What are they going to do? Invade?

How about a pro-credible-news site now?

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Hamas has genocide as its openly, publicly stated goal.

Just this last week, my youngest kid caught and brought home influenza-A, which I’ve been reading is pretty gnarly this year. But it’s been comparatively mild for us - probably because we vaccinate. Mostly just an annoying cough and some fatigue.

In my case, I didn’t get sick at all. My wife has mild symptoms, as does my oldest kid. The worst is actually my youngest, but still not particularly severe.

Moral of the story: Vaccines are fucking awesome and the fact that some people refuse to vaccinate just blows my fucking mind.

Return? I never stopped wearing them. Or social distancing and avoiding indoor spaces packed with strangers.

Weirdly enough, I haven’t caught COVID yet, either.

It worked (and works) to head off criticism of the Israeli government because so much of the time there are antisemites whose supposed criticism of the government is there to mask hate.

But Netanyahu isn’t Judaism. He’s just a guy, and as a fallible human being he has made enormous errors of judgment and engaged in ludicrously unethical behavior.

The article is literally about Israel stabilizing Hamas to keep it and the Palestinian Authority struggling for control and keeping Palestine destabilized overall.

Quite true. Given the reality on the ground, it’s a guaranteed clusterfuck no matter what policy the United States adopts.

Ummm, are you sure you responded to the right comment? I didn’t suggest Israel install a government in Gaza. I described something Netanyahu and his fellow conservatives did to keep Palestine from stabilizing, and I said Israel could have avoided the current state of affairs by not doing that.

It makes a sick kind of sense. If you’re one of the conservatives in power in Israel, and you oppose a two-state solution that would give Palestinians autonomy, keep two weaker factions fighting each other rather than stabilizing a new country.

It doesn’t excuse the inhuman barbarism committed by Hamas against civilians, but it does mean Netanyahu should be immediately removed from power and arrested.

The Palestinian Authority is the only organization there with any actual legitimacy, and had Israel publicly, openly supported it, Hamas could never have gotten a foothold, while the Palestinian Authority would have had reason to normalize relations with Israel.

If the far right in Europe is anything like the far right in the United States, she’ll retain a lot of support from them anyway.

From now on, when I’ve got a cold and I’m working on fixing bugs in our code while living off coffee and cough syrup, I’m calling it a dungeon crawl.

Citation needed.

Unlikely. The Ukrainians are literally fighting for their homes and their lives. While I’m sure they’re sick of warfare, it doesn’t follow that their morale would at all be similar.

I’m not [INSERT_BIGOTRY_TYPE], but [INSERT_TEXTBOOK_BIGOTRY_EXAMPLE].

Far be it from me to defend him and his conservative government. Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for Israel and for peace, no question.

Just look at this:

That’s at the groundbreaking ceremony for a new, illegal settlement in the Golan Heights, named after Trump in honor of him supporting Israel’s claim on the territory (and thereby discrediting the United States as a peace broker, unfortunately).

So yeah, I’m well aware that Netanyahu has been terrible.

Hamas isn’t Palestine. Hamas, and groups like it, have their stated, public goal being the complete destruction of Israel, and simply will not negotiate peace. At all. They consider it their religious duty to eradicate Jewish people for existing in the wrong place.

Yes, of course Israel’s actions have made it worse, by giving Hamas oxygen and credibility, but it’s a mischaracterization to treat Hamas as just some random guy Israel kept locked up.

There are no good guys in this conflict, and all involved - except for civilians on both sides - have been terrible to each other for a long time.

It’s been mind-boggling to see. I mean, “well documented” is kind of an understatement. And so is “near,” actually. Hamas tries to literally merge their infrastructure with civilian infrastructure, making it impossible to differentiate between the two, with the express purpose of using civilians as human shields.

And yes, “foolish” is also an understatement. Israel’s conservative-controlled government has responded exactly as Hamas wanted them to. It was a trap, an obvious one, and they fell right into it.

Oh, for fuck’s sake… Stop reading stuff into my comments that isn’t there. I didn’t justify Israel’s attack on the hospital. I said it’s known that the hospital is at least partially a front for Hamas, which should surprise zero people, since Hamas is a terrorist organization that uses civilian Palestinians as human shields.

The whole situation is fucked up because there are no right answers when an organization is willing to do that. It’s an effective - if psychotic - tactic, since only other psychotics would attack a building that is, yes, also a functional hospital.

And the accusation of racism - for pointing out that nothing Hamas does with hostages other than letting them go (or better yet, never injuring and taking them hostage in the first place) is good, and that we don’t know if the hostages in the video are even still alive, let alone actually treated there - is ridiculous.

Hamas is not Palestine, and Palestine is not Hamas. Palestinians are victimized by Hamas as much, if not more, than the Israeli civilians they murdered, because Palestinians have lived under their brutal rules for decades, and speaking out has long been a great way to get murdered along with one’s entire family.

I’m not taking Israel’s side, here. Yes, they were attacked first, and horrifically. But their response has also been horrific, and their oppression of Gaza has given Hamas oxygen it wouldn’t otherwise have had in the first place.

There are no easy answers now. Anyone who tells you they know who the good guys and bad guys are and how to solve this is a lying scumbag. And it doesn’t help when we don’t look honestly at Hamas and recognize its terrorist tactics for what they are.