Meanwhile on the International front....

OK.

Israel-Hamas War: Israeli Soldiers Start Invasion of Gaza’s South, Satellite Images Show

 

No worries. Next time include the funny. I know you know how.

 

Said nobody ever.

 

I was going for more of a sarcastic inside joke between us about a certain person's obsession with the topic. It was one of those where a wink or tone of voice would've tipped you off if we were sitting in the same room, but the cold, dark void of the internet swallowed it up. Alas.

 

That isn't easy sarcasm to pull off on a message board. Ambitious. I like it!

 

I do enjoy the SJ Foreign Affairs section, so I'm going to present this as less an argument and more of a "what's wrong with this statement?" As a Christian American, I have no skin in the game other than a desire for peace as impossible as it might seem.

As I see it, the current situation in Gaza consists of a group that is historically, repeatedly and systematically oppressed, responding to a clear and present existential threat openly devoted to its destruction by employing what George Bluth might call a little "light genocide" surrounded by actors who they have themselves historically, repeatedly and systematically oppressed and who have a track record of putting themselves and others in harm's way in a deliberate attempt to sway public opinion against an already unpopular force, both locally and globally.

 

I know you jest, but four Texas State House Republicans filed a resolution on Monday to strip Democrats of committee chairs just for advocating for a cease fire.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/05/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-palestine/

Israel’s military is advancing into southern Gaza in a push that ushers in a new phase of its war against Hamas — and an increasingly perilous situation for Palestinian civilians who have few safe places left to flee. Israel says Hamas leaders who planned the Oct. 7 attack are sheltering in the south. Satellite imagery showed dozens of armored vehicles about 1½ miles north of Khan Younis, the largest city in the south. “For people ordered to evacuate, there is nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on,” a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said. A territory-wide communications blackout also hampered the humanitarian response overnight.

 

If Israel stops right now, how long before Hamas tries another attack like Oct. 7? Remember, they haven't hidden their intention to do it again. Israel can be better prepared, but there would still be lives lost.

Also, keep in mind what Hamas did during the cease-fire. They were supposed to release more women, but they insisted that all women under 45 are not civilians. They also claim they have fewer hostages than expected. The interpretation I've seen of that is that they sold some of them off to other groups. That's the equivalent of when I was a kid and I took something from my brother and hid it in the couch. My mother asked me if I had it and I told her no. Of course, I wasn't lying. My father came home and asked if I knew where it was. That was the better question, the one Hamas won't answer.

 

Israel-Hamas war live: WHO official says situation in southern Gaza ‘worse by the hour’; Qatari emir accuses Israel of ‘genocide’