Israel formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday, setting the stage for a major military operation in Gaza as fighting rages on Israeli soil. The declaration comes after Hamas, an Islamist militant group, launched a surprise assault this weekend that has so far killed over 600 Israelis.

Saturday was the deadliest day in decades for Israel and came after months of surging violence between Palestinians and Israelis, with the long-running conflict now heading into uncharted and dangerous new territory. Questions remain over how the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus appeared to be caught off guard in one of the country’s worst security failures.

Over 400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as Israel responds with airstrikes in the densely-inhabited enclave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation, warning his country would take “mighty vengeance” and was readying for “a long and difficult war.”

He urged Palestinians living in Gaza to “leave now.”

  • @Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Netanyahu is saying that for show. It gives the Israeli government a blanket justification to ignore any collateral damage caused in this conflict because they will just claim that they warned them to leave.

    Does anybody really believe that the insanely sophisticated security apparatus of Mossad didn’t know these attacks were coming in advance? This has the same stink of the Bush administration ignoring repeated warnings of attacks by Al Qaeda pre-9/11 to justify war in the middle east all over again.

    • @ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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      271 year ago

      There’s going to be some warcrimes coming. I’m not looking forward to this, nor am I looking forward to the increase of Nazis and Communists using this as justification to tar all Jewish people as evil.

      • @Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My thoughts exactly. The reality of sectarian violence (whether it be ethnic or religious in nature) is the justification of more atrocities. Hurt people hurt people, and the historically oppressed can sometimes find themselves becoming the most effective oppressors. It’s all bad, it’s all sad, and it’s all a reflection on the failures of humanity in extending the saber far more often than the olive branch…

      • @chowder@lemmy.one
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        51 year ago

        Coming? My guy there are already decapitations, slaughtering civilians in their homes, the music festival massacre, POW executions, rape, idk if it’s specifically a war crime, but the whole kidnapped Jewish children in cages.

        • @ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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          121 year ago

          Not really. The Communists were quite happy to play into antisemitism and even encouraged it painting all Jewish people as bourgeois elites.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union

          I’m already seeing users from .grad and .ml defending Hamas’ actions.

          Doesn’t matter if left, right, religious, secular, whatever, fascists who think any means justify the ends of the “perfect” state are an ideological cancer and therefore should not be tolerated in a tolerant society.

    • @QHC@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is standard policy for Israel, the same entity that pretends giving people a ‘warning’ before blowing up their home is a good enough excuse.

      • @flossdaily@lemmy.world
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        -121 year ago

        What a stupid take.

        Israel goes out of us way to destroy terrorist INFRASTRUCTURE instead of people, and you whine about it like it’s a bad thing?

        If some organization thought my home was an enemy base, and sent me an SMS message to give me enough time to get my kids out, I’d be pissed about the house, but my family would be alive.

        Compare that to Hamas who deliberately target civilians.

    • @Vilian@lemmy.ca
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      01 year ago

      This has the same stink of the Bush administration ignoring repeated warnings of attacks by Al Qaeda pre-9/11 to justify war in the middle east

      but did he wanted a war in the middle east?(not trolling i never knew about that teory)

      • @Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That is such murky territory that any answer requires some degree of speculation.

        What is clear is that the Bush administration ignored direct warnings from the CIA regarding credible threats of attacks from Al Qaeda within the United States, and both the FBI and CIA were aware of the identities of some of the hijackers previous to the attacks.

        Additionally, the Bush administration overtly and continuously lied about the presence of WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in order to justify their offensive invasion and continued occupation of Iraq.

        So, whether they were complicit in allowing 9/11 to occur through malice or incompetence is almost irrelevant because it was still used as a carte blanche excuse to push pre-existing neo-conservative foreign policy objectives.

      • Baron Von J
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        71 year ago

        He wanted an excuse to go after Saddam Hussein, who had reportedly put together and assassination attempt on Bush Sr during a trip to Kuwait. Bush Jr was also surrounded by the PNAC crowd, who had published (before getting into the white house) goals to have a permanent US military presence in theiddle east to secure oil interests, and that they would likely need some catalyzing event to garner public support in the US.