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Hamas official says group aims to repeat Oct. 7 onslaught many times to destroy Israel
(www.timesofisrael.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Who still thinks any state is the good guys? Hamas and Israel are both enemies of the people.
The only way to cut through the propagandistic lies of these groups is to point out that neither truly represents the people they say they do.
I mean, Hamas took power by killing Palestinian civilians. They don’t represent anyone and they openly say they will martyr civilians.
The Palestinian National Authority (Fatah) was the democratically elected government of Palestine before 2007. Hamas staged a coup and executed Fatah officials, which is why Gaza and the West Bank are separate entities today.
Hamas is as much a state as Al-Qaeda. They’re a terrorist group that seized power by way of murder and have openly declared they intend to use their citizens as shields and martyrs.
They’re not a state. They’re a terror cell that deserves to be eliminated. Unfortunately their own admitted tactics of using civilians as shields means that civilians will be killed.
This is a lie. Hamas won the vote. The EU, UN, and the Carter Center all called those elections free and fair. If anything, Hamas was an underdog given that Israel, in collaboration with Fatah, kept arresting the politicians in Hamas as they defined Hamas a terrorist organization. Fatah and Israel wanted to delay the elections, but with the encouragement of the US (GWB in particular who felt Hamas would definitely not win), they decided to keep them as they were. Stop making things up to fit your narrative. Hamas still typically wins the popular vote in polling done since then. You have a fucking computer. Just google it. It's all there in black and white.
I mean they did have conflicts with Fatah. But the biggest fights weren't until after they won the election.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)
The elections in 2006 is not when Hamas took power. Their coup in 2007 was.
They aren't making the IDF bomb apartment buildings, which is something they've been doing for decades, before Israel helped create Hamas.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
So where is Israel's responsibility there, in sponsoring terrorists? Or do we pretend notiing happened before the last few weeks because then we can sort of pretend Israel has no culpability, you know, if we squint and try to avoid looking at the bombing of civilians?
Yes they are. By their own admission in this article.
Hamas by their own damn admission uses civilians as shields and intends to martyr them.
Your article leaves out the fact that Israel funded and supported several Islamic organizations at the time in both Gaza and the West Bank. One became a terrorist institution.
Take the whole history into account. After the six day war, Israel was in the position that they needed all the support they could get. So they supported anyone that opposed the PLO, which was sponsored by Egypt and Fatah. Because that’s who they just were attacked by.
Israel funded dozens of Islamic organizations that were opposed to Fatah, including mosques and schools. Hamas came out of one of them.
That article has such a stupid take. It takes tiny pieces of quotes from a couple of ex-Israeli officials and with one of them is clearly omitting context. Did Israel permit Islamist groups to do stuff like build mosques and have charities? Yes. Did he also say, but it is not mentioned in the article, that they were completely peaceful at the time and that Israel didn't want to be viewed as attacking Islam? Also yes.
See, what you are saying is that Israel created Hamas by not using more oppression to stop these groups at a time when they were not attacking Israel, but the PLO was. And that is just such a simple naive take that it is ridiculous. Yeah if Israel could redo things, they might have decided that was a good idea. But then again, what if it just caused more attacks from the surrounding countries after they were claimed to be "attacking Islam." Then would we also blame Israel for those attacks due to them repressing the Islamist movements?
It even does the same by using cherry picked foresight about Afghanistan. It entirely ignores the situation in Afghanistan and just implies that the US caused Al Qaeda. Things just aren't that simple. It's entirely possible that had the US and other countries not interfered in Afghanistan that the soviet union would've lasted longer and Afghanistan might've been another Chechnya.
At the time, Israel was having to fight against the PLO. They were not fighting against the religious Islamic groups. And knowing the history of the time period and the politics in the region, the very religious groups were not nearly the force that they are now. So they made choices for reasons that absolutely made sense at the time. And we have no way of knowing how things would be different if they made different choices.
We can say that places that aren't Israel still have issues with the Muslim brotherhood or are friendly with them all over the middle east. And Israel certainly didn't create the Muslim Brotherhood. And if Israel didn't exist and it was all a Palestinian state with a secular government, it isn't a stretch to say that they would be in that area too, calling for an Islamist government. As they have done in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and more.
Difference is, Israel isn't meant to represent palestinian people, Hamas is. And they are doing a great job of it, if their job is getting civilians killed.
Edit: Just think about the massive protests against Netanyahu earlier in the year. Do those show how in tune the Israeli government and people are? No. But the very fact they could protest mostly peacefully differentiates Israel's treatment of its population from all of its neighbours.
The... what? I have no idea what you're even trying to say.
The IDF is still dropping bombs on civilians. You can invent whatever bullshit you feel like, it doesn't make that somehow okay.
The IDF is dropping bombs on (suspected) Hamas holdouts, which are all conveniently located next to civilians.
Yeah... but they're still bombing civilians. The "human shields" thing makes no sense. Israel was bombing apartment buildings before they helped create Hamas.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
Doesn't change the fact that in this conflict, the IDF are trying to get Hamas targets with their attacks. And that the Hamas are the ones that built their infrastructure next to civilians, that Hamas did kill Israeli civilians indiscriminately and that the Hamas knew full well, that by building their infrastructure next to civilians and by mindlessly raiding Israeli territory, the IDF would respond and kill palestinian civilians while doing so. Israel wants to crush Hamas. Hamas wants as many people to die as possible, so that Israel is made a pariah internationally.
Right... so it's so predictable that the IDF would bomb civilians that any provocation makes the provoker guilty of their murders?
So basically the IDF are so irredeemable in your eyes they're just a force of nature or something?
Again, you're also ignoring the fact that Israel created Hamas.
And Israel SHOULD be a pariah. The only reason they've gotten away with this genocide for so long is because they've had unconditional US state backing.
What do you think Israel should do then with Hamas? Let them get away with murdering more than 1200 Israelis? Conduct small-scale incursions at best? The fact of the matter is simply that the situation was fucked long before and the palestinian civilians were in accute danger of becoming collateral the moment the Hamas broke into Israel. If you are looking for a clearer good-guy bad-guy situation, look to the westbank. There, the Israeli settlers are clearly the ones in the wrong.
All the outrage in the world won't stop Israel from continuing to bomb Hamas in Gaza. On the other hand, Abbas and Fatah got Palestine the recognition of most UN member states. And unlike Hamas, Fatah isn't getting their civilians killed in droves.
I'm not looking for a clearer good-guy-bad-guy situation. I said in my first comment that both Hamas and Israel are enemies of the people.
I don't think either of them "should" do anything, but since "should" doesn't factor into either of their decisions, it's irrelevant anyway. They'll keep oppressing people until they are stopped by organised resistance, just like it is with any oppressive system.
Why do you say Israel and Hamas? Not Likud. Not otzma Yehudit. Just Israel. All of Israel is an enemy? But only Hamas when it comes to Palestine. What about the PLO? Are they fine? Yesh Atid? Or is it really just only Hamas but all of Israel?
Israel the state, who does not truly represent their citizens. I think the way I phrased it makes that pretty goddamn clear.
So again, the entire state of Israel? The ones elected in free and fair elections? Don't get me wrong. I am not a fan of Likud and I loathe ben Gvir and Otzma Yehudit. Just all of it. And only Hamas. The group that won what was called a free and fair election by the EU and the Carter Center and continues to be ahead in opinion polling since they have stopped elections. What are you defining as "Israel the State"?
Why is just the word "elections" enough for you? You need to explain how that makes the government actually speak for the people.
When was the last time you even felt like you had the option of voting for someone who actually represented you? When was the last time you thought the government was working on your behalf in any way? Representative democracy is a farce, it only offers us the choice of a handful of people palatable to the state, and the elected "representative" is not truly representative of the people, because that's a fundamentally flawed concept.
An election every couple of years to appoint a generalised, non-recallable ruler is just a smokescreen over the fact that we have a permanent political class that answers almost exclusively to capitalist oligarchs.
It makes sense because it doesn't violate Geneva conventions. If there are combatants hiding among civilians their deaths are 100% on said combatants. What do you expect Israel to do? After a terrorist attack that is equal to 17 (!) times the scope of 9/11 just to shrug it off and send more humanitarian aid to be pillaged by Hamas?
100%. People here scream "genocide" and "war crimes" but have no idea what these words mean. The "friends" of Palestine here make even Reddit look normal.
The Palestine territories are vassal states of Israel. Israel is ultimately responsible for the safety of civilians in the territory they control.
Uhmm. Are you aware that Israel is #4 on the World Happiness Index this year? It's the happiest non-scandinavic country in the world. You don't get there by being "enemy of the people".
Here are the rankings of Israel's neighbors:
Israel is obviously not the problem in that area.
Wow, extremely wealthy country propped up by imperialism has a high happiness rating compared to extremely poor countries being stomped on by that same imperial war machine.
Surely the poor countries are the problem.
You must understand that you cannot explain it away like that. Palestine perhaps you might, but funnily enough, it's the happiest country of those four.
Why not? Literally just give any explanation. You didn't even try to explain in your first comment how "happiness" has anything to do with this.
Egypt's, Jordan's and Lebanon's bad standings in the happiness scale cannot in any way be explained away by Israel. Just because you lost several wars against an enemy several decades ago isn't enough to explain any of it. So it's all on them. As I said, Palestine's bad situation might be explained by Israel, but again, it's the happiest of those four.
You said that both Hamas and Israel are the enemies of the people. I disproved that notion by noting how Israel is #4 happiest country in the world. My apologies, I thought the inference was obvious.
I didn't blame it on Israel, I said the imperial war machine. Israel the state is also the product of capitalist imperialism, but they are the beneficiary. I made that pretty clear I think.
The poor countries on that list are all the target of structural adjustment policies, which basically say "you need to neglect your population and become indentured servants, and if you don't we will fucking glass your country." That last part about glassing them isn't in the text, but it's clearly implied by the context these policies take place in. Also the leaders are usually bribed so they will agree more readily.
And just because Israeli citizens are "happy" according to some index that you've not actually shared, just insisted does exist, has nothing to do with whether the state is on their side. They are generally extremely wealthy people living in an extremely wealthy state that is propped up by US spending. The people who live there are expats from wealthy western countries, which is a privileged sample of a privileged sample.
I'll refer you to Hank's Razor: "Anything that can be explained by socioeconomic status in a society, it's probably that rather than the thing that you're measuring."
This is almost certainly entirely socioeconomic status, directly influenced by geopolitics.
Also, Israel's genocide is not making their people safer. It is endangering them enormously. The state just can't stop genociding because it's been given a green light by the US imperial war machine, and that's just how states behave when they have that kind of power.
Are you aware that this is a marxist concept?
That's it? That's all you've got? "marxist"? Literally no argument at all.
There are levels of evil.
And? You're allowed to say what you mean, you know.
Where do the civilians being bombed fall on your spectrum of evil? Do they somehow deserve it in your eyes?
Ok, I have to ask. How would you apply this to any other conflict. For example the Allies fighting against Germany. Where did the German civilians fall in the spectrum of evil. Was fighting Germany justified, knowing that German civilians might suffer? If so, how is this situation different?
Strategic bombing - ie, the indiscriminate bombing of populated areas - was ineffective and immoral, and people at the time condemned it as such, and they were right to do so. It was also wrong to use Japanese cities as testbeds for nuclear arms. There was no real strategic reason to do it.
So like... don't do that? Maybe Israel shouldn't do that, because fucking obviously?
Like yes, there were bad states on the allied side in WWII as well. You can see that in how they conducted themselves after the war was over, and at many points before that. In fact the policies of the Nazis were directly inspired by US genocides.
You're not going to trip me up by bringing up the Nazis. I said states are the enemy of the people, and I meant it.
None of what I said should be construed as support for the fascist axis powers, that should just be obvious, but I'm sure I have to say it, because people are just going to try it on.
But you're still ok with using artillery against a city if the city has an army in it?
What? Why? Where did I say that? What the fuck are you talking about?
I asked how this conflict was different and you started talking about a completely different topic like stategic bombing. But Israel isn't using strategic bombing, they're using artillery and missiles. Just like how the allies did against Berlin and other German cities when fighting the Germans. So how is this different?
The difference is that Israel has been colonising the west bank for over 70 years. They are the aggressors. They are more analogous to the Nazis in WWII for that reason anyway.
And yes, just like there were bad actors on the allied side in WWII, Hamas is also a bad actor.
This isn't... COMPLICATED.
Israel pulled out of Palestine in 2005 and Palestine elected their own government, at that point they're an independent nation.
Oh good, so IDF snipers shooting Palestinian children in 2019 couldn't be happening: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-07-21/ty-article/.premium/the-protest-dispersed-then-an-israeli-sniper-shot-a-9-year-old-boy-in-the-head/0000017f-e3ff-d9aa-afff-fbffde890000
I'm sure this was necessary to get to the extremely small Hamas bunker that was surgically implanted in his skull, because those bastards were using him as a human shield.
Similar story much more recently: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65812442
That kid was two years old. Must've been a really small bunker.
Seems like a really common tactic, apparently the rates of Palestinian children being shot by the IDF was increasing before this latest situation started: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/28/west-bank-spike-israeli-killings-palestinian-children
Yup, good thing Israel left and this couldn't possibly be happening.
I read the BBC article on the recent shooting, you're right, it's tragic and wrong. Two gunmen shot up a settlement and then started exchanging fire with an IDF unit and the child was shot in the crossfire. This is awful, but has nothing to do with Palestine being an independent nation since this happened in the west bank, not the Gaza strip, which as I understand it, are different.
Also, this article (which is the only one I can access) seems to be posted in bad faith, the whole tragic situation started by a bunch of people opening fire on random Israeli citizens. But there's no mention of this at all when you're decrying Israeli violence. And the same for your talk about "Strategic Bombing", that no one is doing, or the political situation in the west bank (which is different from the Gaza strip).
Wow, incredible that the IDF just happens to accidentally shoot dozens of Palestinian children every year. Tragic. Surely there can be no assignment of blame here.
And I don't bother explaining what's wrong with Hamas because this thread isn't full of Hamas apologists, it's full of Israel apologists.
Honestly that's a pretty strange thing to say about one of history's most complicated and oldest conflicts. If it was as simple as random dudes online think it is, don't you think this issue would have been somehow resolved by now?
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have tribal roots in the region dating back thousands of years.
The region also has religions significance to all three of the big western religions.
And to make it even more complicated, the region has been under the control of multiple empires over the last 3000 years: waring tribes, Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Byzantines, the second Muslim caliphate, the Ottomans, the British, and I'm sure I'm skipping more. Israel and Palestine as nations where effectively created at around the same time post WW1 (see the Mandate for Palestine and the Balfour Declaration).
So sure.. It's possible that you're so much smarter than everyone else that one of the world's oldest conflicts is trivial to you, OR, just maybe it's a little bit more complicated than you and some other people let on...
This is why it's happening: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4962369/user-clip-joe-biden-israel-usa-invent-israel-protect-interest-region
"Were there not an Israel the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region."
Biden has reiterated this sentiment since this situation has started. His stance is completely unchanged. He admits openly that it is a power play, so any posturing about a "sacred bond" or whatever is bullshit.
It is power politics. The US is propping up Israel as a projection of power, and with that Israel has become ever more fascist without any accountability, and they have perpetrated a genocide because they have the power to, just like any state would in those circumstances, because they are all sociopathic institutions. That's it. There's nothing special about the Jewish nature of the state, it's got nothing to do with religion, that's just an excuse that gets laid over the top of what is simple exploitation.
It's a land grab and a genocide, and Hamas was propped up by Israel to serve their interests at the time. In fact you could say they're still serving Israel's interests, because Israel the state has no real interest in protecting their own civilians, they only want their land grab.
The "it's complicated" bullshit is just there to muddy the waters. It's a lazy handwave to cover the fact that you can't excuse genocide.
The Balfour Declaration, which put the creation of Israel into play, was created by the British during WW1, at a time when the entire region was under the control of the Ottoman Empire.:
It's obvious that Israel is the strongest and most strategically important ally that America has in the region today, nobody can deny that. Just like nobody can deny that Hamas, the ruling entity of Gaza for almost 15 years, is allied with and strategically important to Iran, Russia, and many of Israel and America's other big geological adversaries. Iran supported Hamas' recent terrorist attack on Israel because they understood that they, an Islamic theocracy, would benefit from the chaos of what appears to some as a religious war. Similarly, Russia wants chaos in the region in a desperate attempt to divert western military resources away from supporting Ukraine.
To me, none of that makes the situation simpler.
As for the clip you've linked, the first Arab-Israeli war was more than 20 years prior to that. And, taken in context, Biden was arguing against the Reagan administration's plans to arm Saudi Arabia, and to that point I'm not really convinced that he was wrong...
As for claims of genocide, I'm afraid that cuts both ways:
1988 Charter of Hamas
So yeah, if you think the modern world's oldest geopolitical conflict is simple, then you're either way smarter than everyone else or you're mentally reducing the problem until it confirms your existing biases. Personally I think it's more complicated than you're making it out to be, which is why it hasn't been settled by 100 years of diplomacy and war.
You tried to bury this in details, but your entire explanation boils down to "US sponsors their puppet and the US's enemies sponsor the enemies of the US's puppet". It's a proxy war. That's really about it.
You literally just admitted that it is power politics but you tried to pretend like that complicates the situation in any way.
Yes, there are more details, there are lots of things being said by different actors who all have their own idiosyncratic beliefs and ideas, many of which are fueled by ongoing conflict, but the reason the conflicts in this part of the world are so intractable doesn't come down to those details. It comes down to the fact that the middle east has reserves of oil that are strategically significant. They are in the middle of a geopolitical tug of war.
Messy doesn't mean complicated.
And none of this excuses the wholesale slaughter of civilians. That part in particular is not at all complicated.
Attacking civilians to stop an apartheid from getting more money and support is evil.
Making up reasons after you target civilians and journalists is another level of evil.