Do pro-Palestinian protesters support Hamas? Probably most of them don't, but the language they routinely use leaves room for doubt. This is from Students for Justice in Palestine:
Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law.... Resistance comes in all forms—armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations.
"Resistance" includes armed struggle and Israelis are not civilians. There may not be any explicit mention of Hamas here, but this is pretty obviously a defense of Hamas slaughtering civilians on October 7. In other places "the resistance" is used as a synonym for Hamas.
Avoiding explicit references to Hamas is plainly political. Jodi Dean, who was famously suspended from Hobart and William Smith Colleges for her "comments" on the Gaza war, is more explicit:
The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating.... Although imperialist and Zionist forces try to condense the action into a singular figure of Hamas terrorism...the will to fight for Palestinian freedom precedes and exceeds it.
These are the paragliders who sailed into Israel and butchered more than a thousand civilians, including hundreds of kids at the Re'im music festival. This was "exhilarating."
The struggle for Palestinian liberation today is led by the Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas. Hamas is supported by the entirety of the organized Palestinian left. One might have expected that the left in the imperial core [i.e., the United States] would follow the leadership of the Palestinian left in supporting Hamas. More often than not, though, left intellectuals echo the condemnations that imperialist states make the condition for speaking about Palestine.
In other words, American lefties feel like they "have to" condemn Hamas to maintain their credibility. But Dean is having none of it:
Defending Hamas, we take the side of the Palestinian resistance.... Which side are you on? Liberation or Zionism and imperialism? There are two sides and no alternative, no negotiation of the relation between oppressor and oppressed.
That's clear enough. It's worth noting that even after writing such an explicit defense of killing civilians, Dean's suspension was condemned by nearly everybody as a breach of academic freedom. Maybe that's correct. But after reading her entire essay, I have to wonder whether she can be trusted to treat all her students fairly and maintain an evenhanded approach in her lectures.
It's wise for most Palestinian resistance groups in the US to avoid being as clear as Dean. After all, most Americans, no matter whose side they're on, still think of Hamas as a brutal terrorist group. But even though the resistance groups try to keep things fuzzy, there's not much question that most of them think Hamas is just doing what has to be done and October 7 is therefore to be celebrated. After all, it was nothing more than a necessary step toward eliminating the settler colonialist Israelis once and for all.
POSTSCRIPT: And what about Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza? Is that just a necessary step toward eliminating Hamas? There are many who think so. I'm not one of them, but it's sophistry nonetheless to pretend these are the same things. Hamas invaded Israel for the express purpose of slaughtering civilians. Israel may be guilty of not caring enough about civilian deaths in Gaza, but they are fundamentally fighting against a terrorist group which has the announced aim of destroying Israel.
This is not some mushy, hair-splitting distinction that's blind to Israeli behavior. It's fundamental to the most minimal conception of human decency.
Drum is getting better on this subject based on not being able to turn away from the obvious evil that Israel is currently engaged in. But he is still trapped at times by having grown up with the kindergarten pro-Israel version of the conflict. That comes back in the discussion above.
In the last year we have seen 4 great evils in the conflict. (1) Hamas slaughtered more than a 1000 Israelis, mostly civilians. (2) Israel slaughtered more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza and has induced a famine that threatens more then 2 million people seemingly as part of a plan to ethnically cleanse the territory. (3) Israel continued to maintain a blockade over a captive population in Gaza which included forced food insecurity, shooting at peaceful protesters, preventing fishermen from fishing where the fish lie off the coast. And, of course this was a policy in place for more than a decade. (4) Both before and after 10/7 Israel has been pushing the millions of inhabitants of the West Bank into smaller ghettos surrounded by increasing Israeli civilian populations during an occupation. When all of the available land was taken, Israel turned to pograms to empty some existing villages to make more land available for the occupiers.
Of these 10/7 is probably the least evil of the four both because it involves the fewest victims by several orders of magnitude, and because it is the only one of the four done to try to upset a cruel status quo, while the other three are all ways to maintain a cruel status quo. That is not to say it is not evil, but to put it in the context of what it was a response to.
Drum still manages to find the last two evils as business as usual, and so presents things as if the real evil started on 10/7 and the other evil can be understood as a response to it. His reaction to the Israel response seems to be that a violent response was justified, but the actual response went too far. That is not an unreasonable response. But he seems not to realize that it is the response that many of the people he is criticizing are making to 10/7 only without ignoring the other two great evils I mentioned.
Good post.
"Of these 10/7 is probably the least evil of the four both because it involves the fewest victims by several orders of magnitude..."
This doesn't really make sense. On the one hand, you're tossing about such ill-defined terms as "evil"; on the other hand, you decide that it can be quantified in terms of number of lives lost.
If we embark on the path of reasoning where children are responsible for the transgressions of their parents, who are responsible for the transgression of their government, it leads us toward infinite regression, where anything and everything has some justification. This is also a roundabout way of saying that the ends justify the means. They don't.
The fact of the matter is that Netanyahu's right wing government and Hamas have a symbiotic relationship. They need each other to stay in power. They feed off the violence perpetuated by the other side to bolster their position politically and find more support. Hamas doesn't give a shit about Israeli lives -- but they have the same indifference toward the suffering of Palestinians.
Israel is committing war crimes. Maybe they can even have a genocidal hue to them. Although, to my eye it's just indifference to the lives of Gazans. However, that in no way changes the nature of Hamas.
Huh? I made the claim that some evils are greater than others and pointed to factors that could contribute. Your response to this doesn't make a lot of sense. Obviously you can disagree, say by thinking that evils are equal, or that the factors I chose are the wrong one. But instead you seem to have some a priori belief that numbers can't matter. That is odd. Numbers are a rather obvious thing to matter. Your response seems to be that it can't come down to a precise formula. But when we are talking about abusing millions of people vs abusing over a thousand, not a lot of precision in calculation is required.
Then you point to the fruitlessness of pointing to a line of reasoning that I did not point to. I agree with you that people who go in the direction you suggest are often trying to find excuses for the wrong doing of their side. But that is why I didn't do that.
I get the sense from your last paragraph that your real objection is that you are comparing what Israel is doing not to what Hamas did, but to what you imagine Hamas would do in some possible world. That also seems to be a difficult road to go down. It is quite possible that Hamas would act just as evilly as Israel is acting if it could. But I was talking about what they actually did.
The problem with this approach is simple: it doesn't get us any closer to a solution.
There are 7.5 million Jews who live in Israel. They, or their recent ancestors, moved there to live in a majority Jewish state. They aren't going anywhere.
There are 5 million Palestinian non-citizens in Israel without any civil or political rights. They aren't going anywhere.
The obvious solution was partition, but the last time Israel proposed something like that, in 2000, the response from the PA was to start the Second Intifada, which ended in 2005 after Israel built separation barriers.
Throughout all this time, Israelis continued to add settlements to the West Bank, making partition increasingly difficult.
The 10/7 attacks were heinous, as is the Israeli response. The former deliberately targeted civilians, while the latter is taking virtually no account of potential civilian deaths in their military operations, a distinction without any significance.
The status quo perhaps could have been a lot better had Arafat not started the Second Intifada, which also destroyed politically the only Israeli party willing to negotiate at all with the PA.
At the moment, extremists on both sides depend on each other to justify their increasingly awful criminal behavior. We should stop sending weapons to Israel until they stop killing civilians in Gaza -- they're never going to get rid of Hamas this way anyway. But they're nowhere near reaching a peace agreement, and one-sided analyses like this aren't useful or informative..
The obvious solution was partition, but the last time Israel proposed something like that, in 2000, the response from the PA was to start the Second Intifada . . .
Maybe the Israelis shouldn't have made it clear that they were never going to offer the Palestinians a sovereign state, only a Bantustan.
The status quo perhaps could have been a lot better had Arafat not started the Second Intifada, which also destroyed politically the only Israeli party willing to negotiate at all with the PA.
Let's put the brakes on the idea that any Israeli party (or Jewish party, at any rate) was prepared to really negotiate with the PA. Even Labor refused to countenance giving the Palestinians actual sovereignty. And even Labor violated their signed agreements to halt expansion of West Bank settlements.
Arguing that the Palestinians shouldn't have launched the Second Intifada while not castigating all of the Jewish parties for negotiating ion transparent bad faith, stealing land, and allowing settlers to engage in their own terrorism means that someone isn't serious.
None of the rest of it happens witout the slaughter of innocent civilians on 10/7. It is by far the most evil of your examples.
"Hamas invaded Israel for the express purpose of slaughtering civilians." And Israel of course had no such purpose and only wanted to destroy Hamas.
This kind of comparison, always giving the benefit to Israel, no longer works. The one which invaded and openly stated at times that its express purpose was to slaughter civilians was Israel. And what the express purpose of Hamas is, Kevin simply assumes. Even though all the evidence seems to indicate Hamas didn't care a hoot about civilian life and mostly wanted to take hostages, deal IDF a blow, attack places from which Palestinians had been driven and scuttle Saudi-Israel rapprochement.
Hamas is just a distasteful militia. I too hate it when I see them hailed as part of the "axis of resistance" but the only reason they could do so much damage is because Israel let up its guard to better oppress Palestinians in the West Bank. There's no reason to think Hamas could do it again and never was one.
Okay, my first thought on hearing of the October 7th counerattack by Hamas was "Now Israelis are learning how it feels to be a Palestinian." My second thought was "Who am I kidding? Israelis are incapable of that."
If you can't admit that Hamas's attack was a response to decades of Israeli brutality, carpet bombing Gaza PRIOR to 10/7/23, squatter (aka "settler") violence in the West Bank, and the periodic "mowing the grass" Bee-bee and his party like to do before each election; if you don't think any response was warranted, then it's hard to discuss the Palestine issue at all.
Further given that Israel has refused, for decades, to communicate with Hamas in any way other than violence. Even the recent rounds of "negotiations" have to be done via proxies, because Israel WILL. NOT. TALK.
In short, I have very little sympathy for Israelis. They have made their bed. They could have made peace from Day One with the inhabitants of Palestine and moved in as good neighbors. They preferred slaughtering them.
I'm confounded by more than a few posts in this comment section, but let me ask about yours.
You say:
Okay, my first thought on hearing of the October 7th counerattack by Hamas was "Now Israelis are learning how it feels to be a Palestinian."
I'm curious. Was your first thought on hearing of the 9/11 attack, "Now Americans are learning what's it's like to be a Muslim in the Middle East?"
For the moment, I'll guess not. Maybe you feel those two acts of brutal terrorism are considerably different. But I'm not so sure. Acts of terrorism happen for a reason. Terrorists as a rule feel justified through their history of suffering oppression. They attack viciously and against innocent civilians out of rage and frustration at having no other way to counter the injustices they suffer from a more powerful enemy. Palestinians have a long list of abuses that Israel has perpetrated against them. Muslims likewise with America and the regimes that the US has armed and supported. Take any terrorist group through the ages and they no doubt feel the same.
Is there some principle about terrorism that qualifies some incidents as justified and excusable while others are not?
I'd like to know because I'm not sure if there are some rules and even morals that are supposed to be guiding how people act, or do we live in a world where anything goes?
Yes. Also that Americans would assume Bush Junior had been asleep at the switch. I was, of course, wrong on both counts. First, that Americans would ever assume we had done anything wrong, and second, that we wouldn't rush to support the failed president.
So when it comes to the slaughter of innocents by the thousands, your sympathies lie with the terrorists. Thanks for being honest about that.
I don't know what happened to you, what disfigured your heart, what lobotomized your sense of decency. Whatever it was, I find it a pity. I hope you get help. Find peace if you can.
Meanwhile, the people you claim to support will continue to suffer because you and your kind place a twisted sense of righteousness above any call for shared humanity.
Staking the moral high ground by wildly misstating what someone said might be an internet classic, but I will never understand the appeal.
I reread the exchange, and then again, and I fail to see where I am unfairly stating what he says. His first thought on Oct 7 was that Israelis more or less got what they deserved after what they'd done to Palestinians over the years. He insulted Israelis, the victims on that day, and said he has "little sympathy" for them. When I asked a clarifying question if he had similar first thoughts on 9/11, his answer: "Yes." That unequivocally shows a rather callous disregard for the lives of the victims in those two attacks, and it implies an excuse or justification for the horrors perpetrated by the terrorists. If he meant something different, he could have said so. I'm just reading what he wrote.
This isn't really hard. Just say terrorism is a heinous crime and should not be excused or tolerated. Understand that the victims of terrorist attacks are entitled to their life an liberty and that goes whether they are Israeli, Jewish, or in the case of 9/11, American. If anyone deserves sympathy, yes it is the victims. To deny them that much is fucked up.
Of course, the Palestinian people deserve our sympathy for all they have suffered as well.
But the crimes of Hamas and Netanyahu do not excuse the crimes they commit in return. There is no justice in retribution, only more victims.
Precisely my point.
You make it clear that you are doing a lot of reading between the lines to determine what Salamander truly believes.
Because he didnt say this certain thing a certain way I will assume he believes this!
Claiming that you are just 'reading what he wrote' is obviously a bad faith argument. I dont know what he believes, but I do know that he did not write what you are accusing him of. In the post above you showed us how you reinterpreted what he wrote and then used your reinterpretation as the basis for your claim.
Others have pointed out how your selective editing made it easier to misinterpret what he said.
You definitely don't get it, and you don't want to get it.
I get it.
I think you've revealed yourself better than you know.
Have a good day.
Be happy in your self-proclaimed moral superiority.
You were extremely selective in what you chose to include in your quote. Why didn't the words immediately following make the cut:
I can't see your response as being anything but deliberately obtuse even as your're squirting ink. But let's cut to the chase: do you admit what I quoted above to be the case? Yes or no? Something tells me your loathe to come right out and say either way. IOW, your rhetorical style is not the mark of someone arguing in good faith. Quite the contrary. I advise you to stop deploying these type of arguments.
"Hamas's attack was a response to decades of Israeli brutality."
I am not denying years of Israeli brutality. I think Netanyahu is a war criminal and ought to be in jail, and of course the brutal treatment didn't begin with him.
That said, I do not agree that Israeli abuses justify or excuse the terrorist attack of Oct 7. Not directly, not implicitly. Yet practically every time someone brings up the history of Israel's abuses, that's implicitly what they're doing. They're providing the reason, the rationale, for Hamas's crimes.
The problem with explaining Hamas's actions as a response to Israel's actions is that it's the same explanation that Israel offers for its actions that victimize Palestinians. Israel is responding to being attacked.
Everybody feels justified in committing the horrors they commit. The other side started it. There is always an attack that came before the latest attack. It's an endless cycle of violence. Talk about October 7 and soon you're talking about 1948, and before you know it, about what happened thousands of years ago. Don't you get it? There is no way to win this debate.
So pardon me if I don't agree that the Israeli brutality that preceded the October 7 attack is the most relevant piece of information for this discussion. It's one example of an endless series of examples of injustice and violence. Thinking it's the key factor is a dead end.
Not responding to the full quote, are we? Why didn't you respond to the rest
So, Palestinains have been carpet bombing Israel? Agressively squatting In Israeli land, etc? You're refusing to admit that Israel has slaugtered and brutalized far more Palestinians over many decades than their victims ever did ... and you're desparately squirming to avoid the admitting that you're refusing to admit.
You apparently don't know just how transparent your bad faith is. You're contemptible.
J Harbin, remember that when SOV has to start quibbling with exactly how you responded, it's because they can't handle your argument. So you're winning. At this point, mocking SOV is the correct response.
There was no time before 1982 when Israel could have made peace with its neighbors, and as recently as 2005, the Palestinians were running suicide bombing operations against Israeli civilians.
I'm not making excuses for Israeli bombing of Gaza -- they're not going to accomplish anything beyond creating a new generation who hates every Jew in Israel.
But the Palestinians have continually, since 1967, overestimated the strength of their hand. Both the Gazans and Israelis are run by the worst people in their respective societies. I have sympathy for both the Israelis and the Palestinians -- they're both led by fools with insufficient imagination to figure a way out of a paper bag.
There has also never been a time, ever, that the Palestinians could have made peace with the Israelis. As recently as last weekend, and going all the way back to 1967, the Israelis have engaged in constant land theft and engaged in their own forms of terrorism.
Like everyone else, constantly berating the Palestinians for engaging in terrorism while giving the Israelis a pass means that you are a part of the problem.
An interesting set of comments. I suggest that perhaps the following is not much hair splitting.
Hamas on Oct 7 committed what under international law would be considered a terrorist act.
Israel has a right to self defense.
And under the argument that in self defense they must attack Gaza to destroy Hamas both militarily and politically, Israel notes that this will inevitably result collateral civilian casualties.
So good so far as argued BUT the Israel justification rests these actions being necessary to destroy Hamas politically and militarily.
But as many have pointed out it is unlikely, indeed arguably impossible, for these actions to destroy Hamas politically and militarily. As a minimum there is Hamas leadership who are not in Gaza.
But if the actions resulting I collateral damage cannot achieve the stated objective of self-defense, then the actions are not justified.
Israel either has to actually destroy Hamas politically and militarily or, since guidance has been provided that their actions will not do so, their actions are not justified.
I am still waiting for Israel to actually destroy Hama militarily and politically. I suggest it will be a long wait, and Israeli failure on this point arguably means that the Israeli incursion into Gaza is arguably a war crime.
Now amusingly the Palestinainas also have a right of self-defense. And while this does ot justify acts of terror, it does justify armed resistance to the Israeli incursion.
And one begins to see the emergence of the idiocy which these acts by both Hamas and Israel entail.
We can continue perhaps with the observable agreement by both Hamas and the right wing Israelis in the government that all of the area from the river to the sea or from the Mediterranean to Jordan should be one.
We then add on the terrorist acts of the Israeli settlers, not to mention their violation of international law.
The situation is in short a mess with serious mud on the hands of all participants.
And it will only get resolved politically and only when the political and human right of all participants Israeli and Palestinians becomes the fundamental underpinning of the political settlement.
Yes. The Zionists have been working the "violence" angle with great enthusiasm and vigor for about a century, maybe longer. Yet things keep getting worse! How can it be??
Every child Israel kills, maims, starves; every school, hospital, business, and home it destroys makes more converts to a violent anti-Israel movement. Israelis claim to be "afraid", concerned for their "safety" -- well, maybe they ought to stop deliberately and brutally making more enemies.
But this appears to be beyond their imagination.
You are using the term "self-defense" in a way that defenders of Israel often do, but it is not an accurate use of the term. You at least try to apply it consistently, but it is consistently wrong. Self-defense refers to the right to defend oneself in the face of an immediate threat. Israel's response could be defensible despite not being self-defense, but what they are doing in Gaza is clearly not self-defense.
There seems to be a perversion of the concept meant to suggest that people have a right to kill anyone who could kill them in the future. (This is actually Hobbes' notion of rights which is why people take Hobbes to be making fun of the idea of right rather than supporting it). But it is not good for the chances of peace to go along with describing offensive actions as if they are defensive.
+1
And Hamas has not demonstrated that they are an immediate threat to Israel?
Pray tell how is this not so?
It still only justifies Israeli actions in Gaza as necessary to destroy Hamas politically and militarily IF it can in fact destroy Hamas militarily and politically. At this point I suggest that even the Israeli leadership knows that this goal as stated is implausible.
Again the principle of self-defense does not say you get to do anything you want to anyone who can be considered a threat.
The number of Israelis who have died is higher because Israel invaded Gaza than it would be if they did not invade Gaza. That doesn't mean the invasion is wrong. Going on the attack often involves casualties, and can be justified anyway. But it is not self-defense.
Israel has not killed more than 30,000 Palestinians because they are trying to foil another imminent attack. They aren't even making some longer range attack less likely, although at least they might believe they are doing that. Israel doesn't seem to understand the consequences of its actions well. But the bombing of one's neighbors to keep them weak, a common Israeli behavior, does not qualify as self-defense.
I think we do well to always be very skeptical of justifications for preemptive wars. That was the G.W. Bush administration’s argument for the invasion of Iraq, and part of Putin’s attempted justification for invading Ukraine.
True. And the abuse of the term self-defense seems to be a way to try to get around people seeing this.
Thumbs up.
Agreed. But the assault on Gaza is clearly not in self defense. Key principles of self-defense for nation-states:
Proportionality: The response to an attack must be proportionate to the threat faced.
Imminence: The attack must be imminent or in progress.
Necessity: The response must be necessary to address the threat.
Legality: The response must comply with international law and not violate the sovereignty of other states.
Distinction: The response must distinguish between military objectives and civilian populations and infrastructure.
Of those five, I'd say only necessity is even arguable and even that is a losing argument IMO.
I can't believe that Hamas leadership didn't expect Israel to hit back in a way that would be catastrophic for Palestinian civilians. They had to know what the consequences of their attack would be.
I have no doubt they did (although there is a good chance they did not expect the casualties of their attack to be as high as it was. They did attack one of the best defended countries in the world with bulldozers and paragliders and the kinds of weapons that are available because they are outdated and nobody else wants them much. The scale of the attack seems to be a result of Israel having deluded themselves into thinking that Hamas had been pacified, and so not a threat).
There seems to be a habit of taking the lesson of this to be that Hamas is pure evil, likely hated by the people they are sacrificing. But a better lesson to take would be that it is a sign of the brutality of the Israelis towards Gaza that Hamas would think this risk was worthwhile despite knowing how Israel would respond. The Gazan response to the conflict more supports the latter interpretation. The burst of slaughter, which has been Israel's periodic response to any action from Gaza, followed by a brief period of the world providing support to Gaza is considered to be better, or not significantly worse, than the slow strangulation of Gaza that happens between Hamas actions when the world has turned away.
There's this constant assertion by the hasbara folks that "Hamas" is responsible for the 35,000 or so Palestinian deaths, so Palestinians ought to turn on them."
But let's get real -- Palestinians are smart enough to know that Israel is the one shooting, bombing, shelling, starving them, and all the rest. The Israeli line is what you hear from the abusive husbands and boyfriends: "Baby, why do you make me do these things to you? Why do you keep making me hurt you?"
I'd add Palestinians are also smart enough to know they gave up any chance of free elections when they "elected" Hamas.
I find this hard to believe. The Hamas Party of a few decades ago wasn't the same as today's military wing. It just looks like an attempt to cast blame back on the victims.
Argument by non sequitur isn't the masterstroke you think it is. All it does is lead people to believe you've had a stroke. If you weren't born that way, that is.
Their other choice in that election was Fatah. Maybe you've noticed that they haven't an election since then, either.
But you really do like conflating things that aren't the same.
My recollection is that the main issue in that election was corruption; Hamas promised cleaner administration; the PA was and is rife with corruption.
And, for all of their manifest problems, both in terms of policy regarding the Israelis and their governance of Gaza, Hamas has been a lot less corrupt than Fatah. Granted, that says a lot more about just how corrupt Fatah than how clean Hamas is.
Also, I'm going to push back on framing this as "Hamas vs the PA." It's Hamas vs. Fatah. They are the parties. The PA is the governing structure, and Hamas won the right to control the PA in the 2006 elections.
You are correct; I should have said Fatah.
The purpose of the operation was to provoke exactly that Israeli response. They're not fighting to win on the battlefield, they're fighting to win in the court of world opinion and the best way to do that is to have lots of dead Palestinians on the nightly news.
Can you cite any evidence that Hamas believes that 'world opinion' could further their cause in the slightest? Or that they were confident enough of Israeli overreaction to adopt such a strategy?
That is the history of the conflict. The Gazans face a brutal blockade, Hamas sends bottle rockets over killing a few people, Israel first garners sympathy but then reacts with such force that the world gets disgusted and some aid is sent into Gaza.
It is true that this attack was on a bigger scale than other attacks since the second intifada. But why would they expect Israel to respond otherwise? This is what Israel does. They see what they can get away with wait until the world final has enough of them killing Gazans and then stops with no consequences for Israel. Hamas would have to be incredibly unaware not to know that this would happen on a bigger scale with a bigger attack.
The only people surprised by how this has played out are people who weren't paying attention. I would think that Hamas is playing attention.
The only resistance movement that comes to mind that succeeded with the aid of world opinion was the democracy movement in the former Union of South Africa. My recollection is that the ANC formally and publicly pivoted away from armed action, to backing the internationally-supported regime of divestiture and sanctions.
BDS has seen much less success, and I doubt Hamas expects much from it. They certainly have not renounced violent action in favor of appeals to the international community.
I do not, however, assume that Hamas intended the level of violence perpetrated on October 7, some of which might have been committed by other resistance groups or individuals. But Hamas made no attempt at control of the breaches they made in the border barriers, and they have not attempted to distance themselves from the rapes and killings of non-combatants.
The bigger difference is that the world eventually turned on apartheid in South Africa, while the US at least shows no intention of turning on apartheid in Israel. The boycotts of South Africa would not have worked if the US stayed as disinterested in ending it.
You’re not very smart, are you?
Because I asked questions?
Because you misunderstand where you are.
So, per KenSchultz, you can't cite any evidence that Hamas believes that 'world opinion' could further their cause in the slightest. Hoping that you can insult your way out of tight spot is never a good look, son. I suggest you take your USENET level trolling elsewhere. Closing with the by now obligatory 'Kevin really needs to install an up/down/ignore feature' so runts like you won't be underfoot when the adults are talking.
"Hoping that you can insult your way out of tight spot is never a good look, son."
Wow, that was an entire self-own in a single sentence. Well done, SOV.
Ah, the 'My logic is to be illogical' style of argument. I'm sure you think you're being clever and owning the libs, but the fact is, you're not distracting anyone from the fact that you have absolutely no evidence for your assertion. Which is par for the course and that's one of the categories I've got you down for in my troll rolodex.
Now, since you can't seem to contribute anything substantive, please return from whence you came, whatever '90s USENET hellhole it was.
I mean if you're going to self-own that badly, I can but call it out. David French has a podium he'd like you to join him on to talk about airport food costs.
They're not fighting to win on the battlefield . . .
Correct. Hamas has a strategy. It's evil, and I'm extremely skeptical that it's going to work, but they have a plan for how their actions lead to a desirable, for them at least, outcome.
The same cannot be said for the Israelis. They have no strategy. They have no plan for how to turn operational success into a valuable long term goal. The fact that they still can't articulate what they intend to do with Gaza once they declare this offensive over makes this abundantly clear. It's very difficult to win a war if you cannot even define what "victory" looks like.
But this shouldn't be a surprise. Israel has lacked a strategy since 1967, beyond, "If we makes Palestinians' lives miserable enough, maybe they'll magically disappear." Everything they do is an immediate term response untied to any longer term plan.
They will not, indeed, cannot, win strictly through application of massive firepower. Conventional military operations by themselves never bring victory against an insurgency, unless you're prepared to go the Full Carthage. (The Israeli far right is prepared to do that, no matter how self-destructive it would be.) Contrary to what the Israelis (and a lot of others, including Americans) believe, human beings do not surrender just because you drop immense amount of high explosives on them. You may not think that that's rational, but if not, it's a form of irrationalism that humans are very prone to.
All successful counterinsurgencies also have a component of winning over the population. After the Civil War, the Union won over the population of the Confederacy by allowing them to go back to treating Blacks as subhumans. After WWII, the Western Allies won over the populations of Germany and Japan by providing immense amounts of economic aid and (most crucially) promising to defend them against an enemy they feared and hated far more than they did us, namely the Soviet Union.
Israel has never even attempted this. Granted, at this point, winning over the Palestinian population is going to be incredibly difficult. The time to implement this policy was in 1967. Instead, they chose to aggressively alienating the Palestinians through land theft, arbitrary martial law, and terrorism. So, yeah, they've boxed themselves in.
But, until the Israelis either start trying to do so, or just ethnically cleansing the Palestinians and accepting a true pariah existence, they don't have a strategy. Just a lot of tactics that push them farther into the cul-de-sac.
Of course they knew this would happen. This is what they *wanted* to happen -- Hamas's goal was to damage Israeli morale and standing in the International community. That Joe Biden is even thinking about pulling the plug on military shipments to Israel shows how well it worked.
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