An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed that there were “hostage situations” in the southern city of Ofakim and the nearby kibbutz of Beeri.
Hamas said it had taken “dozens” of Israeli soldiers hostage and moved them to the Gaza Strip as footage emerged appearing to show gunmen in military fatigues leading a group of mostly barefoot women down a street in Israel.
The announcement and video verified by NBC News came hours after Hamas launched a deadly land, air and sea attack and fired a huge barrage of rockets at Israel.
Plenty of blame to go around, of course, but yeah, the Israeli failure to reign in Zionist squatters provides an easy rallying point. Whether or not Hamas is actually working for the interest of the Palestinian people is immaterial to the perception that they are willing and able to stick it to the Israelis.
I’ve believed for a long time that if Israel actually cared about a proper peace solution, rather than “peace when the other fuckers are all dead”, they should’ve taken inspiration from the Allies and Marshall Planned the fuck out of Palestine. Build up infrastructure and industry, and give the Palestinian people some sense that things will be better, because people who have hope don’t become terrorists. But that’s obviously not something the Israelis actually want, and they’re the ones with the power to change things, so here we are.
That’s all fine and dandy to say, but look at Sodastream. They did their best, building a factory in the West Bank, employing lots of Palestinians and paying them fairly. What did they get for that? So much hate from international terror groups like BDS that they had to close that factory down.
One factory worth of jobs can’t make up for an abusive government that wants to oppress people. They can’t work their way out of this.