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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Hamas is an internationally recognized terrorist organization, which just executed a bunch of civilians on a music fest. There is no grey area and no room for interpretation.
Make no mistake, I denounce their violence and targeting of civilians without a second thought. The same criteria I apply to anyone. But to portray only them as "terrorists" - while Israel enjoys designations like "democracy" - is not based in reality. Israel has taken more lives by an order of magnitude, aired equally horrific genocidal rhetoric on public TV in the last month alone, and stolen the land of the Palestinian people in what I can only describe as a psychotically self-centered and racist act of ethnic cleansing. One rooted in deep trauma, but nonetheless. And not in some trivial way, but literally to bring the modern state of Israel into existence.
To use a term like that, given the history of Palestinians being dispossessed of their land, shoved into ghettos and starved of all resources, for the "crimes" of existing and of self-defense, or because finally a tiny contingent of them use the very same rhetoric of genocide as the nation extinguishing their civilization, and applied the same indiscriminate targeting of civilians that they had experienced done to them their entire lives - I can only call that racism. You apply the term "terrorist" to the historical victims, but not to the victimizers.
For the record, here's the actual list of designators of Hamas as a "terrorist" group:
Notice the entire world outside of the sphere of Western states doesn't even participate in this. This is a political term, a stereotype that's used against Muslims, it's never accurately applied objectively in terms of what organizations cause destruction and death for political aims.
To tack on to all of that - the word has pejoratively being used in the last month to describe the entire population of the Gaza Strip. In the same way we stopped using the various "n" words because people had been beaten to death or hung behind them, we should not be using terminology that's actively being weaponized in service of genocide. It's an extremely dangerous thing to participate in.
True, there is no grey area, because Israel is a genocidal state attempting to steal palestine's land. Quit reading nothing except US/Israeli propaganda and educate yourself.
I literally don't understand why people have a hard time with this.
Israel has organized, funded armed forces wearing uniforms. Hamas has teenagers in street clothes hiding in hospitals, schools, and houses.
Israel attempts to protect it's citizens, Hamas uses human shields.
If you agree with the actions of Hamas, which are designed to maximize fear and force Israeli troops to make hard decisions during combat, you support terrorists. Just admit it. Calling Hamas a terrorist organization isn't necessarily perjorative. But it is perfectly descriptive.
If you don't like that you support terrorists, then you have some deep reflecting to do.
It's so hard to response to comments like this, because honestly your whole perspective is so out of whack. Let's start from the top -
Israel has a modern army, U.S. supplied munitions to the tunes of billions of dollars a year, war planes, nuclear bombs, that it uses against teenagers in street clothes. Not in an effort to deescalate violence, but in an effort to deal retribution for it 10 times over each time, which statistics back up.
First, Haaretz reported the IDF fired on Israeli citizens on Oct. 7 to take out the Hamas militants.
Second, the Israeli state and military - to whatever extent they actually care about their own citizen's lives - does not care about the lives of Palestinians. You state that Hamas "uses human shields". First, in a military situation, when you don't have air superiority or arms superiority, or really any other advantage, there is no other choice. If you have standalone military facilities, they'll just be destroyed. Second, Israel, in response to whatever degree they're actually "using human shields", just kills everyone. See OP. Take this same example - if they killed 50 civilians to kill one Hamas member, multiply that by 25,000 Hamas members and you would end up with 1,250,000 casualties. That is "terrorism", if anything is. Rather, the term would be "genocide" - something Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu himself, have openly been signalling to the public. Both sides of this conflict, at the extremes, are indeed calling for the genocide of the other side - but one has killed 6 times more than the other.
I get how people think explanations like this are about "justification", or even "support". They are not. I'm a pacifist.
The exercise here is to fully understand the circumstances, and why people actually behave in the ways they do, and how they actually fare on objective, universally applied moral standards. It is enough to say that Israel does not come out ahead.
It is also impossible not to apply the same logic to dropping 25,000 bombs on a city, to order a forced evacuation and displace a million people, something which was immediately denounced internationally as a war crime. It boggles my mind how people don't think that "terrorizes" people - but people with these perspectives have rarely considered the actual experience of somebody who's made to live in an active warzone.
That was a really long post. Nothing you said refuted anything I said. You're literally doing the thing I'm talking about.
Do you support Hamas? Just admit it.
After a decade of near-zero conflict Hamas unilaterally launched the largest offensive between the two states in a decade. They murdered babies and tortured and paraded civilian hostages around. They can't be trusted and should be destroyed.
In the last decade since the last Israel/Palestine "war" in 2014 Israel has had barely any military action against Palestine. It's not like there's some kind of genocide happening - if Israel wanted genocide Gaza could be wiped from the planet overnight.
Gaza has no democracy, no legitimate government, no industry, no trade. So no hope for the future. Countries don't want to take Palestinian refugees because they attempt coups and threaten to destabilize regions.
The instant that Gaza forms a legitimate democratic government the attacks would stop. The moment that Gazans formed a non military state, the conflict stops.
Don't get me wrong here - the situation for non-radicalized Palestinians is total dog shit. They are the biggest victims here but the blame falls on Hamas in my view.
Well, right off, I don't appreciate writing a long comment for someone for them to just ignore it.
It is specifically like there's some kind of genocide happening. The Israeli government has been openly calling for the destruction of Palestine, displaying maps with Palestine erased to the UN, comparing the Palestinian population to "human animals", Netanyahu bringing up the biblical "Amalek" which the Old Testament commands the complete destruction of, men, women, children, and farm animals. Half a percent of the population of Gaza is already dead. It's like you people are waiting for it to be 20% before you say anything.
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
People like you have no idea what the Israeli right-wing is like. It is the exact same thing as the American evangelicals calling to nuke Iraq or Afghanistan, just Jewish instead of Christian. They are extremely racist and genocidal, and they have a green light.
Hamas are terrorists.
Israel made Gaza into a concentration camp.
Comparing both, Israel is a ton worse. Doesn't matter that they can budget for fancy equipment. And if anything, Israel should know better because of the holocaust.