| Topic: | Re:Pope calls for an immediate end to the barbarity in Palestine. | |
| Posted by: | Steven Rose | |
| Date/Time: | 27/07/25 16:33:00 |
| Richard, your penultimate post demonstrates the way in which critics of Israel use the conflict in Gaza to signal their virtue and enjoy the satisfaction of righteous indignation. Your point seems to be that, unlike your good self, I show insufficient compassion for the victims of the conflict. This thread is not a competition to see who can express most compassion. It’s a discussion about whether Israel is guilty of genocide. Neither you, nor the UN Special Rapporteur nor anyone else have provided any evidence to show that Israel intends to exterminate the Palestinian population of Palestine. Your second post is full of errors. The idea that 70% of the victims are women and children is simply a lie propagated by Hamas and repeated by useful idiots. How is that even plausible? Are we to believe that Israel which has one of the most powerful armies in the world, using laser guided weapons, targets Hamas militants and somehow manages to hit women and children instead? The IDF believe that up to half of those killed were Hamas militants, who are virtually all men. Many of the civilians sadly killed will also have been male adults. Do the maths. There have been violent incidents at food distribution points, both at the GHF posts and those of other humanitarian agencies. The circumstances are not clear. I suspect that the contractors and the IDF have fired at Hamas militants approaching the queues. But that is not the point. Those who accuse Israel of genocide have suggested that Israel is trying to starve the Palestinians to death. If that were true, why would they distribute food? The accusation of genocide has indeed been made by many organisations, but not by responsible organisations, rather by irresponsible ones such as the UN, whose Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, absurdly equates Israeli settlements on the West Bank to genocide. I have no doubt that the accusation of genocide is in part motivated by anti-Semitism. The underlying sentiment is, ‘You Jews are always going on about the Holocaust, but you are just as bad as the Nazis’. How many civilians were killed by Coalition forces during counter- insurgency operations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Probably hundreds of thousands. Have Britain and America been arraigned before the ICJ? Have Blair, Brown, Cameron, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden been indicted by the ICC? No, only Israel and Netanyahu face trial. Why is that? Who seriously doubts that Hamas shields behind the civilian population? Do they fight pitched battles with the IDF? No, they fire from residential buildings and even from hospitals, which they use as military bases. Perhaps you remember the CCTV footage of hostages being bundled into the Al Shifa hospital on October 7. Or is that another falsehood? |