neeshie

Wow, a tunnel near a hospital. There's tunnels under my university too. Should the idf siege it?What I'm asking for is clear evidence that Hamas was using the hospital as a command center. I still haven't seen any of that.

I mean independently verified. The idf has a history of lying and some of the stuff mentioned in that article has already been disproven.

Has there even been any evidence of that?

If Hamas was freedom fighters, then your exact same defense applies to the Israeli military, and it’s a neverending cycle of “justified” violence.

Yeah. That's true. There will be continued death and destruction until Israel tries for peace by undermining Hamas politically, not violently. Or until Israel ethnically cleanses the vast majority of Palestinians, which it seems like they're trying to do.

Hamas is a resistance group, even if their tactics are awful. Their goal isn't to provoke the most awful Israeli responses possible, but to retaliate for the violence that the IDF does. This has been the case for a while, and October 7th is really the main exception because I doubt Hamas predicted how far they'd get. Even with the Oct 7 attack, Hamas literally tried to trade their hostages for women and children in Israeli prisons. They tried to use their hostages as leverage to get Israel to stop bombing civilians as much. They have to care about Palestinians to some extent, because if enough citizens of Gaza decide the PA is a lot better, Hamas won't exist anymore, or at least lose power.

Because they are a terrorist group.

You say this like it means anything. The ANC (fought apartheid south africa) was also a terrorist group. So was the FLN (fought french in the Algerian revolution), the Viet Minh (first Indochina war, against the french), and many other resistance groups.

Currently, Israel is killing civilians and children at a higher rate than Yemen. And yemens population is 16 times that of gaza.

No it doesn't make fuckin sense unless you don't understand why hamas exists. Let's assume that Palestinians aren't people, and it's morally acceptable to kill dozens of them to get one or two Hamas guys. Now, you have a ton of family members of those dead people who are extremely angry at Israel for killing their family and friends. Do you think those people just sit down and die quietly? No, quite a few of them join a terrorist organization to fight back. So now, by bombing that hospital, you've created more terrorists than you've killed.

That isn't antisemetic, that's anti-settler. Jewish immigration into Palestine was not a peaceful process, and 20 years before the PLO charter, 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias. You can't seriously be saying that the PLO was antisemetic because it didn't think settlers were palestinian.

I mean that's just wrong. The stance of the PLO in 1964 was we want a palestinian state, jews of palestinian origin are also palestinian and should be included. This was changed in 1968 to jews who lived in palestine before the invasion are palestinian

Cmon, from the river to the sea has been a thing that 1 state solution people have said for a while, it was popularized by the PLO. I genuinely don't know what else could be associated with it unless you're thinking about it in the least charitable way possible.

It is bad but you have to include context. The context may show that it may be not a cleansing at all.

Gotcha yea. The context here is that Israel has explicitly stated that it wants to make jews an ethnic majority in certain areas of the West Bank, and in order to do this it has kicked Palestinians out so in this case it is ethnic cleansing.

I get what ur saying about wanting details, but the second case wouldn't be apartheid or ethnic cleansing if there weren't people there before. But yeah, I should have just elaborated first. Is the "armed guards, enforced separation, treated as less than settlers on their own land, regularly killed" enough?

Apartheid? Gaza is quite tight, yes, but it’s not exactly Kowloon. How exactly could they show the world that they badly need more land?

Apartheid more accurately describes the West Bank imo, Gaza is more like one long ongoing war crime. The blockade is collective punishment. It prevents Palestinians from receiving certain medical care, and there's shortages of a ton of things. I know of people who have been banned from lifesaving cancer treatment due to the blockade and have died.

Israel didn’t destroy anything on a land before occupying/populating it, did they?

Are we talking when they first started occupying, or are we talking closer to now? Because yes in both cases they do destroy stuff. They have always burned down villages if they didn't want them to be there. At first they planted trees on top of them to completely erase any traces of it, I don't know if they still do that. I don't think they burned down as much stuff in Gaza, but settlers destroyed some of the stuff in Gaza as they were being pulled out, and Israel bulldozed their airport before that. You have to keep in mind that this was a populated area, Israel forced Palestinians out and build their own stuff on top of it.

And in the west bank, they literally just went in and destroyed roads, monuments, and water infrastructure for the fun of it.

At some point there were big populations of jews in arab countries, and now there is no such thing. Isn’t that what would we call cleansing?

Yes, it was horrific. However the correct response to that is not to ethnically cleanse different people, it's a military intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing.

I’m not seeing any record that would show Jews/Israeli are somehow driven by a desire to destroy a certain nation.

Jews definitely aren't. If anyone says that, they're antisemitic and the proper response is to punch them in the face. Israeli politicians on the other hand, have made it very clear that they intend to have 1 Israeli state with a Jewish majority encompassing all of Palestine. Some Israelis have gone as far as to say they want Lebanon too, which is completely ridiculous because Hezbollah would kick their asses.

I think I saw a Palestinian with dental crowns. I can imagine one or two countries live in much more horrific conditions.

I'm sure if there was a clear cause for their suffering, they would hate that cause much more than the Palestinians have been taught to hate Israel.

Not sure what you’re talking about. Not seeing signs of Israeli army being overall incompetent.

Are we talking about incompetence or the moral standard we hold armies to, I'm confused. If you're worried about incompetence, I'd say October 7th was a sign that it's incompetent, as well as its loss against Hezbollah in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war (Battle of Bint Jbeil, 5,000 IDF soldiers lost to 150 Hezbollah fighters).

but my understanding and expectation is that Israel will proceed to be transparent about its actions, and will respond to war crime allegations properly, if not now then eventually.

Your understanding is wrong unfortunately. Israel commits war crimes all the time and gets away with it. It admitted to killing journalists (with a sniper, not an airstrike). I'm gonna point to the great march of return again. They killed marked medics and children as young as 2 with sniper fire. This is a war crime. In fact they tend to not provide any evidence that their bombing targets are valid military targets.

In fact, because Hamas rockets usually kill so few, and countries have a responsibility during war to not harm civilians and civilian infrastructure in excess of the military advantage expected, I would argue that almost every single Israeli airstrike before October 7th, and most of them afterwards, is also a war crime, even if there were rockets there. And Amnesty International agrees.

I don’t think it’s okay to put the burden on Israel while it should be Hamas who could show everyone they are not mindless monsters first.

Gotcha, and I saw the part about Hamas wanting to destroy Israel. I think back in 1948 Israel showed the Palestinians how horrific they were, but Palestinians were still willing to come to the table since then, so I don't think Israel can use the october 7th excuse.

If Israel genuinely wants to seek a 2 state solution, and negotiating with Hamas is off the table (I still think its worth a try, but regardless), then they should start by improving conditions in the west bank, getting rid of checkpoints, withdrawing all of the settlers, etc. That would show Palestinians that actually peaceful negotiation can work, and Hamas's support would collapse and Israel could negotiate with someone else from Gaza.

Or alternatively, they could turn themselves into a secular state instead of an ethnostate. This would also improve conditions in the west bank, it would satisfy the PLO (which includes the PFLP and Fatah), and ultimately it would also result in Hamas's support collapsing.

They've done neither of these, instead building more and more settlements in the west bank, showing that they aren't interested in peace, and leaving Palestinians with only Hamas/PIJ/PFLP/DFLP/Fatah(militant wing) as options for their liberation.

Edit: holy crap these comments are getting long af lol

Ok. Settler colonialism is bad because it is slow ethnic cleansing, and ethnic cleansing is bad. This alone justifies armed resistance, but the settler colonialism is enforced by an apartheid system that treats Palestinians as less than Jewish settlers and restricts their access to their own land with checkpoints, walls, and armed guards. This justifies armed resistance even more.

Hamas kills -> people die -> hamas must be stopped

That's bullshit lmao. Israel kills -> people die -> Israel must be stopped. The north during the civil war kills -> people die -> the union must be stopped. Americans kill germans and japanese people in ww2 -> people die -> the US must be stopped.

See how I can also massively oversimplify the situation.

Then how come it needs to be about how everyone should kill jews?

If I had to guess, it just changes the focus of the hate from Israel to all jews, but again the main factor that leads to the hate is the horrific conditions they live in. Nothing else can come close to that. But again, if you really cared about turning kids into terrorists you would be criticizing the Israeli practices of conscripting people and sending them to the west bank.

An army is very different from what terrorists do.

How so. Shouldn't an oppresive state actor with backing from the US be held to a higher standard than a resistance movement consisting of a bunch of angry zoomers led by some rich guys in qatar? Yet if you look at the actual actions that they take, Israel tends to be worse in a lot of ways.

Is that sarcasm? Do I need to explain how Russia knowingly bombs non-military targets with no military personnel?

No, it's not sarcasm, and you don't have to explain that. I know that Russia purposefully kills civilians. You do however have to show me evidence that every single one of the hospitals and schools that Israel has bombed is a valid military target (spoiler alert: there is none in most cases), and explain why when Russia does it, its bad, but when Israel targets civilians, its fine actually and it isn't terrorism.

It was mentioned (here too I think) that those elections were not exactly what you’d expect from proper elections, and yet you want to use this as an argument…

It wasn't a proper election sure, and Hamas should have won far fewer seats based on the percent of votes, but the point is that they had a large amount of public support.

Well look at how things changed. What was the moment hamas decided to go full terrorist and spend resources on arming up, and how did Palestinians feel about that?

Starting in the 1990s they did more and more terrorism. And since the elections were in 2006, obviously a lot of Palestinians didn't care too much about that.

Destroying Israel and establishing an Islamic theocracy in Palestine is essential; Negotiated resolutions of Jewish and Palestinian claims to the land are unacceptable.

Straight from the wikipedia page:

Hamas began negotiating with Israel and the 1967 borders in the agreements it signed with Fatah in 2005, 2006 and 2007.[71] In 2017, Hamas released a new charter that supported a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders without recognizing Israel.[72][73][74][75] Hamas's repeated offers of a truce (for a period of 10–100 years[76]) based on the 1967 borders are seen by many as being consistent with a two-state solution,[77][78][79][80] while others state that Hamas retains the long-term objective of establishing one state in former Mandatory Palestine.

So yes, they are willing to negotiate. And some people think that they aren't willing to accept a 2 state solution, but that doesn't mean Israel shouldn't at least try to negotiate for peace. If hamas keeps attacking, Israel has the military power to make things go right back to the way it was before. The reason Israel doesn't negotiate is because it isn't interested in peace, it is interested in cleansing all palestinians from the west bank and gaza and taking their land.

Here's Amnesty international's report, theres a 280 page report that outlines most of the atrocities that constitute apartheid in it. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

Here's a UN article regarding the settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is effectively a slow invasion and ethnic cleansing. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129942

It’s not as horrible as the way hamas uses its civilians to act as both living shield and terrorist recruits. Children are being told they need to kill jews from the tv, and parents tell them they would be proud of they become “heroes” that way.

Ok lets look at this claim. The main radicalizing factor isn't TV, it's bombs killing children's families, and those bombs are a million times more effective at turning people into terrorists than antisemetic TV shows. Hamas only has ~25,000 soldiers though, while Israel propagandizes its civilians and forces most of them into either jail or military service when they reach military age. They also put military infrastructure in crowded civilian areas just like Hamas. If you're worried about turning people into terrorists and using them as human shields, this is obviously worse right?

Also, I notice you brought up Russia earlier. Ukraine set up bases in civilian areas, including schools. But we still consider Russia the bad guys, for obvious reasons.

Especially when they have a record, right? Those other conflicts you mentioned were ended when they recognized and supported the oppressed parties, if I get it right. But at the same time they have no morals, sure.

Sure man, I don't really think its worth talking about it. We might decide to sacrifice profits for a moral high ground, who knows. That would be great, but I personally don't think its likely.

I don’t think you understand that odds of that happening.

No I'm aware that it's very very very low.

Because these people never showed that they even cared for their own population, and negotiations would mean they would need to actually work towards establishing a proper state and take care of themselves.

They literally did. How do you think Hamas got elected over Fatah. It wasn't because Palestinians love terrorism or any racist shit like that. Straight from the wikipedia page:

In the 1990s, some 85% of its budget was allocated to the provision of social services. Hamas has been called perhaps the most significant social services actor in Palestine. By 2000, Hamas or its affiliated charities ran roughly 40% of the social institutions in the West Bank and Gaza and, with other Islamic charities, by 2005, was supporting 120,000 individuals with monthly financial support in Gaza. Part of the appeal of these institutions is that they fill a vacuum in the administration by the PLO of the Palestinian territories, which had failed to cater to the demand for jobs and broad social services, and is widely viewed as corrupt. As late as 2005, the budget of Hamas, drawing on global charity contributions, was mostly tied up in covering running expenses for its social programmes, which extended from the supply of housing, food and water for the needy to more general functions such as financial aid, medical assistance, educational development and religious instruction.

And how long do you mean by generations, cause Hamas has only resorted to terrorism against civilians from the 1990s. Hamas literally has in its charter that it is willing to accept a 2 state solution on the 1967 lines, so yes it would absolutely be willing to negotiate.