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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

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621–630 of 693 posts

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#621
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, you've gone pretty far off the deep end. You'd do well to remember there are two sides to any conflict (as my parents drilled into us whenever my brother and I would blame each other). In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint, evacuating people from a target first when possible, firing warning shots before the real attack. Hamas on the other hand is indiscriminately firing over 3000 rockets…

> the Palestinians, but they're hardly the good guys Do you need to write "the Palestinians"? Sounds as if everyone were to blame for the rockets, but less than 1% of the people in Gaza, are in Hamas military wing. Would it be weird to write "Hamas" instead about those who fire rockets? Or "terrorists in Hamas". (but please don't blame everyone for what a few are doing) And in the same way, I wouldn't say that the Is…

No. I feel for the plight of the Palestinian people. I don't give a rat's ass for Hamas.

Don't forget Hamas is the legitimate elected government in Gaza, you cannot just say they're a fringe group not supported by the people of Gaza.

Now Palestinians also encompass the West Bank where Hamas is not the government. But part of the reason for these rocket attacks is Hamas trying to demonstrate that they're the representatives of all Palestinians in a bid to rule both Gaza and the West Bank. Regardless of their actual chances of pulling that off, it does seem to be part of the calculus here.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#622
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, you've gone pretty far off the deep end. You'd do well to remember there are two sides to any conflict (as my parents drilled into us whenever my brother and I would blame each other). In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint, evacuating people from a target first when possible, firing warning shots before the real attack. Hamas on the other hand is indiscriminately firing over 3000 rockets…

> You'd do well to remember there are two sides to any conflict (as my parents drilled into us whenever my brother and I would blame each other). What if the entire world was watching while you shaved your brothers head? Your lies would be pointless, because the entire world has seen what you were doing. > In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint Almost 200 dead in days. If you call that restrain…

> Almost 200 dead in days. If you call that restraint, I think it's you who's gone off the deep end. Restraint would be doing nothing because barely anything has been done to you. Or shooting 10 Palestinian freedom fighters. That would be restraint. Firing missiles into a populated city isn't restraint.

It's totally reasonable to attack your enemy with the intent of crippling their capabilities of harming you. Standard fare in any conflict. Doing that when the enemy is using their own population as a human shield and only having 200 casualties is an achievement of sorts.

> Surely you jest. Those fireworks do almost nothing. A single Israeli missile is more deadly than 3000 Hamas rockets, so you have it backwards.

Thank God they only have rockets and not the military power of the IDF. I'm pretty sure they'd use those nukes if they had them. As I said there's a big power imbalance here. But it's not the effectiveness of the attacks that determine their morality.

> No you don't. Quit the propaganda.

I don't appreciate you calling my feelings propaganda or claiming to understand my state of mind better than me. Both ridiculous claims.

> How is defending yourself terrorism?

The IDF only attacked them after they fired 500 rockets at Israeli cities, an act of terror in every sense of the definition. That's not defending yourself. What the Israelis are doing, that is defending yourself.

> Next you'll tell me that the Jews who fought back against Hitler were terrorists.

If they were attacking civilian targets with the intent of causing innocent casualties - sure, that'd be terrorism. I'm unaware of any instances of that happening, but I don't claim to know everything.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#623
post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing land and people here.

DSingularity above is talking about 2% owning 8% of the land, with "92% accept that so much of what is rightfully theirs would be forcefully taken from them". If you are saying I am confusing land and people, what is the 2% and 8% number referring to in the above comment? People and land? If so, what people, and what land?

[deleted]

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#624
post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing land and people here.

DSingularity above is talking about 2% owning 8% of the land, with "92% accept that so much of what is rightfully theirs would be forcefully taken from them". If you are saying I am confusing land and people, what is the 2% and 8% number referring to in the above comment? People and land? If so, what people, and what land?

At the time of the British mandate the Jewish minority — 2% of the population — owned a total of 8% of the land. So, my point was, why do you blame the Arabs for not accepting the partition plan which came to impose a forceful transfer of land from the majority to the minority. When you consider the facts you can clearly see why the Palestinians opposed the initial partition plan of Palestine.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#625
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not baseless - and you provide no evidence that it is baseless, instead of finding the evidence claimed for it and then somehow proving it's not credible; ironic that your response is baseless.

The proof burden is on the person advancing the conspiracy theory, not on the person asking for proof. Since no evidence was given, it is baseless.

Just because they didn't write an essay to cite evidence doesn't make it baseless. LUL

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is still a Palestinian nowadays though. The reason why there are less Christian Palestinians is because a lot of them were deported or fled shortly after the Nakba. A lot of them would come back if Palestine was restored, but most of them are legally prevented by Israel from coming back. Not even Hamas or Hezbollah wants Palestine to be a single religion or single ethnicity state, so I don't really understan…

The Christian population in the Christian towns of the Westbank (Bethlehem) and in Gaza have been decreasing steadily for the past 70 years - this has nothing to do with the occupation of the Westbank and Gaza and everything to do with persecution by the local population. This trend is not confined to just the Westbank and Gaza and is in fact a trend that is occurring across the entire Middle East where in the past 1…

If by persecution by the locals you mean the Jewish Israelis — sure. But if you are trying to imply that the Muslim Arabs persecuted the Christians get out of here.

By wide margins the European Christian crusaders killed more Arab Christians then any other ethnic group. Palestinian Christians and Muslims have coexisted for a long, long time. To the point that the holiest of Christian churches are often entrusted to Muslim custodianship. How else would you explain that?

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing any shortage of pictures from the ground. I mean, I agree that targeting news agencies would be a step you would take if you wanted to prevent images from the ground but you would have to be far more sweeping in your approach. If the goal is to prevent news images from making their way out of Palestine this may be the most abject policy failure the world has ever witnessed.

> you would have to be far more sweeping in your approach Would you or could it be seen as deterrence? > this may be the most abject policy failure the world has ever witnesse I mean there are a lot of opeds in Hebrew (some lamenting this supposed failure) and Arabic press right now saying exactly that, so I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

> Would you or could it be seen as deterrence?

Given we are still seeing plenty of images out of Palestine and Gaza, even from news orgs, the current approach is plainly and objectively insufficient to the purported goal.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as i can tell you are advocating to punish the residents of pallestine because some time ago, when most of the current residents were either children or unborn, someone else did a bad thing. To me that seems exceptionally unjust.

How am I saying anything of the sort? Regardless of when the people were born, it is a fact that they do not have a functioning government. It is a fact that Hamas derailed the effort to establish that government, and that Hamas has repeatedly interfered with those efforts over the past 15 years and continues to do so now. I am not "advocating" anything, I am simply stating the reality of the Palestinian situation to…

I think Hamas is a horrible organization. But if we could eliminate the entirety of the hamas leadership today, in a single moment, another similar organization would spring up because israel is creating the conditions that encourage such an organization to exist.

Israel holds all the cards here, not the palestinians. Not hamas. Israel is the party that must step up and provide a real solution. Israel's solution over the past decade has been to contain the palestinians, lock their borders, and knock over their buildings whenever they get too uppity. This policy will never result in a reduction of terrorists. It will never result in removing the conditions that allow hamas to exist.

Imagine if you are a 20 year old gazan (older than the average gazan) and all you know, your entire life, is israeli control of the strip. The death tolls aren't high enough that everyone has a dead family member, but i wouldn't be surprised if everyone knows someone the IDF killed. This is how america created terrorists in the middle east. This is how Israel is creating terrorists in their own backyard. Foreign politicians enforcing their will, through force, upon a people that don't want it.

Hamas isn't long past, the fact is Hamas is not particularly important. Hamas is a symptom, not the problem. If Israel had the will to fix their structural problems, Hamas would have no reason to exist.

Hamas is throwing unguided missles randomly and Israel is hitting them back by leveling buildings. Hamas is no more than a small child throwing a tantrum with no possibility to actually cause a change. All they can do is scream louder and hope someone else will do something. Again, Hamas is not the problem, they are a symptom of Israel's policy regarding palestinians.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDF provided the evidence to US intelligence, and apparently that hasn’t made its way to the US state department yet.

That is absolutely ridiculous. The US state department is on top of things. There is no way they do not have this information if it exists.

More info was sent: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/SJA7sEZYd

"Blinken: U.S. received more info on Gaza tower bombing

American top diplomat says he cannot comment on further information received through intelligence channels on the destruction of the building that housed Associated Press, Al Jazeera offices"

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have your beliefs, but that doesn't make them facts. Meanwhile a cleptocratic regime is firing missiles at civlians using as launching pads hospitals, kindergartens or office buildings housing international journalists.

>office buildings housing international journalists. Weird how those journalist agencies themselves missed that. What's the slow colonisation with settlements about? Liberation of land controlled by evil terrorists? Also as far as Israel is concerned there is no recognised regime or other such government there. It's apparently a stateless area with stateless people to be slowly ethnically cleansed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-57136883

"Israeli PM Netanyahu defends Gaza press building bombing

Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that destroying the Jala high-rise block in Gaza on Saturday was justified."

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