Families of hostages storm Knesset meeting after Netanyahu rejects Hamas offer
Family members of Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip have stormed a parliamentary meeting in Jerusalem to demand that Israel’s government does more to return their loved ones, as fighting in Khan Younis reached unprecedented levels.
About 20 relatives of people seized as captives by the Palestinian militant group in the 7 October attack disrupted a Knesset finance committee meeting on Monday, chanting: “Release them now, now, now!”
One woman, who has three family members taken by Hamas, cried: “Just one I’d like to get back alive, one out of three.” Other protesters held up signs reading: “You will not sit here while they die there.”
On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected new Hamas conditions for ending the war and releasing the hostages including the Islamist group retaining control of Gaza and Israel withdrawing completely. In response, a Hamas official in Qatar said Netanyahu’s refusal to end the military offensive in Gaza meant there was “no chance for the return of the captives”.
If they're this callous toward their own citizens you can imagine how barbaric they are to Palestinians
Don't have to imagine. There are plenty of videos, photos, and news stories showing it.
So calous what, that they won't negotiate with terrorists whose sole demand is to be given their own country?
No. Hamas has no leverage. They sold themselves out on October 7. Traded their future and their home to kill 1,300 civilians and first responders. Terrorists don't get to have a country.
Hamas kidnapped these people and Hamas is using civilians as human shields in order to attract sympathy.
If you think Oct 7 was brutal wait until you hear what Israel been up to for the past 50 some odd years 🤔
Yes. Why cannot the Palestinian people seem to organize and get rid of Hamas, put an end to suicide bombers blowing themselves up at coffee shops and what not? Nobody is going to miss Hamas after it's gone. It's a shame how Hamas compromised every structure in Gaza City with a bunch of unpermitted tunneling.
Literally what did Hamas think was going to happen on October 8? They would just hide in the tunnels? Nah, their number is up.
75 years of oppression and apartheid. Seriously try accomplishing anything if this is your life. My grandparents survived the Nakba and were ethnically cleansed. Those who tried to defend our home town were killed by Israel. Add to that the Deir Yassin massacre which prompted the family to flee for their lives and Israeli settlers took over their homes and turned it into a settlement after erasing its name and history. My father grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan under poverty, had to study his way through to even make any livable wage. My grandma had nothing left from her family and struggled to build her own house to raise a family, while still hoping to return home one day. My grandpa could never finish his education and major in English... to this day he feels sorry to only have afforded to study until 6th grade because he had to work every day of his life since his family lost literally everything they had because of Israel.
Sorry we were too busy fixing our lives after Israel wrecked it, didn't have time to make huge political changes in a system we're never allowed to return to or vote in or affect in any way, in a country where we get strip searched and forced to walk in caged queues and where any of us could get shot on spot with no justice.
So again, super duper sorry! We were busy being displaced and getting over trauma.
Ah yes and Bibi funding Hamas endlessly to lead up to October 7th.
You're smart but sometimes you ask the weirdest questions.
Man, I understand all that. Generational trauma, generational poverty. Hasn't everyone suffered under Hamas and it's predecessor ideologies long enough?
I read about that massacre. Arabs began lying about the body count immediately and four days later they bombed a clearly marked medical convoy and killed seventy eight doctors, nurses, and students. What has changed?
Maybe if the Palestinian side had not squandered every dollar in foreign aid it has received on paying pensions to suicide bombers and launching rockets that practically never hit their targets, stop glorifying terrorism and martyrdom, there could have been something to negotiate about. If the national Palestinian response to a massacre is to come together and do another massacre, there is nothing to negotiate.
Oh well, now we will find out what Gaza looks like without Hamas. Hopefully the people there will soon be out from under the extreme religious fundamentalists who are running the place, escape their inevitable fate of being used by Hamas as human shields to score sympathy points.from gullible westerners, and actually have some responsibility and determination over their futures.
Do you really understand, or do you just repeat what I'm saying to make it look like you "acknowledge and understand" but then proceed to ignore it anyway?
??????
I think this is it. I'm done with debating you. We had a good long debate on many threads, but I'm seriously done. Don't take it personally, it's just tiring. Seeing video footage of people dying at every single place they went to shelter in, and then seeing you day in day out pretend the numbers "aren't so high" and trusting the IDF blindly... eh.
I think the discussions were worth it, but today is the first time I cried in a while over this conflict, and I honestly do not think (based on our conversations) you would ever be able to show empathy on a true level.
Man I am a bleeding heart liberal who has a lot of sympathy for the innocent Palestinian people caught up in this.
Where we disagree is that I think the greatest utility comes from liberating the region from Hamas and related ideologies of violence.
You should cry more often. Very clarifying. There is a lot of emotion in your point of view and I think it clouds your assessment of things.
Yeah, you're right, I can look at lot of the "reports" of atrocities and find justification for Israel. If someone says that some apartment building was bombed indiscriminately and then I can go and find the actual recording residents of the same building received hours before the bombing and videos of the airburst shells they fired as warning shots before the ordinance, it's not a lack of empathy that allows me to conclude that the bombing was justified, it's that the alternative proposal, to let terrorist win simply because they use human shields.
You seem perfectly content to let Hamas stay in charge and see another generation of Palestinians be martyred, coerced into doing a suicide bombing or ignoring evacuation orders and warning shots to die as human shields. I am not content with that. That's my sympathy. You are concerned with the lives of tens of thousands of people. I am too. I am simply more concerned with the lives of tens of millions. They take up a bigger space in my brain and in my heart.
Today Israel killed yet more civilians at the UNRWA training center and shelter in Khan Younis, and I bet you that you will find one way or the other to make the IDF look like they either did an "oopsie" or that "Hamas was there", all based on "the IDF said it, the IDF is 'reliable', thus it's probably true enough for me to believe".
This is from Aljazeera's timeline today:
This is insane to justify. Utterly insane, and yet you will confidently find a way.
Sorry for adding yet another message to this, but yeah. Bye then.
This is you being tricked in real time.
You literally don't have enough information to form a conclusion about this thing that happened in the past couple of hours, but that didn't stop you from forming one and being angry about it. You just realize your information is incomplete.
There are extensive tunnels under Khan Younis. Why is it incredible to you that Hamas would be be present there?
Al Jazeera is Qatari state media. Qatari is Hamas's largest financial supporter.
Neither the Qatari officials or their state media has any credibility in its coverage of this war.
Your statement sounds an awful lot like they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
I am glad Israel doesn't negotiate with Hamas and has decided to carpet bomb and glass Gaza.
Btw, how much video of the IDF fighting Hamas are there? It's been over 100 days of fighting. I swear we'd have so much video of the IDF fighting Hamas.
Just the vidoes Hamas posts of the IDF getting their ass kicked lol
Do you not know what the word carpet bombing means? Why are you lying?
Why are you acting like you wouldn't immediately pivot and begin justifying it if Isreal did carpet bomb Gaza?
I would not.
But you do that in every post...
You have misread or misunderstood my point of view, then.
Everytime someone cites some horrible atrocity, I take five minutes to look into it and every time it is more complicated than presented and always involves mitigating circumstances on one side and exaggeration and reckless disregard for human life on the other.
Someone says "oh Israel indiscriminately bombed this apartment building and killed a hundred people." And you look it up and find out that before the bombing, Israel called every cell phone in the area and fired warning shots, and that the 100 people in the building were a Hamas commander and his extended family, who he forced to stay behind specifically so that they would be killed, so that gullible westerners would be tricked into sympathizing with an actual terrorist organization.
Do you agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization that must be eliminated for the good of the Palestinian people?
I think a lot of us noticed this and maybe you don't notice it yourself, but literally when presented with any terrible unspeakable thing the IDF has done, you somehow are able to find an excuse for them... Sometimes you admit they did war crimes, but you never take it to the next level.
Honestly just saying this because I've been discussing things with you for days and it's just something I noticed.
Yeah I appreciate your point of view but the evidence is patiently obvious that there is no formal campaign of genocide or "indiscriminate bombings," and there is a very simple and evidence-based explanation for the high number of civilian casualties.
Can you admit that high civilian casualties is the goal of Hamas, that such martyrdom and human shields are two their weapons?
Can you admit that even if Israel was at fault in the manner you suggest, that Hamas is nevertheless at least 50% at fault for refusing or inciting the civilians to ignore every warning and stay behind to be bombed?
No one is a human shield because they live where they live. The IDF is bombing schools and shelters and universities. Hard pill to swallow, but yes...
I'm sure many here have tried to explain this to you over and over... It's not hard, just go and read about what a human shield is.
Goodbye and have a nice life. I do hope you one day understand, though I don't place any hopes too high on it.
Hamas built tunnels under the schools and shelters and university.
Again. When they launched terrorist attacks from their tunnels, underneath schools and shelters and university, digging under the foundation, isn't it Hamas that made those buildings inhabitable?
The whole place needs to be paved over and rebuilt because of the unsafe tunnels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shields_in_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
Just fyi for other people reading, proximity shielding is questionable and unlike classical or basically real human shielding.
Here, some more Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shield
Sorry, not really replying to you in particular, but it's hard to let this one slip. Proximity shielding is horse-shit invented by hateful people to justify killing civilians. Israel demonstrates a classic use of this.
Deflecting again? Sure i didn't use the right term but the meaning of what i said is the same. Israel wants to flatten Gaza and if they can carpet bomb it they would.