I am A guy who went through the war in Gaza, got damages in my house, AMA!

As a Muslim too, your support for Hamas troubles me. Why not target the IDF instead of civilian homes in Israel? Instead of thousands of tiny rockets, surely better weapons can be targeted at the source of the oppression. I'm from South Africa. We too were oppressed and I certainly understand the need for armed resistance. The ANC (the party that librated us) also had an armed wing but never associated due to the ANC's disapproval of violence.

Nelson Mandela himself was convicted of planning to blow up the railway system, but they would never resort to fear and intimidation against civilians. It was always targeted, government offices or establishments that supported the regime, never a white person's home. What was even more amazing, was how kindly he treated those who oppressed him after liberation. With the amount of hate I see from both sides, I can't see anything similar happening in When you say things like you support Hamas, it makes it very hard for us to sympathise. You want us to feel sorry for your bombed children while you support bombing Israel's children. The Quran does not preach selective compassion. I wish the Arab world would shed it's stubbornness and find it's Nelson Mandela.

(I urge you to read up on the South African struggle, and Nelson Mandelas biography "A long walk to freedom")

Thank you for your kind words. I didn't say i fully support hamas, i said i support the choice of using power against israel including rockets.

Its ok in international law to retaliate to rocket fire. I hope you know that. Please reconsider condoning the rocket fire. What positive tangive benefits have they brought you?

I know, i thinks israel has the right to defend itself, we also have the right to fight for our freedom, in 2012, the war ended with an agreement to stop siege, which was later revoked by israel, but when egypt closed the other bath, it was time to fight.

Aren't you scared of any other war in Gaza? I live in Syria and I understand what horror is

I hope you are safe. I am sure there will be another round of war, but there is always hope for peace.

Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA. I'm Israeli and I've been trying to see as much as I can from the other side lately.

What part of Gaza do you live in? How did the short cease fires affect people in the strip? Do you feel your support for Hamas has strengthened or weakened from the war? Did you have much contact with Israelis during the war? What were most people doing day to day during the war?

I am from west Gaza city, i can see the beach of the mediterranean sea from my bedroom window.

Short cease fire were good for going out to get some needs like water, food and other requirement, but i was sometimes able to go out during wartime only in daylight if i had to, the cease fire also lets officials in power and water supply company work to fix the severely damaged lines.

What kind of contact with israel? No, i didn't contact any israeli other than some comments un /r/worldnews.

I often sat with my kids and family listening to radio, but when i got too much bored i started talking care of my plants that are in a farm near my house, it was terrifying to hear a war jet flying while i was watering my plants in an open farm, but i couldn't stand staying in the house, my 3ds helped me when i get bored in night.

How do you feel your kids will be affected in the long run? Many people where I live feel there's will need years of therapy. Have you ever been in Israel proper? Do you support Hamas? How about the Qassam brigades? Did you have any contact with IDF when inside?

What were you doing in Beit Hanoun? are you a soldier?

My kids are still less than 2 years old, i try to stay with them when heavy bombing occurs, they tend to quake and get scared but i try to relief them, older kids will tremble and cry uncontrollably. I really hope this can be treated as i am worried of the future of my kids.

I don't fully support hamas, but i agree with them that fire is the way to deal with israel, al qassam brigades were heroes who fought for us, may god protect them.

I didn't contact IDF, why would i?

though, one of my life dreams is to visit israel, i would love to see tel-aviv and jaffa with my bare eyes, i hope your government makes it more easy to visit those places when there is peace just like the Palestinians of west bank that can do this, would you support this?

I was a soldier and was called up as a reservist during the war, but I also lived until recently near north of Gaza so I would see Beit Hanoun a lot.

I meant more not if you would go out to contact them, but if you had any contact with them from them being close by, looking for collaborators or giving medical help.

I DEFINITELY support such a solution! I hope at first there could be one where we go our separate ways, but I prefer Palestinians coming to Israel for touring or even working instead of the other foreigners who work here since I'd rather work with my neighbors than people from farther away. I would also love to travel in much of the Palestinian territories as a tourist and not like I have only been able to.

Also, you mention you support the rocket attacks, what about past attacks done by Hamas such as suicide bombings or the kidnappings of the settlers (I understand it was rogue fighters, but seems like it's part of the movement).

If all israelis were like you. Do you think the political views of israelis differences come from their origin countries?

do you support Hamas firing rockets into Israel?

Yes, not in the intentions of killing, but to keep Israelis in shelters and show them what is it like being bombed. It is also to pressure on the israeli government to stop bombing and killing.

But this just brings more and more Israelis supporting of attacks on Gaza. That is one reason this war gained more support among Israelis.

How do you feel of other methods they've used? Such as the kidnappings or suicide bombings in the past?

Kidnapping is fine, israel has so many palestinians prisoners in their prisons, this is the only way to free those imprisoned for life and those imprisoned without charges. We got over suicide bombing, i think it show the world bad image about us, we love life and fight for a good cause. In the last war both sides tried to avoid civilian casualties, but israel still killed many civilians, and hamas killed more soldiers than civilians.

You didn't "get over" suicide bombing, the Israelis got smart about not letting your people get into areas where they can do it.

I know some people who get into israel from gaza, but there are very hard conditions, like you have to own a company and to be 45 or older, while west bank people can get to israel for some jobs.

I understand kidnappings of soldiers, but kidnapping civilians as well?

No i am against the kidnapping of civilians, what happened in hebron shouldn't have happened. Teens are not responsible for anything happens from their government. I also condemn israel kidnapping 1000+ civilians while looking for the three teens.

No offense, but if you think rockets will dissuade Israelis from attacking, I've got some bad news for you.

I agree with you, they wont stop the violence as they will raise it. But imagine if palestinians didn't fire those rockets, would israel stop the unfair siege in gaza ever? would israel ever allow free travel and import of goods? i think the answer is no. The rockets exerted pressures on israel to accept the stop of siege conditions in order to stop those rockets.

You are a delusional piece of shit. Your group was given Gaza, wrecked it and then attacks Israel in cowardly ways, hide behind your women and children and then whine when you get your asses kicked.

I accept your criticism, but hiding behind women? No. When the IDF soldiers attacked, the men were waiting for them on the borders, why didn't they fight those men? Why did israel keep attacking from the air? Now who hides?

How did you learn English so well? Does Internet work reliably in Gaza?

I study engineering, we study it in english so we can get higher degrees in west countries if we desire.

Edit: internet in gaza is great, i was able to reach internet through the war as long as i have electricity, which is why i have extra batteries to run my modem router. The internet in gaza follows bitstream access model, cables are provided by paltel.ps and we have 9+ ISPs most famous one is hadara.ps

Holy. Shit. They have a better market than we do in the US...

In other news, we have only one cell phone carrier and it sucks.

Well then, that throws a bit of a wrench in the comparisons to concentration camps.

Who compared it to concentration camps?

Have you ever directly observed weapons stored in hospitals, mosques, schools or homes?

No, but i can't deny that for sure, i am against this too.

You can't deny it for sure? Meaning you may not have realized something was a weapon?

Were you ever asked to store items in your house?

I mean i can't confirm neither deny weapons being in schools or hospitals. I can confirm rockets being stored in farms and empty lands.

I was not asked to store anything.

How do you feel about a 2 state solution? I see that more and more Palestinians only want a one state solution.

I would love any kind of solution, and i see the two state more doable, the one state solution seems ridiculous, just look how settlers treat palestinians in west bank to know what life is going to be like.

So you think violence is justified (Rockets can kill people. That's violence.), but are interested in a solution? Why do you think continuing violence would bring about a solution?

A solution with your conditions. Israel wants peace too, but israelis want their conditions, they want us to live in poverty and ignorance, we use power to get peace with our human rights met.

I'm an Israeli and I don't want you to live in poverty and ignorance, to the contrary. But your comments here suggest that you are influenced by a very narrow interpretation of the events that aligns with Hamas narrative. The blockade started only after Hamas started firing rockets and attacking Israelis. You keep repeating your support for the rockets because you believe it will stop the blockade but its the opposite. It only makes Israelis support the war and the blockade even more. The reason the blockade is there is because Hamas arms itself with rockets. If Hamas would stop attacking Israel and stop accumulating heavy weaponry Israel will stop the blockade because there wouldn't be any need for it. Israeli government has said so many times.

We want the Palestinians to prosper and have a decent economy and education. Education would help people strive for peace and would help create normalization between Palestinians and Israelis. Contrary to what you might hear from Hamas TV people in Israel don't want to oppress the Palestinians, they want to live side by side in peace. But Hamas keeps searching for war and Israel can't just do nothing and must protect its citizens. If Hamas would choose peace Israel would give it peace.

Do you think your views represent the majority of israel? or the minority? i would live with israelis like you in peace.

As i said in other comment, fatah, which rules west bank, which also chose peace with israel, is not providing the palsestinian of west bank any kind of good life, they suffer from the settlers and israeli check points, israel is giving us the west bank as an example of how our life would be if we chose to live along with israel, so i would chose war anyday instead of living between settlements and israeli check point soldiers.

Would you be willing to live in one state if you could be confident everyone would be treated equally? Is it ok with you persnally that the state would have to enforce a separation of church at state?

edit: spelling is hard

I would be willing, but a government that supports one side wont be fair, it is like black and white people 100 years ago.

What is "freedom" to you?

Some of our rights were violated by israel, freedom to travel, to import goods and not through another country's ports then to other ports. We have power crisis. We cant build ports. I know said fighting for freedom while hamas says they want to liberate the land from the israelis, but this is just for the people who believe that we will get back our land that was stolen in 1948 by israelis, we muslims believe that palestine will be liberated from israel even if it is near the end of the world.

Do you recognize Israels right to exist? If so, does Israel have the right to exist as a Jewish state? Do you ever wish for the beaches of Gaza to be full of Nargila bars and beautiful women?

I don't disagree with their right to exist, but where? they claimed that palestine was land without people, and the are people without land, which led to partition plan of palestine, they clearly don't have the right to steal our land and exist there, find another land, israel!

As opposed to hamas, i would recognize israel as a state, but with limitations, and it is an occupier to me.

Nargila coffee shops are trending in the beach of gaza, but no about bars, alcohol is forbidden. The community of gaza wouldn't accept 'beautiful women' in your exact definition of the term. This doesn't mean i would not love to visit a beach in israel, when their community accepts that.

Banning alcohol and women in bikinis is enough for me to know who's the bad one here, I'm serious.

It is about culture and community, this doesn't mean we don't approve sexy women, but everybody has his own way of showing this. Hamas management has been moderate in this, they didn't force women to wear hijab neither did they close mixed schools or colleges, al azhar university is still overflown with nice gals.

Do you support Hamas, and if so, do you justify rocket attacks and their bombings?

Before the war i wished for hamas to get out of rule, but now i can't wish for the side that defended me in war to be gone. What do you refer to as bombing?

And yes i do justify the rockets as a tool to exert pressure on israel to stop their attacks, and to get some upper hand in negotiations.

So Hamas defended you from Israeli bombs that were in response to Hamas rockets?

Does that make logical sense to you?

The was never stopped, israeli oppression never stopped, the rockets were founded to stop this, we are getting some of our rights back to us after using those rockets, the truce signed yesterday included ending of siege which is the target that was accomplished with the use of rockets, so this gave us more motivation to use more rockets, maybe if israel ended the siege peacefully it would have been otherwise.

I see, so, to you, randomly firing rockets at innocent people, and storing them among your own civilians is acceptable. At least you freely admit being scum. The Israelis would stop their counter attacks immediately if the rockets stopped, but you muslims must destroy the Jew, and will never stop.

Your people are savages, and not capable of living in a civilized society.

To add, you must either (a) be cataclysmically stupid, or (b) flat out lying about your motives. Israel is justified in going after the rocket launchers, and only a total cretin thinks that the way to get Israel to stop attacking rocket launchers is to launch more rockets. Therefore, your true motive must be that you want to kill as many Jews as possible.

Without these rockets we would have been living hell while israelis are having normal life which is unacceptable to me, if you are going to stop life in gaza, your life activities will be stopped too. Unguided rockets are the only choice they have. If having a weapon to defend yourself makes you scum then its fine to be scum.

Hey. I'm sorry for what you've been through :(

Please be unbiased on this and just express your real opinion. As a native Palestinian do you see Hamas "toxic" for Palestinians? Are they a bad influence on Palestine ? Why or why not ?

I don't see hamas as toxic. I might disagree with them about some political views, but their choice of using fire to stop israel oppression is my choice too!

They are half good influence. My people love life, we don't want to bomb ourselves to kill israelis and librate the land, but we want to fight for our rights in an honorable way. I think the west has a bad view of hamas because of bad media that is owned by zionists, hamas is no angel, but they chose to fight for our freedom.

Why can't you attack only military targets instead of wherever the rocket lands? That would take the floor out from most media criticism. Why not keep up the pressure, but do so in less ethically ambiguous ways?

Those rockets are primitive and most of them are homemade or cheap buys so it is not their choice to fire unguided missiles. However, the tunnels were used against soldiers and civilians were never attacked by any of the tunnels attacks.

What do your parents do for a living? Who will pay for the damage to your house? I'm fascinated by how Gaza can maintain any kind of functioning economy with the restrictions they're under and things like this happening.

My father is a partner of a company that imports clothes, we need to ship the goods to israel seaport and pay taxes to israel, then get the goods by one of the crossing points between israel and gaza, and pay more taxes to government of gaza.

I don't know about the damages, i predict that we have to deal with them ourselves, but we will wait a bit to see if some charity is going to do some kind of compensation.

Do you feel that Israelis and Jews are one in the same, and how would you respond to this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21dIRCMfnHs

No, i don't hate Jews for their religion, i hate the Zionist. Those who believe the own the land of palestine.

The video is truly sickening and it is a bad show i wouldn't let my kids watch, but during a bombardment when my kid asks me what is this? i will tell him those the the israelis trying to kill us, what else can i say?

also, i can give you many videos of israelis letting kids write letters on missiles and teaching them to hate arabs.

Do you ever get used to the war around you?

I don't panic when i hear a nearby bombing in daytime, but if wake up in late night to huge bombing sound i would be terrified. so i guess half used to.

Thanks for responding to this thread.

Is Hamas really preventing people from speaking out against it? What would happen to you if it was known if you support some group other than Hamas? Like Fatah?

Do you think that if Fatah was able to make peace with Israel (No more internal blockades, 1967 borders with some land swaps, etc), would most Gazans support peace too? Could Fatah take control of the civil authority (government) in Gaza without there being a big war with Hamas?

Hamas was oppressed by fatah before 2006, hamas was a left party and fatah was like a dictator governing the country, hamas officials were tortured in fatah prisons and imprisoned for israeli desire, i mean fatah opened their streets for israeli army to kill those who opposed israel, which made people vote for hamas in 2006 elections that led to hamas being denied by fatah to form a government followed by organized riots by fatah officials which led to violence that caused fatah to leave rule in gaza to hamas.

After so many years (let's be honest and call it decades), can you ever forsee a peace with Isreal? Do you want a peace? Do you think they do? As an outside it's hard for me to believe either side wants it - with so much hatred and racism on each side.

I hope you are OK and that this madness stops.

I really hope for peace, and i have some hope for the next couple of years, but the war will rise back again sometime in the future. Yes i see hatred from both sides and i hope we can get over it, which seems impossible.

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Yes, they organized protests for peace, i really hope moderate israelis and arab israelis can unite to make a more peaceful israel. I have watched them in TVs getting repressed by israeli forces, which shows how democracy is doing in there.

I'm an Israeli citizen, and I must admit first of all that I'm not used to hearing about Palestinians as anything other than human fodder that we should feel sorry for or blast through in order to eliminate Hamas. The part where you described playing your 3DS at night really got me - I swear I realized at that moment, possibly for the first time, that there are human beings on the other side of the border.

My question: do you have any ill will towards me for being an Israeli citizen or born Jew (I don't practice Judaism)?

Please let me ask, is gaming or nintendo products popular in israel?

During bombardment i would fly with my imagination to a world where i take revenge from those who drive these fighter jets, and revenge for those who were killed. But when i am back in mood, like right now, i would think of you as a normal person, unless you are one of those extremists that think all palestinian kids should be murdered.

Honestly, what's this war currently about? I know there are thousands of years of history but why are they fighting today?

Does Palestine want their annexed lands back? Does Israel want even more of Palestine and the people living there to just... vanish?

The war never ended, they just stop fighting to grow more power and let new generations grow in some kind of peace, but it is surely a temporarily peace, new generations will keep fighting till one of the sides totally wins.

Palestinians believe the land will get back, it is part of muslim beliefs, but when and how? nobody know, israel want to stop the threat of their angry neighbors, but they are doing it either by oppressing or fire, they dont want to leave us alone to make sure we don't get enough power to get the land back.

What is al-aqsa TV like?

Only good at music videos, watch al jazeera instead. i think it needs time to improve, but in general i wouldn't watch such a biased TV.

What do you think most palestinians response would have been if the attack tunnels were used to hurt civilians? Did many not feel these tunnels were a waste of money and resources?

I think many would have approved the use against civilians, because the civilians casualties in our side were already high. But using them against soldier is 100% approved. I, myself, think they are a waist of money, but i understand that they couldn't use the money to get a better tool.

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I do believe in god, because this universe could not be created if there is no god. I have to say, faith played big rule in the last war and is the reason why we wont surrender even if thousands die, we muslims believe that everybody has a time to die which is decided and only god know about it, so if someone dies, it was decided for him to die by any mean, so we believe that if those 2000 didn't die in the war, they would have died in any other mean, i think this is important for the west to understand about us.

Do you have elections any time soon?

I HOPE!

Can you please discuss the water crisis in Gaza? What access to water does the average Gazan have? What difficulties?

The municipality provided water is shit, it is not available all the time and it is very salty even if it is very cheap, only people who can't afford digging a well use municipality water.

I have a well that provides my house with water, while it is good but not good enough to drink, so we rely either on water distributed by special water trucks, which is fairly cheap but have had shortage during war, or rely on water filter, which just like the well, needs electricity to power it, so i guess water supply is good as long as we have electricity.

I know I am late; however, this was an great AMA! My question is simply who is your favorite Pokémon and just curious if you play competitively? (I found Reddit looking for a Pokémon community too!)

It is OK. I don't have a specific favorite poke, i train pokes depending on their base stats and my team needs. I play competitively but not as much as when i first bought the game though, I've had it since day one! I have a big collection of shiny competitive pokes too, got them using instacheck so they are legit.

Do you believe there will be ever true peace?

No, any peace will be temporarily. Both sides hate each other. West bank, which is ruled by fatah, has been negotiating with israel for peace, what they got is settlements in their land and more oppression. While hamas in gaza chose to fight for freedom instead of negotiations, which is IMO the best choice.

The best choice? So Hamas continuing to rocket Israel resulting in their retaliation killing 2000+ people was a better choice than negotiating? I hear from you the same that I hear from both sides, "It's them, not us. We refuse to yield."

As i said, what israel is doing in the west bank gives us a bad example of what how it will be when you negotiate with israel, army there goes into cities, kidnaps whoever they want, get out. They build the Separation barrier and many check points that make the lives of people there a living hell. I don't want to see this happen in gaza.

If you don't believe there will ever be peace, what is the wisdom in continuing a war with a state that is so much more powerful than yours? This can only end badly for the little guy, right?

We think palestine is a holy land, and we think it is ours and it is our right to fight for it, so we will always stay in our homes whatever the big powerful state does. I agree with you it is not wisdom to fight someone way stronger than you, but we believe it is an important cause to fight for.

Do you have any rockets hidden in your home under your ps3?

I wouldn't dare put my beloved in danger, would you hide weapons in your mother's panties?