Maybe this is just my bubble, but the messaging I get is that Israel should stop murdering Palestinian civilians and not that Hamas is somehow righteous in their actions.
Wow, what a daring and brave opinion. I'm in awe that you're willing to share it publically!
Like, a bunch of my local social media bubble has been talking about "media literacy" and "illiteracy" and related concepts and this is a great example.
If, for example, someone is telling you that a publically terrible act of violence by someone associated with palestine is probably a response to previous israeli actions, they are not, in fact, secretly trying to imply that the terrorist is a hero.
They're simply trying to explain the likely consequences of actions.
One of the things that I find most frustrating in certain types of discussions is the idea that we can't do something that will improve the lives of large numbers of people on the off chance that a bad person won't get punished or someone undeserving will be rewarded.
It's entirely probable that the solution that improves the lives of the most people in that region will also involve quite a few awful people not getting punished.
It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing.
If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal.
This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense.
Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part.
People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering.
Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.
Hamas, after years of being supressed, is a group of militants with handguns.
The Isrealli response to those terrorist with guns killing and abducting some of their people, was to flatten and impose collective punishment on the whole country that those people came from.
I have no issues with them defending themselves, but I do with the disproportionate nature of what has been happening.
It’s especially ironic because the jews are one of the few people in the world that should have learned that lesson.
Your "assymetrical" point is especially bizzare. Palestinian terrorists have shown nothing but tremendous willingness and enthusiasm for attacking jews with literally anything they can lay their hands on including screwdrivers and vehicles. The total imbalance of forces doesn't deter them at all. Why would they having more weapons or Israel less change anything?
The main reason large portions of the strip has been flattened is because Hamas built tunnels underneath it.
You say it's disproportionate, but spend a couple of hours reading up israels history and geography. You might arrive at some conclusions about the nature of Palestinian terror (if the parent story wasn't enough). I doubt you could come up with literally any other solution. The only one i can think of is a mass evacuation of the gaza strip. It would have prevented a huge amount of deaths.
I think the main lesson jews learnt from the holocaust is not to rely on the rest of the world to help them when they are in trouble. I have absolutely no idea why you would think they must prioritise the moral lessons they learned above their own safety.
HAMAS spent this time to build a network of tunnels below the streets, and to stockpile ammo/explosives. They could care less about the people, using them only as human shields. They also actively brainwashed the population: https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/b1fjucpdgg
So what would be a "proportional" answer from Israel? They don't have any good options.
> The Isrealli response to those terrorist with guns killing and abducting some of their people, was to flatten and impose collective punishment on the whole country that those people came from.
To give you the sense of scale, HAMAS murdered 1195 people, and they also took 250 people as hostages (somehow pro-Palestinian protesters almost never knew about this!). And 1500 people is a HUGE number for a tiny country like Israel (Jewish population of 7200000). Scaled to the size of the US, this would be aroud 70000 people, many times the size of 9/11.
It’s pure cowardice that they fight the way they do, mixing all their military equipment with civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools, and they rely on propagandizing gullible Western liberals (as well as anti-semites) to get support for their murderous cause.
There is no way to fight them that doesn’t endanger civilians. And there’s no way for Israeli Jews to continue breathing without fighting Hamas. Anyone who doesn’t believe that is living in a fantasy.
The number of Palestinians executed is far less than those killed by Israeli aggression. Don't minimize the war crimes of Israel.
How far is the IDF office from civilian infrastructure?
Your comment reeks of propaganda - or severe misinformation at the least.
With full legal proceedings, lawyers, appeals, appeals to the European Court of Human Rights, etc.?
> The number of Palestinians executed is far less than those killed by Israeli aggression. Don't minimize the war crimes of Israel.
Yes, "aggression" that happened on its own, completely unprovoked.
But I'm sure that even if Israel had been provoked, then such a lawful and peaceful state as Gaza would have had no problems extraditing all the responsible criminals. Or maybe applying the same death penalty to them?
Surely, if they have the death penalty for treason, then they should also have the death penalty for terrorism?
> Your comment reeks of propaganda - or severe misinformation at the least.
You are seriously justifying rampant murder by terrorists.
Sorry, but if this IS what Gaza stands for, then I sure as hell don't want it to be independent.
Ahh, propaganda again. You really are a victim of propaganda, or believe history started on Oct 7. Predictable.
> You are seriously justifying rampant murder by terrorists.
I'd say, and most people around the world, that that's what you're doing. I'm recognizing resistance, and calling out crimes where it occurs. I'm not one to tell oppressed people how to be oppressed, how to be the perfect victims. When you oppress people, it's going to backfire at some point in time.
As far as I recall, Hamas has openly called for, and encouraged, third party involvement to investigate any war crimes committed on Oct 7th and to prosecute the perpetrators. Israel? Not so much...
Sorry, I'm going to need an actual source before I believe that. ("As far as I recall" is not a source.)
In late 2023 and early 2024, Naim repeatedly said that Hamas was ready to welcome an international inquiry mission into allegations about what Hamas fighters did on October 7.
In a statement responding to a New York Times report on sexual violence on Oct 7, he said Hamas had “on various occasions… welcomed any international inquiry mission to look into any allegations” and contrasted this with Israel allegedly blocking investigations.
And from Anadolu Ajansi: "Urged “a neutral international commission of inquiry” to look into allegations of sexual violations committed by its fighters during the Oct 7 attack"
Let's look at 2005, then? When Israel forcibly displaced people out of Gaza. That is, Jewish settlers. Giving HAMAS full control over the land.
Or maybe 2011, when Israel exchanged more than a thousand prisoners (convicted through a regular legal process) for Gilad Shalit.
Sorry, but in the case of Gaza it's completely black-and-white. There are really no shades of gray there. HAMAS was given free rein, and they paid back by committing the worst terrorist act in Israel's history. HAMAS did nothing to help their people, using Gazans as puppets, while funneling money to criminals.
And I actually support sanctions against Israel for their West Bank settlers and discriminatory laws that result in the displacement of Palestinians there. Israel is certainly not blameless.
> When you oppress people, it's going to backfire at some point in time.
Who exactly was oppressing Gaza? Except HAMAS, of course.
> As far as I recall, Hamas has openly called for, and encouraged, third party involvement to investigate any war crimes committed on Oct 7th and to prosecute the perpetrators. Israel? Not so much...
Links? I'm _sure_ they must have at least detained some of the estimated 6000 people participating in the raid?
1. Martyrdom is supposed to be the top aspiration of their fanatic version of Islam, so they’re doing them a favor getting them killed
2. Everyone who knew the dead becomes more filled with hate for the enemy
3. Every civilian death gains Hamas more support among the gullible Western liberals who have been funding and supporting Hamas for decades.
They want this, they choose this, it’s all in their control and they prefer this. All because of their pure hatred for Jews, which will only be sated by actual genocide.
How about murdering 17,000 children in a country with a population of 2M total?
Does that sound better?
Nearly one in 20 people in Gaza was murdered by the Israelli military. That’s an ridiculous number. Since Nazi germany managed about 10% of their occupied population in 5 years, I guess they were right on track to hit those numbers before (can’t believe I’m saying this) Trump thought it was necessary to intervene, whatever his reasons.
(It hasn't been militarily meaningful for over 18 months; you could call it that today! If what you are, principally, is angry about war crimes in Gaza, you have ample evidence to muster without telling fairy tales about what the situation was in 2023.)
You can avoid a lot of trouble by avoiding sentence structures where the subject is "Jewish people" and the verb is "should (x)".
This is beyond ridiculous. Israel is a nuclear-armed regional power with tanks, a modern navy, a state of the art air force, the best missile defence system in the world, and one of the best counterintelligence operations. It can project force thousands of kilometres away into Iran. Hamas is none of that.
Even on sheer manpower, sources from 2023 put Hamas at 3 to 30 times smaller than the IDF, depending on who you trust and how you count reservists. [0]
If Hamas had been a near peer to the IDF, the October 7th attackers wouldn't have been shootings and stabbings within 5 miles of the Gaza border, they would have been successful missile attacks on Tel Aviv or tanks rolling down the streets of West Jerusalem. Or do you think Hamas just wanted to start a limited war with border skirmishes and kept its real military might in reserve?
Perhaps "small arms" or "light weapons" would be more precise than "handguns", but Hamas's capabilities have always been closer to the latter than to Israel's.
[0] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231016-the-israel-ha...
--- start quote ---
In January 2008 the border between Gaza and Egypt was breached by Hamas. It allowed them to bring in Russian and Iranian-made rockets with a larger range. In the first half of 2008, the number of attacks rose sharply, consistently totaling several hundred per month. In addition, Ashkelon was hit many times during this period by Grad rockets.
...
In 2012, Jerusalem and Israel's commercial center Tel Aviv were targeted with locally made "M-75" and Iranian Fajr-5 rockets, respectively, and in July 2014, the northern city of Haifa was targeted for the first time
--- end quote ---
> Perhaps "small arms" or "light weapons" would be more precise than "handguns"
Where "light weapons" are literally thousands of rocket launches against various targets in Israel.
Iron Dome exists due to "small lightly equipped militia" in Palestine.
"Oh it's just a single grenade in Jerusalem or something"
Iron Dome literally built to protect from hundreds of rocket attacks.
"Oh, it's not even close to scratching the deaths from Israeli bombs"
A well-organised organisation easily orchestrating the attacks, and with a funding at lower estimates of at least $200 million
"Oh, it's just militants with handguns. It's just $100 million, not that much" [1].
> I can’t even imagine how people keep repeating that.
Yes, yes I can't imagine how people keep being Hamas apologists in the face of actual reality.
[1] My original comment said "I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas had total funding near the same level as IDF.". This is definitely not true. But man. To dismiss the lower estimate of ~$200 million dollars as "it's nothing" and to pretend that Hamas is neither well funded nor well organised is just absolute insanity.
I can't believe people still peddle this bullshit. Hamas are a well organised and a well-funded terrorist organisation that is also the governing body in Gaza.
So anything from "back alley" support from Iran to fingers in hundreds of millions in yearly humanitarian aid. I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas had total funding near the same level as IDF.
You don't get a separate "rocket attacks on Israel" Wikipedia entry with "just guns": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_... You don't get to fire Russian- and Iranian-built Grad, Katyusha, or Fajr-5 and pretend "it's just a group of militants with guns"
How much damage has those Russian and Iranian built rockets done in Israel? How many tanks do Hamas have? How many fighter jets do Hamas have? How many nuclear weapons do Hamas have?
The fact is, Hamas is a product of being a military in a territory that is subject to blockade by Israel. You can say Israel left Gaza in [insert year], but the fact of the matter is that a blockade has been there up to now.
And so if Hamas was a democratically elected government of Gaza, with the opportunity of becoming a 'Singapore' of the Middle East and having full agency (as Israel claims), why is it outside the bounds of reasonableness that they do acquire weapons from Russia and Iran, just like any other country in the world does for their own military needs?
Enough for Israel to build Iron Dome. Iron Dome literally exists because these "poor militants with handguns" were firing hundreds of rockets per month at targets in Israel. From Wikipedia:
--- start quote ---
In January 2008 the border between Gaza and Egypt was breached by Hamas. It allowed them to bring in Russian and Iranian-made rockets with a larger range. In the first half of 2008, the number of attacks rose sharply, consistently totaling several hundred per month.
--- end quote ---
The rest of your message is a non-sequitur on top of non-sequitur.
Hamas is not, and never has been "militants with handguns". They are, and have always been, a well organised organisation with huge funding.
Agan. Wikipedia.
--- start quote ---
Hamas has reportedly accumulated over $12 million per month from taxes on goods imported from Egypt into Gaza as of 2021. Iran provides some $100 million annually to Hamas and other Palestinian groups
--- end quote ---
These are just some estimates. Actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher.
Oh my goodness. 100 million? They can afford one tenth of a JSF!
To just immediately quote the first thing that google spit out in it’s AI search thing:
> A mid-size hospital (defined as having 100 to 499 beds) typically has an annual operating budget of several hundred million dollars.
After some research, it seems that the budget of Israel’s military is about 3x Hamas’s entire annual operating budget.
In full anarchy, the bigger person is rational. Regardless, the bigger person seeks to make some semblance of a case of why their perspective is not immoral, and they mostly can’t. It’s not both rational and moral (as much as they want delude themselves out of moral accountability), it is simply just rational which means one actor is truly psychopathic.
As I said in another comment, my own experience of living in two countries, and reading media from a few others, is that it inaccurate, sometimes wildly so. Sometimes dishonestly so - and dishonesty often comes from simple laziness.