Israel launches ground invasion of Gaza...again

Sorry while it is absolutely terrible to see military action, Israel is in a pretty bad situation...can't sit by and do nothing and can't retaliate without being condemned. Hamas is at fault imo....they push Israel and unfortunately Israel has to react.

Thank God for the 2-post-in-a-row limit. :)

Kinda feel bad for Israel. Everyday is a constant struggle being surrounded by countries with hate towards you because of the religion you practice. I don't blame Israel for sticking up for themselves. At the end of the day Gaza did this to themselves. Blatantly ignored a ceasefire... I guess you reap what you sew though.

In a sense Israel is like Iran. Hated by the surrounding countries. But you don't see Iran attacking Afghanistan or Iraq. People who think this attack is a mere "retaliation" are completely out of their minds. Israel has plans. It's not going apeshit over those rockets. No country is that stupid. (OK maybe U.S but not Israel.) The real motive behind all this and what sparkled this "war" are still a mystery to me. One would be to boost moral and attract people to a certain party I guess but I could be wrong.

My point this war was completely avoidable. Every sane man can see that. Can't say I don't like where it's headed now though. Hamas being crushed is not a bad thing but there was a large room for diplomacy. Basically what the poor Abbas was trying to do. But "some" politicians over at Israel didn't seem to like where Abbas was heading. Not to mention how Hamas allegedly killed those Israelis. It's like as Master_live always says:

SOME PEOPLE WANT TO SEE THE WORLD BURN

"Israel launches ground invasion of Gaza...again"

Can only be done with US approval. Israel's current regime is only as maniacal as the US allows them to be.

@thebest31406 - I know this might blow your mind, but the vast majority of countries don't require US approval when acting in their own self interest.

The US's Arab ally Saudi Arabia began a military campaign against Houthi rebels in 2009 with Operation Scorched Earth did'nt happen because USA gave the green light. they didn't wait for approval because Yemen is an explicitly Saudi issue that they care about and continue to be.

The US has to apply pressure that is usually very public in order to get countries to do anything, usually stopping things like ceasefire or to do things like hold diplomatic meetings or actively recruiting nations to join them in the coalition of the willing like Iraq War 2003.

@alim298 After just ONE Houthi rebel raid on a Saudi patrol in Saudi - killing 2 soldiers and injuring 11 others was enough to bring Saudi into the Yemeni-Houthi war.

Israel was under constant bombardment of rockets in 2014 and near constant in 2013 . Hamas is like that Ret@rded kid pulling on the fur, ears, nose, and tail of a dog then suddenly being surprised when the dog bites back after an immense amount of patience has been spent.

People.. do just a tiny bit of research before opening your yaps on conflicts. even a wiki search will provide more then enough supported and cited evidence.

Great videos, but sadly that video got deleted before I could see it along with the account that posted it. I wonder why Youtube would do that.

it's Al Jazeera footage so they might of wanted to take it off the air because it's their footage. and they're playing a very hard propaganda campaign on both their Arabic and English channels whenever the Gaza conflict comes up. If i find it again i'll post it.

In the mean time the IDF made a strike on one of the entrances to the tunnels, in the tunnels they use them for storage of rockets and munitions, as well as hidden launch pads (kinda like an ICBM lift off from underground). well when the IDF made a strike it set off a massive chain reaction of explosions.

Yet just when Abbas tried to strike a deal with Hamas all the shit happened...

Besides saying that U.S's greatest Arab ally acts as stupid as U.S doesn't really justify anything.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention one thing. I don't know much about this burned ground operation but it seems that Suadis were "helping" their allies in putting down the insurgents than actually "invading" their land. These two situations are totally different.

that deal was a desperation deal by Hamas who needed money to pay their employees , and wanted to use the PA budget to pay (which leads to a situation where donations from the US or EU end up paying Hamas salaries). I honestly don't think that deal was worth the paper it was written on .

the reason this fighting started was not due to the deal, it started following the kidnapping and killing of those 3 Jewish teens. the Israeli response was to tear down Hamas' infrastructure in the West Bank (due to the fact that the kidnappers are believed to be Hamas members). Hamas felt humiliated by this and the firing of rockets started around then , most likely to cover up the shame (thats how the Middle East works after all)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-iraq_war

When Iran went to war against one of their neighbors it resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 civilians. Israel is reacting the same way any other country would if 2/3 of its citizens were under daily threat of rocket attacks. The only way this war would be avoidable is if Hamas would stop shooting rockets. If Israel had some sort of ulterior political motive besides preventing rocket attacks on their citizens, they would not have agreed to multiple ceasefires which Hamas has broken.

@sauronthehun: The Iran-Iraq war is irrelevant. That's two countries fighting. This is a country fighting a terrorist group. I was specially referring to ISIL threats and Taliban threats that Iran (apparently) doesn't give two fvcks about.

EDIT: Now that you mentioned it could you provide me a link on numbers of civilian causalities on "each" side? I know the number of Iraqi causalities minus the ones caused by Saddam is inferior to that of Iran but a good statistic comparison would be good too but I can't find a link.

Oh then I guess I was making a big deal out of that deal.

following your links I came upon this: From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel

Rockets fired by Palestinian militants:

Guess they really tested their patience then.

ISIL and the Taliban are not shooting rockets into Iran on a daily basis. The best comparison to an Iranian response to an attack is the Iran-Iraq war, in which Iran showed far less restraint than Israel has, so don't try to pretend Iran hasn't responded to threats with force. The fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization and Iraq is a sovereign state is irrelevant.

This is the best link I could find for civilian casualties, but doesn't have a good comparison of the casualties inflicted.

Nope. If you were in Israel when a rocket attack occurred, and you were killed, Hamas would applaud your death. Even if you obviously have nothing to do with the current conflict. Do you even live in the same reality as I do? By the way, I'm talking about this current conflict. In the long run, yes, it is about religion.

Yeah have to kind of back down from my claim. To tell you the truth I didn't know Hamas shoots rockets into Israel on such a "regular" basis. Thanks for the link though.

The US is fine with countries acting on their interests provided that a state's interests doesn't conflict with US interests. As it happens, illegal occupation and settlement expansion doesn't interfere with US interests; it may even aid US interests since the US sees fit to overwhemely support Israel in every way imaginable. On the other hand, the US threatened to suspend certain arms tech to Israel for selling certain long range tech to China - the move wasn't very public at all. The US supported South Africa in the very same way it supported Israel until the 80s where the public pressure both in the US and SA was so great that they simply couldn't support that criminal regime anymore. SA apartied did last long after that.

@thebest31406: yes and your point?

countries act in their own self-interest and will stop even allies if they acting against those interest. Saudi has had several differences with US's policy in the middle east. they're still allies though. and both acted in their own self-interest without seeking the approval of the other, nevermind that even if they did and had disagreement still worked towards their own end goals.

The US is an empire by power projection and influence, not a literal empire in the classical sense. it can't actually dictate to most countries what it can or can't do nearly as well as past empires once did. and that doesn't mean it's necessarily inherently evil either, in fact i'd argue the Uni-polar world with the US being the sold superpower is a better world then a world where it's Russia or China is calling the shots...

Should probably sit down one day and read through the Wikileaks leaked documents, you'll find even the allies have disagreements and all the dealings they do. but the one thing you'll notice almost across the board is that each party is rational and acting in their own self-interest.

@SaudiFury: The US can and have imposed sanctions in an attempt to bend certain countries to it's interests. South Africa is and has always been an ally to the US but there was a time where in spite of their allied relationship, sanctions had to be impose in order to change it's regime. The same can and should be done with Israel, though the pressure has to come from a grassroots level.