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Comment by BillyTheMage | Hacker News Reader

This entire claim of it being anti-semetic in nature rests on the false notion that Israel is "the jews". It's not. Jewish people from all around the world condemn Israels genocidal actions against the people who actually have a valid claim on the land. The fascist puppet that was created by The Empire less than 100 years ago could end all this in a heartbeat if they really wanted to, but that's not their goal. Hamas itself started as a response to the evil stuff Israel was already doing.

This is similar to how it's always the victim who gets in trouble for defending themselves in schools that follow zero-tolerance policies for bullying. The bully gets away scott-free for years, but when the victim finally has had enough and lashes back at them, everyone acts like it's the worst thing in the world and calls the victim a "bully".

Not saying Hamas and its members aren't anti-semetic. But the root cause of all this is not anti-semetism.

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Is the root cause Israel's policies, or the very idea that Jews have any right to self determination in their historical homeland?

Because the latter is definitely an antisemitic position.

It is actually possible to support Israel's right to exist while objecting to (some of, or even many of) Israel's policies and actions, but denying that Jews have a valid claim to any of the land kinda puts you outside that camp.

> Is the root cause Israel's policies, or the very idea that Jews have any right to self determination in their historical homeland?

Do native Americans have the right to self determination in their historical homeland?

I didn't mean to imply that. I think everyone deserves a home. But what Israel is doing is far from "self-determination".

Hamas, as an organization, is founded on the idea that the State of Israel should be destroyed and all Jews should be killed or expelled. Antisemitism is at their core.

If Israel has a right to exist, they must deal with existential threats like Hamas.

If you have suggestions for how to do so while doing less harm to the civilian population that Hamas is using as a human shield, I'm all ears.

And if you didn't mean to imply that, why do only Palestinians apparently have an "actual" claim?

Yes, Hamas is evil and anti-semetic. But it was created as a response to evil things Isreal was doing. Like a kid who gets bullied bringing a gun to school because they just fuckin can't take it anymore. It's wrong and they should be stopped, but to ignore the fact that they were pushed to this point by other people who are equally or more awful is just self-defeating.

I hope all this isn't coming off as a defense of Hamas. I simply see Hamas and the Israeli state as equally evil, two heads of one machine that does nothing but hurt people.

Ah. So your position is "a pox on both their houses" and implying moral equivalence between the entire state of Israel (which includes plenty of Jewish peace activists, Arab citizens with the right to vote, Druze and Bedouin citizens who serve in the IDF, and much other complexity) and a terrorist organization that deliberately targets civilians by preference while using their own civilian population as a human shield.

Pardon me if I don't accept that premise.

It isn't that Israel doesn't have any genocidal extremists, because they do. They tend to end up in jail, though.

You are brainwashed.

So they should just roll over and let Israel take their home?

They had multiple opportunities to establish a state. In fact Gaza was a state with insane financial support from all over the world, probably one of the highest per capita aid recipient in the world from governments and private donors, including Israelis.

You'll have to be explicit about how you're defining "their home". Just the territory conquered in 1967, or the entire state of Israel?

Anywhere that people had to be displaced for Isreali citizens to have liebensraum

There are some such places, but they are relatively few and far between. The exception, rather than the rule.

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