Still two rather "pissy" mentions of murder (and an eyeroll) in an insincere retraction.
What you mean is still just as clear. And still just as wrong.
And no, I don't see the "irony" in my response ... mostly because it isn't there. "The use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning" (irony, per the Merriam Webster dictionary) is an intentional literary device. It wasn't my intent, and I didn't choose to employ it.
Just like "genocide" and "murder", you're imagining it entirely.
I don't doubt that what you're feeling is valid, and it is heartbreaking to consider the lives lost in this conflict, but blaming Israel makes zero sense ... unless you're unaware of the history.
Israel and the rest of the more or less "civilized", law-abiding world has suffered unjustifiable Palestinian violence and terror for decades. The UNPROVOKED attacks of Oct 7 DURING A CEASEFIRE and the resulting carnage are just one more in a long, bloody list of examples.
Sirhan Sirhan's assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 for "his sole support of Israel" (Sirhan's own words). Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) throughout the '60s. Several failed attempts to assassinate king Hussein of Jordan in 1970 and the subsequent plane hijackings and assassination of Jordanian Prime Minister in 1971. The Munich massacre of the Israeli Olympic team athletes in 1972 and the hijacking of several civilian airliners like the one in Entebbe and the Savoy Hotel attack.
How is Israel to blame for this violence against American, Jordanian, Egyptian and other civilians, including school children?
Interestingly, in 1982 when Israel finally invaded Lebanon, where the PLO had established bases from which it launched attacks, resulting in the PLO's expulsion from Lebanon, Israel enjoyed a few years of relative peace. Learn a little (and learn a little from) history. We're now seeing this same cause (unprovoked attack by Hamas) and effect (determined self defense by Israel) play out yet again.
Hamas in particular, supported by Hezbollah and Iran (nice company), has been starting shit they can't possibly finish since the 1990s with a long, bloody string of suicide bombings and other attacks on buses, restaurants, clubs, shopping malls, universities, homes, and now beheadings and rape at a music festival. Oh, and all while preying on their own people, stealing humanitarian aid intended for civilians in Gaza. Very fine people. Ahem.
Since taking control of Gaza in 2006, Hamas specifically has fired rockets into and carried out terror attacks against Israel, while indoctrinating and training Palestinian children to carry this hatred and resulting violent behavior forward in future generations.
Self defense is not hate or genocide, nor is the practical military necessity of defending one's people from a relentless attacker who will literally stop at nothing.
While I'm very sorry for the trauma you experienced, if you want to know who's responsible for bombs that intentionally kill little kids and the misinformation that ensures continued future violence, it's terror organizations like Hamas.
Rational, peace-loving people everywhere need you to carefully reconsider your position in the light of history and redirect your admirable and understandable passion against those who have historically chosen violence against civilians as a means to their political ends.
