Mailman,
My view is probably coloured by my connections with Northern Ireland. That was a place about which (in the '70s) I would also hear amazingly simplistic "solutions" from well-meaning Australians. And much as Tony Blair (aka "naive idiot") might like to think that it was the Good Friday Agreement that finally capped it, I'm pretty sure it was 9/11 that really did the trick. The fall of the World Trade Center woke up many Americans from their romantic dreams of IRA "freedom fighters" and the funding dried up.

There are parallel elements in the Middle East: historical grievances, organised crime gangs, external funding, and naive believers exploited by cynics. It's even more complicated than Northern Ireland but it seems this brings out even more people who know just how to solve it. Oddly enough, these sure and simple solutions don't all agree.

husq,
Truth is the first casualty of course, but It doesn't add up...'s link seems more plausible than the anglicannews.org one. The latter says it was a rocket. Looks likely, but who uses rockets in this conflict?

tomo,
Seven million smart meters eh? Well, it's only money. Did like Micky R's comment there -- that "smart" describes the sensation after receiving a slap (There's your meter, *slap* and there's your smart)

A (somewhat) practical use for an electric plane as a trainer for early pilots, just so they can get a feel for it. I thought the 1 euro estimate of electricity used for their short flight was a bit unlikely. Being generous: if their average power was 20kW (which was selected once they reached altitude) that would be 5kWh for 15 minutes. Bit of a subsidy to get that at 1 euro, but it should be well under 2. Still pretty good.

At that YouTube site was also this video describing Boeing's ongoing problems which commenters suggest stem from being guided by MBAs not engineers. The "snowmen" problem with the 737 rear panels was just utterly shonky.

Not sure what else you'd expect the hospital to say. Another view here that the BBC would have done well to consider before pontificating.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/18/identifying-possible-crater-from-gaza-hospital-blast/

According to the Anglican Communion news service,

Anglican-run al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza damaged by Israeli rocket fire as war continues.

The strike on al-Ahli Arab hospital happened at 7.30 pm EEST (4.30 pm GMT) on Saturday 14 October. Four hospital staff were injured in the blast and are receiving treatment for their wounds.

https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2023/10/anglican-run-al-ahli-arab-hospital-in-gaza-damaged-by-israeli-rocket-fire-as-conflict-continues.aspx

Archbishop says Israel warned Gaza hospital three days in a row.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kus7xsGSnGg

Robbo,

These are your straw men and is irrelevant to what Hamas has done.

And unless dealt to once and for all will do exactly the same thing again in a few years time, while continuing to hide behind a population that continues to vote Hamas in to power. You can bang on about the international community having to be convinced but they aren’t the ones having their mothers, daughters, sisters, babies raped and beheaded by terrorists.

Now isn’t it strange that the same people demanding Israel accept a truce with Hamas have not once ever demanded the Ukraine signs a truce with Russia? Fascinating isn’t it. It’s almost as if these people need Jews to die to satisfy their blood lust. Keeping in mind Russia isn’t totally committed to the extermination of all Ukrainians but it does seem plenty of people in the West are quite prepared to make the sacrifice of killing Ukrainians to keep the war with Russia going for as long as possible.

So again, this isn’t complex at all. There could be peace tomorrow if Arabs and Palestinians would just accept Israel’s right to exist and exist in peace. But of course we know Arabs and Palestinians (and the left in general) considers ALL of Israel as occupied land and therefore Israel and Jews can never exist in peace.

Which brings me on to another point, one of the media’s role in fuelling rampant Jewish racism around the world. Yesterday the airwaves were positively abuzz with the news the Jews had killed 500 people at a hospital. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t an Israeli air raid or that Hamas was very quick to come up with a big scary number that the BBC and everyone else just accepted as the word of God. Or that there was evidence available at the time pointing to this being a failed missile landing in a parking lot. All day long the BBC and ITV were broadcasting that this was an air strike, which then changed to mitral language but always leading with Israel first and NEVER mentioning anything about a Hamas missile causing the damage. And today, not a peep from the BBC or ITV about the incident.

BBC reporters were very quick to retweet claims this was an Israeli airstrike and very quick to claim on air that this could only be an Israeli airstrike, which feeds in to the blood libel narrative that Jews just kill Palestinians because they can.

No wonder Jews feel afraid, and they should be very afraid with how the media is fuelling hatred against them with people with a tenuous grip on reality to begin with and a penchant for looping heads off on a whim.

Mark Hodgson,
Happy to put in a good word and I've been rewarded by one of those rare increases in commenters here.

Mailman,
Just for argument's sake let's accept that there really are *no* innocents in Gaza or Palestine, and that they're all so far gone in their evil ways that killing every last one of them is entirely justified. As you say, this makes the solution logical and simple: stand well back and (figuratively) nuke/sterilise the place. World improved.

Let's say Israel is convinced that the above is true. Would it be wise for Israel to start nuking? I don't think so. The problem is that perceptions matter more than facts, and until the rest of the world is also convinced of the above, the perception — in the West, in the Middle East, pretty much everywhere — would be that Israel was massacring innocents in their thirst for revenge. Wiping out the Palestinians would earn Israel a larger number of more powerful enemies.

Somewhat related, I enjoyed the recent Econtalk where Russ again interviewed Adam Mastroianni. While they were discussing incentives and unintended consequences, Russ trotted out a parable he's given before:

The city has too many snakes, so they put a bounty on snakes, and if you bring a snake to the snake office, you get paid. You get a reward. So, the idea is, 'Oh, people will go out and trap snakes and we'll have fewer of them.'

Of course, if you pick the wrong amount, people will raise snakes. And that would be defeating the purpose of the legislation.

Which is a pretty standard lesson. What made it fun was that Adam took the next step: that the city leaders, realising the loophole, repeal the bounty on snakes, at which point all the people breeding them say "Oh nuts", and release the snakes they've been breeding. Not only was the money wasted, the snake problem ends up worse than ever.

DaveS,
Wow. That must have been some demo drive!

I noticed the captioning saying how the car *unexpectedly* burst into flames. Maybe, but it seems to be getting more and more expectable.

And of course there's Hamas:

What do you know about Hamas?
That it’s sworn to destroy Israel? That it’s a terrorist group, proscribed both by the United States and the European Union? That it rules Gaza with an iron fist? That it’s killed hundreds of innocent Israelis with rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks?
But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)
“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.

If you go to Haaretz, subscribe (free) and search for:
"Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant"
You will find:
Hamas as partner

Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Ron Paul (2009): Israel Encouraged and Started Hamas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgy6B_QOYAM

Mailman:

>Not quite sure why you need Israel/Palestine to be complex? The basic truth is as follows;<

Not according to Miko Peled.

Born in Jerusalem in 1961, Peled grew up in Motza Illit to a prominent Zionist family; his grandfather, Avraham Katsnelson, signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence. His father, Mattityahu Peled, fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and served as a general in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Miko Peled followed his father’s footsteps at first, joining Israel’s Special Forces after high school and earning the red beret, but he soon grew to regret his decision. He surrendered his status as soon as he earned it, becoming a medic, and finally, disgusted by the 1982 Lebanon war, he buried his service pin in the dirt.

Watch: Miko Peled Seattle. Oct. 1, 2012

And of course there are many others who challenge your 'basic truth' including:

Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Mate, Thomas Suarez, Ilan Pappé, Shlomo Sand.

Robert

An even more expensive fire (plug-in hybrid)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNYvy17YGes

Robbo,

Not quite sure why you need Israel/Palestine to be complex? The basic truth is as follows;

1. The Jews are indigenous to the area (and therefore are not colonisers).
2. Muslims are just another wave of colonisers.
3. Israel exists and nothing changes that.

Everything else is fluff by people invested in killing Jews for the crime of being Jews.

Same for climate;

1. We aren't in a climate emergency.
2. Everything else is fluff by the same kinds of people who are happy to support Hamas in their religious fervour of removing the Jews from earth (as they would love to do the same thing to climate deniers).