Comment by A1kmm

> Jews and Arabs living side by side in the same country as equal citizens.

Except that Israel has Arabs already, living side by side with the Jews there. Palestinians have rejected that.

Re: "Let's also separate Palestinian civilians from those exerting power unto them in Gaza" - I do not think you can. A lot of Palestinians are radicalized. What do you think a father who lost his kids in an airstrike will do next? Or a brother who lost his sister / brother? Do you think these people will care about rule of law, or turn the other cheek, etc...?

Re: "any other way is a can of worms". I agree with this statement.

Putting these two statements together means there will never be peace in Palestine. It sucks....

These are good questions and I hope someone with more knowledge then me answers them more thoroughly. In short my answers are:

How did Hamas come to power? Via democratic elections and by winning a subsequent civil war.

What are their goals? Total Palestinian liberation and the restoration of the pre 1948 borders (a.k.a one state solution).

How do they promise to achieve these goals? Via armed struggle, a.k.a. intifada and revolution.

Hamas came into power after a fair democratic election in 2006. Outside observers monitored the elections and all agreed they were correct and fair. The only major interference actually came from Israel which backed the rival political group Fatah. Following the election the Palestinian civil war broke out in Gaza, which Hamas won. After which they took full control of the Gaza strip. There has not been an election since then, neither on Gaza nor on the West Bank. Aside: The legislative council in Gaza was demolished by the Israeli army last November.

Meanwhile on the West Bank Fatah took power, where they control the Palestinian Authority. It is interesting to see the fate of the territory each faction controls. While Gaza suffers a blockade and constant military interventions, the West Bank is suffering from constant incursion from settlers and military raids as well as further partitioning of their lands, illegal settlements, military checkpoints, etc.

In simple terms, Fatah supports the two state solution, among with most of the international community, which is why many Western nations view them as the legitimate government despite Hamas having won the election fair and square. Hamas on the other hand at first did not recognize Israel as a state, and wanted all of historic Palestine under Palestinian control. Since 2006 they have somewhat eased their stance against Israel, but are still calling for decolonization and one state.

The Palestinian Authority (and Fatah by extension) is not popular among Palestinians. The way I understand it is that people view them as a colonial government, pandering to the interest of their colonizers. It is my understanding that Hamas is viewed favorably, as pandering to the interests of the colonizers has not left the West Bank in a nice state for the indigenous population.

In short, in simple terms (as per my limited understanding), the two state solution is not seen as the right path inside Palestine, so people actually support Hamas’ one state solution, and see the fight for decolonization as legitimate. This may be a tough reality for westerners to accept as Hamas is only portrait by their very real and devastating atrocities, but seldomly seen as liberation fighters and never recognized for their decolonization efforts.

Instead of relying on western analysis of the situation, I actually like to take in some historic comparisons. The Mau Mau in Kenya were indeed very brutal, and conducted very severe crimes against, however their fight—with the hindsight of history—was indeed very just, and resulted in the liberation of Kenya from the oppressive British colonial rule. Another example is FLN in Algeria, which probably had even more popular support then the Mau Mau, and were even more brutal in their fight against their French colonial oppressors.

The crazy thing is that the pro war machine talking heads keeps trying to make this about Iran, when it's really Qatar and Turkey financing Hamas, in part using illegal Oil sales from Syria. Nikki Haley was talking about "finishing them". It's also worth remembering that Hamas actively fought AGAINST Syria and it's allies(Iran) with the other Islamist rebels

The US has huge military presences in both countries, and if they really wanted to shut down funding to those institutions they could do it tomorrow.

We know that Netanyahu deliberated supported these groups to shut down opposition in Gaza by his own accord and that he has even recently asked to send more funding[1]. The talking heads also want you to believe that this is some sort of protection money out of goodwill for the poor civilians in Gaza.

I listened to some Palestinians on twitter spaces the other day and they told explained to people how the political landscape is actually a lot more complex than we are led to believe from media.

One person breaking down Hamas really well has been Brian Berletic from the new atlas[2]. Some people here might not like him, because he very much in favour of China, but I still urge everyone to take a look at his Palestine analysis.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-chief-top-general-visit...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPJaNoxtE20

> It’s insane how normalized antisemitism is you people don’t even see it

breakdown

1. normalized antisemitism = there is antisemitism AND it is normalised. Neither claim backed up.

2. 'you people don’t even see it' = there is a flaw in your world perception, not the posters'. Totally subjective so impossible to dispute.

3. keep them [Hamas] in power - isn't that what the Israeli gov't has done?

(Hamas are appalling but the IDF response is also appalling, and counterproductive in being exactly what Hamas wants. Keep pushing and the local conflict may spread and pull in bigger anti-Israel actors)

"How do you honestly support people who elected Hamas"

Speaking against mass destruction of key societal institutions and infrastructure, mass murder and attrocities, and starvation of Gazans by Israel's government policy in its current military operation against Gaza, is not a high mental bar for giving "support". It's easy to support that.

I don't have anything against Jews. But I can see that people in Gaza, being under siege by Israel for almost two decades, and under direct occupation before that, and being displaced or having ancestors displaced from their original homes, by Israel before the occupation, may dislike Israel or Jews. (easy to conflate the two, given that that's the Isreal's media policy) And I'll not judge them for that.

If this is insane, fine...

It doesn't matter if they support hamas you still cannot genocide them.

That's not a good line of argument to take here given that Israel has mandatory military service and given what its democratically-elected government has been doing to the Palestinians for generations.

Part of the reason why the conflict drags on and is making that little pocket of the world a festering sore of evil is because so many Palestinians and Israelis think like this.

Be part of the solution, not the problem. It is not as easy as simply believing that whatever your group is doing is right, some other group is less worthy of moral consideration than yours, and wallowing in the victim-mentality that anyone criticizing your actions or position is racist towards you. That's how you know it is right.

I suppose that these are people who do not understand Arab culture. Just recently (as in, I remember it was October 22 because I had an appointment in Beersheba that day) an Arab explained to me, more or less because the conversation was not in English, that "You Jews always argue and protest and fight with each other. We don't do that, we listen to our fathers. We have families". He was explaining to me how the different families fight between them, like they'll shoot at each others houses but the goal is to assert family honour, not to actually shoot somebody. But the point he was struggling to make, is that in Arab societies, everybody thinks the same. There is no room for division, no room for dissent, no room for contrary opinions. He specifically mentioned that he has family in Gaza (and yes, this was already two weeks into the current conflict) and everybody there is Hamas. He said "is Hamas", up to me (and you) to interpret that as being actual members of the organization or supporters.

I actually talk to Arabs often here, and I don't shy away from the hard questions. The Beduins specifically will happily tell you all you want to hear, with me (maybe naively) feeling that I'm in danger. Just yesterday I had a half hour conversation with a Beduin about such matters, in my house as my guest.

I don’t think the majority of people killed so far in this conflict have been enemies of Israel per se, in the same way that most (nearly all?) of the people who died on October 7 were not enemies of Palestine. Even in the most hardened, cynical, irredentist view this wouldn’t be true.

“Collateral damage” is one of those bloodless wartime euphemisms for killing innocent men, women, and children. It’s a dirty, unavoidable reality. But I don’t believe for one second that Israel’s hands are so sufficiently constrained that the current degree of civilian death is necessary. I say that as a Jew, with family in Israel, who I worry about.

I do recall opposition to America’s post 9-11 response based on the same arguments, oddly enough.

The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities: Israel’s argument is that they don’t have to follow the laws because Hamas is breaking them.

There was lots of criticism of disprortionality in the US' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US also made a point not to conduct civilian death counts and they were little reported. But what numbers did exist were absolutely important for those opposed to the war.

Just do a web search restricted from 2001 to 2007 for discussions of the civilian death toll.

> Hamas to allow civilians to use its tunnels as shelters.

That is absurd. Israel bombs “facilities used by Hamas”, civilians going in Hamas tunnels will be a direct target for IDF.

By most standards, what the US did to the civilian population of Japan was an atrocity.

I don’t have easy answers here. But I think we’ve lost an important piece of the plot here if we can’t look at one terrible human tragedy, and then another, and then ask ourselves whether the first had to beget the second.

> The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor.

They killed 20M Chinese.

Japanese did enough evil through Asia during WW2 to more than deserve that.

"Israel is going great lengths to protect civilians."

No they don't. They never did.

> So you are suggesting an eye for an eye, we should kill a Palestinian for every one of our dead? Honestly, I find that thought disgusting.

I don’t know how you can possibly arrive at this interpretation from what I wrote.

> So you are suggesting an eye for an eye, we should kill a Palestinian for every one of our dead? Honestly, I find that thought disgusting.

Just to be clear: you find that more disgusting than killing over ten Palestinians for every dead Israeli?

I don't think you can possibly know that they killed 15k civilians. Those numbers are reported by Hamas and don't contain a breakdown of civilian vs. militant.

That doesn't change the tragedy of innocents being killed - that's still a horrible tragedy. But Israel is not going around just killing civilians for no reason, as that number makes it seem.

Considering that those very hospitals were used as military bases and that Hamas is hiding among the population, the numbers alone don’t say anything about how hard Israel is trying or not trying to kill civilians.

Besides, even if that were the order, that doesn’t make it illegal or immoral. Destroying military assets is an essential part of war. If you want civilian losses to be minimized, you’d do well to keep military assets clearly delineated from civilian zones. If you don’t and your people die as a result… well, that’s on you, not on the enemy you’re fighting.

"Not trying very hard not to kill them" may be true, but that is still vastly different from a "massacre," which is deliberate by definition.

I think dang made a mistake by allowing this topic onto HN. Nothing good is going to come out of that.

Begin is rolling in his grave as we speak. There is nothing between today's Likud and any historic version of that party. That's one thing.

The Likud (under the leadership of Sharon, who is also rolling in his grave) is also the party that withdrew from Gaza and handed it to the Palestinian Authority, dismantling settlements (by force). The Likud (under Begin's leadership) was the party that made peace with Egypt and gave Sinai back, also dismantling Israeli settlements (by force).

I don't think the history of the Irgun is really relevant here. At any rate, the views of the Likud shifted substantially and current party called "Likud" has really zero connection to the Likud at the time of Begin/Shamir/Sharon etc.

I wasn't ignorant of it - that's why I said "any modern Israeli party". I'm aware past Israeli/Zionist groups have engaged in terrorism and in some cases deliberate civilian massacres. As far as I know Likud hasn't within the past 50 years.

Hagari was not speaking about massacring civilians. He was talking about damage to Hamas/military targets. He did say that Israel is biased towards more damage vs. accuracy.

This is very propaganda. I've been following the conflict pretty closely and I speak Hebrew. The parent is correct, there is and was no order to massacre civilians.

It's probably safe to say that protecting Palestinian civilians is not Israel's main priority, but there's a big difference between that and painting a picture of Israel trying to massacre as many civilians as possible.

To add to the list.

- Amichai Eliyahu, Israel's heritage minister: "that "there are no non-combatants in Gaza," adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute 'a failure.'" [8]

In the same interview: "When asked by the interview whether a nuclear weapon could be used on Gaza, Eliyahu responded: 'That's one way.' " [9]

[8]https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-05/ty-article/ne...

[9]https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-minister-suggested-nu...

Look, I'm not going to go over that last one by one, but a bunch of those are taken out of context, e.g. speaking specifically about Hamas but being presented as being about civilians.

Some of those statements are also reprehnsible and are should be and are rightly condemned, within Israel as well.

But do you have a similar list of all the statements that Israeli officials have made that go against these? Because there are far more of those, they just don't make it into circulation like these. There are many, many on the record statements of Israeli officials specifically saying that the war will be conducted justly, morally, while trying to minimize civilian casualties.

You can choose to dismiss those as "well they have to say it to please the world", and insist that these statements you've linked are the only ones that matter, but then you're just choosing what to believe based on your own prior beliefs going into this.

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Intent matters, and disregarding it disables your ability to determine right from wrong. If someone attacks you and you kill them by acting in self defense, you absolutely would hope that the people judging you for your actions would consider your intent. You would probably feel you don't deserve to spend a moment in handcuffs, let alone night in jail, let alone go through a criminal trial, let alone be sentenced, even if it is negligible in comparison to a murderer.

> Surely you jest. How is this attack supposed to remove Hamas? It seems designed to strengthen Hamas, just as Israel has been supporting Hamas since their formation.

This attack is supposed to remove Hamas by killing them, or forcing them to surrender. There's a lot of legit criticism of what Israel is doing, but if you think it's designed to bolster Hamas, then you're really misunderstanding what's happening.

You seem to ignore the fact that Palestinians have rejected a 2-state solution and have elected hamas themselves.

Hamas supporters would say the same thing about Israel, that they could never "make a peaceful treaty" with the state that expelled their grandmother from her home at gunpoint, that launched the bomb that killed their sister, that supported the illegal settlers that shot their cousins in the West Bank…

The 1% most extreme on both sides want to drag you down to their level, don't let them.

For any side of conflict which is playing zero-sum, there can be no negotiations which are beneficial to both. Only one side has to commit to this strategy to condemn the other side to this path. Authoritarianism is an awful method of government which often ensures the minimum amount of people necessary will contribute to a solution for that nation which will benefit only the most privileged. All these countries mentioned are prime examples, and Israel is not exempt from criticism given Bibi's actions over the past few years.

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There have not been elections held in Gaza in 18 years and Putin’s elections are not considered free and fair - see the arrest of Navalny.

Democratic processes are good because it holds those in power accountable for their actions and should not just be hand waved away as if it doesn’t matter.

And no, what Hamas has done was not mentioned, all that was said was ‘the actions of Hamas’. What actions - did they hold a bake sale? It is unclear and minimized.