I’m struggling with everything on this article. On the one hand anytime a hostage has been freed, that’s good news. On the other, at what cost.
40 000 dead. That’s the easy stat. Amputations are also incredibly high. Most of them kids and performed without anesthetic.
This is the first time the IDF has rescued hostages.
So I’m sitting here with my initial feeling of ‘oh, that’s good news’ ,and then I think about the wider picture and context, and it doesn’t seem so good anymore.
Nah, that was the one that Egypt fucked up. There had not been an actual agreed upon hostage transfer since the first one. Hamas also won’t give actual information on the hostages. This whole thing is just war crimes the whole way down.
So you think we should negotiate with terrorists? Give them something to make them stop what they’re doing today, and they definitely won’t commit more terrorism later in the hope of getting more things later.
Spain did successfully negotiate with ETA, and there is no more ETA today. Colombia’s government negotiated with the FARC, and the immense majority of the FARC have gotten peacefully integrated in their country’s parliamentary system.
If I looked into those organizations, I would bet they were probably at the point of talking reasonable concessions, and probably resembled a proper government, albeit radical or militant.
That would require Hamas to care about Palestinians. Their leadership is a bunch of wealthy shitheads living it up in the UAE. They hold a dictatorship over Palestine and refuse to have elections.
To actually get Hamas there, you probably need to target the rich people giving orders.
Maybe the Palestinians themselves devalue their own lives compared to Israeli lives. Just look at when they agreed to a ceasefire and traded hostages for prisoners: each hostage was worth multiple prisoners released by Israel.
This is also noticeable when Hamas use their own population as human shields, exemplified by when they hide their soldiers and weapons in hospitals and schools. Or when they blend in with civilians on purpose by not using any combatant uniform like the IDF do. They really don’t care for their own civilians. These are only useful for acting as human shields and, if they’re killed or injured, strike a pose for NatGeo-style photos in their attempts to appeal to western sentiment.
Maybe the Palestinians themselves devalue their own lives compared to Israeli lives.
You should just stop right there. If your logic depends on saying “they actually don’t value their lives as much as others” then please stop and ask “what the hell is wrong with yourself?”. People who think like this probably value their life least of all. /s
When I see how easily the Hamas uses their own population as sacrifices, I have doubts they really value their lives. Remember: the Gazan population elected the Hamas with more than 60% of the votes. It’s not too farfetched to say a significant part of the Gazans think like the Hamas in terms of sacrifice, and by extension, how they value their lives.
50% of the population of Gaza was under 18 based on Israeli numbers for Gaza prior to October. This means 50% of the population wasn’t even alive when that vote happened since it happened 18 years ago!
Fun fact about that vote; Hamas represented themselves as significantly more moderate in the run-up to the election only to drop that the moment they got elected and murder all their political opposition. They have since continued to murder outspoken political dissidents and quash any efforts for new elections.
A twenty-year-old election that was run on lies tells us nothing about the feelings of the people of Gaza in the current day. It doesn’t tell us how much they support Hamas now and it certainly tells us nothing about how much they value their lives.
Though your twisted rationlisation tells me a lot about how you value their lives.
You don’t believe me? Those who are immersed in islamist ideology think quite differently from people of christian heritage (even if they’re not christian themselves, but they inherit a set of values). For the islamists, self-sacrifice if a good thing if done for a holy cause. That’s what motivated the plane terrorists from 9/11: their religion made them believe that what they were doing was just. And as a reward, they’d have the company of multiple virgins in paradise.
In the western countries, due to the inherited christain values, people value life and reject self-sacrifice. Suicide is considered a sin, because the person is throwing away the body given by God, which is a holy thing. That’s why the USA and other west-aligned countries pressure Israel to preserve the life of innocent Gazans: that’s what best aligns with their moral values. If a bank is being robbed with the use of hostages, the police will do its best to preserve the life of the innocent, even negotiate with the robbers if necessary.
That’s a way of thinking that’s the polar opposite of the muslims. For them, if the cause is holy, self-sacrifice is allowed and encouraged. They’re indoctrinated in these values since they’re children. What the Hamas is doing is exploiting the western values for their benefit. That’s why they took hostages, because they knew it would be a huge leverage against Israel. And that’s why they’re always flaunting the number of casualities (which are obviously inflated, because it helps their goals), in an attempt to reach the western countries’ moral values and turn it into pressure for Isreal accept an indefinite ceasefire agreement, even a bad one.
Consider this: if the roles were reversed: Gaza had immense millitary strenght and Israel was the poor country, the Gazans would invade Isreal in a heartbeat and would care much less about Isrealli innocent civilians: for them the cause is holy, so it is justified to kill indiscriminately.
What is it that I disbelieve exactly? You’re here trying to convince others that a group of people don’t value their lives as much as you do. I believe you when you say that you don’t value groups of human lives equally, I just don’t share that view.
Those who are immersed in islamist ideology think quite differently from people of christian heritage
I’ll be honest, I didn’t bother reading the rest of the wall of text after this. Enjoy your crusade and may you die as you have lived.
No, no it doesn’t. Suicide is a sin but Christianity absolutely glorifies self-sacrifice for the religion. I mean you’ve heard of martyrs right? It became a core tenant of the religion in the early roman days that dying for the faith gets you straight into heaven. Glorifying dying for the faith is a massive part of Christianity too. In Islam committing suicide is a sin unless you’re self-sacrificing yourself for the faith and dying for the faith also gets you straight into heaven. Just like in Christianity. They’re both Abrahamic faiths and have a lot of the same roots.
So yeah what the fuck are you talking about? They are no more self-sacrificing than anyone else. They’re just fucking people. They’re all just people. Why can’t we just treat them like people?
I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen any independent verification that Hamas has been using hospitals and schools for bases, but I’m positive that there’s been debunked Israeli reports that schools and hospitals have been used as Hama’s bases.
Same thing for human shields. IDF admits to using Palestinians as shields. To my knowledge, there’s no Hamas equivalent.
This ‘war’ isn’t about Hamas anyways. If it was, there wouldn’t be 1000 people killed in the west bank. Hamas isn’t in the west bank. Why is the IDF letting people kill Palestinians in the west bank?
Likewise, there’s no independent verification when the Hamas minister of healthcare periodically announces the number of casualties, but the media tends to take it at face value as it was the crystalline truth. When this is most likely an inflated number to keep Israel in the worst light possible, and to exert political pressure for the USA to stop supporting Israel with weapons of war. It’s all with the intent of the Hamas getting away with it.
The Hamas has a history of lying and deception in order to support the narrative in their favor.
There’s the incident of Hamas accusing Israel of bombing an hospital last year, which the media widely reported as truth before checking, but in the end it was in a building a block away from the hospital. Since this embarrassment the media has been more careful before confirming anything coming from Hamas official sources.
Also the Hamas had a guy that multitasked as an News Reporter, Combatant, Healthcare Professional, Bloodied Victim. This was reported in social media, a guy from Hamas appearing in photos doing all those things in different occasions. Give this guy an Oscar already!
The Hamas does not hesitate to manipulate facts to confirm their intended narrative. Their track record is tarnished at this point. But, to be honest, an organization that takes hostages as a leverage to negotiate a ceasefire in a war they themselves started, from this point it was already very clear they’d do anything to achieve their goals. From using civilians as human shields to lying without shame, these things are just the cherry on top of the heinous acts they committed as the catalyst of the war. They were not trustworthy from the start.
And what you say about “IDF using Palestinians as shields” makes no sense. That’s what the Hamas do, actually. The Hamas see their civilians as disposable sacrifice for a religious end. If an IDF soldier took a Palestinians civilian literally as a human shield in order to avoid being shot by a Hamas militant, the militant would shoot both of them without hesitation, because they see their civilians as sacrifices in a religious sense. Just an addendum, the Islamic State leaders used to say “we love death like you love life” as a point of comparison of the radical islamic worldview compared to the western worldview. That’s the kind of thinking that drives the Hamas, and that’s why they’re not ashamed to call for the extermination of all Jews as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
About the deaths in the West Bank, I’m not too knowledgeable about this to comment further.
The media isn’t taking the numbers at face value, unless you’re also making the claim of the UN and UNICEF because they use the same numbers. The fact is, given the wide destruction, the actual numbers are much worse. If you can’t admit that last point then I assume you’re not familiar with what percentage of homes have been destroyed or how many dead journalists and their families have been murdered.
I can’t see how the UN and UNICEF can get to an accurate number for the number of casualities, as most bodies are in a zone of war. And just because a building was blown up doesn’t mean there were civilians inside. Most civilians are in tents in refugee camps. I’m not trying to say there’s no casualities in a war, but that it’s impossible to count all bodies right now because of the warfighting, and there’s probably bodies under rubble as well. Only when the war is over it’ll be possible to get an exact number.
Both statements can coexist without any contradiction.
If no numbers can be trusted (due to loggistical concerns I cited in my previous comment), how can Hammas be so sure of the numbers it gives to the press? Not only would Hammas’ numbers be innacurate if they were acting in good faith, but they’d be outright fake in case of bad faith on their part (most likely scenario).
Again, the UN has looked at the numbers and found them to be reasonable. And we would have more numbers if the IDF didn’t kill a record number of journalists (and their families).
I’d take this with a grain of salt because it’s just the tale of one man. But if it’s true, it’s sad becuase it would represent the wheel of hatred turning.
Three months ago the IDF also rescued 3 hostages by killing many civilians. They bomb entire neighbourhoods to rubble as a distraction mechanism for their teams to go in.
Imagine how much resources hamas spent on keeping these hostages and how many lives could be saved if they just released them all before the ground operation was started.
They don’t have any leverage, because the people calling the shots in Israel (and to be clear, that is the likes of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who want effectively no Arabs river to sea, and hence Netanyahu, who I think would do just about any atrocity no matter how abhorrent just to stay in power and out of jail) value the pretext to invade far more than they value the lives of the hostages.
So the hostages do not actually give Hamas any leverage over Israel - hence why Israel is not willing to agree to anything. Hamas should not have taken civilians hostage or targeted civilians in the first place, and they should release them. That is still an ongoing war crime, even if it is overshadowed by bigger ones being perpetrated by the Israeli side.
Hamas never had a chance of winning on military might.
The best chance for a good outcome for the Palestinian people is through raising awareness of the plight of the Palestinians, resulting in international pressure. The pressure against Israel arising now is because of the severity of Israel’s war crimes, while Hamas’ war crimes are one of the key talking points used to justify not taking action. Hamas could help Palestine win the information space war by taking the high road; winning a military war is futile for them.
While it is not fair to punish Palestinian civilians for the war crimes of Hamas just because the interests of Palestinian civilians are aligned to Hamas’ goals, there are many people who don’t see it that way. Palestinian statehood (or a non-apartheid one-state solution) would now get far more international support if the Palestinian militants shifted to peaceful resistance.
What leverage? You’re saying hostages are needed to save hamas members? Well that seems to be working pretty well huh? Remind me again why they were taken in the first place?
You should become a negotiator.
What negotiations? It was a perfect opportunity to show that your cause is a good one, and not to Israel. Instead they kept the hostages… For what purpose? To have “leverage”? Well let’s see how that will help them with anything. Maybe there will be more news about released hostages that you could again associate with Israel trying to release its civilians, not with hamas doing right things.
I repeat: that violence did not serve the purpose and it was never meant to. It’s useless to justify their actions based on their sufferings alone. It’s obvious hamas never seeked anything except violence.
I’m struggling with everything on this article. On the one hand anytime a hostage has been freed, that’s good news. On the other, at what cost. 40 000 dead. That’s the easy stat. Amputations are also incredibly high. Most of them kids and performed without anesthetic. This is the first time the IDF has rescued hostages. So I’m sitting here with my initial feeling of ‘oh, that’s good news’ ,and then I think about the wider picture and context, and it doesn’t seem so good anymore.
And half a dozen months ago they could have had a ceasefire to have them released, along with the ones that STILL aren’t released.
Nah, that was the one that Egypt fucked up. There had not been an actual agreed upon hostage transfer since the first one. Hamas also won’t give actual information on the hostages. This whole thing is just war crimes the whole way down.
“we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and that stance is “non-negotiable.” If only these terrorists would just stop and do what we want.
So you think we should negotiate with terrorists? Give them something to make them stop what they’re doing today, and they definitely won’t commit more terrorism later in the hope of getting more things later.
Maybe just stick to eating ass, Adam.
Spain did successfully negotiate with ETA, and there is no more ETA today. Colombia’s government negotiated with the FARC, and the immense majority of the FARC have gotten peacefully integrated in their country’s parliamentary system.
If I looked into those organizations, I would bet they were probably at the point of talking reasonable concessions, and probably resembled a proper government, albeit radical or militant.
Hamas is not at that point.
So, how many bombs still need to be dropped on Palestine to get them there?
That would require Hamas to care about Palestinians. Their leadership is a bunch of wealthy shitheads living it up in the UAE. They hold a dictatorship over Palestine and refuse to have elections.
To actually get Hamas there, you probably need to target the rich people giving orders.
Exactly.
So you don’t know anything about those terrorist organisations, don’t want to read up on them, and instead just assume.
Just to be clear: are you talking about the Palestinian terrorists or the Israeli terrorists?
Yes.
Maybe you’re right, the world tries to negotiate with israel all the time to no avail.
Well from the other side the IDF are the terrorists, since they’re terrorising Gaza indiscriminately.
I wouldn’t negotiate with Israel either
Maybe the Palestinians themselves devalue their own lives compared to Israeli lives. Just look at when they agreed to a ceasefire and traded hostages for prisoners: each hostage was worth multiple prisoners released by Israel.
This is also noticeable when Hamas use their own population as human shields, exemplified by when they hide their soldiers and weapons in hospitals and schools. Or when they blend in with civilians on purpose by not using any combatant uniform like the IDF do. They really don’t care for their own civilians. These are only useful for acting as human shields and, if they’re killed or injured, strike a pose for NatGeo-style photos in their attempts to appeal to western sentiment.
You should just stop right there. If your logic depends on saying “they actually don’t value their lives as much as others” then please stop and ask “what the hell is wrong with yourself?”. People who think like this probably value their life least of all. /s
When I see how easily the Hamas uses their own population as sacrifices, I have doubts they really value their lives. Remember: the Gazan population elected the Hamas with more than 60% of the votes. It’s not too farfetched to say a significant part of the Gazans think like the Hamas in terms of sacrifice, and by extension, how they value their lives.
50% of the population of Gaza was under 18 based on Israeli numbers for Gaza prior to October. This means 50% of the population wasn’t even alive when that vote happened since it happened 18 years ago! Fun fact about that vote; Hamas represented themselves as significantly more moderate in the run-up to the election only to drop that the moment they got elected and murder all their political opposition. They have since continued to murder outspoken political dissidents and quash any efforts for new elections.
A twenty-year-old election that was run on lies tells us nothing about the feelings of the people of Gaza in the current day. It doesn’t tell us how much they support Hamas now and it certainly tells us nothing about how much they value their lives.
Though your twisted rationlisation tells me a lot about how you value their lives.
Just know that this accusation you make is a confession of your views and you should investigate what that says about yourself on your own.
You don’t believe me? Those who are immersed in islamist ideology think quite differently from people of christian heritage (even if they’re not christian themselves, but they inherit a set of values). For the islamists, self-sacrifice if a good thing if done for a holy cause. That’s what motivated the plane terrorists from 9/11: their religion made them believe that what they were doing was just. And as a reward, they’d have the company of multiple virgins in paradise.
In the western countries, due to the inherited christain values, people value life and reject self-sacrifice. Suicide is considered a sin, because the person is throwing away the body given by God, which is a holy thing. That’s why the USA and other west-aligned countries pressure Israel to preserve the life of innocent Gazans: that’s what best aligns with their moral values. If a bank is being robbed with the use of hostages, the police will do its best to preserve the life of the innocent, even negotiate with the robbers if necessary.
That’s a way of thinking that’s the polar opposite of the muslims. For them, if the cause is holy, self-sacrifice is allowed and encouraged. They’re indoctrinated in these values since they’re children. What the Hamas is doing is exploiting the western values for their benefit. That’s why they took hostages, because they knew it would be a huge leverage against Israel. And that’s why they’re always flaunting the number of casualities (which are obviously inflated, because it helps their goals), in an attempt to reach the western countries’ moral values and turn it into pressure for Isreal accept an indefinite ceasefire agreement, even a bad one.
Consider this: if the roles were reversed: Gaza had immense millitary strenght and Israel was the poor country, the Gazans would invade Isreal in a heartbeat and would care much less about Isrealli innocent civilians: for them the cause is holy, so it is justified to kill indiscriminately.
What is it that I disbelieve exactly? You’re here trying to convince others that a group of people don’t value their lives as much as you do. I believe you when you say that you don’t value groups of human lives equally, I just don’t share that view.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t bother reading the rest of the wall of text after this. Enjoy your crusade and may you die as you have lived.
You made the right choice.
Desperate people do desperate things
What the fuck
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No, no it doesn’t. Suicide is a sin but Christianity absolutely glorifies self-sacrifice for the religion. I mean you’ve heard of martyrs right? It became a core tenant of the religion in the early roman days that dying for the faith gets you straight into heaven. Glorifying dying for the faith is a massive part of Christianity too. In Islam committing suicide is a sin unless you’re self-sacrificing yourself for the faith and dying for the faith also gets you straight into heaven. Just like in Christianity. They’re both Abrahamic faiths and have a lot of the same roots.
So yeah what the fuck are you talking about? They are no more self-sacrificing than anyone else. They’re just fucking people. They’re all just people. Why can’t we just treat them like people?
I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen any independent verification that Hamas has been using hospitals and schools for bases, but I’m positive that there’s been debunked Israeli reports that schools and hospitals have been used as Hama’s bases.
Same thing for human shields. IDF admits to using Palestinians as shields. To my knowledge, there’s no Hamas equivalent.
This ‘war’ isn’t about Hamas anyways. If it was, there wouldn’t be 1000 people killed in the west bank. Hamas isn’t in the west bank. Why is the IDF letting people kill Palestinians in the west bank?
Likewise, there’s no independent verification when the Hamas minister of healthcare periodically announces the number of casualties, but the media tends to take it at face value as it was the crystalline truth. When this is most likely an inflated number to keep Israel in the worst light possible, and to exert political pressure for the USA to stop supporting Israel with weapons of war. It’s all with the intent of the Hamas getting away with it.
The Hamas has a history of lying and deception in order to support the narrative in their favor.
There’s the incident of Hamas accusing Israel of bombing an hospital last year, which the media widely reported as truth before checking, but in the end it was in a building a block away from the hospital. Since this embarrassment the media has been more careful before confirming anything coming from Hamas official sources.
Also the Hamas had a guy that multitasked as an News Reporter, Combatant, Healthcare Professional, Bloodied Victim. This was reported in social media, a guy from Hamas appearing in photos doing all those things in different occasions. Give this guy an Oscar already!
The Hamas does not hesitate to manipulate facts to confirm their intended narrative. Their track record is tarnished at this point. But, to be honest, an organization that takes hostages as a leverage to negotiate a ceasefire in a war they themselves started, from this point it was already very clear they’d do anything to achieve their goals. From using civilians as human shields to lying without shame, these things are just the cherry on top of the heinous acts they committed as the catalyst of the war. They were not trustworthy from the start.
And what you say about “IDF using Palestinians as shields” makes no sense. That’s what the Hamas do, actually. The Hamas see their civilians as disposable sacrifice for a religious end. If an IDF soldier took a Palestinians civilian literally as a human shield in order to avoid being shot by a Hamas militant, the militant would shoot both of them without hesitation, because they see their civilians as sacrifices in a religious sense. Just an addendum, the Islamic State leaders used to say “we love death like you love life” as a point of comparison of the radical islamic worldview compared to the western worldview. That’s the kind of thinking that drives the Hamas, and that’s why they’re not ashamed to call for the extermination of all Jews as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
About the deaths in the West Bank, I’m not too knowledgeable about this to comment further.
The media isn’t taking the numbers at face value, unless you’re also making the claim of the UN and UNICEF because they use the same numbers. The fact is, given the wide destruction, the actual numbers are much worse. If you can’t admit that last point then I assume you’re not familiar with what percentage of homes have been destroyed or how many dead journalists and their families have been murdered.
I can’t see how the UN and UNICEF can get to an accurate number for the number of casualities, as most bodies are in a zone of war. And just because a building was blown up doesn’t mean there were civilians inside. Most civilians are in tents in refugee camps. I’m not trying to say there’s no casualities in a war, but that it’s impossible to count all bodies right now because of the warfighting, and there’s probably bodies under rubble as well. Only when the war is over it’ll be possible to get an exact number.
Not sure if you realized, but you moved from “Hamas’s numbers can’t be trusted” to “we can’t trust any numbers because it’s war”.
Both statements can coexist without any contradiction. If no numbers can be trusted (due to loggistical concerns I cited in my previous comment), how can Hammas be so sure of the numbers it gives to the press? Not only would Hammas’ numbers be innacurate if they were acting in good faith, but they’d be outright fake in case of bad faith on their part (most likely scenario).
Again, the UN has looked at the numbers and found them to be reasonable. And we would have more numbers if the IDF didn’t kill a record number of journalists (and their families).
I’d probably trust Hamas numbers over the UN myself.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140920055606/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X_yEHXXxK00/UH3HG_uGwEI/AAAAAAAAKBw/L4IhER5Gz40/s1600/The+day+Israel+used+a+boy+aged+13+as+a+human+shield.jpg
https://worldcrunch.com/focus-israel-palestine-war/idf-using-human-shields
I’d take this with a grain of salt because it’s just the tale of one man. But if it’s true, it’s sad becuase it would represent the wheel of hatred turning.
I gave two examples…
Fuck of Nazis scum.
Three months ago the IDF also rescued 3 hostages by killing many civilians. They bomb entire neighbourhoods to rubble as a distraction mechanism for their teams to go in.
Those human shields had it coming. /S or I guess they’re human bait now?
Imagine how much resources hamas spent on keeping these hostages and how many lives could be saved if they just released them all before the ground operation was started.
Netanyahu said since November that even if all hostages were released he was going to invade anyway and not stop the war.
Even more reason to release them all then, and I’m appalled by how hamas was that stupid to not realize that.
Ahh yes, give away all your leverage when your enemy already stated he will murder you all.
You should become a negotiator.
They don’t have any leverage, because the people calling the shots in Israel (and to be clear, that is the likes of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who want effectively no Arabs river to sea, and hence Netanyahu, who I think would do just about any atrocity no matter how abhorrent just to stay in power and out of jail) value the pretext to invade far more than they value the lives of the hostages.
So the hostages do not actually give Hamas any leverage over Israel - hence why Israel is not willing to agree to anything. Hamas should not have taken civilians hostage or targeted civilians in the first place, and they should release them. That is still an ongoing war crime, even if it is overshadowed by bigger ones being perpetrated by the Israeli side.
Hamas never had a chance of winning on military might.
The best chance for a good outcome for the Palestinian people is through raising awareness of the plight of the Palestinians, resulting in international pressure. The pressure against Israel arising now is because of the severity of Israel’s war crimes, while Hamas’ war crimes are one of the key talking points used to justify not taking action. Hamas could help Palestine win the information space war by taking the high road; winning a military war is futile for them.
While it is not fair to punish Palestinian civilians for the war crimes of Hamas just because the interests of Palestinian civilians are aligned to Hamas’ goals, there are many people who don’t see it that way. Palestinian statehood (or a non-apartheid one-state solution) would now get far more international support if the Palestinian militants shifted to peaceful resistance.
What leverage? You’re saying hostages are needed to save hamas members? Well that seems to be working pretty well huh? Remind me again why they were taken in the first place?
What negotiations? It was a perfect opportunity to show that your cause is a good one, and not to Israel. Instead they kept the hostages… For what purpose? To have “leverage”? Well let’s see how that will help them with anything. Maybe there will be more news about released hostages that you could again associate with Israel trying to release its civilians, not with hamas doing right things.
This guy will start calling all of us hamas soon
Just think about how many lives could have been saved if Israel worked towards a two state solution
Yeah. October 7 surely didn’t make them start working on that, did it?
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I repeat: that violence did not serve the purpose and it was never meant to. It’s useless to justify their actions based on their sufferings alone. It’s obvious hamas never seeked anything except violence.
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Start reading what you’re replying to, please.
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Yes because Oct 7 happened apropos of nothing
You understand. It happened apropos, not in order to solve problems.
Use your words
Trying my best as a non-native. Feel free to hate my way of speaking.
Not trying to hate, just not understanding what point you were trying to make.