2 hours ago, candide said:

Hamas is not 'Palestine'. It's lame propaganda! 😅

The people of Palestine voted for HAMAS.

43 minutes ago, JimCM said:

Who is 'we'?

Rather sick post.

You dont agree that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians? You sound like an Israel apologist, you support genocide I guess.

From the River to the Sea! Whats that mean to you, simply having the poor victimized Palestians be subject to the apartheid Israeli state? You dont think that terrorist State should be eradicated? You dont thin their entire government should be tried for genocide and subjected to capital punishment.

I thought you had the courage of your convictions. You managed to change my mind, now you are backing out.?

2 hours ago, TedG said:

The people of Palestine voted for HAMAS.

The last general election in which Hamas participated and won took place on 25 January 2006.

Analysts and exit polls suggested the win was largely a reaction to perceived corruption and ineffectiveness within the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), rather than a universal endorsement of Hamas's ideology.

Tensions between Fatah and Hamas escalated into a violent conflict in June 2007. Hamas then took total control of the Gaza Strip, while Fatah remained in control of the West Bank. Since 2007, Hamas has ruled Gaza as a de facto government without further general elections.

Indeed, Hamas are notorious for attacking and killing political opponents.

So how many Gazans alive today voted for HAMAS in 2006?

Approx 47% to 50% of Gazans today are under the age of 18, meaning they were born after the 2006 election took place. So that's them not included.

Because a voter must have been 18 years old in 2006 to participate in the last elections, only Gazans currently aged 37 or older (as of 2025/2026) were of voting age during the last election.

Gaza has one of the youngest populations in the world, with a median age of just 18. Muslims have lots of kids.

• Age 0–14: ~40% of the population.

• Age 15–36: ~40.2% of the population.

• Age 37+: ~19.8% of the population. 

So less than 20% of the current Gaza population could vote for HAMAS in 2006.

And of that 20%, approx 76% voted, meaning just over 15% of the current Gaza population voted.

51% voted for HAMAS so just over 7.5% of the living Gaza population actually voted for Hamas in the last election,.

The West Bank is slightly more, 7% to 10% of the total current West Bank population voted for Hamas in 2006.

Don't blame the Palestinians today for what happened in 2006.

Just now, bannork said:

The last general election in which Hamas participated and won took place on 25 January 2006.

Analysts and exit polls suggested the win was largely a reaction to perceived corruption and ineffectiveness within the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), rather than a universal endorsement of Hamas's ideology.

Tensions between Fatah and Hamas escalated into a violent conflict in June 2007. Hamas then took total control of the Gaza Strip, while Fatah remained in control of the West Bank. Since 2007, Hamas has ruled Gaza as a de facto government without further general elections.

Indeed, Hamas are notorious for attacking and killing political opponents.

So how many Gazans alive today voted for HAMAS in 2006?

Approx 47% to 50% of Gazans today are under the age of 18, meaning they were born after the 2006 election took place. So that's them not included.

Because a voter must have been 18 years old in 2006 to participate in the last elections, only Gazans currently aged 37 or older (as of 2025/2026) were of voting age during the last election.

Gaza has one of the youngest populations in the world, with a median age of just 18. Muslims have lots of kids.

• Age 0–14: ~40% of the population.

• Age 15–36: ~40.2% of the population.

• Age 37+: ~19.8% of the population. 

So less than 20% of the current Gaza population could vote for HAMAS in 2006.

And of that 20%, approx 76% voted, meaning just over 15% of the current Gaza population voted.

51% voted for HAMAS so just over 7.5% of the living Gaza population actually voted for Hamas in the last election,.

The West Bank is slightly more, 7% to 10% of the total current West Bank population voted for Hamas in 2006.

Don't blame the Palestinians today for what happened in 2006.

The peope of Palestine put HAMAS in power. End of story. I don't understand why so many people go to such great lenghts to defend to these losers.

Just now, TedG said:

The peope of Palestine put HAMAS in power. End of story. I don't understand why so many people go to such great lenghts to defend to these losers.

Only 7-10% of the Palestinian population alive today voted for Hamas, and as stated, of that 10%, most voted for Hamas because of the corruption within the P.A.

Should we penalise all Germans today because many of their grandparents voted for Adolf Hitler in the 1930s?

8 minutes ago, bannork said:

Should we penalise all Germans today because many of their grandparents voted for Adolf Hitler in the 1930s?

We are penalized, and fairly so. What was done in the 1930s and 40s was beyond horrific and should be remembered as such.

As, I am sure, those who are about to take control over Gaza will be remembered for their endless barbarism for the next decades to come.

Looking at the picture in the OP, it reminds me of a certain city quarter of Warsaw, where Germans built a wall around it. It was the same mindset, as bombing a whole city of 2 million people into total ruins and starving those that have survived -- purely for being of another ethnicity and religion -- with the final target of taking their 'Lebensraum' to build nice resorts over the rubble...

3 minutes ago, jts-khorat said:

We are penalized, and fairly so. What was done in the 1930s and 40s was beyond horrific and should be remembered as such.

As, I am sure, those who are about to take control over Gaza will be remembered for their endless barbarism for the next decades to come.

Looking at the picture in the OP, it reminds me of a certain city quarter of Warsaw, where Germans built a wall around it. It was the same mindset, as bombing a whole city of 2 million people into total ruins and starving those that have survived -- purely for being of another ethnicity and religion -- with the final target of taking their 'Lebensraum' to build nice resorts over the rubble...

Germany was helped a lot after the war.

The Marshall Plan provided $1.4 billion (over $19 billion today)

1 minute ago, bannork said:

Germany was helped a lot after the war.

The Marshall Plan provided $1.4 billion (over $19 billion today)

Indeed we were; and paid back every penny of it, because to this day we believe in rules and promises.

But the true price, up to this day, is a permanent military occupation force by the Americans, and they behave as one.

I remember American jets flying so low over our village when I was a kid, that you could see them from above when just walking in the hills; airplanes starting from Ramstein in a 10 minute rythm made the window panes in my sisters apartment shudder; and EUCOM is just a few kilometers from where I live, making sure I will be in the nuclear burn cone when the Americans finally start a war with the wrong people.

As I am sure they will, righteous and pure as they are.

A post with nothing other than a trolling meme has been removed:

13. Low-Value Posts - Posts that add no written contribution are not allowed.

    This includes emoji-only replies, very short comments, memes, GIFs, screenshots, or embedded social media posts without explanation or opinion.

17 hours ago, candide said:

The official representative of Palestine, is the PLO, dominated by Fatah! The PLO (Palestine) did not invade Israel on Oct 7.

The PLO officially represents Gazans just like María Corina Machado represents Venezuela and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi represents Iran.

And Gaza is ruled by Hamas, just like Germany was ruled by the Nazis, Italy by Fascists, Iraq by Saddam's Ba'ath Party, etc. And Germans, Italians, Iraqis all paid the price, whether they were innocent or not, for the criminal actions of their rulers.

I wonder what Gaza would be like today if Hamas had invested in productive infrastructure the billions of dollars it spent building underground tunnels, stockpiling weapons, training and militias, terrorizing Gaza's honest citizens to impose its criminal will on the majority of them.

And please, don't just call Palestinian Arabs Palestinians. All inhabitants of the region deserve to be called Palestinians, especially the Jews who inhabited that land for thousands of years before the Arabs invaded.

8 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

Palestine keep attcking Isrel since 1948 is the problem .

The current Israel Government is besides the point

It's good to see you recognising the problem.

Palestinians have had a rough deal, the real question is what is Israel prepared to do to restore them to where they should rightfully be.

10 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

I quite clearly stated "South Palestine" , which Hamas are the elected rulers .

Don't try and distance yourself from Hamas , whoms aims you agree with , the destruction of Israeli

Only after I criticised your initial post. And no one is calling Gaza "South Palestine", you are grasping at straws! 😁

Your claim is pathetic! As you perfectly know I never supported Hamas! 🤣

11 hours ago, JBChiangRai said:

Palestinians have had a rough deal, the real question is what is Israel prepared to do to restore them to where they should rightfully be.

The issue as I see it: Israel has done very, very little to try to integrate the Arab population; and looking at how settlers can behave in the present, it is really not on their list.

Which is weird, learning from history and all that, what friction can be created by having two parallel societies living in large part side by side, culturally unmixed, maybe even for hundreds of years (yes, I am still talking about Germany and what transpired during Nazi times).

Integration is a very difficult process, which needs major financial and social investments, as we in Germany know (having opted to integrate a large number of Afghans, Syrians, etc -- falafel is now as German a food as Pizza or Döner are). It is an investment that is well worthwile, because -- at least I believe so -- those people who put in the effort to come this far to build a better life, are actually wanting to build a better life. I believe, if they feel enfranchised, they will put in a tremendous effort (statistically speaking).

How to enfranchise a people that have been segregated against for 80 years?

A more difficult task, true. But looking at how South Africa ended Apartheid, or the Civil Rights movement in the US, it is not without precedence.