Yuyutsu,

Re the Hamas hostages, I'm concerned about their wellbeing, but the Israeli Government and others internationally are not. Their "concern" is to justify their existence and make them relevant to people re daily life. That being without governments we will all wither and die. These hostages are nothing more than a pawn for governments, as they are for Hamas. Both are equally evil.

The problem with the government concern line, is they treat their own people appallingly, alongside those within their borders.

With Israel, one person has been jailed for about 110 days for refusing military service, having to stay amongst those in prison regarding murder, rape, firearms and other crimes. An extremely off putting experience and when one considers there are only 365 days in a year that's a lot of time in prison.

The U.S record is not clean, look at how many people have died due to being put to the electric chair or Australia's record of keeping Refugees and Asylum seekers in offshore detention.

This article sums up some points well about the military in Israel. The figures show how badly their military is in terms of outcomes and spending, compared to the loss of lives. We don't even have all of the Hamas hostages out yet and have over 20,000 Palestinians (dead or missing) and Israelis also (dead and missing).

Israel has a large spend re military (one of the largest in the world) and a large presence (numbers wise).

Israel, 169,500 active military personnel in the army, navy and paramilitary, a further 465,000 constitute its reserve forces, 8,000 form part of its paramilitary.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/how-big-is-israels-military-and-how-much-funding-does-it-get-from-the-us

Yet despite the spend and numbers in the military, Israel's defence was caught out and showed they were not up to it. In terms of Hamas, they didn't pop up recently and the Israeli Government has had plenty of time to reduce their impact and remove their presence peacefully.

I'm hoping the people of Israel will peacefully overthrow the current government there and/or elect a new one, one which has some basic principles in place.

Dear Nathan,

I join your prayers.

Hi Nathan,

I think that we all hope for that outcome.

The humanitarian aid going to Gaza is first allocated the resistance fighters and any Gazan stealing aid is shot on site. The citizens of Gaza are treated as second class citizens by Hamas, and their lives are mere pawns in this battle.

In a written statement, Hamas openly admits it is taking the humanitarian aid by force that enters Gaza. Mousa Abu Marzouk responded to the killing of an 11-year-old boy in Rafa. They should not take the food needed for the fighters, said Marzouk.

Humanitarian aid has been made conditional and is
being withheld according to political and military agendas.
Food, water, fuel, and medicine is being systematically
used as weapons of war in Gaza. As is disinformation.

Attacking and trying to discredit is yet another means of
waging war and compromising the humanitarian response
weakening the protection of civilians and civilin
infrastructure.

Josephus

Yes. Hamas is responsible for stealing and all of the shortages of aid to Gazans.

But, what we have to realise is that the 'usual subjects' here are anti-Israel and possibly anti-Semitic. Their "facts" are just the opinions of the mainstream media and Leftist sources spreading nonsense.

These people are also naive. This is WAR. Israel has no responsibility for aid or anything else to it's enemy - outside international laws. The idea that it has is ridiculous.

War is brutal and horrible. This particular brutal and horrible war was started by Hamas and the Gazans who voted for them.

But, the usual suspects will continue to blame Israel for purely idealogical and racist reasons. They don't care about a few Arabs; they just hate Israel and Jews.

All we can do here is ignore their hate speech. There is nothing to be gained by arguing with anonymous lunatics who, like all people whiling away time time on the internet, have no power to do anything much about our own lives, let alone international affairs.