I think this “story” started when The Economist did a filler article about it. The Economist article was based on some pretty weak understanding and knowledge of Kiwis and their culture of spending time abroad.
From there the usual YouTube “experts” started stories on it. You know the type - they sound authoritative but they are basically regurgitating stuff from Wikipedia (or some Economist article) with some pretty screens and clickbaity thumbnails.
Ultimately, there’s nothing behind this story. As has been the case since Pakehas arrived, lots of Kiwis go abroad and spend lots of time abroad, some go back, and some don’t, and meanwhile NZ’s population continues to grow.
The trends grow and shrink based on relative health of the Aus and NZ economies.
Typically, Kiwis would leave after graduating university or in their mid-20s. That Kiwis 30 - 50 are leaving now is a relatively recent phenomena (18 -> 43K in 4 years).
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I think it is a hard problem to discuss clearly, but it not automatically a deal breaker. What about 175 children vs 30,000 protesters? What about 30,000 protesters a year in perpetuity?
Exactly, a real moral calculus needs to be made, not a hysterical "But the IRGC said 175 children died." And a real moral calculus involves weighing the value of the deaths caused by removing the IRGC against the deaths caused by the IRGC.
My antagonist said I have no moral compass. Of course I care about the death of children. But that doesn't mean I swallow IRGC propaganda wholesale, as they apparently do. The IRGC lies constantly, it has provided no evidence that so many children died, and hasn't brought forth any evidence to indicate the destruction of the school was caused by western munitions as opposed to a failed launch of their own (which we've seen happen.
Well, just in the past two months, iran is thought to have killed more than 30,000 of its own citizens, while the whole civilian death toll in gaza is about 40k or less over more than two years (out of roughly 70k killed), so i'd say you just made that up.
Demographics: Approximately 70% of the 70k verified fatalities are women and children. International observers, including the OHCHR, have noted that children alone account for roughly 33-44% of the death toll.
The main source in that Wikipedia article is "According to the IRGC." Trusting any belligerent in a war is silly, but given its history, trusting the IRGC during wartime is even sillier. No independent body like the Red Crescent (which is counting casualties in Iran) verified this. It's all "trust me, bro."
USCENTCOM and the IAF both rejected these assertions.
You should demand some evidence for the IRGC's claim. If the claim is that the US or Israel did it, why doesn't the IRGC show the munition used? Or any OSINT data, like where the munition was fired from, its trajectory, etc. The IRGC has been firing from the IRGC base where this school was located. It could just as easily have been a failed IRGC munition.
Also, was this "school" by an IRGC base actually a school, or did it serve a military purpose? Surely you can't know the answer to this, so it's tough for you to judge the military necessity of the strike.
Finally, what's the claim, really? That western powers intentionally struck a school and killed these kids to advance their war aims? Or that it was an accident? If the former, an explanation for "how" is required; and if the latter (and if it did indeed happen) it's the kind of collateral damage that occurs in all wars.
>> what's the claim, really? That western powers intentionally struck a school and killed these kids
Israel or US or both struck a school and killed these kids. Nobody knows whether it was intentional or not. And this is not the first time Israel bombed schools or hospitals.
nzrf wrote: "Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people?"
The implication is that someone thought that it would. I am saying nobody in the US or Israel thought bombing a children's school would bring peace to the iranian people. In fact, both the USAF and IAF deny they hit a school. There is no evidence the IRGC has put forward to support its claim. Without such evidence, it doesn't make sense to believe it.
Also, you talk about mental gymnastics while defending IRGC propaganda and spewing nonsense like "Israel bombed hospitals." If you're so confident that Israel has bombed hospital buildings, can you tell me which they bombed, when they did this, and any OSINT details like the munition used?
You're just linking me to lists from highly unreliable sources. I'm a simpleton, make a claim like this: "I think Israel bombed this hospital building on this date using this ordinance. Here's the evidence."
You are being bigoted (“evil, evil people”) and if you believe what you say you can just answer my question directly. You won’t because it hasn’t happened.
Actually a simple statement you can actually support would: Israel bombed this hospital building on this date using this munition. You can’t meet that simple standard because it never happened.
Step 1. OP makes a positive claim, repeating an IRGC narrative.
Step 2. I point out there’s no good evidence supporting it.
Step 3. You reframe that as "you’re just demanding more evidence."
That’s backwards. If someone claims something extraordinary happened, the burden is on them to provide evidence. Showing that the current evidence doesn’t support the claim is a perfectly valid rebuttal.
Otherwise we could do this with anything:
kid: "There’s a ghost in my room."
dad: "I don't hear a ghost. I don't see one. There’s no heat, sound, footprints..."
kid: "That doesn’t mean there's no ghost. You’re just demanding more evidence.”
Gaza began the war with a more powerful army than many European countries: more soldiers, more rockets, more war-fighting infrastructure. Gaza wasn't a particularly poor place before the war, certainly not by the standards of the middle east. It had mansions and average salaries that, for some professions, were higher than average salaries in Israel. It was a net food exporter.
I claimed Hamas had a larger and more powerful military than many European countries. This is a fact.
> What? You mean countries like Monaco and Liechtenstein?
No, my claim is much stronger. I mean Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
> Simply counting the # of soldiers or rockets is disingenuous when this is obviously an asymmetric war.
Counting things like soldiers and military arsenals is the standard way to evaluate military strength. And of course there is a force asymmetry, Israel is a global power and its air force is probably the second most effective in the world. That doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate Gaza's military the way we would any other.
> Please explain what you mean by "war-fighting infrastructure ".
Well, for example, Hamas built the largest underground military tunnel system in the known world, a vast standing army numbering in the tens of thousands, gathered plenty of intelligence on Israel, militarized their population, and has a history of combat, for starters. But it goes way beyond this, and extends to the broad financial and military support they enjoyed from the IRGC.
> "Depends on what you mean by "standards of the Middle East", but just compare Israel($52k) and Gaza ($3455) for 2023:"
I'm not comparing it to Israel, which is a standout in the middle east, and among the most technologically developed countries in the world. I'm comparing it to other middle eastern countries. It wasn't exactly destitute, despite its murderous, anti-woman, anti-gay, and antiy-jew jihadi philosophy. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE-xjBRKkPL/
> It's clear that the method of combatant recognition employed by the IDF is flawed, given they're killing aid workers and people from the UN.
Have you considered that the some aid workers were also Hamas militants? Or that the UN, through UNRWA, employed Hamas militants? Many of the so-called aid-workers israel killed turned out to actually have been part of Hamas. There is unfortunately extensive evidence that UN employees participated in the 10/7 attacks and the subsequent fighting. And Hamas uses world central kitchen and other aid organization vehicles and infrastructure, so distinguishing is not easy in the first place.
> How did you develop your understanding of this situation? And what are you trying to communicate here?
I have developed my understanding of this situation from decades of study on this topic, and at least a thousand of hours of research over the past 2.5 years. In the span of 15 years, I've gone from leading so-called pro Palestine rallies to my current positions. What I am trying to communicate is that reality is more nuanced than many (including a younger version of me) like to think. Reality is nuanced, and at odds with the picture you paint.
>No, my claim is much stronger. I mean Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
Hamas, who don't even own a single Howitzer. Much less a plane.
Stronger in munitions? One western artillery shell is worth countless Qassam rockets. The Qassam rockets are largely useless from a military perspective because you aren't going to hit anything with them.
This is an apples and oranges type comparison, except Hamas is stuck with crabapples.
Qassam rockets are not "useless." They've killed multiple people, including kids. They are relatively low-yield compared to later Grad/Fajr/M-75 type rockets Hamas used, but to say they're "useless" is a huge overstatement, and the implication that they represented Hamas's entire arsenal is wrong.
The reality is that Hamas also had dozens if not hundreds of R-160 / M-302 medium range rockets (up to 200km) and long range Ayyash 250 rocekts (travel more than 200km).
In addition to the direct devastation the rockets cause, they also force large swaths of the Israeli population into bomb shelters, which has other military benefits for Hamas. It was part of the 10/7 strategy they employed.
People like to pretend Hamas was a tiny force. The reality is what I said: it was larger than many European militaries, with an arsenal to match.
I suggest you look up the concept of CEP, circular error probable. It's a very important measure when discussing weapons like these.
Modern western rocket artillery will strike your target from tens of kilometers away within a circle of a couple of meters.
Your typical Grad will have CEP in excess of 1.5% of range. So at 10KM you'll have only half of your rockets land within 150 meters of your target.
These are weapons where your target selection amounts to "fuck someone in that general direction". Not "better shoot at that guy before he shoots at us". Fundamentally useless for fighting wars.
The Grads can be vaguely useful, but Hamas doesn't have the launch platforms to field them as an area denial weapon as originally intended.
EDIT: and you can probably stop reading right here, I'm mostly just repeating myself after this point.
> They've killed multiple people, including kids
I never thought I'd laugh at the idea of kids being killed, but in this context it comes across as pretty hilarious. This is not a good feature in a weapon of war! In war you typically want to kill enemy soldiers, not kids.
You can point a Gazan artillery rocket towards an urban center, maybe hit someone and kill a kid. It is not feasible to hit a target more specific than that using these weapons.
You can't fire one at a smallish enemy position.
>The reality is that Hamas also had dozens if not hundreds of R-160 / M-302 medium range rockets (up to 200km) and long range Ayyash 250 rocekts (travel more than 200km).
Hamas having dozens if not hundreds of M-302s is certainly a claim I'd love to see evidence for, but even if it were true this isn't very impressive at all. These are terribly inaccurate unguided artillery rockets! Western militaries don't really have much in terms of equivalents because they're practically useless.
>People like to pretend Hamas was a tiny force. The reality is what I said: it was larger than many European militaries, with an arsenal to match.
This is a straight up lie. Hamas had a plenty of manpower, but certainly has never had an arsenal to match. Artillery rockets you can realistically only use to indiscriminately strike civilian areas are absolutely useless when fighting a war.
The whole point is that Hamas is an unconventional fighting force that does aim at civilian centers and doesn't particularly care for accuracy. You sneeringly ask me to look up CEP, as though Hamas tries to be accurate and target military installations rather than sewing terror. They know they can't go head to head against Israel militarily, and they do purposefully kill civilians (see: 10/7). I can see you laugh at kids being killed, which is horrifying!
You also scoff at the idea that Hamas had M-302s, but the reality is not only did they have them but they fired them, for example on July 9, 2014 towards Hadera. In March 2014 the IDF also siezed M-302s being smuggled into Gaza. I can go on. Your snarkiness is no substitute for research.
I wrote "people like to pretend hamas was a tiny force" and you say that's a "straight up lie." But people on this very thread have claimed that. Yes, their arsenal didn't match European countries in terms of accuracy, but in terms of raw firepower, they had lots, which is why Israel spent billions developing the iron dome.
If Hamas had the tech, they'd surely blow up the whole of Israel, including military installations. But they don't (which I agree is good) and their history and words and actions all show a desire to target and kill civilians.
The most effective air force in the world is almost certainly the American one. The second most effective air force in the world may well be the American Navy.
I don't see how that's relevant to the earlier claim, but even this claim of yours is a gross overstatement.
There was a partial blockade, not a full blockade, and this partial blockade came after Palestinians launched the second intifada. Prior to the october 7 massacre, perpetrated by Hamas and gazan civilians, tens of thousands of gazans were able to travel out of gaza through egypt and israel, where many of them worked. nearly 75,000 truckloads of food and cargo went into gaza from israel in 2022. Gaza exported lots too.
My point is that Israel had full control about exactly what Gaza was allowed to import and export (and frequently used those controls for collective punishment as well)
I don't quite see how under those circumstances, they were able to build "a more powerful army than many European countries", unless you talk about Luxembourg or the Vatican.
Yes, Israel and Egypt together controlled what Gaza was allowed to import and export - not as a form of collective punishment, but to ensure its own security. There's a huge difference between that and a "full blockade" (which is what Russia did to Mariupol early in the war), so precision matters.
In terms of Hamas's army being more powerful than that of many European countries, I'll respond to that below.
And the Wikipedia article you cite has been manipulated by a band of ideological editors and is not reliable, and has no value (inverse value?) as a citation.
The article currently has 361 references. Also the accusation they use it in arbitrary means, for collective punishment is widely shared, not just here.
Explain to me how continuously reducing the area permitted for fishing is necessary for Israel's security.
Calling the Second Intifada "sparked by Israeli massacres" reverses the basic chronology and ignores Palestinian leaders' own admissions.
1) Marwan Barghouti (Fatah leader of the uprising in the West Bank) told The New Yorker in Jan 2001:
"The explosion would have happened anyway... But Sharon provided a good excuse."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift
2) UK Parliament Hansard (Apr 16, 2002) quotes the semi-official PA daily Al-Ayyam (Dec 6, 2000) reporting PA communications minister Imad al-Falouji:
"the Palestinian authority had begun preparations for the outbreak of the current intifada... in accordance with instructions given by Chairman Arafat himself"
and that it was not meant merely as a protest over Sharon's visit.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2002-04-16/debates/d69...
(search within the page for "Al-Ayyam" or "Al-Falouji")
1. Ariel Sharon staged a deliberate provocation by storming the Temple Mount with hundreds of policemen.
2. Palestinians protested, and Israeli forces shot live ammunition at them, killing four Palestinian civilians. Within weeks, riots had broken out and Israel had killed dozens of Palestinian civilians.
Israeli actions were the spark, not some planned Palestinian operation.
The long-term cause of the 2nd Intifada was Israeli refusal to carry out the Oslo Accords in good faith. The Palestinians recognized Israel and agreed to give up the armed struggle for their freedom in exchange for a set process by which Israel would rapidly withdraw from the occupied territories and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israelis repeatedly reneged on that throughout the 1990s, and by 2000, the Palestinians were completely disillusioned with the so-called "Peace Process."
This mixes up the first 24 hours with who launched the Intifada as a sustained campaign.
Even if you think Sharon’s Temple Mount visit was provocative and Israeli police used excessive force on Sept 29, senior Palestinian figures later said the uprising was coming anyway and was planned, and Sharon was a convenient trigger.
Also, it is not just Israelis saying this. Mainstream sources record these admissions and describe the outbreak as Palestinian violence following the visit.
You've actually hit on the most important point: Although Oslo was sold as a two-state solution, the Israelis never agreed in writing to a Palestinian state.
The Israelis showed an incredible amount of bad faith. Rabin said in one of his last speeches that there would never be a Palestinian state - only a semi-autonomous entity under Israeli control. The Israelis never halted settlement construction. After Rabin was assassinated by the Israeli Right, Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged Oslo for years (which he brags about today), refusing to withdraw from the occupied territories as agreed.
After 7 years of this, with a Palestinian state no closer at all, a top Israeli politician (soon to become PM) staged a deliberate provocation, and Israeli forces began massacring Palestinian civilians.
Of course there were thoughts in the PLO about the possibility of future armed resistance. They would have been crazy not to think about that possibility. But they preferred a negotiated two-state solution, and they tried to get it for 7 years. After the Israelis started massacring Palestinian civilians, it would have been impossible for the PLO to keep a lid on the violence.
You are switching topics because the original claim does not survive contact with the record.
You said Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada. Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began. The first deaths were in the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is tragic, but it is not some prior massacre that supposedly set everything off.
Also, your Oslo framing is backwards. Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal. It is an interim framework that explicitly defers permanent-status issues like borders, settlements, and Jerusalem to later negotiations.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/isrplo.asp
A politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not a massacre and not a justification for launching an intifada.
Switching topics? We've been discussing the reasons for the 2nd Intifada. The Israelis reneging on Oslo was the fundamental reason for it.
> Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began.
Huh? I've mentioned the massacres that Israeli forces carried out in the aftermath of Ariel Sharon's storming of the Temple Mount several times now.
> The US-led Mitchell Report is explicit: Sharon’s Temple Mount visit did not cause the Intifada
You cite the Mitchell Report when it agrees with you, but ignore it when it disagrees with you.
The Mitchell Report explicitly states that the PLO had no premeditated plan to unleash violence.
In fact, it says that the proximal cause of the 2nd Intifada was the massacre that Israel carried out on 29 September 2000 against Palestinian protesters. Those protests were in response to Sharon's storming of the Temple Mount.
The report says that after that massacre, neither side showed restraint, which caused the violence to escalate.
So the report that you yourself are citing as an authority turns out to agree almost 100% with what I've been telling you all along.
> Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal.
Actually, Oslo II lays out a very specific timeline for Israeli withdrawal, to be completed within 18 months (by mid-1996!).
More generally, the Oslo Accords were sold as a rapid path to a two-state solution. If the Accords weren't about a two-state solution, then the Palestinians were completely swindled by the Israelis.
You opened with: the Second Intifada was sparked by Israeli massacres. Now your alleged massacre is Sept 29, the first day of the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is not a prior massacre that precipitated anything, it is the opening confrontation itself, and you are laundering it with a loaded word.
On Oslo, you did not even mention it until your massacre story fell apart. And your Oslo summary is wrong on the text. Oslo II explicitly defers permanent-status issues (Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees, etc.) and excludes them from PA jurisdiction. The 18-month line is about phased interim jurisdiction, not a guaranteed state or full withdrawal. This was also obvious to everyone alive at the time and was widely reported. It's only now that people like you are attempting to rewrite history.
https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/
Read the Mitchell Report you keep invoking.
- It describes Sept 29 as large demonstrations where Palestinians threw stones and Israeli police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, killing 4 and injuring about 200. Calling that a massacre is absurd. It was an armed clash, premeditated and planned by the palestinians, so not only was there no massacre, but the Palestinians themselves say armed clash was premeditated and Sharon's visit was just a pretext.
- The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Also, Sharon visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Mitchell even says holy places must be accessible to all believers. The choice to turn that into an uprising was a choice.
> You opened with: the Second Intifada was sparked by Israeli massacres. Now your alleged massacre is Sept 29, the first day of the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is not a prior massacre that precipitated anything, it is the opening confrontation itself, and you are laundering it with a loaded word.
Those are the exact same thing. The "clashes" you're describing are Israeli forces firing live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in the wake of Sharon's deliberate provocation.
You pulled out the Mitchell Report as an authority on the subject, and it turns out that the Mitchell Report backs me up.
> Calling that a massacre is absurd.
Police opening up with live ammunition into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators, killing 4 and injuring 200 is not a massacre?
> but the Palestinians themselves say armed clash was premeditated and Sharon's visit was just a pretext.
No, no one said the September 29th clashes were premeditated. How would the PLO even be responsible for Israel deciding to open up with live ammunition on a crowd of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators? Did the PLO use mind control on the Israelis?
> Also, Sharon visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Mitchell even says holy places must be accessible to all believers.
The Mitchell Report says that Sharon's visit was a deliberate provocation. He wasn't just a random believer visiting a holy site. He was a top Israeli politician (on the verge of becoming prime minister) and a notorious general with a long career of slaughtering Palestinian civilians (including in Lebanon, where he let fascist Christian militias carry out a massacre in a Palestinian refugee camp). He stormed the holiest Muslim site in Palestine with hundreds of police officers. It was a political stunt intended to spark a reaction. One would have to be incredibly naive to think otherwise. Sharon knew that his actions would spark a massive outrage among Palestinians. Or are you claiming that Sharon had no idea what he was doing?
> The 18-month line is about phased interim jurisdiction, not a guaranteed state or full withdrawal.
No, the 18-month deadline is explicitly about full withdrawal of all Israeli forces from virtually the entire West Bank (including Area C) to specific military bases. Israel just completely reneged on that. Netanyahu has boasted about torpedoing Oslo by reneging on that specific requirement.
You opened with "Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada." Now the "massacre" is just the first day of the riots themselves, and when that gets challenged you pivot to Oslo (which you never mentioned in your original claim).
Mitchell's chronology is not "Israel opened fire on peaceful unarmed demonstrators." It describes a confrontation after Friday prayers where Palestinians began throwing at police near the Western Wall; police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammo; 4 Palestinians killed, about 200 injured; and 14 Israeli policemen injured. That is a violent riot plus (arguably) bad crowd-control, not a one-sided massacre. Same report: "no persuasive evidence that the Sharon visit was anything other than an internal political act" and "The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/mitchell_plan.asp
Nobody is claiming Palestinians pre-planned Israeli live fire or used "mind control." The point is what happened next: Palestinian leaders chose to turn this into a sustained uprising. Barghouti said the explosion would have happened anyway and Sharon "provided a good excuse."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift
Also, a politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Throwing stones and turning it into a street war is.
Your Oslo II claim is wrong on the text: interim jurisdiction explicitly excludes settlements, Jerusalem, borders, etc. The 18-month clause is phased redeployments, not "full withdrawal from Area C."
https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/
It's hard to believe the earth is round, but it is.
As I mentioned above, Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing.
They also had tens of thousands of rockets.
Look, I'm obviously not saying that Hamas is stronger than all European countries in every metric, and I already did mention their lack of an air force. All I'm trying to say is that by some standard ways to judge military force (e.g., number of active soldiers) Hamas surprisingly is ahead, which gives lie to the idea that it's a small force. Your position has some nuance, which I appreciate, but another commenter in this very thread wrote "This is such an insane statement that you instantly disqualify everything else you say."
It's obviously not an insane statement, given that we can debate things like the accuracy of their munitions and the lack of air power. the other commenter probably simply didn't know how many active soldiers Hamas had and how few some developed European countries have.
There are areas where Hamas was stronger and areas where it was weaker, as is true in any military comparison.
Hamas was no rag-tag militia. It was also a government organization which spent billions building a military tunnel system that was longer, better and more effective than any European power has today. They had tens of thousands of soldiers. They could reach into the deep pockets of Iran and Qatar, and diverted billions in international aid. They had tens of thousands of rockets, most inaccurate, but all with real explosives and predictable trajectories. They also developed a unique warring strategy where they put their own population at risk by firing rockets from schools, storing weapons in children's bedrooms, and so on. Hamas was a formidable army in 2023. Where we perhaps can agree is that now, after two years at the wrong end of the IDF's military capabilities, they've become a rag-tag militia.
No, they are not stronger in any area. Any European country could hand out AKs to the population and instantly have more men on paper. They don't, because that's not what makes a strong military.
Hamas' strategy was in no way unique. They are a militia fighting an urban guerilla war. What was nearly unique in the modern world was the absolute brutality with which Israel fought an urban guerilla war. They decided to level everything. Imagine if the British had leveled all of Catholic Belfast in response to the IRA. It's a level of contempt for the local population and cynical justification of mass murder that is rarely seen from "civilized" countries.
The Israelis think they can solve their "Palestinian problem" with pure violence. A terrible irony.
There's no sleight of hand, just a horrifying reality. It's not just Hamas and Hezbollah. Civilians from Gaza participated in October 7 and poll after poll shows broad palestinian support for the destruction of Israel.
Support for Hamas itself is waning in Gaza due to their brutality, but Hamas began the war with broad support for their genocidal aims.
That is kind of a dishonnest take. You make sure to avoid mentionning that hamas is not only a terrorist organization. It is also an administrative body which has been bringing employment and services to a significant portion of the palestinian population while they have been constantly under strict embargoes, restriction and aggressions for decades.
You can't really criticize people to support the only org that pretend to care about them while the whole world seem to be against their own existence. Most palestinians would just want to live a peaceful normal life but have been expropriated and forced to live in a ghetto. How convenient to feign surprise and indignation that same people would have resentment against those that have been making their life difficult and at risk. Israel created Hamas.
You can draw a parallel to say, part of the colombian population that was supporting Pablo Escobar when the Medellin cartel was providing services that the government was failing to provide to the poorest classes.
You wrote:
"You make sure to avoid mentionning that hamas is not only a terrorist organization. It is also an administrative body which has been bringing employment and services to a significant portion of the palestinian population while they have been constantly under strict embargoes, restriction and aggressions for decades."
This sounds like:
"You make sure to avoid mentioning that the Nazis are not just a genocidal army of aggression, intent on genociding Jews and taking over Europe. They are also an administrative body that bla bla bla"
I wasn't simply saying that there was broad support for Hamas among gazan civilians, I was saying there was broad support for the destruction of Israel and the crimes against humanity that Hamas, along with a broad contingent of Gazan civilians, perpetrated on civilians on October 7.
My cousin was a Holocaust survivor, and he was utterly disgusted with what Israel was doing to Gaza - all the way back in 2014, before Israel completely leveled it and killed more than 20,000 children.
You keep comparing the Palestinians to the Nazis, which is utterly shameless, especially given that you support the side that has committed mass murder of tens of thousands of defenseless civilians and that holds millions of people under an apartheid regime.
I do not keep comparing the Palestinians to Nazis. I made an analogy between Hamas and Nazis to illustrate a rhetorical point. I stand by that comparison.
Nobody is justifying Palestinian deaths, whatever that means. You don't know my position on the war, since I haven't articulated it here.
I'm simply refuting your earlier claim that only Hamas and Hezbollah is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, while regular Palestinians are fine with it. Hopefully you have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge your earlier claim was wrong, and there was and is indeed broad support for destroying Israel and its civilian population among Palestinian civilians. And not just intellectual support, but concrete actions. Are you familiar with the "pay for slay" program?
Hamas has weaponized every hospital in Gaza. By contrast, Israel has not dropped an aerial bomb on any hospital building in Gaza.
What has happened is Israel has attacked hospitals with Hamas presence using ground forces, and they have dropped bombs on hospital grounds, but not in hospitals themselves.
Yes, it's specific. It's also a fact that is in direct contradistinction to the OP's claim.
Israel has also not fired any missiles at hospitals, with one exception (a small diameter bomb aimed specifically at Hamas that caused minimal damage).
...What an odd and dishonest framing of the problem. Do you define "hospital not destroyed" as "some walls are still standing"? Because an easy counterpoint to your claim is the Al-Shifa Hospital, which you will certainly agree cannot be operational in this state and thus can be defined as "destroyed":
Okay, you go get treatment at that facility if it's working as well as you insist.
Besides, whether the facility is (partially!) operational today is besides the point. Your original post insisted that "Israel has destroyed no hospitals", while it clearly has. The picture I linked is from 2024. The fact that Al-Shifa was brought back to a partially operating state in late 2025, after months of partial ceasefire, doesn't disprove that it was destroyed in 2024. Sources like https://en.yenisafak.com/world/al-shifa-hospital-begins-reco... show that the situation is far from positive.
You said al Shifa isn't operational. I proved it is. Now you're trying to redefine "operational" to mean "yes, you can get treatment at the hospital but it's not working well." That's a major switcheroo.
I stand by my claim that Israel has not bombed any hospital buildings. If you think this is false, find me a hospital building that Israel has bombed, tell me when it's been bombed, the munition used, etc.
Israel is an oppressive, genocidal, apartheid illegally occupying force. You can't compare the two sides.
Palestinians have been under this assault by Israel and Zionists in general for nearly a century. Defending anything Israel does at this point is indefensible. Their context has ALWAYS been wrong and they've been caught lying so many times it's more accurate to believe exactly the opposite of anything the IDF says.
This is wildly one-sided and basically incorrect. The Palestinians initiated multiple conflicts against the Jews, even before the foundation of Israel. The Jewish people beat them back every time, and this same pattern continued after the Israel's founding. What happened throughout history when someone beat back a hostile enemy that attacked them? The loser lost territory, resources, and freedoms.
Which isn't to say that Israel hasn't done some seriously unethical things, but this notion that the Palestinians are poor innocent victims that have never hurt a soul and carry no blame for their situation going back a century is absurd and ahistorical.
This conflict has nothing to do with "the Jews," and framing it in that way seriously distorts it.
It's a conflict between the native population of Palestine and people who came in from the outside with the goal of making Palestine their own. The outsiders won for a number of reasons (British backing, superior political organization, etc.). They now rule over the native population, most of whom they deny any rights to. They justify this by saying the native population deserves it because it hates them and resists them.
It is about the Jews, because the Arab population started violent conflicts against Jews who were legally purchasing land up through Israel's founding. Palestinians lost territory because of the violence they repeatedly started, despite legitimate military losses over territory and new borders drawn by armistices.
The Israelis could be Shinto or Sikh, and it would make no difference at all to the Palestinians.
The Palestinians just care that foreigners came in and took over their land.
By casting this as the Palestinians hating "the Jews," you're trying to frame the conflict as just another example of antisemitism. The Palestinians get cast in the role of the Nazis, and the Israelis get to pretend they're the victims of antisemitism.
The actual situation is completely flipped. The Israelis exercise military rule over the Palestinians and subject them to an apartheid system, not the other way around.
It’s not though. Before the British gifted land to the Israelis they owned 7% of the land through land purchases and just ended up with 51% of the land after pressuring the British to leave with a series hotel and car bombs. So, yeah the Palestinians were victims and then about 750,000 of those people were forced from their homes into crowded ghettos Nazi style. All of that occurred irrespective of any armed conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians.
Can you name a hospital in Israel that doesn't have an IDF presence?
"Presence" is an incredibly vague claim. In order to attack a hospital, you have to prove that the enemy is actively shooting at you from it, and your attack has to be proportionate. Vaguely asserting that some enemy might have set foot in the hospital at some point does not give you carte blanche to blow up a hospital full of civilians. Yet that's exactly what Israel has done over and over again.
I'm not vaguely asserting that "some enemy might have set foot in the hospital at some point." I'm accurately pointing out what is common knowledge: armed Hamas members were and are in hospitals, where they also took and killed Israeli hostages.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, Israel has not blown up any hospital buildings. This is a myth. If you think I'm wrong, point to which hospital building Israel blew up. Show me standard OSINT stuff: when it occurred, pictures of the rubble, the munitions used, who died.
Hospitals in Israel are generally guarded the same way hospitals in the US are: by police and security guards. As opposed to Hamas, the IDF doesn't use hospitals as bases. They don't build terror tunnels under hospitals. They don't take hostages to hospitals and kill them there. They don't shoot from hospitals. They don't store weapons in hospitals. Hamas does all of those things.
IDF personnel are in and out of every hospital in Israel all the time. Every other adult in Israel is IDF.
Israel has attacked every hospital in Israel with the blanket claim that some Hamas person was there at some point. Not that there was active fighting at the hospital. Not that Hamas was barricaded inside and firing out of it. Just that someone however loosely related to Hamas might have been near the hospital at some point. By that same argument, virtually every building in Israel would be a legitimate target.
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