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Well, if you support Hamas after they butchered civilians, yes you'r supporting terrorism.
by refaelv 3y ago
Well, if you support Hamas after they butchered civilians, yes you'r supporting terrorism.
- logicchains 3y ago>Well, if you support Hamas after they butchered civilians Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that matter, literally hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq.
- hef19898 3y agoAnd pointing out the dire straights of Palestinians is different from supporting Hamas. The same way critizing Israel as a nation not the same thing as being anti-semitic. The whole Western media and political landscape somewhat fails to appreciate that small, but incredibly important difference lately. Heck, I am even getting Youtube propagan... I mean ads from the Israeli ministry of defence. But as the saying goes "One death is a tragedy, thousands are a statistic".
- Belopolye 3y agoIn this situation he tweeted something about supporting any of the actions that Hamas makes. > But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
- hef19898 3y agoAny action obviously goes to far. The situation is already bad enough as it is, a ground assault cpuld easily turn very, very ugly. And blow up thie whole powder cake that is the middle east. I just hope cooler heads prevail, but given the rather fragile political landscape in Israel, well we will see.
- bdsa 3y agoPowder keg
- Tao3300 3y agoIMO, in light of that comment, this is a non-story. Though what they did was stupid: acting like a fascist towards someone like this tends to undermine whatever position you're trying to establish simply by making you look like the bad/worse guys.
- Belopolye 3y ago[flagged]
- mardifoufs 3y agoWell, some lives matter more than the others. No one in the west cares about Palestinians. And the way people try to do blatant war crime apologia is by saying that Israel wasn't targeting civilians specifically (as if they would admit it lol) so that's fine! Even Russia pretends that it isn't openly targeting civilians but again, Palestinian lives are basically worthless so it's just different :)
- bilvar 3y agoIf even Palestinians (Hamas) do not care about Palestinians and are holding them hostages or using Palestinian children as human shields, why would anybody expect from the West to?
- mardifoufs 3y agoWell I guess if Hamas doesn't care, that justifies war crimes from Israel.
- bilvar 3y agoNo it doesn't justify war crimes from Israel. I'm just pointing out your delusion expecting anybody to care when they don't even care about themselves. You have to love yourself first, in order to be loved.
- mardifoufs 3y agoWhat? What are you even talking about? I'm not saying anything about loving them, there's an insanely wide margin between loving them and not turning a blind eye on war crimes because it's your ally that is doing it. What the hell?
- bilvar 3y agoDude, don't play semantics. Want to substitute the word love for care? Do it, the statement still holds.
- bawolff 3y ago> Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that matter, literally hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq. I don't know why "numerically" matters. There is a big difference morally between someone accidentally killed while persuing a legal military target, and intentionally gunning down a rave or children at a day care.
- hef19898 3y agoCivilian infrastructure and housing are decidedly no legitimate milotary targets. Never have been, and this makes air power such a bad choice when fighting insurgencies, it is to indiscriminate.
- bawolff 3y agoWhether or not it is a legit legal military target depends on if it is being used for a military purposes and how "porportional" the military benefit of targeting it is relitive to the civilian damage targeting it would cause. The idea that if someone converts a house into an ammunition store depot it can never be targeted ever under international law is just straight up wrong. Of course how that translates to what is being done on the ground is very complex. Which is why numerically approaches are wrong - you have to put every incident in appropriate context to judge it
- hef19898 3y agoYou make the point about fighting insurgencies and guerilla opponents being so damn hard very well, I think. Not the least beimg, that said insurgents do not really count as an armed opponent. Regarding the house being an ammunition depot: Sure, legitimate target. Blowing up the whole highrise, debatable. Blowing up the neighbouring highrise, even more debatable. And airstrikes are nowhere precise enough for that kind of work.
- xdennis 3y ago> that said insurgents do not really count as an armed opponent Insurgents are people who are fighting their own government (with guns) so they are armed, but they're not fighting Hamas, they're fighting Israel, so they're not insurgents. Many of them don't even wear military uniforms in combat, that makes them unlawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions and don't have rights. They almost always attack civilians, so they're terrorists.
- enoch_r 3y agoThe numbers we have for IDF civilian deaths in Gaza come from the governmental authority in Gaza. That government authority happens to be Hamas. - Hamas falsely attributes civilian deaths to Israel (as you can see from the "hospital strike") - Hamas vastly inflates civilian casualty counts, somewhere between 2-5x as you can also see from the "hospital strike" which was immediately claimed by Hamas to have killed more than 500. US estimates have it between 100-300, and I think the photos of the damaged parking lot are extremely damning for Hamas's claims - yes, an explosion and fire in a crowded refugee camp could kill lots of people, but 500 is absurd. - Hamas tells civilians in Gaza to ignore text messages from the IDF telling them to evacuate because their residence may be bombed. - Hamas sets up road blocks to prevent civilians in Gaza from evacuating. - Hamas sets up military installations and ammunition caches next to or in civilian installations, including kindergartens and mosques. (You can find videos of bombings resulting in massive secondary explosions as ammunition caches pop off.) They hide in refugee camps (https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hamas-top-commander-killed-airstrike/ https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hama...). I think it's worth asking whether there is any way to wage a just war against a government like this, that is literally trying to maximize the number of its own civilians killed. And if not, what kinds of behavior does that incentivize?
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoHalf of Gaza's population _wasn't even born_ yet when Hamas was "elected" so this point is kind of moot
- enoch_r 3y agoI'm not saying that Gazan civilians deserve to suffer because they voted for Hamas. I am saying that Hamas tries to inflate the death toll for Gazan civilians (both by lying about that toll, and by taking actions with the express purpose of increasing that toll). If you refuse to go to war with Hamas because of this fact, you incentivize that behavior. I can't really think of a more just case for war than "the government of a neighbor just brutally, intentionally slaughtered civilians in a surprise attack in our country." It doesn't matter whether the neighboring country is a dictatorship or a democracy. It very much sucks for the people of Palestine that Hamas chose to start a war with Israel and is using tactics that purposefully result in the death of Palestinians. I hope that they stop putting rocket launchers in and next to schools. I hope that they start allowing people to evacuate. I hope that they stop lying to their people about "psychological warfare" in an effort to get more of them killed. I wish that neighboring countries would allow Palestinians to escape the carnage, and adopt strategies that actually support the Palestinian people rather than the Palestinian cause. But the IDF and Israel do not control that. And I'm honestly not sure what people expect from them. If you can't fight an enemy that hides behind civilians, then hiding behind civilians is an obvious winning strategy. And personally, I don't want to live in a world where the government most willing to sacrifice their own people automatically wins any conflict.
- mns 3y agoMaybe if nations and groups of people would just stop trying to destroy Israel as a state and kill jewish people out of pure hatred, we wouldn't be in this situation.
- kossTKR 3y agoFirst of i doubt he's done that. Second, the Israeli military has killed much, much more people, including thousands of civilians, kids and mothers over a half a century. There are countless of videos and reports of rich settlers, harassing, stealing property and straight up killing regular palestinian farmers and families just living in their houses. And third. Israel has actively supported Hamas to destroy moderate opposition like the PLO - the good old divide and conquer strategy. So unless you also want to detain supporters of Israel this doesn't really make sense. And no, you shouldn't detain them either like this.
- hef19898 3y ago[flagged]
- kossTKR 3y agoTrue, let's call it Apartheid then, not much better unfortunately. Also very important to highlight that most people living in Palestine were pretty provincial and moderate farmers before being carpet bombed by settlers which has unsurprisingly lead to extremism.
- hef19898 3y agoTerror bombing never worked ever. What it does so, also confirmed hostorically by its biggest advocates like Sir Harris, is satisfying someones need for revenge. Hell, this whole middle east conflict is so fucked up, I do not see any way how it will ever be resolved. And obviously, getting rid of either Israel or Palestine is absolutely no option. A shame, in a different world Israel could have become the Switzerland of the Middle East, instead religious hardliners, on both / all sides of this conflict did their utmost to prevent that.
- howmayiannoyyou 3y ago[flagged]
- 3y ago
- alistairSH 3y agoHas the author done that? Hamas may be the ruling party, but there aren’t elections, so the people don’t have a choice. It’s further confused by the fact that Hamas is the government, so they also provide aid, run schools and hospitals, etc. Point being, there’s far more nuance to the whole situation than “Palestine bad.”
- enoch_r 3y agoThe author tweeted the following (https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1713335006121140511 https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...): > To be entirely plain. > I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation. > But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. > If that is a crime, send me back to jail. I think this is pretty clearly supporting Hamas. The "in the coming" bit gives him a bit of leeway, of course, since he's not actually saying he supported the October 7 massacre itself (though presumably he is saying he would support another one, if it were it to occur now?), but he certainly doesn't seem to be making the sort of "I support Palestinians, not Hamas" argument that you assume. Personally, as an American, I've been told by Europeans here that our attitudes towards free speech are bizarre, and that government has an important role to play in, ah, curating the information ecosystem. Despite that, I still believe that people like Murray should be perfectly free to argue for their views, however much I personally find them abhorrent.
- alistairSH 3y agoAh, well that's a bit more clear. I don't agree with what he said. But, it also doesn't strike me as terrorism itself or outside the bounds of free speech (at least as we know it in the US, which isn't quite the same as in the UK). [I don't have a Twitter account, and try to avoid the site since access seems to be hit-or-miss since Musk took over]
- kmlx 3y agohttps://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266038/List_of_Proscribed_organisations.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... > PROSCRIBED TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS > Proscription makes it a criminal offence to: > belong to or invite support for a proscribed organisation; > arrange a meeting in support of a proscribed organisation; and. > wear clothing or carry articles in public which arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of the proscribed organisation. i think he broke the first rule.
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoTo them, they're freedom fighters. They won't learn otherwise without punishment.
- cedws 3y agoPalestine != Hamas
- jules-jules 3y agoBy that logic, the following applies, too. > people forget (or likely don’t even know) that, when Israel was not yet in a position of asymmetric power and secure statehood, Israeli paramilitaries often committed terror attacks which are indistinguishable from what we have seen Hamas do in recent decades. Deir Yassin, the King David Hotel Bombing, al-Husayniyya Safad, and so on. Now they do not have the need for such acts, when high tech bombing and artillery barrages, international legal sanction, highly trained police, are available. Beheading children and setting off car bombs at shopping centers looks bad internationally, and there’s little reason for it when you are the one with a “legitimate” state. But Israel got to that position in part by using methods indistinguishable from Hamas. Granted, one will say— that wasn’t Israel, it was the Irgun, or the Palmach, or some particular militia: more extremist factions of the Zionist movement. But it’s the same for Palestine. What is the great difference between the Irgun and Hamas, except in terms of success? Israel still engages in extreme brutality, and have even abetted on the ground massacres since the 1970s, but usually in ways that extricate themselves from the same level of responsibility (whether by setting up Lebanese militias to do their dirty work, or by allowing massive Palestinian casualties to be categorized as collateral damage). I can recognize that civilians being killed by artillery in a war zone is categorically different than civilians being assaulted, tortured, raped and executed by ground forces. But the crazy thing that’s forgotten is that Israeli forces did use those same tactics, when it’s situation and power position was more desperate, and it’s reputation not yet based on maintaining the appearance of civility.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoThat's whataboutism; although it's true that there are no "good" sides in this conflict, the issue here is that supporting Israel is fine, but supporting Hamas is not because they have been declared a terrorist organization. Nobody's going to get in trouble for opposing the conflict, or pointing out civilian casualties, displacement, war crimes, etc. But you WILL get on a List if you support Hamas in any way shape or form. Pick your battles, know the risk. Yeah it's not fair, just or morally correct, but this is the reality of things.
- sharno 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMkhonto_we_Sizwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMkhonto_we_Sizwe
- o11c 3y agoVery relevant, and we can think of numerous additional examples. I'm fond of making American Revolution comparisons. The only difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is which side you're on (or: which side the victors write into history).