Comment by bjourne
2 years ago
I really wish people would stop citing pollsters with no pedigree. What is the Arab World for Research & Development? Who is funding them? Who is conducting their polls? Who staffs them? Are their results reliable?
2 years ago
I really wish people would stop citing pollsters with no pedigree. What is the Arab World for Research & Development? Who is funding them? Who is conducting their polls? Who staffs them? Are their results reliable?
Their clients and partners include The World Bank, UN, Save the Children, European Commission, USAID, CARE International (https://www.awrad.org/en/article/10467/Partners--Clients-201...) and their polling dates back to at least 2007: https://www.awrad.org/files/server/analysis.pdf
But if you don't believe these numbers, here is one from the Washington Institute in July 2023:
"Overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas"
"But it is organizations like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Lion’s Den that receive the most widespread popular support in Gaza. About three quarters of Gazans express support for both groups, including 40% who see the Lion’s Den in a “very positive” light, an attitude shared by a similar percentage of West Bank residents."
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-sh...
> Their clients and partners include The World Bank,
You are speaking to the startup crowd. Anyone can put anyone's logotypes on their website and claim they are your partners. It's not even that hard.
Mind your sources folks.
Even if these numbers are true, you have to look at them within the lens of colonial warfare. How many black South African supported the ANC against the Apartheid regime? How many Kenyans supported the Mau Mau against the British imperial army? How many Vietnamese supported the Viet Cong against the American army?
Today these are considered liberators, but during the colonial wars they were all considered terrorists who conducted inhumane acts. Perhaps people knew that but still supported their fight, simply because they considered the oppression inflected by their colonizers worth fighting against.
And also the context of the ineffectiveness and corruption of collaborationist governing parties like Fatah.
This times a thousand. None of this can possibly be understood even remotely well without the broader context of settler colonialism that persists to this day, as Israeli settlers continue colonizing land that is not theirs even now, today.
The amazing amount of historical revisionism where once it became so obvious and irrefutable that the causes of these various entities were, in fact, correct the entire time at which point colonial powers suddenly do an about face and call them freedom fighters instead of terrorists in genuinely nauseating. ALL groups in this vein commit various kinds of atrocities, because war, especially guerilla war, is itself largely an atrocity. And more war will only breed more of these groups as more people who do not belong in an area, do not share it's culture, and blatantly do not give a steaming shit about either of those things continue to meddle in their affairs.
Hamas will not do open battle with Israel, because of course they'd fucking lose, just like the Taliban would've to us, or the Viet Cong to us, or anyone else. They can't field an army and they know that, they aren't stupid. But what else would you have them do? Just waive the white flag and let the Western powers redraw their borders again, fuck up their cities and culture and treat them like brainless savages to avoid being killed?
> But what else would you have them [hamas] do
What about caring for their civilians, not using them as meat shields, not using hospitals as bases, not starting rockets from civilian buildings; using the obscene amount of international aid responsible for the benefit of people, over selling it for profit in their supermarkets to fund rockets, digging up goddamn water pipes to turn into rockets, etc. Oh, also, maybe don’t shoot their own people trying to evacuate an active warzone?
Hamas is an utterly disgusting terrorist organization, this is an objective fact. Equating them to freedom fighters is just vile, and a disgrace to any decent movement that tried to overthrow their oppressors.
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