mickthinks wrote: ↑Mon Dec 25, 2023 2:27 pm
Gaza is a paradise and not a prison
Nobody said anything remotely like that. What Gaza was, before Hamas turned it into a bombed-out hellscape, was its own territory, with its homes, its markets, its schools, its hospitals, its buildings and government -- even one so utterly hostile to Israel. True, it wasn't free, because it was dominated by a wicked Islamic theocracy; and true, its billions in aid were being siphoned off to buy explosives for the rockets, tunnels for smuggling and terrorism, and Mercedes for Hamas leaders -- but none of that was on Israel, who was supplying the very power and water that Hamas was exploiting.
It wasn't paradise, but it was far from being a prison. It was so free, in fact, that it could import the wherewithal to launch a vicious, surreptitious attack on the only democracy in the entire Middle East, and then claim victim-status for the war that would never have happened at all except for Hamas insisting upon it.
Not a prison. Not a paradise. But not what it is right now, either.