Do those who are concerned about Palestinian civilians getting killed in the war between Hamas and Israel have any suggestions for Hamas so innocents do not end up in the line of fire?

Yes, Release the hostages. All of them. And turn over all who participated in killing children and raping girls.

That assumes that the goal of the Israelis is to target Hamas as they state, but it’s not. It’s to expel Palestinians from Gaza, and killing civilians is just a necessary part of that.

We’re funding and enabling genocide, and this is your question?

Stop attacking Israel. Stop taking hostages. Give hostages back. Stop hiding behind civilians.

Civilians: stop electing Hamas to represent and lead you.

Don’t store the ammo in residential areas.

@hat Do you have a suggestion for Hamas?

Yes, my suggestion to Hamas is for them to dress up as doctors and journalists, so the IDF don’t miss so much.

Release the hostages and change the government so Hamas is no longer in charge. Other Middle Eastern states need to pressure Hamas to stop.

Hopefully after that some sort of peace treaty and two state solution can happen. Doubtful, but it would be nice.

I have a modest proposal for Israel. Stop the invasion and stop bombing Gaza. Palestinian lives matter. They are building a generation of “terrorists” with this response.

Assuming killing all Palestinians isn’t their goal? Gotta prove that one first.

What you need to remember is that hamas aren’t there to represent Palestinians They’re there to cause havoc and make the US and western countries look bad by supporting Israel. They don’t care if Israel bombs a hospital and leave children in ITU to die. That’s a win for them.

The last time Palestinians voted was 2006 and even then Hamas didn’t get a majority. It doesn’t help that Isreal did what the US has done so many times previously and supported Hamas as they were opposing the PLO and Israel were hoping to break the PLO’s hold on the region.

At this point Israel is behaving as badly as Hamas and any one not calling for an unconditional cease fire imagine probably ask themselves why.

There is nothing Hamas can do to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza. The genocide and ethnic cleansing is the goal and Hamas is the excuse. Israel knows they can use Hamas as the “boogyman” excuse to kill indefinitely. There will aways be another possible tunnel or theoretical terrorist in any closet or hospital or ambulance or preschool or church or United Nations Humanitarian aid distribution center. How many years did the US war in Afghanistan take place? Did it succeed in wiping out terrorists forever?

At this point, Israel’s crimes are orders of magnitude worse than Hamas. There is no crime worse than genocide and Israel is guilty beyond a doubt. It’s essentially a terrorist state, flagrantly violating the ICJ’s order to prevent genocide and prevent and punish any public incitements to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and to preserve evidence related to any allegations of genocide there. Meanwhile Israel held an ethic cleansing of Gaza conference and then they proceed to bulldoze away the evidence of their genocide, prevent international aid organizations from entering Gaza and documenting the crimes, and providing humanitarian aid. The IDF is even shooting the fucking food convoys.

If this were being done to Jewish people—nobody would have a problem calling it for what it is.

I dare Hamas to offer the hostages back for a cease fire. Let’s see what happens.

Palestinians need to cease fire too. No more rockets, no more blowing themselves up to kill Israelis.

Neither side seems willing to be reasonable and work something out. Not the current governments.

It’s not just “Hamas” that wants to get rid of Israel, a lot of Palestinians want it to be one Palestine.

@JLeslie “I dare Hamas to offer the hostages back for a cease fire.”

They have at the very beginning of the conflict.

@gorillapaws Israel did do a cease fire and some exchanges. Is this article going back to that? It was done. Hamas doesn’t consider the young men civilians. Or, is this something else?

@JLeslie They’ve always been willing to exchange the Israeli hostages for the Palestinian “hostages” as they see it—in Israeli jails (many of whom have never been charged with crimes, are convicted in a dubious legal system and given extreme sentences for crimes of throwing rocks). And they expect a permanent ceasefire for the exchange.

Israel is now the controlling power in Gaza and with that power comes responsibility. It is up to Israel to ensure the wellbeing of the two million residents of Gaza, Hamas can’t do it and who else can or would want to?

@gorillapaws Does the ceasefire include no more rockets fired by Hamas and no more operations (suicide bombers)?

@flutherother No other countries want to. If Israel is now responsible for Gazans then is Israel now the governing body in Gaza? Gaza is now part of Israel? I hadn’t heard that.

I would suggest to Hamas to spare the lives of the remaining Palestinian civilians by fighting and dying like real men.

Return the hostages with or without a prisoner exchange deal then go out and engage with the Israelis in the open. Die or flee and abandon Gaza, physically and politically extracting themselves from that place.

They wouldn’t do it. They’d rather see their civilians get killed by Israelis. Their long game is the annihilation of the State of Israel.

@mazingerz88 Excellent idea but let’s make ot a fair fight. Equal numbers on each side. Volunteers only and armed with equivalent weapons and no dropping bombs on apartment buildings or hospitals.

^^Why not? But Hamas should have thought of proposing that, instead of their horribly brutal attack.

Dang. I’m with @mazingerz88 on this one.

Fair fight? The entire world, including Hamas, knows how Israel will respond.

People seem to forget it is mini small Israel and the huge rest of the Middle East and a lot of the countries in the Middle East want to eliminate Israel, or at minimum are antagonist towards Israel at some level. Plus, Jewish Israelis have lived through or have no very distant family members who have lived through genocide (if you want to use that word) beyond imagination.

So, both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis have been through horrible times that explain (not necessarily excuse) their actions. Both groups are very small. Both groups are hyper sensitive to threats.

So tired of people saying Israel is strong like they are some sort of majority group dominating the Middle East. Israel has 9 million people, around 7 million are Jewish, the other 2 million are mostly Palestinian, but not all. The Middle East has 350 million Muslim Arabs and Iranians.

Diplomacy has no chance if the diplomats don’t understand both sides.

Hamas wants Israel gone. You get what you give. Israel moved out of Gaza almost 20 years ago to let them govern themselves. That hasn’t worked.

Here’s a thought: Why did Hamas attack Israel to begin with? It all comes back to hatred of Jews by the Arabs. Sane, rationality would ask “Why can’t Hamas and Israel sit down and talk about specific grievances and work out a way to co-exist?” But in the entire history of Israel, Arab nations have been trying to destroy them.

If they can’t actually discuss specific issues and be content if those are worked out then it is just plain hatred. And with hatred comes violence and with violence comes death. Often to people that did nothing to create the problem (i.e. civilians).

^^Dang. I concur.

And now, the Pentagon has finally admitted that Hamas is using hospitals as bases of operation. They have built an entire military plan around the tunnels under the hospitals. They are using the civilians and the hospitals to garner pity from the west when Israel retaliates for the attacks of Hamas. What can Hamas do to protect civilian lives? Stop using them as shields.

The decision to bomb hospitals was made in Israel. The Israeli government carries the responsibility for that.

@flutherother Yet the question was what can Hamas do to to not put civilians in the line of fire. Building your military HQs under hospitals is not it. That is using the civilians as a shield…putting them directly in the line of fire. If they do that and then claim the moral high ground because Israel didn’t allow them to get away with it is pretty weak. Question for you: do you believe Israel would have bombed a hospital if Hamas wasn’t hiding in/under it?

Hamas sends women and children out in front of them to see if an area has Israeli soldiers. Hamas truly treats people like pawns and numbers and thinks nothing of killing people, including killing Palestinians, to achieve their goal, and their goal sucks. What is their goal? Get rid of Israel and also Muslims take over and rule all of the ME, and I assume they want Islam worldwide, but I don’t know their exact doctrine. Those type of religious zealots think suffering and war is meant to be and normal in God’s world, and they tack on things like life after death is paradise.

We can blame Hamas for using people as shields. We can blame Israel for sometimes being too aggressive. We can blame the other countries in the area for not letting the Palestinians in. We can blame many leaders in the region for not accepting Israeli for so many years, and that kept the culture alive among the people that Israel should not exist. We can blame the UN for the original decision to create Israel. Blame Hitler for murdering 65% of the Jews in all of Europe that helped along the creation of Israel. The blame can go on forever. The way these things finally end and have some peace is for everyone to give up something and just stop. They have to care more about life than getting 100% of what they want. They have to recognize that everyone is giving up something, and not just be focused on themselves. You need the right two leaders at the time to get it done.

@JLeslie “Hamas sends women and children out in front of them to see if an area has Israeli soldiers. Hamas truly treats people like pawns and numbers and thinks nothing of killing people, including killing Palestinians, to achieve their goal, and their goal sucks.”

I completely agree. Hamas are terrorists and monsters. And yet Israel is hundreds of times worse. You have kids being starved to death with scenes that look like something out of Auschwitz and Israeli citizens blocking aid convoys with a genocidal dance festivals. In fact, 95% of Jewish Israelis polled supported the plausible genocide of Gaza. In other words, Israel is well on its way to becoming the next Nazi Germany.

^^I will point out Hamas is using the very people they are supposedly defending and supposed to be protecting as shields. If an IDF soldier kills one of them, which they try not to do, whose fault is it? Are you going to say Israeli soldiers shouldn’t be there in the first place?

I don’t think the Nazis sent German children out first to see if enemy soldiers were nearby.

Israel is trying to stop their enemy which winds up killing their enemy and some of those who live under the enemy leadership. Israel and I for that matter, know that not all Palestinians are Israel’s enemy, but rather they are getting caught in the crossfire.

As I have said before, it is no surprise to me that many Israelis are at this point somewhat indifferent or apathetic to the suffering in Gaza, because they are DONE after Oct 7th with the violence and constant attacks by Hamas on Israel. I believe the majority of Israelis want no one innocent to die, but they want Israel to be safe and to have peace more than anything.

The majority of Israelis also want Netanyahu to resign, or get rid of him as soon as the war ends. The whole thing is very complex emotionally.

What do you want Israel to do? Just stop? Then what? How do they get rid of Hamas? How do they get the hostages back? You think Hamas will just disappear?

All I can do is hope this horribleness is a catalyst to peace. I realize that is not likely.

@JLeslie “I will point out Hamas is using the very people they are supposedly defending and supposed to be protecting as shields. If an IDF soldier kills one of them, which they try not to do, whose fault is it?”

In that situation, it’s Hamas’s fault.

There have been over 30k people killed in Gaza. Are you suggesting this is how a significant number of them died? by good IDF soldiers forced to kill innocents as evil Palestinians literally hide behind them like shields, and the crackshot IDF soldiers try their best to shoot around the innocents to hit the badguys, but sometimes miss? Is that how you think this massacre of civilians is happening?

There’s documented evidence of IDF soldiers blowing kids heads off with sniper rifles. They changed the protocols on how many civilians are acceptable in a bomb strike. The IDF has been using the largest bombs available (2k pounders) in an extremely densely populated area—note that the US were very hesitant to use bombs that were 75% less powerful in Iraq/Afghanistan because of concerns of collateral damage—and those were in less densely populated areas. Would you find that acceptable if it were Jewish civilians being killed to defeat Hamas? How many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dead Israelis would it be worth to defeat Hamas forever?

Yezen Al-Kfarna wasn’t a shield. He was killed by you, and me, and Biden, and the Israeli people, and the Europeans. He fucking starved to death. They’re eating birdseed and weeds. They’re being buried alive in the rubble and starved to death because Israel is deliberately creating these conditions because they want oceanfront property in Gaza, and our leaders are happy to help them do it.

If this were happening to Jews we’d all be outraged, but for some reason, Palestinians have become so much less than human, we can all simply stand by and let this happen. It’s beyond sick.

@gorillapaws Of course I am not suggesting 30,000 Palestinians were killed by IDF gunfire when mistaken. Obviously, the masses are dying in bombings. I want a cease fire and some relief for the Gazans as much as you. I don’t want anyone to starve to death. I don’t understand war at all, such a horrible thing. I want everyone happy and to get along.

Which 30,000 Jews are you going to kill to prove your point? Jews in the US? What organized terrorism are they doing? The Jews during Nazi Germany? What did they do? The Jews in Israel? The radical ones have committed some crimes against Palestinians, they should be put in jail, give them the death penalty if you want if they premeditated a murder. The settlers are not organizing missions that slaughter over 1,000 people at once under government leadership. Should we just put Hamas terrorists in jail or kill them? That’s fine with me how do we get to them? They shield themselves with civilians.

Hamas is oppressing and killing their own people. How can you free those Palestinians? How could they have been freed before Oct 7? Realistically, would the Gazans have gotten rid of Hamas? How?

Pressure and criticism should be put on Hamas and relief should be given to the Gazans.

I keep hearing this 30,000 people dying number. But I saw a rebuttal on that today that at least half of those are actually Hamas soldiers/supporters. People that are acting as terrorists. So the actual number of the civilians is closer to 15,000. Still not great, but again, how many are put in harms way by Hamas? Most. And remember, when Hamas started all this shit, they were killing civilians that did nothing in Israel. They took hostages. They are terrorists and they don’t care about human life. The only thing you can do with a rabid dog is to kill it. You can’t surgically remove the rabies. You can’t think that if you just treated them differently they would stop being rabid. I go back to my original statement on this thread. If Hamas wants to do things to stop civilian deaths, they need to stop attacking Israel, they need to stop grabbing hostages, and they need to stop using civilians as human shields. Every thing they have done in this conflict has been evil. If you didn’t have them starting this shit, Israel would not have done a thing to the Gaza Strip.

@JLeslie “Which 30,000 Jews are you going to kill to prove your point?”

None. I don’t think it’s worth killing any civilians to satisfy a vengeful bloodlust. I’m not gullible enough to believe you can annihilate an idea with bombs (just ask the fucking Taliban and you’ll see what I mean)

My point is if Hamas had dug tunnels under Tel Aviv, would it be worth it to flatten Tel Aviv with an equivalent carpet bombing to end Hamas, killing 10,000s of thousands of Israelis in the process? I suspect that’s a price you wouldn’t be willing to see paid to end Hamas forever, but it sounds like you’d accept that many Gaza’s being killed to achieve such a goal. This begs the question, why are Gazans less of a person than Israelis?

@seawulf575 “I keep hearing this 30,000 people dying number.”

It’s likely closer to 40k because many of the bodies are still buried in the rubble and/or decomposing. Over half are believe to be women and children. Obviously not every man is a terrorist either. Some are doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, journalists, etc. I imagine every single one of them will hate Israel after this genocide is over.

@seawulf575 “If you didn’t have them starting this shit, Israel would not have done a thing to the Gaza Strip.”

You’re full of shit Israel has been killing Palestinians all of the time before 10/7. Even unarmed protesters by the hundreds.

@gorillapaws It’s a reasonable analogy to ponder, I need to think about.

A couple of months ago I heard 250,000 Israelis are misplaced, they had to move out of border areas on the north and the south to be safer. I think Israel would move their own people to do something about tunnels under Tel Aviv, and I don’t know how they would close up the tunnels.

You want Israel to be as careful with Palestinian civilians as Israeli civilians? That seems unrealistic in war between any countries, but it would be nice if that was how things happened.

War is horrible. I want to be a pacifist, but it’s not realistic.

@JLeslie “You want Israel to be as careful with Palestinian civilians as Israeli civilians?”

That’s their OBLIGATION under international law. Civilians are civilians, regardless of race, religion, gender, nationality, etc. But Israel simply doesn’t care about respecting international law. There has never been a single consequence for Israel. They’ve given the world the middle finger for decades.

@gorillapaws I know that is one of the rules of war, I’m talking about reality of how people work. How extreme they would be about protecting civilians. Israel does try to move Palestinians out of harms way to some extent.

You asked me would Israel handle the tunnels differently if the tunnels were under Tel Aviv. I think it’s reasonable to say that maybe they would. I’m just guessing that maybe they would do everything possible to move people out of the area, but they might still blow up the area if that was the only way.

This brings me back to moving the Palestinians out of Gaza. Would Israel stop Gazans from leaving if another country or the West Bank would take them in temporarily? I don’t know the answer. I assume Israel would let them go, especially women, children, and the elderly.

Edit: I disagree with you that Israel doesn’t care at all about the law. Israel consults with lawyers to be within the law. Are they always within the law? I don’t know. Could they be more careful regarding civilians? I think so.

@gorillapaws Isn’t it interesting when you only give part of the story how horrible it sounds? Take you “Full of Shit” citation. Yep, Israel did, indeed, launch rockets into the Gaza strip in May of 2023. But pull your head out of your ass and get the whole story. Israel had capture a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader who decided to go on a hunger strike and effectively killed himself. In “retaliation” for his death PIJ launched 102 missiles into Israel. Israel held off a week before responding and launching their own missiles in targeted shots killing several more PIJ leaders. PIJ decided to launch 938 more missiles into Israel. Enter the air strikes your article refers to. Again, lunatic Palestinians, with a goal of destroying Israel, rejecting the 2-state solution and backed with Iranian weapons, started a fight and then want to play the weak sister routine when Israel responds. Stop Attacking Israel and they will not blow you up.

I couldn’t read your second citation as I don’t subscribe to Haaretz and don’t intend to. It does look like an article about Israeli snipers shooting protesters on the border when the protesters came too close to the fence (into the forbidden area, I imagine). Again, it is effectively a repelling effort. When you are dealing with fanatic that would gladly toss bombs at the fence you have to have something in place to stop it. I’d be willing to bet that every one of the protesters knew where they were not allowed to go. Stop poking Israel and they leave you alone.

When you go back through the entire history of Israel, almost every conflict they have been in with their neighbors has been one of defense or retaliation. Almost every single one starts with some lunatic Islamic group attacking Israel. And almost every time they always cry foul when Israel attacks. It is the story of Israel in the ME. And these same lunatic Islamists hide behind civilians. They do this because they don’t care about the civilians and want to be able to play a propaganda campaign against Israel when they do get their asses handed to them.

@seawulf575 You don’t have to worry too much about the lunatics. It’s what the sane get up to that concerns me.