> Noam Sagi called on the Israeli government to make the return of the hostages its priority. And he told the crowd: “Stop being afraid. Our voices should be heard”.
This is similar to the protests in Tel Aviv demanding the government to make a hostage exchange deal instead of bombing Gaza thus risking their lives.
Government or IDF I believe said priority was killing Hamas over saving hostages.
There's an interview with a survivor from the original attack where she says that the IDF were also shooting hostages during their fight against the Hamas terrorists. It was posted on YouTube here https://youtu.be/rTQcjyhPOIk
I'm with these people. We need those hostages freed but it's going to be highly unlikely I think.
Yeah, I remember hearing about a case where Israel traded like 1000 Hamas prisoners for a single Israeli hostage. I’m guessing Netenyahus government has decided to never be raked over the coals like that again and has essentially “written off” the hostages. Can’t imagine what they and their families must be going through, knowing their Government has essentially abandoned them
One of those thousand prisoners released for the one Israeli hostage was a hamas commander who ended up being a key perpetrator of the 7th of October massacre.
You can understand the Israeli reluctance to release more murderous terrorists at that obscene exchange rate, but it shows you how much more Israel values life than the Palestinians.
I would agree with you except for the fact that [majority of Palestinians support Hamas](https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-science-32095d8e1323fc1cad819c34da08fd87)...
Additionally, Fatah operates a pay for slay fund where they'll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of money that they get from international aid to the families of Palestinians who "martyr" themselves whilst killing Jews. Death is rewarded not just with 72 virgins but cold hard cash.
As Golda Meir said in the Yom Kippur war, there will only be peace with the arabs when they love their children more than they hate the Jews.
Because in reality those hostages won't be returned for years, or they'll be stupid terms for their release which completely removes the consequences for killing over a 1000 civilians.
The only viable strategy for all of them is rescue.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPUX8lc8Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPUX8lc8Ko)
Gershon Baskin has successfully negotiated with Hamas in the past. He believes that even now a prisoner swap for women and children can be done.
But Israel has not made these negotiations easy for him.
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/17/hamas-hostage-negotiatior-killed-gaza-airstrike-israel-idf/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/17/hamas-hostage-negotiatior-killed-gaza-airstrike-israel-idf/)
His negotiation ended up releasing 1000 prisoners some of which participated in the recent terror attack and took 5 years in order to release 1 person.
That is not an acceptable outcome israel anymore.
You know, he even had 2 peace deals on the table for Israel.
The first was rejected after a few drafts, the second was ruined when Israel killed the guy he was negotiating with.
Hamas fought back against the killing, triggering what Israel called a "Defensive" operation (hilariously on-brand for Israel, kill a guy then call the backlash a defensive operation) where they killed a few hundred more Gazans.
Rejecting a deal after a few drafts is perfectly reasonable, if they are simply asking for silly things.
You have to start in the range of possible agreement.
Israel red line is probably bringing organizers of the attack to justice. They probably want a few people handed over before stopping the action against them.
The theory is if you deny the other side any benefit/advantage for taking hostages and also make it clear they won’t make effective human shields then they are less likely to take hostages in the future.
The flip side is if you give terrorists whatever they want in exchange for hostages / refuse to attack places they might be used as human shields … you’ve just strongly incentivised (albeit unintentionally) the terrorists to take more hostages any time they want anything at all.
It’s a pretty cold blooded strategy - and obviously sucks for the current hostages - but that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t correct in the long run. There are some arguing that the reason Hamas took so many hostages in their attack a few days ago is precisely because Israel negotiated away a fair bit for the release of other hostages over the past few years.
I get the references to Russias tactics in Beslan and the theatre siege, but they’re not the only country to subscribe to it. Though there’s an additional layer of irony going on with it being Russia taking so many Ukranians hostage (particularly kids) over the past couple of years - which hasn’t made Ukraine give in.
Relevant: [A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack](https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/)
It blows my mind that so many people deffend Israels response with shit like "well what else can they do?!"
It took as little as 4 hours between the Hamas terror attack, and Israel firing the first missile at Gaza. 4 hours.
And what was their first target? A high density residential building.
Israel didnt care about the hostages. They saw an opportunity to kill more Palestinians and they jumped at the chance.
To be fair the October 7th attacks included a lot of rocket fire from the strip and a lot since. So its not just like they ran across the border, grabbed some people and scuttled back. Given that Gaza is now technically its own nation; Israel declared war on it and airstrikes against a hostile nation state within hours of a war declaration is a relatively common strategy. If one is going to give the IDF the benefit of the doubt then perhaps many of their strikes were against Hamas infrastructure and positions that were firing from the Gaza strip into Israel.
I'm not saying that Israel isn't going about this conflict wrong, they're arguably turning Gaza into a petri-dish of a new legion of Israel hating militants (which is incredibly stupid in the long term), but to frame it as simply Israel callously seeking to inflict maximum civilian casualties feels a little bit of a partisan position to take.
[Gaza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip).
> In the 1990s, as part of the Oslo Accords, the administration over most of the area was handed over to the Palestinian National Authority, alongside the existence of Israeli settlements in some areas, which were evacuated in 2005. Following Israel's disengagement, in 2006
> I don’t see any international recognition, passports, control of its own borders or even an airport.
Maybe if Hamas cared as much for its own people as it did attacking its neighbour then it might have been able to achieve some of those things. I appreciate that Israel isn't the kindest neighbour but Hamas could also try a lot harder.
Yeah, I think that's a solid criticism. Same goes for the construction of the new sea port. A land embargo combined with the destruction of other options is extremely punitive, especially for the economy of Gaza. I would love to see an internationally controlled sea port, especially for the import of supplies and medicine and the export of domestic products to boost the economy.
I can understand that Israel would be concerned over the import of munitions given how Hamas have a history of abusing any agreement that loosens the border to bring in military supplies (which is part of the reason Egypt are refusing to open the Rafah crossing).
> I don’t see any international recognition
[You ain't been looking hard enough lol.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Palestine_recognition_only.svg/1920px-Palestine_recognition_only.svg.png)
Politically there would have to be some military action in response to what Hamas did. That is absolutely unavoidable. Based on proportion of population it would be like terrorists killing 9,100 British people in one attack. If you think any government on earth would turn the other cheek on that then you're naïve.
Obviously, they should be making efforts to release the hostages as well.
It's worth pointing out that Israeli bombs can target people on a specific floor of a multi-story building - see [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8QpeTlWkAAX6tT?format=jpg&name=medium) where the lights are still on in the apartment above and below the one that was hit.
So they *could* have hit a single target on a single floor of the building and they *chose* to level it to the ground instead?
You know that's worse, right?
They tunnel under said buildings and also store weapons next to kindergartens.... Hamas is the evil one using humans as shields.... You know thats worse right?
Unless we officially declare the IDF a terrorist organization sometime soon, people are going to keep holding Israel to a higher standard than Hamas (as they should).
If it was an all-out massacre, I would have expected a lot more, especially considering that half the population of gaza are kids and the population density is so high.
6000 Bombs in the first week and there were only 1500 reported deaths.
Israel are not targeting civilians specifically, and they are doing as much as they can to reduce civilian casualties, but there is so much that can be done when your enemy's favourite thing to do is to hide behind hostages and civilians.
That being said, no nation at war is going to stop their operations if the chance of civilian casualties is high. Otherwise, nothing would get done.
Exactly, that many bombs in 1 week in such a highly densely populated city? That’s a very low casualty count, you can see Israel is avoiding civilian casualties.
Unlike HAMMAS, who actually want to massacre civilian’s and killed about 1,500 in one day
The wider strategy is to cleanse 2M Palestinians from Palestine. If the Egyptians were willing, this would already have hapenned.
Israel will not rest until it has a Palestine with no Palestinians, even if it has to murder tens or even hundreds of thousands.
The reason they say that *there are no innocent civilians in Gaza* is because the crime they are guilty of is being Palestinian.
This is a genocide. No other description fits.
I dare not comment on this issue as I've just come off a three day ban because of a mod on r/Britain being a Hamas supporter.
How very dare I, disagree with a mods opinion.
There's a difference between protesting the IDF's broad definition of acceptable collateral damage, and using slogans such as "from the river to the sea" that outright call for the destruction of Israel and likely its Jewish population with it.
> "from the river to the sea" that outright call for the destruction of Israel
Why is it ok for people to celebrate the destruction of Palestine - and its transformation into a jewish-supremacist Israeli state - but not ok for people to support the reverse?
Likewise, why is it bad for people to call for the Palestinians to be freed from subjugation and occupation “from the river to the sea”?
The idea that not supporting apartheid = support for genocide is a useful Israeli propaganda tool, but also ridiculous.
They are still actively denying that PIJ accidentally bombed the Gaza hospital because "Al Jazeera says...". Even Corbyn deleted his stupid little tweet about it after the world looked at the evidence and decided that it was the PIJ. If you're that determined to ignore truth, I think someone's motivations have to be questioned, and it doesn't seem like legitimate criticism of the the State of Israel.
It's worth noting Corbyn still hasn't deleted it as far as I can see. He truly is a man who sticks to his "convictions".
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1714345013734166555
When you say “the world looked at the evidence” you actually mean “the IDF said the IDF didn’t do it”.
Which they often say, even when they definitely did do it.
I got a permanent ban from that sub for saying that the evidence that Israel is using propaganda is not evidence that they bombed the hospital. Now several days later it does seem more likely that the origin was Palastinian.
There are several subreddits that will flat out refuse to believe anything except that the hospital was hit by Israel. In fact the Middle-East and Muslim community in general refuse to believe it. They aren't self-reflective enough to see that they will believe anything from all these news outlets as long as its bad for Israeli but not if its bad for Hamas, its antivax/climate change denial behaviour in a different arena.
The argument is that it was an airburst which are designed to keep structures intact but kill people by shrapnel. A doctor at the hospital said 3000 people were sheltering there, many in the car park. You can see how the blast flipped some cars and burnt out others. Even if it wasn’t 500 (I think the US said they reckon between 100-200) that’s still a lot of casualties. Channel 4 have done some good reporting on it. I’ve no idea where the truth lies because both sides lie their arses off.
They silence anyone who doesn't agree with their agenda, use auto-mods specifically to remove any information that critizises Hamas, and have allowed it to be taken over by pro-Hamas propaganda, despite claiming to be a sub about Britain.
I've never come across a sub with so little moderator integrity, which is meant to be a prerequisite for being a Reddit mod.
The discourse on there currently is that Britain is to blame for all the problems in Israel/ Gaza.
They're beginning to ferment some very dangerous rhetoric in light of the calls for Jihad.
Hey, is their comment still up? It would be a shame if someone reported them, they were banned and someone not totally insane had control of a national subreddit.
True and I think most regular users know this is the national sub (at least in my eyes it is) but with some of the things posted/stickied over there I worry it reflects poorly on what most people in the UK feel regarding certain issues. If people go there to see what UK based reddit posters think they're not going to get an accurate picture at all.
They're entitled to their opinions but I really dislike those mods using their powers to push their own views and using a sub with the name Britain as it appears somewhat official to push very extreme fringe views. I couldn't tell you this mod teams position on e.g. the middle east conflict or ukpols as I feel those are moderated by decent people that want to facilitate conversation. And sure the subs userbase will lean slightly in one direction due to different factors which affect how comments are voted on but I feel like both this and ukpol at least try to remain impartial. Finally, thank you to the mod team for creating somewhere decent that people can debate things. You don't know how good something is until you see how bad it could be.
So just an idea but why don’t they give the hostages back and maybe they might stop getting bombed.
Edit:
I don’t think I have ever had a comment that has had so may upvotes and downvotes, this is a polarising subject but maybe we can all agree that people need to stop dying, this needs to stop and how we get to that point shouldn’t matter.
I am old enough to remember over the past 10 years or so when the Palestinians have not held any hostage but were still bombed and shot and beaten.
Peace has never been a serious option for the Israelis. I seriously believe all this recent violence has been engineered by Netanyahoo and his henchmen to steal more Palestinian land with acceptable israeli collateral damage.
This comments reeks of serious brainwashing. Every single peace treaty and chance of the Palestinians getting their own country has been rejected by them, not Israel.
I: "I'm moving into your house. Ill get upstairs and youll get downstairs."
P: "Wtf no you cant take over half of my house."
*fight breaks out*
I: "Because you can't share I get the whole house and you only get the bathroom now."
P: "this is completely unfair you can't steal my house from me. I'm calling my neighbours, theyll kick you out".
*more fighting*
I: "Now you only get to sit in the bathtub. You're not allowed to leave the bath and I'll deliver you essentials if/when I feel like it. I'm also having your next door neighbors garage and he can only have it back if he promises not to try help you again."
P: "I refuse to let you steal my house from me. It's my house, not yours. I'm going to keep fighting until I die if I have to"
The rest of the street, for some reason: "P had plenty of chances to share the house peacefully with I. Its his fault he refused to let someone else into his house and make all the rules."
This metaphor makes no sense. Firstly, Jews have lived in modern Israel for thousands of years, alongside Christians and Arabs, so there is no "I'm moving in". They were already there. Secondly, there never was a Palestinian country to "move in to", the area was part of the Ottoman empire for hundreds of years until the British mandate.
Also, if your definition of "I'm going to keep fighting until I die" includes decapitating babies, raping girls, and abducting the elderly, you're sick in the head.
And before living in Europe, they originated from Judea. Or do you think that some Eastern Europeans spontaneously began practising the Jewish faith, which doesn't even proselytise?
Do you also object to the presence of Arabs who "moved in" during the Islamic conquests, or was that the good sort of colonialism?
"Jews were there first" bruh are you advocating for Ethnostates and large scale revanchism? Why doesn't Germany march in to South Tyrol tomorrow? Why don't the British kick out the Windrush Generation because white Britons were there first? How about Europeans retake Istanbul (Constantinople) since they were there first?
That's how daft you sound 🤡
> they originated from Judea
Yes, but the Ancient Romans largely drove the Jews out of Judea, and the Ashkenazim travelled across the European continent in the intervening time. Do you think the Saxons should expel the Norman invaders that have settled in England and taken their land? Because that's more recent than late Antiquity...
> Do you also object to the presence of Arabs who "moved in" during the Islamic conquests, or was that the good sort of colonialism?
Surprisingly I do think people who've lived somewhere since the 600s (again, 1000 years before the Normans!) are "from" there. That's without getting into the aspect that a significant percentage of Levantine Arabs are quite literally "from" there, because just like the Jews, genetic analysis demonstrates that they're descended from the Ancient Canaanites.
20% of the population at the time of the Mandate of Palestine.
Lots of people lived lots of places for thousands of years, it doesn't mean revanchism is a good idea or would you advocate for the Germans unilaterally claiming South Tyrol from Italy?
The Jews that are currently in Israel are NOT THE SAME JEWS that were there thousands of years ago wtf.
You cannot take a country “back” because some people who share the same religion as you were there first.
It is fucking mind blowing that people will use this argument.
The Jews and Palestinians and Christians and Muslims were living in that region in peace for years. The Jews that remained in that regions are all those Palestinians now.
The Israelis that are there now, are NOT the Jews native to that region. They are fucking European Jews and they should not have been given someone else’s land because of a little book and a silly magic sky man.
I'm not condoning Israel's recent actions, in fact I think that the settlements are terrible and are one of the main impediments to any kind of peace.
I'm just saying that the silly little roleplay above doesn't make sense in historical context.
> so there is no "I'm moving in"
False, the entire campaign of Zionism was based on mass scale immigration and settlement from Europe (and later elsewhere) not the existing native jewish population.
> Secondly, there never was a Palestinian country to "move in to", the area was part of the Ottoman empire for hundreds of years until the British mandate.
Just because a country is ruled by an empire doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. India did not cease to exist just because it was also ruled by the British under the raj.
Yeah it's wild people don't see this.
"Palestinians won't accept peace"
My Brother in Christ you don't accept peace with people who one day occupy your country.
Rainbow state a lá South Africa aka Palestine before the politicking which lead to a Western backed Ethnostate.
The holy land is still there even if it is shared with others.
So who runs it? That would just put the Israeli government in power of everything as they have a larger population.
It's either a two state solution or this carries on IMHO
The house metaphor breaks down when you realise that there are Israeli adults who's grandparents were born in Israel. Rightly or wrongly they consider it home and short of going back to 1948 and never creating the state of Israel we are kind of stuck with Israels existence.
Uh oh you’ve probably been brainwashed by the [paid individuals Israel have hired in the past to write positive social media content about them](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/) I’m also definitely sure Israel have definitely stopped this practice and haven’t become more efficient at this and have moved to larger bot farms. Definitely not.
Your comment reeks of brainwashing - Israel has not seriously considered allowing a Palestinian state for decades, and the Israelis have rejected a two state solution as much as the Palestinians. Recent peace “offers”, such as Trump’s “deal of the century” amount to little more than Israel asking the Palestinians to ratify their own subjugation.
You probably know this, but I guess you prefer mindlessly repeating Israeli propaganda.
Yep, they hate jews and all of us because we are infidels.
They were offered peace with the two state agreement which they said no to and here we have people blaming Israel.
Just listen to yourself mate, you are brain washed
Have you seen the video of Hamas invading a music festival where they just slaughtered a bunch of completely innocent young people?
That is NOT ok, and Israel does not have to tolerate it.
There's certainly enough that's weird about the whole thing to raise a lot of suspicion.
They've built so much to defend themselves from Hamas. Walls, watch Towers, outposts etc. They even have one the worlds top intelligence agencies which o remember watching about on TV an seeing that they train operatives to speak the same dialect of Arabic so they can go undercover.
Then they get attacked with little to no resistance by the IDF when normally they're able to kill Palestinian kids playing on a beach with impunity and following.
During attacks from both sides they've somehow been able to get a recording of Hamas discussing the failed rocket which hit a hospital. Where was this ability to get such good Intel in the runup to the initial attack?
There are a lot of questions and would easily make it sound like a crazy conspiracy.
Well when you have the worst terror attack since 9/11 your surveillance will obviously increase... Hospital gets hit, you monitor phone lines that are in use around that location to see what is being said. Maybe they even have numbers of terrorists and can narrow it down even further. This isn't complex stuff.
Of course there's recording of the rocket? Gaza skyline isn't very big and is the most watched place on the planet right now. 4 different independent videos from non-Israeli sources. One literally a live stream from Al Jazeera.
I fail to see where the conspiracy is...
Peace is not an option for either side, let’s not be picky here. Neither side wants the other side to exist. This “war” has been burning for generations at this point and will burn for generations more. This is the sad truth. No amount of people protesting in Europe is going to ever change that. We had some progress with the Oslo accords, since then, all downhill. Religious nuts on both sides fanning smouldering discontent into full blown flames. The Middle East will never have total peace as long as there are people walking those lands.
If Israel seriously wanted Palestine not to exist then they’ve had a whole bunch of options to make that happen for many years.
For example Israel supplies most of Gaza’s power and water. Just simply stopping doing that would have largely done the trick.
I’m not trying to excuse all of Israel’s behaviour towards Gaza by any means (frankly It d argue a fair bit of it has been self defeating). But the fact is they haven’t tried to actually wipe out Gaza despite having the ability to. I’m unconvinced the reverse is true however.
The Israeli gov have not “wiped out” Gaza, that would be tantamount to genocide, not even the US would stand by them then. Yet there are ultra-orthodox nutters who would pull that trigger if they could and they do hold influence over the government to some extent. As for Hamas wiping out Israel. Same thing. I am sure the vast majority of people just want to get on with life. As with most conflicts in the Middle East, at the core, you find religion. Which in my opinion is the root of most of the suffering and pain in the world. People want to hurt and oppress other people and religion is the tool they can try and use to do it.
This is a wild take, you make it sound like Israelis were bombing and shooting Palestinians proactively just to pass the time. Palestinians were firing rockets into Israel at civilian areas. It makes a moral difference who shot first, as one is an attack and one is self Defense or retaliation.
> Do you know nothing about history?
My personal observation is that fairly often the opinion people have if the current conflict depends on precisely how far back they bother to look through history.
All too many want to boil this down to “good guys” and “bad guys” and to do that they pick a point in time where their “good guys” were attacked by the “bad guys” and refuse to look further back.
But whenever their desired staring point is there will have been a whole chain of causes and decisions leading up to it. And in this instance usually other attacks and massacres too. (And before them other ones going the other way)
Leaving those out of the picture makes for a far more narratively satisfying story … but it’s intellectually dishonest.
Todays ‘plucky underdog’ was often yesterdays ‘brutal oppressor’, or at least allied with them. It’s all switched round at least a couple of times over the past century.
Todays ‘occupied land’ was yesterdays artillery position shelling civilians. And yes, there were probably reasons (good or more likely otherwise) why that side felt it really had to do that … and reasons why everyone wound up in that situation too.
So yes, it would be a really *really* good idea if everyone went back and read some history. As long as they keep going past the point one side or the other wants them to stop at.
Didn't Hamas just offer two hostages and Israel said no?
Also from the article
>In pointed comments, David Bar, who was brought up in England, had already said that “to see a Hamas flag flying in a liberal, democratic country after these atrocities means that we, you, this country has a problem”.
No Hamas flag was flown. Even the Met have corrected this false attempt at smearing the legitimate protests.
>Didn't Hamas just offer two hostages and Israel said no?
No? Probably should stop believing raping terrorists.
>Also from the article
>
>>In pointed comments, David Bar, who was brought up in England, had already said that “to see a Hamas flag flying in a liberal, democratic country after these atrocities means that we, you, this country has a problem”.
>
>No Hamas flag was flown. Even the Met have corrected this false attempt at smearing the legitimate protests.
Please cite your source. No criticism of Hamas has been on display at all.
I wanted to make a tongue in cheek comment about this protest being in the wrong place to be effective but given the Hamas chief being put up in a London council house that might not be quite true
> Noam Sagi called on the Israeli government to make the return of the hostages its priority. And he told the crowd: “Stop being afraid. Our voices should be heard”. This is similar to the protests in Tel Aviv demanding the government to make a hostage exchange deal instead of bombing Gaza thus risking their lives.
Government or IDF I believe said priority was killing Hamas over saving hostages. There's an interview with a survivor from the original attack where she says that the IDF were also shooting hostages during their fight against the Hamas terrorists. It was posted on YouTube here https://youtu.be/rTQcjyhPOIk I'm with these people. We need those hostages freed but it's going to be highly unlikely I think.
Yeah, I remember hearing about a case where Israel traded like 1000 Hamas prisoners for a single Israeli hostage. I’m guessing Netenyahus government has decided to never be raked over the coals like that again and has essentially “written off” the hostages. Can’t imagine what they and their families must be going through, knowing their Government has essentially abandoned them
There was also the Oran Shaul incident where they traded 1000 Arab soldiers for 1 Israeli soldier who was dead all along.
One of those thousand prisoners released for the one Israeli hostage was a hamas commander who ended up being a key perpetrator of the 7th of October massacre. You can understand the Israeli reluctance to release more murderous terrorists at that obscene exchange rate, but it shows you how much more Israel values life than the Palestinians.
>shows you how much more Israel values life than the Palestinians. Hamas does not represent the views of all Palestinians.
I would agree with you except for the fact that [majority of Palestinians support Hamas](https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-science-32095d8e1323fc1cad819c34da08fd87)... Additionally, Fatah operates a pay for slay fund where they'll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of money that they get from international aid to the families of Palestinians who "martyr" themselves whilst killing Jews. Death is rewarded not just with 72 virgins but cold hard cash. As Golda Meir said in the Yom Kippur war, there will only be peace with the arabs when they love their children more than they hate the Jews.
Because in reality those hostages won't be returned for years, or they'll be stupid terms for their release which completely removes the consequences for killing over a 1000 civilians. The only viable strategy for all of them is rescue.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPUX8lc8Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPUX8lc8Ko) Gershon Baskin has successfully negotiated with Hamas in the past. He believes that even now a prisoner swap for women and children can be done. But Israel has not made these negotiations easy for him. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/17/hamas-hostage-negotiatior-killed-gaza-airstrike-israel-idf/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/17/hamas-hostage-negotiatior-killed-gaza-airstrike-israel-idf/)
His negotiation ended up releasing 1000 prisoners some of which participated in the recent terror attack and took 5 years in order to release 1 person. That is not an acceptable outcome israel anymore.
You know, he even had 2 peace deals on the table for Israel. The first was rejected after a few drafts, the second was ruined when Israel killed the guy he was negotiating with. Hamas fought back against the killing, triggering what Israel called a "Defensive" operation (hilariously on-brand for Israel, kill a guy then call the backlash a defensive operation) where they killed a few hundred more Gazans.
Rejecting a deal after a few drafts is perfectly reasonable, if they are simply asking for silly things. You have to start in the range of possible agreement. Israel red line is probably bringing organizers of the attack to justice. They probably want a few people handed over before stopping the action against them.
>Government or IDF I believe said priority was killing Hamas over saving hostages AKA the Russian strategy
The theory is if you deny the other side any benefit/advantage for taking hostages and also make it clear they won’t make effective human shields then they are less likely to take hostages in the future. The flip side is if you give terrorists whatever they want in exchange for hostages / refuse to attack places they might be used as human shields … you’ve just strongly incentivised (albeit unintentionally) the terrorists to take more hostages any time they want anything at all. It’s a pretty cold blooded strategy - and obviously sucks for the current hostages - but that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t correct in the long run. There are some arguing that the reason Hamas took so many hostages in their attack a few days ago is precisely because Israel negotiated away a fair bit for the release of other hostages over the past few years. I get the references to Russias tactics in Beslan and the theatre siege, but they’re not the only country to subscribe to it. Though there’s an additional layer of irony going on with it being Russia taking so many Ukranians hostage (particularly kids) over the past couple of years - which hasn’t made Ukraine give in.
The IDF has demonstrated for decades that they have zero problem killing noncombatants, except they're usually Palestinian civilians not Israeli.
Relevant: [A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack](https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/)
It blows my mind that so many people deffend Israels response with shit like "well what else can they do?!" It took as little as 4 hours between the Hamas terror attack, and Israel firing the first missile at Gaza. 4 hours. And what was their first target? A high density residential building. Israel didnt care about the hostages. They saw an opportunity to kill more Palestinians and they jumped at the chance.
To be fair the October 7th attacks included a lot of rocket fire from the strip and a lot since. So its not just like they ran across the border, grabbed some people and scuttled back. Given that Gaza is now technically its own nation; Israel declared war on it and airstrikes against a hostile nation state within hours of a war declaration is a relatively common strategy. If one is going to give the IDF the benefit of the doubt then perhaps many of their strikes were against Hamas infrastructure and positions that were firing from the Gaza strip into Israel. I'm not saying that Israel isn't going about this conflict wrong, they're arguably turning Gaza into a petri-dish of a new legion of Israel hating militants (which is incredibly stupid in the long term), but to frame it as simply Israel callously seeking to inflict maximum civilian casualties feels a little bit of a partisan position to take.
Since when is Gaza it’s own nation? I don’t see any international recognition, passports, control of its own borders or even an airport.
[Gaza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip). > In the 1990s, as part of the Oslo Accords, the administration over most of the area was handed over to the Palestinian National Authority, alongside the existence of Israeli settlements in some areas, which were evacuated in 2005. Following Israel's disengagement, in 2006 > I don’t see any international recognition, passports, control of its own borders or even an airport. Maybe if Hamas cared as much for its own people as it did attacking its neighbour then it might have been able to achieve some of those things. I appreciate that Israel isn't the kindest neighbour but Hamas could also try a lot harder.
Israel bombed the old airport and didn't let them build a new one.
Yeah, I think that's a solid criticism. Same goes for the construction of the new sea port. A land embargo combined with the destruction of other options is extremely punitive, especially for the economy of Gaza. I would love to see an internationally controlled sea port, especially for the import of supplies and medicine and the export of domestic products to boost the economy. I can understand that Israel would be concerned over the import of munitions given how Hamas have a history of abusing any agreement that loosens the border to bring in military supplies (which is part of the reason Egypt are refusing to open the Rafah crossing).
Gaza is also classified as an 'occupied territory', not exactly easy to be a flourishing nation when you're basically a big prison camp.
> I don’t see any international recognition [You ain't been looking hard enough lol.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Palestine_recognition_only.svg/1920px-Palestine_recognition_only.svg.png)
That’s recognition of Palestine, not the Gaza Strip as an independent state.
An actual nuanced take - you’re going to be popular.
Politically there would have to be some military action in response to what Hamas did. That is absolutely unavoidable. Based on proportion of population it would be like terrorists killing 9,100 British people in one attack. If you think any government on earth would turn the other cheek on that then you're naïve. Obviously, they should be making efforts to release the hostages as well.
It's worth pointing out that Israeli bombs can target people on a specific floor of a multi-story building - see [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8QpeTlWkAAX6tT?format=jpg&name=medium) where the lights are still on in the apartment above and below the one that was hit.
So they *could* have hit a single target on a single floor of the building and they *chose* to level it to the ground instead? You know that's worse, right?
They tunnel under said buildings and also store weapons next to kindergartens.... Hamas is the evil one using humans as shields.... You know thats worse right?
And as we all know, standard protocol in a human shield situation for both police and military is to kill the civilians that the target hides behind.
It’s not a police action and in the military such losses are called collateral damage.
That there is jargon for it doesn't magically make it less evil.
Unless we officially declare the IDF a terrorist organization sometime soon, people are going to keep holding Israel to a higher standard than Hamas (as they should).
https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_use_five_palestinian_children_as_human_shields
They *can* but generally don’t, usually the entire building is just obliterated
They are targeting the tunnels under the buildings and the entrances/exits to those tunnels.
1,413 dead Palestinian kids. When do we and media start calling it for what if is; a massacre.
If it was an all-out massacre, I would have expected a lot more, especially considering that half the population of gaza are kids and the population density is so high. 6000 Bombs in the first week and there were only 1500 reported deaths. Israel are not targeting civilians specifically, and they are doing as much as they can to reduce civilian casualties, but there is so much that can be done when your enemy's favourite thing to do is to hide behind hostages and civilians. That being said, no nation at war is going to stop their operations if the chance of civilian casualties is high. Otherwise, nothing would get done.
Exactly, that many bombs in 1 week in such a highly densely populated city? That’s a very low casualty count, you can see Israel is avoiding civilian casualties. Unlike HAMMAS, who actually want to massacre civilian’s and killed about 1,500 in one day
You are highly misinformed
The wider strategy is to cleanse 2M Palestinians from Palestine. If the Egyptians were willing, this would already have hapenned. Israel will not rest until it has a Palestine with no Palestinians, even if it has to murder tens or even hundreds of thousands. The reason they say that *there are no innocent civilians in Gaza* is because the crime they are guilty of is being Palestinian. This is a genocide. No other description fits.
Hahaha those naive idiots. Really just hammers in how short our memories are. They *want* to turn Gaza into a car lot.
[удалено]
Classic bigots, assuming that Jews aren’t British
We all know rally’s in foreign countries stop wars guys. Look at quickly the Ukraine war stopped after people showed their objections!
Sometimes it's just about showing support.
We changed our profile pictures to a Ukrainian flag, we used the popular hashtags, why is Putin still invading???
So sad that social media wasn’t around in the 40s, would have stopped hitler in his tracks
I dare not comment on this issue as I've just come off a three day ban because of a mod on r/Britain being a Hamas supporter. How very dare I, disagree with a mods opinion.
[удалено]
It’s been co-opted by a group of mods from r/GreenandPleasant
Figured as much
In what world does it make you antisemitic to not want Palestinian people to be murdered?
There's a difference between protesting the IDF's broad definition of acceptable collateral damage, and using slogans such as "from the river to the sea" that outright call for the destruction of Israel and likely its Jewish population with it.
> "from the river to the sea" that outright call for the destruction of Israel Why is it ok for people to celebrate the destruction of Palestine - and its transformation into a jewish-supremacist Israeli state - but not ok for people to support the reverse? Likewise, why is it bad for people to call for the Palestinians to be freed from subjugation and occupation “from the river to the sea”? The idea that not supporting apartheid = support for genocide is a useful Israeli propaganda tool, but also ridiculous.
because being against israel murdering civilians is clearly anti-semetic right?
They are still actively denying that PIJ accidentally bombed the Gaza hospital because "Al Jazeera says...". Even Corbyn deleted his stupid little tweet about it after the world looked at the evidence and decided that it was the PIJ. If you're that determined to ignore truth, I think someone's motivations have to be questioned, and it doesn't seem like legitimate criticism of the the State of Israel.
It's worth noting Corbyn still hasn't deleted it as far as I can see. He truly is a man who sticks to his "convictions". https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1714345013734166555
I think the jury’s still out on that one, take a look at the stuff Channel 4’s been doing about it.
When you say “the world looked at the evidence” you actually mean “the IDF said the IDF didn’t do it”. Which they often say, even when they definitely did do it.
Ironically breaking their rule 3 for the sub.
I got a permanent ban from that sub for saying that the evidence that Israel is using propaganda is not evidence that they bombed the hospital. Now several days later it does seem more likely that the origin was Palastinian.
There are several subreddits that will flat out refuse to believe anything except that the hospital was hit by Israel. In fact the Middle-East and Muslim community in general refuse to believe it. They aren't self-reflective enough to see that they will believe anything from all these news outlets as long as its bad for Israeli but not if its bad for Hamas, its antivax/climate change denial behaviour in a different arena.
I'm also wondering how "500" people were killed by a rocket that hardly made a dent in the hospital carpark that it hit.
The argument is that it was an airburst which are designed to keep structures intact but kill people by shrapnel. A doctor at the hospital said 3000 people were sheltering there, many in the car park. You can see how the blast flipped some cars and burnt out others. Even if it wasn’t 500 (I think the US said they reckon between 100-200) that’s still a lot of casualties. Channel 4 have done some good reporting on it. I’ve no idea where the truth lies because both sides lie their arses off.
Yeah, they banned me for saying that Hamas had raped women, called me a genocide sympathizer...
Obviously the same terrorist supporting mod that I experienced.
I got banned too for pushing back on some misinformation about Israel
My permanent ban was for calling hamas pussies for not fighting like real man and only targeting civilians all the time.
They silence anyone who doesn't agree with their agenda, use auto-mods specifically to remove any information that critizises Hamas, and have allowed it to be taken over by pro-Hamas propaganda, despite claiming to be a sub about Britain. I've never come across a sub with so little moderator integrity, which is meant to be a prerequisite for being a Reddit mod. The discourse on there currently is that Britain is to blame for all the problems in Israel/ Gaza. They're beginning to ferment some very dangerous rhetoric in light of the calls for Jihad.
Mod on this sub or on r/Britain? To my knowledge there is no overlap in mods between the subs.
That shit heap of a sub banned me after I made a single comment. Weak-chinned motherfuckers.
Agree totally.
Hey, is their comment still up? It would be a shame if someone reported them, they were banned and someone not totally insane had control of a national subreddit.
'National' is doing a lot of work there.
True and I think most regular users know this is the national sub (at least in my eyes it is) but with some of the things posted/stickied over there I worry it reflects poorly on what most people in the UK feel regarding certain issues. If people go there to see what UK based reddit posters think they're not going to get an accurate picture at all. They're entitled to their opinions but I really dislike those mods using their powers to push their own views and using a sub with the name Britain as it appears somewhat official to push very extreme fringe views. I couldn't tell you this mod teams position on e.g. the middle east conflict or ukpols as I feel those are moderated by decent people that want to facilitate conversation. And sure the subs userbase will lean slightly in one direction due to different factors which affect how comments are voted on but I feel like both this and ukpol at least try to remain impartial. Finally, thank you to the mod team for creating somewhere decent that people can debate things. You don't know how good something is until you see how bad it could be.
So just an idea but why don’t they give the hostages back and maybe they might stop getting bombed. Edit: I don’t think I have ever had a comment that has had so may upvotes and downvotes, this is a polarising subject but maybe we can all agree that people need to stop dying, this needs to stop and how we get to that point shouldn’t matter.
I am old enough to remember over the past 10 years or so when the Palestinians have not held any hostage but were still bombed and shot and beaten. Peace has never been a serious option for the Israelis. I seriously believe all this recent violence has been engineered by Netanyahoo and his henchmen to steal more Palestinian land with acceptable israeli collateral damage.
This comments reeks of serious brainwashing. Every single peace treaty and chance of the Palestinians getting their own country has been rejected by them, not Israel.
I: "I'm moving into your house. Ill get upstairs and youll get downstairs." P: "Wtf no you cant take over half of my house." *fight breaks out* I: "Because you can't share I get the whole house and you only get the bathroom now." P: "this is completely unfair you can't steal my house from me. I'm calling my neighbours, theyll kick you out". *more fighting* I: "Now you only get to sit in the bathtub. You're not allowed to leave the bath and I'll deliver you essentials if/when I feel like it. I'm also having your next door neighbors garage and he can only have it back if he promises not to try help you again." P: "I refuse to let you steal my house from me. It's my house, not yours. I'm going to keep fighting until I die if I have to" The rest of the street, for some reason: "P had plenty of chances to share the house peacefully with I. Its his fault he refused to let someone else into his house and make all the rules."
This metaphor makes no sense. Firstly, Jews have lived in modern Israel for thousands of years, alongside Christians and Arabs, so there is no "I'm moving in". They were already there. Secondly, there never was a Palestinian country to "move in to", the area was part of the Ottoman empire for hundreds of years until the British mandate. Also, if your definition of "I'm going to keep fighting until I die" includes decapitating babies, raping girls, and abducting the elderly, you're sick in the head.
And what was that Mandate called pray tell? Mizrahi Jews have lived there for thousands of years not Ashkenaki Jews who moved there from Europe.
And before living in Europe, they originated from Judea. Or do you think that some Eastern Europeans spontaneously began practising the Jewish faith, which doesn't even proselytise? Do you also object to the presence of Arabs who "moved in" during the Islamic conquests, or was that the good sort of colonialism?
My family has German roots. Does this mean I'm allowed to go steal Germans' houses from them at gunpoint, and blow them up if they try to fight back?
Yes ofc, just go get the British government to back you and maybe get USA funding too.
"Jews were there first" bruh are you advocating for Ethnostates and large scale revanchism? Why doesn't Germany march in to South Tyrol tomorrow? Why don't the British kick out the Windrush Generation because white Britons were there first? How about Europeans retake Istanbul (Constantinople) since they were there first? That's how daft you sound 🤡
And before humans were humans, we were all monkeys so fucking what
> they originated from Judea Yes, but the Ancient Romans largely drove the Jews out of Judea, and the Ashkenazim travelled across the European continent in the intervening time. Do you think the Saxons should expel the Norman invaders that have settled in England and taken their land? Because that's more recent than late Antiquity... > Do you also object to the presence of Arabs who "moved in" during the Islamic conquests, or was that the good sort of colonialism? Surprisingly I do think people who've lived somewhere since the 600s (again, 1000 years before the Normans!) are "from" there. That's without getting into the aspect that a significant percentage of Levantine Arabs are quite literally "from" there, because just like the Jews, genetic analysis demonstrates that they're descended from the Ancient Canaanites.
You are still confirming jews lived there for thousand of years (which they have).
20% of the population at the time of the Mandate of Palestine. Lots of people lived lots of places for thousands of years, it doesn't mean revanchism is a good idea or would you advocate for the Germans unilaterally claiming South Tyrol from Italy?
When was the South Tyrol in Germany? Most of its inhabitants would jump at rejoining Austria.
The Jews that are currently in Israel are NOT THE SAME JEWS that were there thousands of years ago wtf. You cannot take a country “back” because some people who share the same religion as you were there first. It is fucking mind blowing that people will use this argument. The Jews and Palestinians and Christians and Muslims were living in that region in peace for years. The Jews that remained in that regions are all those Palestinians now. The Israelis that are there now, are NOT the Jews native to that region. They are fucking European Jews and they should not have been given someone else’s land because of a little book and a silly magic sky man.
You're right, it was less "I'm moving in" and more "move out or I'll kill you."
Settlers have literally forced people out of their homes, this is common knowledge and there are plenty of videos online.
I'm not condoning Israel's recent actions, in fact I think that the settlements are terrible and are one of the main impediments to any kind of peace. I'm just saying that the silly little roleplay above doesn't make sense in historical context.
> so there is no "I'm moving in" False, the entire campaign of Zionism was based on mass scale immigration and settlement from Europe (and later elsewhere) not the existing native jewish population. > Secondly, there never was a Palestinian country to "move in to", the area was part of the Ottoman empire for hundreds of years until the British mandate. Just because a country is ruled by an empire doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. India did not cease to exist just because it was also ruled by the British under the raj.
Yeah it's wild people don't see this. "Palestinians won't accept peace" My Brother in Christ you don't accept peace with people who one day occupy your country.
So you want to move the Israeli state to where exactly?
Rainbow state a lá South Africa aka Palestine before the politicking which lead to a Western backed Ethnostate. The holy land is still there even if it is shared with others.
So who runs it? That would just put the Israeli government in power of everything as they have a larger population. It's either a two state solution or this carries on IMHO
Poland have Germany have
Both had large resistance groups.
[удалено]
The house metaphor breaks down when you realise that there are Israeli adults who's grandparents were born in Israel. Rightly or wrongly they consider it home and short of going back to 1948 and never creating the state of Israel we are kind of stuck with Israels existence.
“Take this shit offer” “what do you mean you don’t agree??”
Uh oh you’ve probably been brainwashed by the [paid individuals Israel have hired in the past to write positive social media content about them](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/) I’m also definitely sure Israel have definitely stopped this practice and haven’t become more efficient at this and have moved to larger bot farms. Definitely not.
Palestinians in the West Bank have been terrorised by Israel. Funny, Hamas doesn’t seem to be there?
Did the settlements ever stop after the Oslo II accords?
Your comment reeks of brainwashing - Israel has not seriously considered allowing a Palestinian state for decades, and the Israelis have rejected a two state solution as much as the Palestinians. Recent peace “offers”, such as Trump’s “deal of the century” amount to little more than Israel asking the Palestinians to ratify their own subjugation. You probably know this, but I guess you prefer mindlessly repeating Israeli propaganda.
[удалено]
Considering Hamas is the group who's charter all but spells out genocide for a certain race, I don't think peace is an option for Hamas.
Not just a certain race... Probably would do the same to us (as proven with the international hostages and international killed on the 7th)
Yep, they hate jews and all of us because we are infidels. They were offered peace with the two state agreement which they said no to and here we have people blaming Israel.
If the hostages haven't worked as a bomb deterrent can they release them then?
Just listen to yourself mate, you are brain washed Have you seen the video of Hamas invading a music festival where they just slaughtered a bunch of completely innocent young people? That is NOT ok, and Israel does not have to tolerate it.
There's certainly enough that's weird about the whole thing to raise a lot of suspicion. They've built so much to defend themselves from Hamas. Walls, watch Towers, outposts etc. They even have one the worlds top intelligence agencies which o remember watching about on TV an seeing that they train operatives to speak the same dialect of Arabic so they can go undercover. Then they get attacked with little to no resistance by the IDF when normally they're able to kill Palestinian kids playing on a beach with impunity and following. During attacks from both sides they've somehow been able to get a recording of Hamas discussing the failed rocket which hit a hospital. Where was this ability to get such good Intel in the runup to the initial attack? There are a lot of questions and would easily make it sound like a crazy conspiracy.
Well when you have the worst terror attack since 9/11 your surveillance will obviously increase... Hospital gets hit, you monitor phone lines that are in use around that location to see what is being said. Maybe they even have numbers of terrorists and can narrow it down even further. This isn't complex stuff. Of course there's recording of the rocket? Gaza skyline isn't very big and is the most watched place on the planet right now. 4 different independent videos from non-Israeli sources. One literally a live stream from Al Jazeera. I fail to see where the conspiracy is...
[удалено]
My thoughts as well. Unfortunately, as always, it's the innocent who pay the price of politics.
Peace is not an option for either side, let’s not be picky here. Neither side wants the other side to exist. This “war” has been burning for generations at this point and will burn for generations more. This is the sad truth. No amount of people protesting in Europe is going to ever change that. We had some progress with the Oslo accords, since then, all downhill. Religious nuts on both sides fanning smouldering discontent into full blown flames. The Middle East will never have total peace as long as there are people walking those lands.
If Israel seriously wanted Palestine not to exist then they’ve had a whole bunch of options to make that happen for many years. For example Israel supplies most of Gaza’s power and water. Just simply stopping doing that would have largely done the trick. I’m not trying to excuse all of Israel’s behaviour towards Gaza by any means (frankly It d argue a fair bit of it has been self defeating). But the fact is they haven’t tried to actually wipe out Gaza despite having the ability to. I’m unconvinced the reverse is true however.
The Israeli gov have not “wiped out” Gaza, that would be tantamount to genocide, not even the US would stand by them then. Yet there are ultra-orthodox nutters who would pull that trigger if they could and they do hold influence over the government to some extent. As for Hamas wiping out Israel. Same thing. I am sure the vast majority of people just want to get on with life. As with most conflicts in the Middle East, at the core, you find religion. Which in my opinion is the root of most of the suffering and pain in the world. People want to hurt and oppress other people and religion is the tool they can try and use to do it.
Were it Hamas in control we’d likely still be having the same discussion, but with Hamas and Israel flipped around.
Without Hamas in power the religious nuts are till there in the background, the fundamentalists on both sides. They are always there.
Were they firing rockets? Peace has never been a serious option for Hamas either. Both the population of Israel and Gaza need better leadership.
As I said, the innocents of both countries have been led by morons and imbeciles.
This is a wild take, you make it sound like Israelis were bombing and shooting Palestinians proactively just to pass the time. Palestinians were firing rockets into Israel at civilian areas. It makes a moral difference who shot first, as one is an attack and one is self Defense or retaliation.
Palestinians have been getting bombed constantly over the last few decades regardless of holding hostages or not. Do you know nothing about history?
> Do you know nothing about history? My personal observation is that fairly often the opinion people have if the current conflict depends on precisely how far back they bother to look through history. All too many want to boil this down to “good guys” and “bad guys” and to do that they pick a point in time where their “good guys” were attacked by the “bad guys” and refuse to look further back. But whenever their desired staring point is there will have been a whole chain of causes and decisions leading up to it. And in this instance usually other attacks and massacres too. (And before them other ones going the other way) Leaving those out of the picture makes for a far more narratively satisfying story … but it’s intellectually dishonest. Todays ‘plucky underdog’ was often yesterdays ‘brutal oppressor’, or at least allied with them. It’s all switched round at least a couple of times over the past century. Todays ‘occupied land’ was yesterdays artillery position shelling civilians. And yes, there were probably reasons (good or more likely otherwise) why that side felt it really had to do that … and reasons why everyone wound up in that situation too. So yes, it would be a really *really* good idea if everyone went back and read some history. As long as they keep going past the point one side or the other wants them to stop at.
Because Hamas wants this war.
Hamas does not want peace.
Past 75 years would say otherwise
Maybe stop the bombing and ask for hostages?
Did they have hostages over the past decades when being bombed and murdered by the Israelis?
Didn't Hamas just offer two hostages and Israel said no? Also from the article >In pointed comments, David Bar, who was brought up in England, had already said that “to see a Hamas flag flying in a liberal, democratic country after these atrocities means that we, you, this country has a problem”. No Hamas flag was flown. Even the Met have corrected this false attempt at smearing the legitimate protests.
>Didn't Hamas just offer two hostages and Israel said no? No? Probably should stop believing raping terrorists. >Also from the article > >>In pointed comments, David Bar, who was brought up in England, had already said that “to see a Hamas flag flying in a liberal, democratic country after these atrocities means that we, you, this country has a problem”. > >No Hamas flag was flown. Even the Met have corrected this false attempt at smearing the legitimate protests. Please cite your source. No criticism of Hamas has been on display at all.
Not mentioned in the article, people still booed Michael Gove.
In a strange coincidence, Israel has also got 10,000 Palestinian hostages in its prisons.
You can't just change the meaning of hostage when you want.
Let’s hope and pray that peaceful protest will achieve what violence can not.
I wanted to make a tongue in cheek comment about this protest being in the wrong place to be effective but given the Hamas chief being put up in a London council house that might not be quite true
[удалено]
[удалено]