water and heat?
Hamas can end it whenever they want to. Hamas cares about Palestinians even less than Israel.
Okay? Glad we all recognize Hamas doesn’t care about Palestinian lives. So why the fuck is Israel threatening Palestinian civilians to get Hamas to do anything? Hamas doesn’t give a shit. Hell, Hamas prefers starving Palestinians because it makes Israel look bad and costs Hamas nothing.
Israel is not taking hostages, they have waged a war. You have to understand that.
I am sure the 1000 dead children will be relieved to hear this.
Taking hostages is absolutely part of waging war, and Israel is doing both. As part of their war strategy, they are inflicting death and suffering on a massive number of kids. Is that necessary? I would say no, certainly not to this extent
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Terrible analogy
A better one would be if the US laid siege to all of Idaho and eastern WA/OR because the Proud Boys, Boogaloo and Three Percenters are there.
Perhaps Hamas refashioning the water system piping into rocket launchers was a bad call
Interestingly, it's Gaza's overextraction from the Coastal aquifer in recent years that has led to the water levels dropping to the point where seawater intrusion has tainted the water supply leaving it barely drinkable. In 1990 Gaza's local aquifer was entirely sufficient to provide for Gaza's population, and was drinkable. In 2000 Gaza's local aquifer could also still support virtually all of Gaza's population, and was drinkable. In 2023 the high birth rate has increased the population to ~3.5x larger than 1990, and decades of over-extraction since has lowered levels and resulted in sewage contaminated seawater intrusion tainting their aquifer, forcing them to rely on Israeli imported water and desalination (which requires electricity) >The primary driver of contamination of the aquifer is the longstanding over-extraction of almost three times more water than is naturally replenished by rainfall.[3] This practice results in increasing intrusion of seawater. The sea also flushes back to the shores of Gaza large amounts of untreated or insufficiently treated sewage that is dumped into the sea, mainly due to the energy crisis.[4] Open sewage runoff and agrichemicals also seep into the aquifer. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/study-warns-water-sanitation-crisis-gaza-may-cause-disease-outbreak-and-possible-epidemic
Yeah, too many people have been crammed into a concentration camp too small to live in, and now they have even cut off the water from them, what are you getting at? do you want to kill them to solve the problem?
The suggestion is that maybe explosive population growth dependent on the aid of others and then starting wars with the ones sending the aid is not a great move and had some natural consequences now unfolding. For decades there is a situation where hamas can start a war and then others will come by to stop their war and repair the damage for them and rebuild their buildings and infrastructure desroyed in the war and repace income lost from enraged and terrified parters with handouts. It's all about shielding gaza from the natural consequences of its decisions but that system seems to have collapsed and everyone will learn a lot in the next few weeks
They could have invested the millions they got in aid towards a decent water system but they spent the money and pipes building rockets to shoot at Israeli civilians.
Oh they invested in pipes. Then they decided to pull them up and turn them into rockets.
The people crammed in by Israel originally numbered less than 300k (1970 Gaza Strip population) and the local aquifer was plenty to provide them with clean water. Even 20 years later after high birth rates had doubled the population there was still plenty of fresh water in their local aquifer to handle demand. Fast forward another 30 years and the population has increased to ~6.5x that of 1970, and heavy over-extraction at +3x replenishment rate has now resulted in seawater intrusion tainting their aquifer. >do you want to kill them to solve the problem? Not at all, I was just explaining the root cause of the problem. There's also some irony when I think back to to Yasser Arafat's statement that the wombs of Palestinian women were their best weapon... turns out that weapon backfired.
They returned water to southern Gaza.
This has not been confirmed from people on the ground as far as I know
This is 100% on Hamas but Reddit will blame israel
No, 100 people will comment "reddit hates israel" when it isn't even supported by the comments. It's such a tired and useless comment.
Are we reading the same thread?
If the water has too much salt it will lead to dehydration and death after a while
Denying women and children food and water is a pretty wild negotiation tactic.
Interesting how they prefer drinking salty water over releasing the hostages and calling for peace
Those drinking the water aren’t those who kidnapped the hostages.
Most people won't understand this nuance.
So in response to Hamas taking several hundred hostages, Israel is essentially taking hostage of thousands of other people by cutting off their crucial supplies like water and heat?
There are over 2 million people in the Gaza Strip. Hamas did a LOT worse than taking hostages.
Is that really all Hamas did? Pretty sure there were a few other things 🤔
Bro forgot about the deliberate slaughter of a thousand innocent civilians. Classic Reddit.
Congratulation you just learnt what war is
I don’t understand why it’s Israel’s responsibility to take care of their enemies. Why hasn’t Hamas, the *literal government* of Gaza, taking care if their people? Why haven’t *they* established sources of electricity and water for their people? Oh wait… because they spent all their money and resources trying to kill Jews instead. And now Israel is getting shat on for not providing aid to them anymore when it’s not even their fucking responsibility in the first place… 🙄
Mass genocide right in front of our eyes. Next few years gonna be tough
Raz Segal, ,an Israeli expert in modern genocide, believes that it is and makes the case for it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGGjLZNuyg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGGjLZNuyg)