What is different from Hamas right to exist compared to the IDF or Likud? Hamas certainly has less blood on their hands!
Turn on Israeli TV and they're showing the IDF raping prisoners in Sde Teiman. Degenerate behavior from the self-described Jewish state. The US taxpayer is paying the bills for all this bloodshed.
The IDF and Likud does not have a policy of attacking civilians to achieve political or war goals.
They likely have some deranged and radicalized commanders who do this anyway, but it's not the organizational policy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017165958/https://twitter.c...
Top-down messaging like that certainly doesn’t strengthen whatever ‘policy’ is
I am trying to respond in good faith, but it looks like Hamas is accepted across the world as a terrorist organization for specifically targeting civilians. And as much as I loathe the loss of civilian life at the hands of IDF, this is not a conventional war, and Hamas hiding within civilian populations and tunneling under hospitals is on Hamas and not on IDF. Like it happened in history a million times, Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
So, that's why Hamas must cease to exist. Not Palestine itself, nor another government in Palestine - just Hamas. They could've stopped it, they didn't.
Let me know when IDF/Likud behave like this unprovoked (Yes, I know what's going on in West bank and its not remotely close to what Hamas did)
And then Israel would keep occupying more and more land, control their water, electricity, treat Palestinian people like sub-humans, occasionally shoot some children in the head, take palestinian hostages/prisoners without legal right (occasionally tortue and rape them).
What do you do then? Protest peacefully?
Actually attempting to attack legitimate military targets seems like a bare minimum we should demand of pretty much everyone.
Yes.
What has violence solved here? Thousands of people have died, and Palestinians are not treated better. I am no sure what peaceful protests would have done, but "nothing" is still way better than what we have now.
I pointed out Palestine because Israel is in a dominant position, so it is unlikely that they would want to protest, peacefully or not. But it would be nice to see more "peace-and-love" movements like in the 60s that opposed the Vietnam war, among other things.
IDF is the military branch of an actual state. Likud is a political party. Neither advocate for indiscriminate killing of civilians (though some Likud politicians might, just like the US or any other nation has crazy politicians).
"Right to exist" is granted either through law or force. Hamas doesn't have law, doesn't exist within a functioning state, and is illegal by the laws of most nations. IDF isn't.
If you actually think there's a moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas, or that Hamas is somehow the moral group here, you really need to learn more. Stop consuming social media, stop reading things on the internet, go buy some books from a diverse array of sources, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel, and maybe you can gleam the truth out of there. It's not a guarantee, but it's your best shot.
I really think the TikTok age has amplified insanity where we actually have people asking, "Why does a military get to exist but not terrorists?".
For anyone who needs a reminder of how this war started (warning, extremely graphic / not suitable for life): https://www.hamas-massacre.net/
The blood of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas waged war from behind is absolutely on Hamas's hands.
Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Thousands of Palestinians children are dead, and for every single one, Israel could have chosen not to kill them, and the decision to do so is on them.
- The "Israel should disband itself" reply: Give in to terrorists' demands, give them their country, and humbly negotiated for a freeing of the hostages without any military response. Hamas remains in charge as military dictatorship of Gaza.
- The military genius reply: I would have sent only special forces to Gaza to go after the Hamas leadership and free all hostages. No civilians would have been harmed and all collateral damage is avoided.
Neither of these are even remotely realistic. What was ordered and how events unfolded was more or less like any other country would have reacted. Two goals: #1 Destroy Hamas, #2 Free the hostages.
The problem right now with the hostage deal is that it leaves Hamas in charge. That's a huge problem.
If they want credit for the ones not dropped, they need to take responsibility for the ones they did. Not really that hard!
This is important because "it's all on Hamas's hands" is really just a refusal to engage with the ethical questions at all. Folks could (and clearly would!) say that, whether one child is killed, or a million. It's just a question of when it becomes untenable to brush the question away.
The idea that "this is more or less like any other country would have reacted" is the same trap; this makes Israel no worse or better than any other country, and conveniently means we don't have to ask ourselves about the morality of it all.
> If you're Natanyahu on October 8, 2023, and the reports of the Hamas massacres on civilians come in, there is almost no leeway for reacting in a way differently than how the Israeli government and the IDF reacted.
Any lack of political leeway to react differently is squarely within Israel's ethical score card. I.e. "Israel as an entity is not responsible for its choices because the entities constituent parts forced those choices" is reductive.
> The problem right now with the hostage deal is that it leaves Hamas in charge. That's a huge problem.
That this is the current outcome is maybe an indication that your framework of the three possible options (what Israel did + two strawmen) is lacking.
Do you think Palestine has a future under a Hamas government? If you do, you're supporting Hamas. If you don't, you need to come up with a plan to oust Hamas. Sadly, any realistic option would involve high collateral damage because Gaza is a densely populated area and the Al Aqsa brigades were comprised of about 40k prepared fighters with extensive tunnel systems.
I'm tired of hearing terrorist apologists coming up with vague "in between" replies that ultimately fall into one of the categories I've mentioned. If you can't even state how you would have dealt with the October 7 attacks, you should shut up.
The article you linked to is pure propaganda - Hamas' charter changed a long, long time ago. OTOH, Israeli politicians literally say genocidal things on a near daily basis - it's a deeply sick society.
Hamas' charter was changed recently when it was rewritten by a UColumbia grad. They still openly talk about destroying Israel and killing Jews. Learn Arabic, they don't use cover words there.
> They still openly talk about destroying Israel and killing Jews
No, they really don't? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians talk daily of committing war crimes and genocide, but somehow that's fine because it's against Arabs?
> they lived peacefully alongside Christians in Gaza
Christians are .13% of Gaza. Come on. If the Christians had any real power, they'd crush them just like they want to crush the Jews. They'd make it totally unworkable just like in Lebanon.
> No, they really don't? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians talk daily of committing war crimes and genocide, but somehow that's fine because it's against Arabs?
The far-right who does so, no that's not ok. But the IDF does not act in such a way.
No, it's not "propaganda". It's factual reporting that happens to be inconvenient to Hamas apologists.
It's also corroborated by the atrocities against innocent civilians that these monsters gleefully filmed themselves committing on October 7th, such as attacking children with grenades.
(All of this assuming no outside intervention for 3rd-party nations or groups of nations, of course.)