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I'm reading your reply in Ben Shapiro's voice

> Hamas would kill every man woman and child in Israel without batting an eye if it had the means to do so

Yours is a textbook example of de-humanisation of the enemy. Once you believe this, you can allow yourself any atrocity. And you do.

It's not dehumanization when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel). He didn't say Palestinians as a whole. When you show compassion for the cruel you'll end up being cruel to the merciful.

> when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel).

This is literally bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant

Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't calling to kill the Jews?

Calling for Jihad against the Jews and quoting Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews isn't an incitement for genocide?

This reads just like mein kampf, if this was written by a white person you would call him a nazi.

I don't think there is any chance for me to convince you, but the Hamas covenant is an old document, written by religious fundamentalists who also were inflamed by decades of conflict on their homeland and holy land (and whatever you think of it, you can't deny that the people who are losing the war and the land must feel wronged). So I cut them some slack and don't take the religious raving seriously. As the Wikipedia page you linked explains, Hamas itself has moved on and is far from monolithic: various of its leaders have multiple times declared in the past 15 years that they've moved away from that original covenant. The second sentence of the Wikipedia entry literally states that Hamas has a new charter since 2017.

So why would you fixate on a piece of text written 33 years ago by angered fundamentalists, that has also been multiple times rejected by the leaders of the same movement and that is now superseded by a more recent one? If you want to hate someone, it's easy to cling to a single piece of damning, black-and-white evidence, however outdated and contested. Don't you think you should consider more elements, at least to give your views some balance?

You can check the new charter here:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

> single piece

It's their actions not just this document. It's the calling of Jihad that's not changed. Calling for the destruction of Israel that has not changed. If they wanted to "change", their action would reflect that, what you linked is just a lipstick on a pig to appeal to the westerns media and mind set to look more tolerant but they truly aren't.

If ISIS suddenly had a more "tolerant" charter and leadership would you change their mind about them?

Hamas is a movement with a religious fundamentalist basis, I don't think that "tolerance" is what you should expect from them. But this is not a beauty contest. Just use Occam's razor: they call to "Jihad" (struggle) because foreigners have come and displaced them from their homeland (well beyond what the international community- including the western nations- considers legal). It is just preposterous to attribute racial or religious hatred to those who fight back an invasion of their homeland. If China came and invaded your land, would you fight back because you are an anti-Asian racist? And after all, wouldn't being invaded and oppressed by China make you a bit into a racist, at least on the long run and while the struggle stands?

Everyone doesn't like a specific group doesn't matter what the basis is or reason, but that wasn't the point of the argument, that point was about dehumanization.

You want to struggle against oppressors, ok , I get that but when you say you want the utter annihilation and destruction of a racial group when you praise and actively work to bomb busses, stab people in the street and in their homes, when you dig tunnels to pop up in the Kibbutz dining room, when you blow incendiary balloons that destroy forests and nature reserves killing countless wild life you are not human, you are an evil daemon that should be eradicated just as was done with nazi Germany and ISIS.

> when you say you want the utter annihilation and destruction of a racial group

We already established that they don't say that.

> when you praise and actively work to bomb busses, stab people in the street and in their homes...

If your country had been invaded and utterly militarily overwhelmed by another country, now intent on building cities and installing their population on your former land, what would you do to free it, where would you stop and just throw your arms up and say "well, I can't do anything"?

In a situation like that, there will always be someone who is willing to use any means to make the occupation and the oppression as costly as possible for the oppressor. It's not racial hatred, it's that when you cannot hit the army you'll hit whatever you can.

When Israel will have given back all the territory that has illegally appropriated (illegally according to the western nations, not some backwards middle Eastern dictatorship) then it will be in a position to denounce any continuing terrorism from Hamas. Before that, it's just complaining because its victims fight back.

> We already established that they don't say that.

We haven't, you didn't.

> when you cannot hit the army

They do but it's just easier to just cut a fence and stab children sleeping, that's not legitimate struggle that's barbarism and terrorisms.

> willing to use any means

That's exactly the point, when the end justify the means. What they do, how they operate that's evil. It has nothing to do with justice.

> your country had been invaded

The PLO was founded in 64 way before any occupation of the west bank and gaza so your point of fighting your oppressor is moot unless you consider the occupation the entire state of Israel then your legal argument is void.

They didn't struggle against their Egyptian and Jordanian "occupation" but when it's Jews, oy vey.

> The PLO was founded in 64 way before any occupation of the west bank and gaza so your point of fighting your oppressor is moot unless you consider the occupation the entire state of Israel then your legal argument is void

And ~50 years after Palestinians were promised self-rule, Jews were promised the right to move to Palestine, and Palestinians said they're against the mass migration of Jews there that displaced them.

Why is it that you think Palestinians only have the right to Gaza and the West Bank when they were the majority across the whole of Palestine less than a hundred years ago ( what, two generations?) ? The PLO didn't see it that way in 64, only a few decades after Palestinians had their land stolen ans themselves evicted from it by new settlers.

> Palestinians said they're against the mass migration of Jews

Ofc they would. So what? They weren't the rulers or had any form of government, most of the land didn't belong to them no matter how gerrymandering maps you want to draw. It was the British mandate before the ottoman before that.....

> mass migration of Jews there that displaced them

It didn't. The land Jews settled on was purchased since the 1880s.

A lot of those Palestinians were immigrants themselves who came to Palestine for work, and the Jewish population were the ones that hired them. Most of Palestine before the Jews started to immigrate and built was deserts and swamps, no one wanted to live there until the Jewish population terraformed them to be livable.

> Why is it that you think Palestinians only have the right to Gaza and the West Bank

Because they lost the war they started, you can't start a war lose and then cry that you lost territory. They didn't want a Jewish state at all, or be under Jewish rule.

That's how countries form, that's how borders are made. Every other country in the world was formed by conflict it's just that most of those countries annihilated the other side long ago so there is almost no one left to hear their voice or go on a twitter rampage.

> you can't start a war lose and then cry that you lost territory. ... That's how countries form, that's how borders are made.

Actually, according to international law, you cannot lose territory by war, even if you started it. I'm sure you think this is absurd, but it really is necessary.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...

“Without this absolute prohibition, acquisitive states would have a strong incentive to obfuscate the origins of the territorial acquisition, leading us backwards to the days when borders were impediments to overcome, rather than frontiers to respect.”

Also, once you occupied someone else's territory (necessarily for a temporary period) to transfer your own civilian population in it is a war crime:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul...

"The prohibition on deporting or transferring parts of a State’s own civilian population into the territory it occupies is set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention.[1] It is a grave breach of Additional Protocol I.[2] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts."

> They didn't want a Jewish state at all, or be under Jewish rule.

Let's not be disingenuous here. Palestinians could never be part of a Jewish state, because Israel is a Jewish nation and a democracy. It simply cannot include millions of Palestinians as citizens- and I don't mean it as a critique (I also come from a national state formed out of a preexistent ethnic, linguistic and religious unity). It's a matter of fact. Israel wanted the land but not its original population ("the bride and the dowry" - https://www.amazon.com/Bride-Dowry-Israel-Palestinians-After... )

> it's just that most of those countries annihilated the other side long ago so there is almost no one left to hear their voice...

So you think that Jews now have a right to do the evil they didn't get to before, because they didn't have a nation when conquers and pillage were still accepted?

I'm not going to debate International law on HN, it's a complicated issue with a lot of details and I'm not an International law lawyer and interpreting the law at face value without going back the intent of the law when it was formed is wrong but then I'm sure you agree with every law your country pass without judgment right?

> Israel wanted the land but not its original population

It's probably true that the founders didn't want to control the Arab population (not out of racisms) but as it turns out they have 2 million Arab citizens. I do agree that a one state solution couldn't work now demographically as that would be an apartheid state.

> so you think that Jews now have a right to do the evil

Who is dehumanizing who now...

The point was the formation of Israel in 48, the parent talked about territories other than gaza and the west bank, It's just that it's disingenuous to pick on Israel at that time saying they are the baddies just because they won, they were fighting for survival and against the annihilation of the Jews in that region and that one of the reasons that this still an issue because unlike other countries Israel did not annihilate their enemies, if the Arabs won in 48 there wouldn't be a debate because all the Israeli Jews would be dead and the world would go on like it's another day and just mark it in the footnote of history as the 2nd Jewish holocaust and that's it.

I do think the west bank occupation is wrong and should be "solved" but it's far from evil because intent matters, why there is an occupation matters, they reasons behind Israel actions matter, actions Israel don't make as the occupying force matter.

But I'm closing this discussion because it leads to nowhere and the bots downvoting me within 1 minute of commenting needs a break, have a good day.

> I do think the west bank occupation is wrong and should be "solved" but it's far from evil because intent matters

I think the intent (insofar as it's the result of planning and not simply the result of multiple individual initiatives) is clear: to create an irreversible situation on the ground so that, if the time comes, there will be no viable solution to give those territories back.

That said, Israel is also very careful to avoid full scale ethnic cleansing and genocide, partly for ethical and cultural reasons (they're modern Europeans after all, and they want to be considered as such) and partly because ambiguity is what keeps the occupation sustainable. It cannot be done if they alienate the support of the western nations.

> the bots downvoting me within 1 minute of commenting needs a break,

Yep, true about the bots, I was upvoted within a few seconds for my last submissions. So it's either a bot or someone who has an alert set up on new comments in this subthread. Maybe @dang could give it a look.

Whatever your cause, two wrongs will never make a right.

So which solution are you in favor of?

1) a two state solution, in which, somehow, Gaza and the West-Bank must be free to pass goods and humans with zero Israeli involvement (how? a tunnel?)

2) a one-state solution (a greater Israel) with a Jewish minority

Because I see cynicism in the actions of Likud (and others)_that have ramped up a lot since the assassination of Itzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right wing settler.

I see cynicism in allowing right wing marches through the Arab quarter of Jerusalem.

I see cynicism in settlements built upon annexed land.

I see cynicism in deliberate provocative actions designed to goad Palestinians into predictable action.

Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.)

I don't recall anyone working with the Palestinian Authority to offer any "carrot" to complement the "stick" (incentivizing support for PA vs punishing Hamas)

I see hard line nationalists in Israel with no actual path forward. Do they really think they can treat 4 million people (both territories combined) as inconsequential forever? Is genocide and "death to Arabs" an actual game plan for some extremists?

The settler thing is blatantly copying the old American "how the west was won" plot line, ship in new immigrants and send them to the frontier to defend/expand it.

and yes, I've spent significant time in Israel and I'm not trying to push some unrealistic story here, I'm trying to say that you don't even realize how right wing your bathwater has become...

BUT... the topic was "Saudi Arabia cuts a youths head off for being rebellious"... and I am disgusted at how "The West" speaks of democracy and values and rails on China, but gives Saudi Arabia a break and prefers to sell them weapons. Egypt and support for Sisi (and Mubarak) is also disgusting...

Do you know who was promising in Egypt? Anwar Sadat. Look what happened to him...

Why do I have to pick from your two options? Who knows what possibilities lie ahead given enough time.

> Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza.

Sorry, but what do you expect Israel to do here? Hamas shells Israel continuously, it's easy for outsiders to virtue signal and tell Israel not to attack back, but they would've done 10 times worse.

> It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.)

Why is it when people bring up the "blockade" of Gaza they always conveniently forget that Gaza is also bordered by Egypt, who are also cutting them off, yet no one ever blames their "brothers" and yet expects Israel to open up the border.

It's important to note that Egypt is also run by an autocratic regime which is fearful of the influence of hamas and other revolutionary parties like Muslim brotherhood. I think Israel for all their supposed military intelligence is thinking extremely short sighted, ultimately it's best for them that they make peace with the people around them by giving them equal rights and not provoking them by stealing their land. In the decades to come, the political situation can change dramatically in the middle East and Israel may find itself among Arab countries that are no longer monarchies and won't ignore the Palestinian situation