Genuine question... What's up with Hamas? Like when people say Hamas has to be destroyed... What's wrong with that?
I don't think Israel should be killing Palestinians, but I can't really get behind Hamas either.
Not trying to start a fire or anything. Genuinely just curious.
Hamas is only responding to the violence initiated by Israeli colonialism [1] [2]. There was no Hamas in 1948, when Israel ethnically cleansed Palestine and began occupying Palestinian villages [3] [4]; there was no Hamas in 1967, when Israel escalated their occupation and ended up occupying Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights (part of Syria). The Oslo Accords, the supposed “peaceful and diplomatic” avenue—mainly representing the Palestinian Authority, which is seen as a more peaceful alternative to Hamas—to a “two-state solution” (i.e. some Palestinian government with its own autonomy over East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, with the territories seized in 1948 still deemed “Israeli”) were undermined by the Israeli government itself, just as Israel shot innocent protestors peacefully marching along the militarized borders of the Gaza Strip.
Violent resistance to Israel is simply a response to their own violence, of which all of this could be ended by Israel agreeing to end their occupation/apartheid system. Israel has the complete power to eliminate these conditions of oppression that brought Hamas into existence, and nothing positive will come of them escalating this to the nth degree. This is to of course assume that Israel is merely targeting “Hamas terrorists” in the current fighting rather than using their resistance as a scapegoat to expedite the ongoing settler-colonial genocide.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state which has occupied Palestine for over 70 years now. their end goal is the genocide and removal of the Palestinian people. you don't have to support Hamas' domestic policy or religious beliefs to support them in their liberation struggle. any 'concern' about Hamas, any talk that's like "of course Hamas must be destroyed, but..." serve to make the point that Palestinians don't have the right to resist their oppression - they have to just lay down and face their extinction.
I think this is the best explanation. I guess it's a hard situation. With Israel currently in power, it feels like there's only two options. Either Israel fucks off or Palestine does. I feel like they've made it clear that they're not particularly interested in coexisting.
Israel claims that it was originally their land thousands of years ago. Palestine claims... Pretty much the same thing. I don't feel like either one could be in power without oppressing the other... What options are the public eye not seeing?
I definitely am not claiming that genocide or mass exodus is my recommendation. It's not like my opinion will affect much, anyways. It just feels like a rock and a hard place.
Israel claims that it was originally their land thousands of years ago. Palestine claims... Pretty much the same thing. I don't feel like either one could be in power without oppressing the other... What options are the public eye not seeing?
This is an absurd distortion. Palestinians actually were on that land 100 years ago. The ancestors of Israelis were overwhelmingly in Europe (and anglosphere states) at that time. Go back another century, and the answer is the same, go back 500 years and the only difference is the relative lack of colonists in Australia and the Western Hemisphere. The Israelis have the Old Testament for their claim, Palestinians have real world history.
There were a tiny number of Palestinian Jews who did live in Palestine, some of whom are a tiny number of Israel's current population, but these people were a prop used by the western Allies in the postwar period to create a settler-colony of European/Anglosphere Jewish people, who were funneled into the region.
also not that it matters because it's a stupid argument, but there's a lot of scholarship which shows that the Zionists who settled in Israel aren't even the same people as the Jews who lived there thousands of years ago. just the same religion.
(I only say a two state solution is necessary first because obviously this generation of Israeli’s is not going to accept the abolition of their ethnostate)
Ethnonationalists don't need to consent, see South Africa or Rhodesia. Fuck them, they can cry about it. The only additional concession is that perhaps Europe and the anglosphere can take back some of their garbage.
I'm going to move in to your house, start sleeping in your bed, and fucking your wife. Because the prophecies in my holy book say I can. Neither of us is interested in coexisting. Which of us should leave?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - Arch-liberal John F. Kennedy in 1962.
Israel has refused time and time again to consider Palestinian lives, and has been tightening the screws on Gaza specifically ever since 2014. Israel is easily the party at fault, and everything with the way they treat Palestinians, there is no "nice" option, so the people who are sick and tired of being murdered seemingly for fun are going to fight back.
It's not about being behind Hamas. Hamas didn't come into being in a vacuum, but is a direct result of what was happening in the region for years. At first Israel let Hamas form or even encouraged it, attempting to use it to keep Palestine divided. Destroying Hamas, which has the highest cost for civilians, is useless if the circumstances that gave rise to it didn't change. Another Hamas will just form. It's like the US trying to bomb Taliban out of existence, they are in power now after all the death and tragedy.
Edit: if you want to know more, there's an archived Wall Street Journal article citing Israeli sources about how Hamas was formed, and the role Israel played in that.
Dr Finkelstein responds to Bernie Sanders' recent statement opposing a ceasefire.
only takes 20 minutes at 2x speed
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Hamas is just people fed up with their families' suffering. Why would you be opposed to that?
Hamas should be dismantled, but it should be dismantled after Israel. In the current moment, "dismantling Hamas" means disarming Palestinians and/or excusing their murder by settler-colonists. In the current moment, Hamas is part of Palestinian resistance and therefore should be supported in the absence of a genuinely more viable alternative, which does not exist no matter what concern-trolling zionists tell you about "alienating supporters".
It's basically like when slaves like Nat Turner rose up and killed their masters and the families of the slavers. Is the random kid of a slaver responsible for slavery? Probably not. Will I cry for them and condemn the revolution against oppression? Definitely not.
