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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Actually UNWRA funding was spend the money on schools. A majority of now them damaged or destroyed.

But there was a secondary non-UN source of funds via Qatar directly to Hamas. Thus funding source was approved and encouraged by Netanyahu. Netanyahu actually empowered and transferred money to Hamas, while disempowering moderates because he felt that was the best way to ensure there was never a 2 state solution. Read it here in the Israeli press:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolste...

You should educate yourself on what is actually going on, rather than repeating tropes.

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Let's not forget that Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 [0] in what is largely considered a fair election*. And if anything, Israel's interference would have been against Hamas (see Wikipedia link).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative...

* There are some caveats to "fair" in this case, which is why I linked to the Wikipedia article. But it is by and large considered a legitimate democratic process.

> Let's not forget that Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 in what is largely considered a fair election.

What point are you trying to make with this statement? It’s also true that there hasn’t been an election in the past 17 years. I’m unclear what you’re trying to imply about the will of the Palestinian people here.

The idea that Netanyahu is responsible for Hamas' popularity is false. Yes, Israel has played Hamas off against the PA, yes that was a very bad move, but it's not the reason Palestinians prefer Hamas to the PA. Money doesn't explain everything.

> The idea that Netanyahu is responsible for Hamas' popularity is false.

The claim was that Netanyahu preferred Hamas "to ensure there was never a 2 state solution", which is true.

And so far it that seems to be working out. Mass starvation, infectious diseases, day 7 of the internet blackout in Gaza, the university in Gaza was just blown up with wired explosives, the Israeli government (even Mossad on Twitter, heh) proudly show it off.

Hamas doesn't explain all that, the expansionist goals do, including why one would have preferred Hamas. There was never a realistic threat of Hamas "destroying all of Israel" from Gaza, regardless of what Hamas might have wished they were capable of, but the destruction of all of Gaza, and the people in it, is going on with a speed and ferocity we haven't seen before.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2024/jan/11/palest...

Allegedly, the count of bombs dropped on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, half the population being minors, now surpassed the amount of bombs dropped in the second Iraq war by US and UK combined in ~8 years, that number being 29,199 bombs according to Wikipedia:

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

Here's an older (this all moves so quickly) article also discussing the 2000lbs bombs: https://edition.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html

> A man sits on debris as Palestinians conduct a search and rescue operation in Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza City, on November 1

Were there tunnels under the refugee camp? I don't know, and I don't care. One cannot hide the elephant of the violent excesses, the genocidal language and the settlers who seem to have their every whims catered for, completely behind the fig leaf of Hamas and the actors that support them.

> There was never a realistic threat of Hamas "destroying all of Israel" from Gaza, regardless of what Hamas might have wished they were capable of

This is the argument I just don't get. Are you saying Hamas is not all that bad because, although they have clear genocidal intent, they are not likely to be able to carry it out?

Its like saying a hitman, who fails to carry out a plan to kill, is better than a driver whose car malfunctions and actually causes a fatal accident.

"Its like saying a hitman, who fails to carry out a plan to kill, is better than a driver whose car malfunctions and actually causes a fatal accident. "

No, it's like saying a a hitman who fails to carry out a plan to kill is better than an army of hitmen who succeed. And that is simple to say.

[edit]

If you really want to understand the people with whom you disagree, you might find it useful to understand that no one believes that this situation is just some accident into which the IDF has been forced to act. That is a long history, but the idea that one group is malicious and the other group is just acting like a person operating a car is central to the disagreements.

To use your metaphor for a lot of us what we are hearing is that drivers in cars have a historical mandate to mow down pedestrians who aren't in crosswalks. I don't think that is true, and I don't think that the IDF is operating ethically in any sense.

That's not an argument, that's a cold hard fact.

The argument is that someone wishing they could commit ethnic cleansing does not excuse actually committing it on a third party. Just like Hamas thinking collective punishment is justified doesn't mean you get to respond with collective punishment. Hamas and other terrorists are not the standard.

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