Israel Declares War For The First Time Since 1973.

Yeah I don't follow events in the Middle East very closely either.The latest attacks by Hamas were predictable and I am fine with every single one of the terrorist perpetrators being killed. The lives of Palestinians is atrocious and has been since Israel was formed in 1948 and the Israelis have had all the power for more than 75 years and their policy has always seemed to be subjugation. This has also, ironically, forced all those terrorist organizations to hide among innocent blockaded Palestinians so Israeli retaliation always kills many innocents, further fueling hatred and future terrorist attacks.After 75 years maybe the Israelis should rethink their long term strategy. Until they do, I don't support aid from the U.S.

Well, the U.S. spends more per year on our military than all the rest of the world combined, several times over, the last I heard. Hypothetically we should be able to fight and win any conventional (non-nuclear) world war.

Probably, and I'm going to totally blame Phat!

Nope, just you. Government? Do you even know what the function of a government is??? Governments keep civilization functioning. Hamas is trying to destroy civilization. They have never performed even a single aspect of a functional government, let alone the most important, protecting their people. Yeah, this has been reported for decades, no other Arab country wants them, period. Egypt doesn't seem to want to let them in, even in the most dire circumstances. They can all stand back and let Israel get blamed for everything that happens to the Palestinians and Israel is perfectly willing to play into the part once again, kicking the possibility of peace so far down the road that it's out of sight.

I just watched reports on MSNBC that showed multiple aerial or satellite images of the blast area at the hospital. There is no identifiable crater and minimal damage to the hospital and other surrounding buildings. All the people reported killed by the blast were outside in the parking lot. Israeli explosives would have left a crater and done much more damage to surrounding buildings.All the evidence is pointing at a Hamas rocket that went off course.

Well, I have no idea how you are tracking "more impact globally." Is that more news, more deaths, more damage, more risk of expanding to global conflict, what? Russia in less than 1.5 years has lost 4 or 5 times more soldiers than the U.S. lost in the whole Vietnam War, so that may have an impact on their global plans for the future.Sorry, you will have to "emphasize your point" with your own actual words rather than trying to communicate via telepathy. As always, I question your grasp of reality.

Really? They're going to nuke Gaza?

Yep, terrorists are cowards and every single time they use innocent populations as shields. The decades that the Palestinians have not had any control of of the supply of food, water, electricity and medicine and where they have no citizenship rights, no vote...will make it exceedingly difficult to resolve. What can resolve 3 generations of oppression?

I just saw a comment on a news channel sum things up..."It's going to get worse before it gets really worse!"

I can recommend a book you might find interesting, The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver by Shawn Inman. It is free on Audible.

You buy each title and you own it. A monthly $15 gets you one credit for one title. I think the 1st two are free. It is free for everyone. You have to search through their options for the best deal (this isn't necessarily the case for every author) from this author, Shawn Inman. In this case the 1st twelve books in his Middle Falls Time Travel series are free (so far, there are 18 titles in the series), but they also have bundles of three titles that cost one credit. The first twelve books is over 100 hours of listening! And these are not time machine kind of time travel at all.Even if you quit Audible their player still works and you can listen to your books any time. Credits can build up monthly for a year before you start losing any. My wife and I have a shared Audible account so we can use each other's credits...I listen a lot more than she does.The last few years I find that I prefer listening to audiobooks more than music while I retouch images on my computer and while I am driving and really doing anything that doesn't require me to visually read text (I can't listen to text and visually read text at the same time).Shawn Inman's books average 10-12 hours each, but I usually like to find new reads that are longer than that. I love 30 hour+ books. Since I am hearing impaired I can't enjoy the "sounds of nature" when I'm out wading in my favorite stream shooting dragonflies, so I usually have my earbuds in listening to a story. I really miss bird songs!

I was watching the news this morning and they were showing Netanyahu talking to some Israeli soldiers and I noticed that all the soldiers had on fabric head covering that also had a face mask across the bottoms of their faces so only the eye region was exposed. Any ideas what the purpose of this part of their uniform is? What is it even called? Do the masks work to filter out the dust from concrete pulverized by bombs? That gray dust seems to coat everything in Gaza.

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Yeah, I know. It seems to be a pretty common part of modern foot soldier's kit. I can think of several functions, i.e. camouflage, dust masks, but I think a lot of times it's purely a tactic to intimidate your foes and impress the public. The costumes you see militarized police SWAT teams wearing seem to be pure intimidation and posturing for themselves. Their costumes look really uncomfortable in hot weather and also looks like it would impede breathing, hearing and peripheral vision. Helmets, body armor, gas masks, etc. Hell yeah, but this excessive head gear seems risky to me, and I don't remember seeing it in Nam.

If they had a rifle or grenade, you knew. That's the thing with insurgents, they don't wear uniforms. The thing about insurgents is they care more about their cause more than their people. Even if their cause is just, its operation is without honor.