Comment by sonotathrowaway
2 years ago
These types of responses always skip over the most crucial parts of history:
The IDF originally funneled money to the founder of Hamas in order to weaken popular support for Fatah, and Netanyahu facilitated Qatari payments to Hamas when it seemed that support for the Palestinian Authority was rising. His far right defense minister publicly resigned, saying that Netanyahu was financing terrorism against Israel.
Including in these facts into the argument makes it seem less like Israel is fighting a terrorist group, and more like Israel tolerates a terrorist organization as their best alternative to a two state solution.
Yeah, IMO a key idea--which I wish was more popular in the zeitgeist--is this:
The vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis are both being abused by their respective leaderships, which--for many years now--have desired and actively promoted some degree of violent-threat and indefinite strife, because it's how they maintain power and crush political rivals.
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P.S.: For fellow Americans thinking "that can't happen here", there's good evidence that Richard Nixon tried to sabotage--or at least delay--US/Vietnam peace talks in order to get himself elected President. [0] In either case, the war continued for another five years.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nix...
It also skipped most of a century of historical context, pretending the conflict started two months ago out of nowhere. The specific origins of hamas are certainly relevant but so is the nakba, the 2018 border protests, the apartheid structure of israeli governance of palestine. etc.