Like you, I am concerned for "thousands upon thousands of murdered" Palestinian children. We differ only on where to place blame. You blame Israel. I place responsibility squarely and solely on Hamas.

There has been no debunking of the fact of the October 7th atrocities. Hamas admits doing it, filmed themselves doing it and said they plan to do it again. You can watch their videos if you can stomach it.

These debunkings are paper-thin, special pleading rationalizations for Westerners with an incorrigible anti-Israel stance.

"Oh, a game of telephone in the fog of war led Biden to incorrectly refer to the fact of a baby cranium being found as '40 beheaded babies', so this is the excuse I will use to deny anything at all happened despite Hamas proudly admitting it"

It is sad that genuinely innocent Palestinian civilians are dying. They are another crime that Hamas will have to answer for.

You go way too far claiming that I'd "deny anything at all happened".

This isn't a topic for awful reading comprehension leading to vile accusations. Settle down. Take a breath. Try reading again.

Or don't; because really, nothing productive is going to come from someone whose response to Israel's war crimes and atrocities is to put their fingers in their ears and blame Hamas 100%. That's an incredibly shitty thing to do. I hope you find your way out of that mindset; it's abhorrent to the nth degree.

You are the one literally questioning the mass rapings.

Let us both take a calming breath and step back.

I think the salient point is that we both care for Palestinian children. We both differ on what to do about it.

From my perspective, they live under a brutal, genocidal dictatorship who will fling them into the maw of war to tactically garner sympathy. This tactic is not successful for me, because I view it as emotional manipulation. It just makes me angrier at them.

I happen to be well-disposed towards Israel and its people. When Israel says they are sincerely trying not to kill children but that Hamas keeps putting them in harm's way, I will generally believe it until I have a good reason not to believe it.

This seems to contrast to how many people view the statements of Israel, including very powerful people in, eg, the BBC, HRW, WHO, UN, Amnesty International, Harvard, Justin Trudeau, etc. Many people seem to view every statement of Israel with suspicion. I don't really get it, but here we are.

I'm calm.

However.

What you're doing here is abhorrent.

Children weren't 'flung' anywhere. They were at home, or in refugee camps after being displaced four times, before being vaporized without warning. They were in premie beds, before being left to rot and be eaten by wild dogs. That happened. It's happening now.

Blaming Hamas for it is the mark of a seriously disturbed mind. There were no Hamas terrorists forcing the Israeli soldiers to march doctors out of the care room at gunpoint, that was something they chose to do. They chose to leave those babies behind, after promising the doctors they'd receive care. No evidence of Hamas leaders in bombed refugee camps was ever offered.

Israeli programmed AI has decided that 100 civilians per Hamas leader is acceptable. It isn't. It really, really isn't. It's completely insane to think that it is, and yet they say it with a straight face, calling anyone who argues a Jew hater. It's so, so dangerous.

> Many people seem to view every statement of Israel with suspicion

They have lied so, so often. The lies are tissue thin, as if daring people to question them. 40 beheaded babies? Pregnant women cut open? Babies in ovens? Hamas command center tunnels under every hospital? These lies are still being used to justify atrocities, and it's beyond sickening. The whole world is aghast.

Israel have called stone throwing children terrorists for decades, shooting them on a whim. Their response to a 13 year old being raped was to designate the investigating charity a terrorist organisation. They've called the UN, the BBC, the Guardian, the Ivy leagues, and anyone who criticized their war crimes in any way anti-semitic. Slogans of freedom - "from the river to the sea" have been framed as calls for genocide. They've co-ordinated smear campaigns against well-respected thought leaders for simply stating casualty figures.

Again - nothing good can possibly come from this. If you love Israel, or even like it a little, you should be horrified at what they are doing to themselves. This stain will never come out, never; and it keeps getting worse.

If you care for Jewish people, and Palestinians, the only sensible action is to demand an immediate ceasefire.

I simply disagree.

I don't think calling people who disagree with you "a disturbed mind" as you did is helpful, nor leads to understanding. My advice is to assume those who disagree with you have information you do not have, ask them for their information, consider it, and only then reject it. Calling people "disturbed" does not lead to any understanding.

From my perspective, the Free Palestine movement only has emotional arguments. I do not think it can be rational because its fundamental premises are flawed. You can debate me, find out why, share your information, or you can dismiss me as disturbed. One leads to exchange of views and new information for both of us. The other leads to contention and endless flame wars that help no one.

Prove me wrong through information and arguing against the best version of my arguments, not through insults and dismissal.

> From my perspective, the Free Palestine movement only has emotional arguments.

That's disturbed.

I don't care to understand whatever is wrong with someone who can say something so abhorrent during a full on genocide, and ask for civil debate. It's demented beyond measure.

You are dismissed, no debate for you.

I understand that genocide and especially the death of children makes it difficult not to be emotional. Genocide happens when people are emotional and convinced of the rightness of their cause.

There is a phenomena in genocides called "Accusation in a Mirror" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror The side that is committing a genocide genuinely believes, or cynically accuses, the targets of their genocide of perpetrating genocide. Right now you believe that is Israel. Right now I believe that is Hamas.

In your favor: the ratio of Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths.

What I find alarming about all of this, is that there is genuine, physical and video evidence of genocide where the only explanation is genocide and its perpetrators admit that it is genocide. The world dismisses this as lying, or playing the victim.

In Israel's favor, these assertions:

"We are not targeting civilians intentionally." Dismissed as lies.

"Hamas is using civilians as human shields." Dismissed as lies.

"The high ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is an artifact of Hamas policy." Dismissed as lies.

"Our women were raped." Dismissed as lies.

"Babies were burned alive." Dismissed as lies.

Every single assertion that Israel makes about its intentions are dismissed as lies no matter the evidence. The only acceptable explanation for people (such as yourself?) is that Israel wants to commit genocide and is lying to do so.

By contrast, Hamas explains to the world that they intend genocide and will try for it as long as Israel exists.

I don't know how much clearer it can be. What am I missing?

You mean the ceasefire stopped (again) by hamas?

Oh and sorry, it wasn’t 40 beheaded baby, it was just killed babies and separate instance of beheadings, with goddamn shovels. Much better. Also, to question the mass rapes is just vile and utterly disgusting propaganda on your part - these untold evils have all been uploaded on hamas telegram channel by themselves and can easily be seen.

> these untold evils

The only evidence put forward that I've seen turned out to be a ten year old picture of Kurds. If the Israeli government wants its claims to be taken seriously, it needs to stop making up crazy racist shit like beheaded babies and babies in ovens. "Those who can make you believe absurdities..."

The only reason to make shit up on top of the already terrible acts of October 7th is to break people's minds in advance of a land grab. Only the greediest, the most ignorant, and the highly delusional are falling for it. Most of the planet is horrified at Israel's response.

There was so much sympathy internationally on October 8th. Now it's universal condemnation. Human rights groups, every population, the UN, the ICC. That's not anti-semitism, it's a normal human response to Israel's actions.

Again, and again; this won't ever be forgotten. It will never be lived down. It could lead directly to Israel's end, if America is forced to stop supporting the genocide.

Netanyahu has created an unending source of national shame. The way the world sees Israel will never be the same. No amount of oil, or gas, or blood-soaked salt-ruined land is worth this.

Honest question: why are you convinced that Israel is making up the burned baby story? Not asking you to justify your stance and I won't attack you for what you do have, just, why?

It was debunked in Haaretz itself a week ago, along with a lot of other persistent lies that are still being used to justify horrific ongoing war crimes.

> https://archive.ph/fCj9i

The absurd claim was always based on testimony from one single guy (Eli Beer), with nothing else.

Why were you so convinced it was real? Try and justify it however you like; it was always absurd, and there was never any actual evidence.

Israel are running targeted assassinations on journalists, poets, academics, health workers. Ten thousand very real children have been murdered. And you're all worked up over a baby that never existed. Explain it to me.

Thanks for that article.

> And you're all worked up over a baby that never existed. Explain it to me.

This is from the article:

A variety of evidence is available on Hamas' cruelty, which includes the murder of parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. There were sexual assaults, rapes and mutilations, while some victims were bound and some of the dead were desecrated. Some homes were burned with the people still inside.

None of this is in dispute.

It goes into quite some detail.

So, I am worked up over this atrocity. I'm glad that I can relegate to fiction the image of a woman being raped while her baby burns to death in an oven, because that's nightmare fuel. It is important that the world gets the details accurate, so I would not say it doesn't matter. It does.

Just, I guess I don't understand - and again, I really want to understand your perspective - how, given all of the other depraved stuff that Haaretz confirms did actually happen, how that translates to Israel is necessarily lying? Like, Hamas admits to doing the other stuff, there's video of it. What is it about the story of the burned baby and 40 beheaded babies that, because it didn't happen, makes you so angry? Again, not attacking, I promise. Really trying to understand.

> What is it about the story of the burned baby and 40 beheaded babies that, because it didn't happen, makes you so angry?

I say this with all kindness and good intent: if you struggle to understand that, there's something very wrong with your worldview. I can't be expected to diagnose that.

Why do you think lying about beheaded babies is okay?

I appreciate your kindness and good intent and accept it in that spirit. Thank you.

I don't think lying about beheaded babies is ok. I employ the Principle of Charity whenever possible, though. I don't automatically assume someone is lying unless I have evidence for it. Just makes life easier. It means that sometimes people will get away with lying to me, but as a teacher and father, I'd rather that than assuming an honest mistake is a lie. However, when there is a lie, I'm certain, because I have eliminated all other possibilities first, so I have no doubt.

I don't assume 40 beheaded babies was a deliberate lie. Maybe you have information I don't, but it seems to me that while some people might say such things to be malevolently deceptive, I think in this case that particular untruth reasonably could have been down to shock + rumor + "the game of telephone". Do you have clear evidence that it was a deliberate deception?

That's something you can easily figure out yourself. As was most of this, tbh.

Not really.

I too once assumed that anyone who had the same information I had but held a different opinion was some combination stupid, crazy or evil. But in this case, I don't even have the same information you have.

In the same spirit of genuine kindness that you offered before, I can assure you that will not serve you nor your causes. If your cause is true, speak plainly without fear.