A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
The fact that a large number of people in the West are denying this and portraying Hamas as freedom fighters is very worrying.
There’s something in the world of intelligence called the “useful idiot”. It’s basically someone who drinks the Kool aid you’re selling and unwittingly works for your agency/country/organization.
Don’t overestimate the wisdom of the average Joe of the Western world.
I just love how many people from “the world of intelligence” knowing all their stuff you can meet on the Web. That’s an /s .
My first step in approaching the wisdom of any specific Joe, though, would be whether he considers himself all that smart and cynical or, well, about average. The latter would be wiser.
Well then who is Israel attacking? If Hamas is in Qatar?
You can’t be seriously asking this in good faith.
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Israel being evil doesn’t make Hamas the good guys. If you butcher unarmed men, women, and children, then you’re fucking evil. Fuck Isreal, and fuck Hamas.
In Western news and media, everything has to boil down to a good vs evil story. It’s part of the reason our society has become so polarized. In reality, there’s often no good sides in a conflict.
Trevor Noah had a great segment on this, about how it always has to be X vs Y. The example he used was cat people and dog people who get into arguments – “why can’t we just agree that they’re both cute?”
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Hamas “fought back” by breaking down the doors of Israeli homes and slaughtering the families cowering inside. Gunning down teenagers at a music festival and kidnapping the survivors. That wasn’t strategy. That was fanatical hatred, cowardly, and evil.
Hamas are cowards, perfectly happy to sit back and watch innocent Palestinians be slaughtered in the aftermath.
The IDF has killed 11 thousand men, 9 thousand women, and 14 thousand children, making 34 thousand total killed (an unknown number of which were civilians). Hamas has killed 0.6 thousand military personnel and 0.8 thousand civilians, making 1.4 thousand total killed (57% of which were civilians).
The number of children killed by Isreal (only children) is 17 times larger than the number of civilians killed by Hamas. Of course that doesn’t make killing civilians OK, but I struggle to see an argument that Hamas is worse than the IDF. And if Hamas is the only method by which Palestine can defend itself, then there is a solid argument to be made for it being the lesser evil.
Both groups are murderers. One is just better equipped for it. Hamas hasn’t killed less civilians out of some kind of restraint or combat disipline, they just don’t have the same capability as the IDF. Meanwhile, Israel is gleefully using all the free shit that it’s allies are supplying it with to kill every man woman and child in sight. Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare
If you ever find yourself on either side of asymmetric warfare, and you’re killing kids…you’re the bad guy.
Do you have any proof to back up your statement that Hamas ordered killing of children?
If you expect decency from malnourished oppressed people i would just call you entitled
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It’s like I said, it’s not one or the other. They are both the bad guys.
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Actually 45% soldiers. 824 civilians were killed and 678 soldiers and police were killed on October 7th, according to Israel.
Hamas killed soldiers so that they would free to go on their rampage against civilians. Israel accidentally kills civilians as they are trying to fight an enemy that hides behind them and camouflages themselves as civilians precisely to blur the lines between civilians and soldiers. That’s the difference between the two.
Israel isn’t accidentally killing anyone. They’re stright up murdering civillians. Let’s not pretend the IDF is any better than Hamas.
I literally don’t know if this is true any more.
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That’s not what I said and you know that.
At some point you might learn that simplistic, childish concepts of pure good and evil rarely apply in this world. Yes, the Allies were the good guys in WW2. Being the good guy doesn’t mean you’re perfect, because absolutely nothing is.
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Like the other user said, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa only became successful after it abandoned violent resistance - and citing Haiti as an aspirational example is downright hysterical.
There’s also a massive difference between demanding outright perfection and not applauding people who behead Asian guest workers (who, as I’m sure you are aware, but equally willing to ignore, are not “evil Zionist colonizers”) with a rusty gardening hoe while live-streaming the torture-murder on the Internet. Coincidentally, you seem to have no trouble with demanding outright perfection from the IDF, who, by the way, has a roughly similar soldier kill rate in this conflict according to most estimates - but I bet you are not willing to applaud them for that.
As for what Gaza actually was, here’s what this supposed “concentration camp” looked like before the war:
https://youtu.be/W1r1z3x53ZU
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Telling lies again? This sounds exactly like the Hamas beheads babies story. Israeli propaganda became so lazy.
Fuck Hamas and what they did, but compared to the genocidal Israelis they are saints and I’m tired of reading all these unproven horror stories of what Hamas allegedly did while Israel is literally using an AI to murder children.
I’ve watched that beheading and worse things. I wish I hadn’t. Imagine having the audacity of calling Hamas saints by comparison. What a despicable and inane thing to do.
The ANC in South Africa was largely ineffective. Mandela specifically is a great example of how people can get much more done as moderates than violent radicals. He would never see any sort of true progress until after his imprisonment and subsequent putting down of arms.
That’s not a clean experiment. Moderation gives you nothing when the oppressing side knows you can’t do violence.
The only thing that kept the apartheid gov in place was US and British support. There’s a reason the Berlin wall was a big deal for SA. Similarly, Israel’s current existence as a colonist state and the dominant power in the middle east is only possible because of daddy America. If not for our support (and emigration, many settlers are from the US) they would likely cave to international and internal pressures (like in Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and others)
I hope that Joe can finally get the balls to do it. People are pissed off and he’s going to lose the election if he doesn’t do something, which is a shame as his government isn’t great but it has been a lot better than many previous ones, and especially has done a lot concerning monopolies (insofar as taking them to court). Also though I don’t want to live in a fascist shithole under Trump.
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You are talking about young Mandela. He went to prison for 20 years and changed his mind about a lot of things.
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/658964
Hamas is not a protest organization. They pick up the gun first, not last. They have direct connections to Iran and Syria, who could put more diplomatic pressure in favor of a peaceful solution. But none of them want that.
They want to kill for revenge and domestic support and personal gain. Someone like that will never make peace. Just like Netanyahu.
What the fuck
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You have fun with your 66% civilian murder rate. Literally worse than the US carpet bombing Japan into oblivion, but I’m sure Hamas soldiers on the ground are way less capable of discerning between civilian and soldier than WW2 pilots literally aiming for civilians.
Pick pretty much any conflict other than WWII. Like WWI. All bastards.
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It’s not a concentration camp, it’s just a non-exitable area surrounded by barbed wire with not enough food let in. (mostly /s, the OG camps were worse, but really, is that the bar we want to set?)
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Yeah, there’s actually a lot of complexity to the Holocaust. I’d say nuance, even, if that didn’t have moral connotations. Auschwitz is the most famous one, but it was exceptional in that it had both extermination and labour centers in the complex. IIRC most Jewish victims didn’t even get the luxury of going to a camp. My ancestral shtetl, at least, would have been the kind where Einsatzgruppen show up and just kill everyone on the spot, however they can think to do so.
… is fucking Hamas doing it right now? Because from what I see, Israel is closer to completing their genocide than they have been in my lifetime. Sure as fuck doesn’t look like they’ve STOPPED anything, but rather poured gasoline on the fire.
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The only thing we can be certain of is that Hamas’s attack has led to Israel genociding some 30,000 Palestinians. The fuck makes you think killing a bunch of civilians is in any way fighting for any cause other than extending the conflict? But neither Hamas nor you care about that; only drum-beating for Islamofascism using Palestinian independence as a shield for that shitfuckery. Fucking insane.
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“The only thing we can be certain of is [thing that is by no means certain]; therefore the attack was justified! Legitimate Resistance™!”
“The only thing we can be certain of is [THING THAT HAS ACTUALLY ALREADY HAPPENED]; killing a bunch of civilians did nothing but lead to [THING THAT HAS ACTUALLY ALREADY HAPPENED]”
But anything to play apologist for the murder of civilians, huh?