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0 pointstsimionescu1y ago0 comments

You adjusted your post to note that the ten thousand dead was an adjustment. Even so, it's an adjustment in the wrong direction - Northern Ireland is tinier than Israel, not larger. And the correct comparison is Irish Republicans in Northern Ireland ~ Palestinians, British loyalists in Northern Ireland ~ Israelis. You can view the greater UKs role in the conflict as similar to the USAs role in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Of course, none of these comparisons are remotely 1:1, but they are close enough.

Going for a less shallow dismissal of your points then:

> Did the IRA kill around ten thousands of Brits in one day and kidnapped a few thousands (I'm adjusting to population size here) ?

The IRA in total killed some 2000 people, representing some 0.2% of the Protestant population of Northern Ireland. Hamas killed in total ~2600 people since 2008 (where I found simple data on Wikipedia), which represents about 0.04% of the population of Israel, taking a very small estimate for the total population. So, in percentages, the IRA was about 5 times as vicious as Hamas (edit: accidentally wrote 50 earlier).

> Did the IRA have the sworn objective to eliminate England?

Yes, the IRA had the objective to eliminate British rule in Northern Ireland entirely, which is quite similar to Hamas's goal of eliminating Israeli rule in all of Israel. I'm not sure if the IRA was as happy to kill any loyalist civilians as Hamas is in killing Israeli civilians, to be fair.

> Did the IRA join forces with another terrorist organization and a superpower bent on destroying England to encircle England from all directions and join the war?

I'm not sure what superpower you refer to here (are you calling Egypt a superpower? Edit - oh, you mean the USSR...). Regardless, Ireland did have some amount of implication in the Troubles, though of course immeasurably less. I'm also not sure why it's more legitimate to bomb civilian buildings or not based on whether those civilians were once supported by outside countries, 50 years ago.

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weatherlite1y ago

"The IRA (Irish Republican Army) was responsible for killing around 1,800 people during its terror campaign from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. This includes approximately 650 civilians"

So 650 civilians in around 30 years, that's less than what Hamas did in a couple of hours on October 7th. Btw Hamas is not only active in Gaza, it was a big part of the terror campaign that derailed the Oslo peace initiative and later Camp David - mostly in the West Bank. Hamas' reach is all across the Palestinian territories and it has hit Israelis in all kinds of ways - suicide bombings (in the West Bank), rockets (Gaza) and recently full on invasions and massacres. The death toll, destruction and disruption to the economy and civil life it had on Israeli society is orders of magnitude larger than what Britain has ever experienced.

> Yes, the IRA had the objective to eliminate British rule in Northern Ireland entirely, which is quite similar to Hamas's goal of eliminating Israeli rule in all of Israel. I'm not sure if the IRA was as happy to kill any loyalist civilians as Hamas is in killing Israeli civilians, to be fair.

So there's a major difference here I think, Britain could have simply left Northern Ireland or reach some compromise to meet some of the IRA's demands (which has actually eventually happened) and still remained Britain. For Israel to meet Hamas demands it needs to commit national suicide, cede control to a group that hates it (happy to kill Israelis - your words) and wants to take revenge and as a result probably have the majority of its population flee the region completely (where to? perhaps to the West, which is also not the most hospitable environment for Jews/Israelis).

> I'm not sure what superpower you refer to here (are you calling Egypt a superpower? Edit - oh, you mean the USSR...).

I am talking about Iran which is considered a regional superpower and about the fact Israel is surrounded by Iranian made armies (Hezbollah to the North, Yemenite Houtihs and Iraqi militais to the East) that are now occasionally bombing its civilian population or trying to force a naval blockade on it. England never had to face anything remotely similar to this with the IRA. The last time England had something similar to this was WW2.

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