this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Hamas’s Qassam Brigades has threatened to execute Israeli captives if Israel continues to bombard and kill civilians in Gaza.

“Any targeting of innocent civilians without warning will be met regretfully by executing one of the captives in our custody, and we will be forced to broadcast this execution,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades.

“We regret this decision but we hold the Zionist enemy and their leadership the responsibility for this,” he said.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I dunno, the internet has told me that Israel is just as bad. I definitely remember when the IDF took a bunch of civilian women and children as hostages and then announced that it was going to livestream their murder.

Oh wait.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

There are no good guys in that conflict.

Only bad guys and victims.

Hamas being terrorists doesn't make it OK for Israel to be committed to genocide any more than Israel's existence as an ethnofascist apartheid state makes in OK for Hamas to be bombing proms.

Both organizations are making it impossible for Palestinians to live peacefully.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine. It is their historical sensitivity to genocide and limitations placed on them by international law and foreign pressures that imposes on them very different standards of behavior in this war. If they operated by the same set of rules that Hamas does, this conflict would have been over long ago.

Others were captured and bound and kidnapped. “I saw videos with a male getting held by a group of Arab kids. Like, they’re like 16, 17,” one survivor recalled. “They’re kids, but they’re young men already, and they’re holding this guy, and he looks as his girlfriend is being mounted on a bike and driven away from him. God knows what she’s going to experience … Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies.”
Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs.
One survivor who’d returned to the scene later in the day to look for his friends spoke, in a breaking voice, of what he’d seen. Of the bodies, mainly of young women, lying cold and mutilated. Of scantily clad corpses, many of whom appeared to have been shot at point-blank. Of cars, perforated by bullets or blown up by grenades.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/israel-music-festival-massacre-eyewitness-account

Israel does not perform atrocities like this. This wasn't collateral damage, this wasn't an attack on a valid military target, it was intentionally kidnapping, raping, and murdering civilians. This sort of behavior makes it very hard for me to swallow the, "both sides are equally bad," narrative. I had a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian situation before, it is quickly evaporating.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m not denying that some of this is factual reporting, but that particular source can be very biased with respect to Israel.

Overall, we rate Tablet Magazine as right-center biased based on an editorial bias that moderately favors the pro-Israel nationalist right. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting rather than High due to the promotion of conspiracy theories despite a clean third-party fact check record.

Source

[–] NevermindNoMind 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide, but I'll save that criticism until it actually plays out. In general, Israel is an apartied state. Hamas is a bunch of murderous terrorists committing war crimes, doing far more harm to their supposed cause than good. This attack will result in far more of their people suffering. But they count on that, hate within the Palestine community in Gaza is what gives them political power, so the civilians Isreal is currently killing will just continue to fuel the cycle of violence.

Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn't make Israel "good". If you compare Nazi Germany to apartied South Africa, the former is going to win the evil country contest everytime. But that doesn't make apartied South Africa good. If it wasn't for the Book of Revelations, America (it's government and it's people) would care as much about this conflict as it does about various civil wars and genocides happening all over the world, which is to say not at all (unless oil or other natural resources are imperilled).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide

My understanding is the border crossing with Egypt is still open, so Palestine can still have access to all of that.

Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn’t make Israel “good”.

You make a good point about no one having clean hands in this conflict, but one party here seems willing to commit atrocities that the other is not. One party is historically willing to compromise and negotiate for a viable solution and the other has not, and in fact has it in their charter that they will not negotiate or compromise.

[Hamas's charter,] article 13, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

What we need to end this amicably is a solution that neither party is happy with, one they are equally dissatisfied with, because that is a hallmark of compromise. If one or both parties are unwilling to compromise, the erosion of Palestinian lands and power will continue as it has, and such atrocious acts may serve to hasten it.

[–] Evilcoleslaw 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My understanding is the border crossing with Egypt is still open, so Palestine can still have access to all of that.

The border crossing to Egypt is usually only for people when it's open. As I understand it, all goods have to use a different crossing passing into Israel first and then Gaza.

[–] jcit878 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The border crossing to Egypt is usually only for people when it’s open.

why all the innocent palestinians arent rushing for the border to get out is beyond me. you know what's coming. being dead and saying 'i told you the bastards would kill me' sounds great up until the point you are dead.

Hoping Israel doesnt unleash possibly the most intense campaign of this generation is a fools dream really and unless you are a combatant, you'd get the hell out ASAP. Hamas is going to be blown to limbs and those that survive the bombings and full scale assaults are going to wind up Munich'd after all this is over. They cant do what they did and not expect utter retribution

[–] Evilcoleslaw -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably because Egypt isn't going to let them in either.

[–] jcit878 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

well instead of acting like a little bitch about it, maybe work on that solution

[–] Evilcoleslaw -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, let me just call up the government of Egypt and tell them to let in 2 million refugees.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine.

Hate to point out the irony, especially in this context... but at the rate things are going, in another 5 years there probably won't be a Palestine.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Snark aside, I do completely agree, and there's a lot that I would criticize Israel for. That list does not, however, include mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of random civilians.

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[–] kromem 17 points 1 year ago

The equivalency discussions are all BS.

Terrorist attacks targeting civilians are bad.

Also, indiscriminate bombing killing civilians is bad.

A civilized world really shouldn't condone either. And one doesn't justify the other.

Flying planes into civilian buildings killing thousands wasn't an appropriate response to their government supporting tyrants who tortured and killed dissidents. (Also, probably not a good idea to support tyrants.)

The hundreds of thousands of civilians who died in the middle east in response to those attacks shouldn't have had to pay the price on such an attack even if their country had had anything to do with it in the first place.

The only appropriate "both sides" in these kinds of situations is the capacity to have empathy and regret over the suffering that occurs to normal people trying to live their lives on both sides of the conflicts.

Unfortunately a lot of what I'm seeing online these days is the logical equivalent of "Bin Laden was justified in 9/11 because the US's foreign policy caused the suffering of many in the middle east." Logic I happen to think is pretty disgusting personally, just as I've also always found dismissal of civilian suffering in broader military responses reprehensible.

Not a lot of countries have clean hands to be pointing fingers with, but the only way we move towards a world with less blood on our collective hands is by unequivocally pointing to human rights abuses where they occur and saying "this is not okay."

Not "this is okay because so and so bombed a city block first and wasn't touching black while saying I'm rubber and you're glue."

No - targeting or indiscriminately killing civilians is not okay - full stop.

And if one's attitude about the civilian deaths of one group of people is anything less than that, they might just be a bit racist towards that group of people, and may want to reexamine how they look at fellow humans and the degree to which minor differences in skin color or religion or ancestral identity outweighs the commonality of the human experience of pain, suffering, and loss.

TL;DR: It's perfectly appropriate to recognize that the Palestinian people have suffered injustice and mistreatment while also recognizing that a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians is repugnant. The mental gymnastics to recognize the former and not the latter is pretty gross though, and honestly every time I see it (and frequently these days) I can't help but think it probably really does boil down to racist assholes using false equivalency to justify their bigotry.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

You don't think cutting off food, water, and power to millions isn't an are we the baddies moment too?

Both sides are acting like petulant children while their people suffer

[–] bl4ckblooc 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don’t take them hostage, usually they just kill them right there.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You know as well as I do that the IDF has never done anything like what happened on Saturday. Kidnapping children? Shooting random people waiting at a bus stop? Slaughtering 200 people at a festival? Taking a hundred hostages and then threatening to murder them while live streaming it?

Israel has done a lot of shit, and deserves criticism for all of it, but it has not done anything comparable to this.

[–] bl4ckblooc 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They have regularly and repeatedly carried out air strikes targeting civilian infrastructure with no evidence of military targets.

There are multiple reports from multiple years of IDF soldiers killing children, including the recent video of soldiers killing a young boy in front of a cheering crowd.

What about all the videos of the things IDF has done to people in the West Bank? Countless reports of women being raped before being thrown from their homes, and their family members being shot for resisting having their land stolen from them.

Yes, what happened the other day was terrible. But it’s not unilateral, Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians for decades. Just because they have been spread out instead of all happening on one day does not make them better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have any sources of, for example, countless women being raped by the IDF/Israelis?

[–] jadalovelace -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok not to say this isn't awful but you if you have to go back 75 years to find 4 rapes, don't you think the wording 'countless' and the implication this is a regular practice in the West Bank is a bit of a lie?

[–] jadalovelace 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

didn't see it was already 75 years ago. i think you're right.

i went looking online to see if i could find any reports on rape allegations. most sources are news websites that i'm not familiar with so i don't want to use them as source.

most reputable news sources have articles about rape allegations among soldiers, not from palestinians. Which i think is a problem in every army, regardless of the nation.

so i think i'm in agreement with you here that there's not much evidence that the IDF is raping palestinians.

having said that, it feels like a technicality in the face of all the palestinians the IDF has murdered and evicted. Where i'm talking exclusively about civilians, not hamas terrorists.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think it is just a technicality really. Accusations of systemic rape as a weapon of war are very serious. If they are used as a counter argument to say "it's not important that Palestinians immediately go on a raping spree the very moment they step foot out of Gaza, because the Israelis have been doing it for years" that is a clear lie. Such lies need to be called out, not excused as unimportant technicalities. How are you deciding that those Israeli kids deserved it if you don't really care about facts

[–] jadalovelace 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

oh i never meant to say that any of the israeli victims deserved it.

neither the israeli nor the palestinian people deserve what has been happening.

i do think its unfair to be shocked at palestinian aggression while ignoring israeli war crimes.

none of it is ever deserved or justified. the hamas attack from last week should be fought back with tooth and nail. hamas needs to be brought down.

and netanyahu and any israeli politicians involved in the colonization for the past two decades should be tried for war crimes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok then we are on the same page I guess

But I feel kind of dirty having to defend the Israelis against a lot of propaganda. Letting this kind of casual lies to excuse horrid violence pass will not serve anything but normalize more violence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ok then we are on the same page I guess

But I feel kind of dirty having to defend the Israelis against a lot of propaganda. Letting this kind of casual lies to excuse horrid violence pass will not serve anything but normalize more violence.

Also, where we might disagree: you say Hamas should be brought down. But they are deeply entrenched between the civilians in Gaza. So how do you suggest it's done?

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